Tag: horror

GUILT

In the end of “The Life We Bury”, the mystery of a murderer is solved. However, the real reveal of the story is how every human being is guilty of self-absorption.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

THE LIFE WE BURY (A Novel)

Author: Allen Eskens

Narration by: Zach Villa

Allen Eskens (Author, former defense attorney who lives in Minnesota.)

Reading/listening to a book is motivated by one’s ignorance, public popularity, author reputation, or subject of interest. “The Life We Bury” is similar to an earlier murder mystery by Allen Eskens. “The Life We Bury” deals with a crime but has no famous historical allusions like the mystery in “The Quiet Librarian”. However, it does have a similar theme. “The Life We Bury” is about injustice and a human desire to right what is wrong. As a popular author and an attorney by profession, both novels show Eskens intimate knowledge of the legal system and its faults.

The characters of life.

The main characters of “The Life We Bury” are Joe Talbert, a 21-year-old college student working his way through college, Carl Iverson, a Vietnam War Veteran convicted of raping and murdering a young girl, and Lila Nash, a next-door neighbor to the college student. Hardship of life is illustrated by Joe who lives 2 hours away from a younger autistic brother that lives with their mother. She is an alcoholic. Their mother’s addiction makes care of the younger brother perilous. The mother’s alcoholism and her social life often leave the autistic boy at home to fend for himself. Joe deals with his mother’s neglect as well as he can with a job as a bouncer and college student who lives two hours away from the family home.

Assisted living facility.

An assignment from college for Joe is to interview a senior citizen who is living in an assisted living facility. Joe visits a retirement community near his apartment and asks the manager if he could interview one of their elderly occupants for his college assignment. They agree and Joe meets a terminally ill resident who is staying at the care facility from a prison which could not care for “end of life” needs of an imprisoned inmate who is convicted of rape and murder of a teenage girl.

Autism.

Lila, Joe’s next-door neighbor, becomes aware of Joe’s younger brother’s autism and is drawn into their awkward lives. She goes to the same college and by happenstance has some knowledge of the American justice system which leads her to help Joe with his interview and writing assignment. With her knowledge of the justice system, Joe is able to get the police file of the convicted rapist/murderer. The file is damning but a friend of the convicted and terminally ill patient tells Joe that his interview subject would not and could not have murdered the young girl.

Influence of others on our lives.

“The Life We Bury” is a person we know from our past that we no longer know but who have had a profound influence on our lives. “The Life We Bury” are people we know but often never reconnect with for either thanks or explanation of their effect on our lives. Eskens creates a story that on the one hand reveals how ignorant we are of other people’s lives and on the other how little we realize the impact others have had on our lives.

We all have some kind of guilt.

Carl Iverson is not guilty of killing and raping a young girl for which he is convicted and imprisoned. The search for the real killer is what moves Esken’s story along, but its theme is about guilt, and our ignorance about others and ourselves. Human beings live in their own worlds and often are unable to see others with the same clarity we think we see in ourselves. Eskens shows we neither understand ourselves, the people we think we know, or what impact they have on our lives.

In the end of “The Life We Bury”, the mystery of a murderer is solved. However, the real reveal of the story is how every human being is guilty of self-absorption. The race is on to arrest and convict the guilty rapist and murderer before the death of Carl Iverson. The last chapters of Eskens’ book are a nicely written denouement of his interesting story.

GOTHIC TALE

The climax of “Modern Gothic” is where myth enters Moreno-Carcia’s story. The fundamental truths of colonization are revealed in her creative story while its denouement is an entertaining explosion of imagination.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Mexican Gothic

Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Narrated By: Frankie Corzo

Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Author, Mexican/Canadian novelist, editor and publisher.)

Moreno-Garcia’s “Mexican Gothic” is a chilling story of colonization, eugenics, ecological contamination, mystical beliefs, and control of society by men. The author chooses the name of Doyle as an English family that exploits the Mexico’ silver mining industry in earlier centuries. A dynasty is created by generations of Doyle’s. They created a colonial manor called “High Place” from which to rule a crumbling empire. As colonizers they capitalize on Mexico’s silver deposits by exploiting native Mexicans’ land and labor to grow their mining operation. The wealth of local citizens is lost to the English foreigners who keep wages low to increase the wealth of the Doyle family.

Over generations, the Doyle men married local women that were related to each other. A common practice of royalty before the twentieth century.

They wished to maintain the genetic purity of the Doyle bloodline by having future Doyles marry genetic descendants of Mexican women that had been their wives. This is not greatly different than the experience of royal marriages in European cultures. The consequence of that marriage tradition is that recessive genetic mutations become more prominent in offspring. Children were more susceptible to diseases like cystic fibrosis and had higher incidents of developmental and cognitive disorders. This is one of many threads of meaning in “Mexican Gothic” because one of these descendants becomes a murderer of Doyle family members and the current Doyle generation seems socially dysfunctional. Added to that dysfunction is the Doyle family’s diminishing wealth.

An arranged marriage is a lynch pin to the story.

The heroine, Noemi, is the daughter of a wealthy Mexican family. She is sent to investigate a letter that was received by her father from a young woman that marries a Doyle. She is a cousin of Noemi’s. The marriage is arranged in part because of her father, and he feels something is wrong and wants Noemi to visit the Doyle family to find what the mysterious letter means. Soon after Noemi arrives, she begins to have hallucinatory dreams. Listener/readers find the hallucinations are because of spores that are in the bedroom of the deteriorating Doyle house. A clever thread of meaning in Moreno-Garcia’s story is ecological contamination that comes from colonization. As one nation colonizes another, it inevitably brings different plants and animals that are not indigenous to the country they are colonizing. The author notes a fungus is growing in the Doyle household that may have come from the original colonizers.

The penultimate theme in “Modern Gothic” is the creation of myths that compound the horrific events that occur in the Doyle house.

From the history of murders in the Doyle household, to hallucinatory dreams, to incestuous relationships, to the gloom and doom of the story, to a myth about the age of the Doyle patriarch, Moreno-Garcia offers a climax to her story that vivifies reader/listener’s imagination. The climax of “Modern Gothic” is where myth enters Moreno-Carcia’s story. The fundamental truths of colonization are revealed in her creative story while its denouement is an entertaining explosion of imagination.