Creature X is ultimately trying to entertain, rather than change the world, an egoistic conceit to begin with, and sometimes, as long as it is done mindfully, and conciously of impact of steriotypes entertainment for it's own sake is enough. And perhapse, while writing a hunt for a mythological creature, Dupuis has managed a few blows in getting rid of other dinosaurs altogether.
With the last chapters we look at how Esther's disaperance came to shape their future lives, and became woven into their emotional foundations of those involved. Genuinely, I wept, and who out of us would not weep when we faced with the great tragedy of all human lives, that even when the blissful moments of childhood are infrequent, it is a state we all yearn for, but will never be able to return to, exiled from it as we are by the knowing that we sought, and the knowing which is thrust upon us.
February 14th 2022, is True Crime Fiction's first birthday, so I feel it is important to thank everyone who has been listening to the podcast, reading the website, sharing and liking posts and in general to those who have enjoyed TCF. It has been hard work, and at times the review schedule has felt a little oppressive, but given that I was not really sure what would come out of True Crime Fiction, I am really pleased with what it has produced. We've had over 11,000 downloads in the first year and we've got plans for future development.
It is the slow building of a sense of place, time and people over a series of novels that allows one the same sense of emotional investment as one would have to Ellis Peters, or Lyndsey Davis. For historical crime fans this is going to be the new must-read series.
Ivy, is very much a woman of her time, and as culture is currently obsessed with rewriting every historical woman as a "badass," there is something refreshing in finding a woman who operates to actively find the answers she needs within her times restrictions rather than creating a fabulist narrative of the ease of societal change.
This kind of elitism and snobbishness has always existed in the arts. However what the many who tightly cling to this sense of superiority do not realise is that it is only very recently that realism has crept into literature - think about Homer, Beowulf, Shakespeare with his Wyrd Sisters, Titania and Oberon. Human beings have always enjoyed a good dose of the mysterious, miraculous, mythological and the unexplainable in our stories.
McGowan, feels like the right person to have written this book. It is true as a fiction writer she doesn't have the investigative experience of a journalist or former detective, nor the sharp academic skill of a criminologist or sociologist, but what makes her perfect is that she herself grew up in the triangle and was a young woman at the time of the dissaperances and murders.
What Russo firmly does is place the outcomes of the cult, within a cultural context of the crumbling American empire, and the death of the public service ideal. By doing this he makes the scared, isolated lives the cult members live much more a symptom of the modern worlds lack of connection, community and shared values, rather than the punchline of a joke.
Bates book is part of a genre I have decided to name True Dystopia, so unrelenting and difficult to counter are the subculture she maps. However, at the end of the book we do gain some glimmers of hope as to how these incidious and dangerous ideas can be dealt with, and it will take a lot more energy and time than I suspect many realise. It is not the internet per say that has created these groups, but general culture, the internet just allowed communications between their individual members, who have used that opportunity the way any living organisim does, to grow, to become stronger, to reproduce.
The Baby Is Mine is an engaging, playful and modern take on the biblical tale Solomon's judgement.
