Monday, March 18, 2024

the last book I ever read (Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis, excerpt one)

from Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis:

Over the next few weeks, we waited for an explanation, but none was ever offered that was more plausible than the one they had given themselves. And they did give it themselves; some of them sat for radio and TV interviews and repeated what the farmer and pilot had said about them on the first day. Most of them could speak only German, but a few, most notably Klaue Lutz, had a good command of English. They spoke quietly and carefully, as if to deemphasize their accents and the faint mechanical whir made by their voice boxes. Of course, people had theories about kings and billionaires and secret organizations that might have the resources and inclination to play such a huge, strange trick on the world, but these were nearly as unlikely as the dogs’ own story and usually not as interesting. And so for practical purposes we all began to talk about the dogs as if they were exactly what they claimed to be.



Sunday, March 17, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt seven)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

The two women glared at each other, driven past endurance by the unfair role-reversal that aging forces upon parents and children. I felt sympathy for them both but gladly removed from it all. This was not a situation I would ever confront: I had two sisters, better qualified by geography and temperament to look after our parents (both still in good health) if the need arose, and I had no children. When I was as old and frail as Helen Ralston, assuming I made it that long, there would be no one left to care if I looked after myself properly or not. And unless I had the money to pay for it, there would certainly be no expedition for the elderly me like today’s.



Saturday, March 16, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt six)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

Over fresh coffee—decaffeinated for Helen—and slices of apple tart, talk about Helen’s life weren’t on, leap-frogging a couple of decades to London during the Blitz and the brief war-time love affair with Robbie, a much younger fighter pilot. He was Clarissa’s father, although he’d not lived to see his only child. I was surprised to learn that Clarissa was sixty—I told her honestly that she looked much younger—but she’d been born during the war, to a grieving single mother.

“I named her after Mrs Dalloway,” Helen informed me. “I was reading that book during my confinement—in fact, I read it three times. It was the only escape I had, a window into the world before the War, London before the bombs fell, before … “ she trailed off, blinking rapidly, and her daughter stroked her hand.



Friday, March 15, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt five)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

The Second Wife, Helen Ralston’s fifth novel, was a revelation: understated, subtle, psychologically complex, ambiguous, and faintly sinister … it was just the sort of novel I aspired to write myself, and reading it now, at this fallow period of my life, stirred a creative envy in me. For the first time in ages I wished I was at work on a novel and, although I knew I wasn’t anywhere near ready to start one, I could believe that one day I would be, that the roads of fiction weren’t forever closed to me. Maybe, after I’d finished with Helen Ralston, I’d be inspired by her example to write fiction again.



Thursday, March 14, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt four)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

I was unprepared for this interview in more ways than one.

Yesterday I had discovered that my cassette recorder, which had seen me through more than ten years of occasional interviewing, was no longer working. I’d driven off to Oban immediately to buy one, only to find that the electronics shop I’d remembered had closed down—driven out of business, I guessed, by the stacks of cut-price VCRs, DVD players, printers, personal stereos, and telephones on sale in the aisles of Tesco. Alas for me, Tesco did not sell cassette recorders—players, yes, but nothing with a recording function. The closest equivalent I’d been able to find after searching every store in town was a toy for young children. It was the size of a school lunch-box and made of bright red and yellow plastic; with a bright blue microphone attached to it by a curly yellow cord. But it worked, and so I’d bought it.

Now, though, I knew I couldn’t possibly arrive for my first meeting with Helen Elizabeth Ralston clutching this children’s toy. In any case, she hadn’t agreed to an interview; I hadn’t even spoken to her yet. I couldn’t remember if I’d told her daughter that I was planning to write a biography, but I was pretty sure I’d said only that I admired her mother’s work and wanted to talk to her about it. Best if this first meeting should be informal, relaxed, a friendly conversation. Questions “for the record” could come later.



Wednesday, March 13, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt three)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

Helen Ralston lived with her daughter in an ordinary two-storey, semi-detached house in a quiet neighborhood on the northwestern edge of the city. The drive through Argyll, along the narrow, loch-hugging road, switching back upon itself again and again as it cross a land divided and defined by water, up into the mountains and then down again, went more swiftly than I’d dared to hope, without any of the delays that could be caused by log-lorries, farm vehicles, and road works, and I was parking on the street in front of the house at five minutes after nine o’clock the following morning. I got out of the car stiffly, feeling numb and a little dazed by the speed of it all. That so soon after deciding I wanted to write about Helen Ralston I should be meeting her seemed little short of miraculous.



Tuesday, March 12, 2024

the last book I ever read (My Death by Lisa Tuttle, excerpt two)

from My Death by Lisa Tuttle:

In the jumbled, fragmented memories I carry from my childhood there are probably nearly as many dreams as images from waking life. I thought of one that might have been my earliest remembered nightmare. I was probably about four years old—I don’t think I’d started school yet—when I woke up screaming. The image I retained of the dream, the thing that had frightened me so, was an ugly, clown-like doll made of soft red- and cream-colored rubber. When you squeezed it, bulbous eyes popped out on stalks and the mouth opened in a gaping scream. As I recall it now, it was disturbingly ugly, not really an appropriate toy for a very young child, but it had been mine when I was younger, at least until I’d bitten its nose off, at which point it had been taken away from me. At the time when I had the dream I hadn’t seen it for a year or more—I don’t think I consciously remembered it until its sudden looming appearance in a dream had frightened me awake.