forever we try

So, like I said in my last reading post, I've been meaning to/trying to finish this book for a long time. I got obsessed with Ursula K. Le Guin's fantasy books (mostly Earthsea, but also the Annals of the Western Shore series and "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which is a short story and also maybe not technically fantasy, though it's never felt like straight science fiction to me, either) in middle school, but her science fiction never quite clicked with me then. I tried reading The Left Hand of Darkness at least once (maybe twice?), and just couldn't get through it--the pacing felt really slow to me, and I liked the main characters but didn't love them.

Reading it this time, though, the pacing isn't slow at all; I think my actual problem was that in some ways it's a much quieter book than any of the others I'd read before. Not that there isn't a lot going on--because there is--and not that the stakes aren't high--because they are--and definitely not that the story isn't high concept--because duh--but at the end of the day it isn't about any of those things so much as it is about Genly and Estraven and their relationship. And Genly and Estraven aren't always the most communicative people, even though they do try to communicate. Their friendship develops very slowly, and it takes them a long time to get a point where they understand each other even a little bit, and back in middle school I don't think I had the patience for it. 

(It's funny, because the communication issues--one person thinking they understand the other when they VERY much don't, or one person wanting to understand the other but being on such a different level that they really have to struggle to do it--crop up in Earthsea, too, especially in the first three books, but since those books are much shorter the issues are resolved sooner. And they were probably my favorite parts of those books [and still are]! So even though I couldn't finish The Left Hand of Darkness in middle school, I was already prepped to absolutely love it once I could, and I did end up loving it a lot, mostly because of those issues and conflicts, though the worldbuilding is obviously fantastic and fascinating.) 

"Where are my girls?"

I first came across the story of Winnie Ruth Judd, aka the Trunk Murderess, on an episode of My Favorite Murder (the Buzzfeed Unsolved Network also has a super-short video up that summarizes the case pretty well), and it's stuck with me ever since, probably because even though the case is technically "solved" so much about it--Winnie's motivations, whether she had an accomplice who helped dismember one of the bodies, whether she actually did it at all or took the fall for someone else--is still unknown, and almost all the theories that I've heard feel murky and unsatisfying. Not that, obviously, there's ever a really satisfying explanation for murder, especially a murder that ends with two women shot and stuffed into shipping trunks, but. This story in particular has always niggled at me. 

Basically, it goes like this: Winnie Ruth Judd was working as a secretary at a clinic in Phoenix, Arizona in the 1930s; she lived apart from her husband, William C. Judd, who was apparently a morphine addict. She met an X-ray technician who also worked at the clinic, Agnes Anne LeRoi, and became good friends with both Agnes and Agnes's roommate, Hedvig Samuelson. They even moved in together, but after a few months Winnie moved out again, and sometime around the night of October 16th, 1931, she shot and killed both Agnes and Hedvig. Three days later Winnie showed up in Los Angeles with two trunks containing the bodies, and things began to fall apart for her once a baggage agent noticed liquid oozing from one of the trunks. 

Bury Me Deep by Megan Abbot follows the basic outline of that story up until this point. In a lot of ways, it reads like an alternate-history version of the case where Winnie--except in this version she's called Marion, her friends are named Louise and Ginny, and the married lover who may or may not have been involved in the murders in real life is DEFINITELY involved here--had a little more time to make her escape, a husband who's still a morphine addict but willing to take the fall for her, and a chance to get revenge on her former lover, who in the book is portrayed as the puppet-master behind the murders and an all-around sociopath. He's charming enough that Marion never comes across as stupid for falling for him, just sheltered and repressed and pretty desperately lonely, and her relationship with Louise and Ginny is fascinating. None of them are perfect people, or even necessarily good people, but they become so dependent on each other so fast that the fallout feels inevitable and also like a punch in the gut. In real life, the theory is that the argument that ended with both Agnes and Hedvig being shot and Hedvig's body chopped into pieces had something to do with Winnie's lover, whom all three women knew. In the book, their argument starts with him, though it's also clear that it's about Louise's protective instinct and love for both Marion and Ginny, and Ginny's jealously and suspicion that Louise and Marion will eventually run off together and abandon her; Ginny, like Hedvig Samuelson, has tuberculosis and is in no position to live on her own or take care of herself. And of course, in the book, Marion's lover is in exactly the right position to know all these instincts and suspicions and to manipulate Marion and her friends through them. 

I checked this one out because a.) it's one of four old-school-noir-style novels Megan Abbot wrote, and all four have fabulously pulpy covers, and b.) I loved her thriller, The End of Everything, which is set in the 80s and also features intense female friendships and predatory men. I wouldn't call either book a fun read, and if you're not a fan of very (very) descriptive writing styles they take some getting used to, but they're both fascinating and absolutely full of tension and foreboding in a way that's, again, very noir. Bury Me Deep is also great if you like true crime (and I do)--it captures a lot of the how-could-something-like-this-ever-happen horror of the case without feeling sleazy or exploitative, and Marion's a complex and sympathetic character, even in her worst moments.

The weather's finally shifted! Cold and rainy for the most part, but we've had two or three really lovely, this-is-what-I'm-talking-about, FALL days--bright and crisp and cool. The leaves are even starting to change! Not a whole lot yet, but hey, I'll take what I can get. It's wonderful to be (hopefully) done with all the humidity, anyway. And also a great reminder that Halloween's right around the corner; I've been getting into the spirit by promising myself I'll sit down to watch The Haunting of Hill House when I have just a little more time, promising myself I'll finish Penny Dreadful...tomorrow (one more episode to go now and I don't wanna), and reading Carrie for the first time. It doesn't quite top IT as my favorite Stephen King so far, but I might put it just a space above The Shining? For no other reason than that, even though I knew the story backwards and forwards years before I ever read it, I still came away haunted by Carrie. She's a wonderful character, and the way she's written puts you in the (very) uncomfortable position of getting (even if only a little bit) why she's the butt of every single joke--she's awkward and alone and pitiable in a way that makes her almost unlikable, exactly the kind of person no one wants to be in high school, and identifying with her isn't always as easy as identifying with, say, Sue, who isn't cruel on her own but makes no effort to befriend or help Carrie until it's too late. Plus, the book moves along very quickly, like pretty much all the Stephen King books I've read before, but it has the added advantage of not being 400+ pages. I breezed through it in two or three days, which was a nice change of pace.