08:00 – Just finished reading Beryl Bainbridge’s Goodnight Children, Everywhere, which takes me two-thirds of the way through Ox-Tales: Air (Profile Books). I rather enjoyed the story which is all about Thomas, and a freaky old radio that can predict a certain type of event (no spoilers). Leaving me suitably creeped out, Bainbridge’s story kind of read like a British take on Koji Suzuki’s The Ring, but not really (what the heck do I mean by that then? 
).
The story also gave me a ‘laugh out loud’ moment when Thomas remarked that although he didn’t know what the ‘credit crunch’ was, it sounded like a chocolate bar. Funny stuff Ms. Bainbridge, funny stuff.
12:30: – OK, concerted effort to tick off a couple of Maupassant shorts this lunchtime – 1. Because I haven’t read any for a week and 2. I want to read the two shorts I mentioned recently in my Reading Journal entry on 27th June 2009. They’re two stories (along with The Horla), that were written at the time when Maupassant’s mental condition began to deteriorate, and they are said to give a good indication of Maupassant’s declining state at this time. So – Lunch? Check! Sony Reader? Check! Kids bribed to go out for an hour or two? Hehehe Check! Settled into comfy reading nook? Check! Time to begin.
First up is The Terror (can be read online HERE). Wow! This story reads in a similar way to The Horla, and it’s certainly no less chilling. It’s plot revolves around the narrator hallucinating about someone being there in the room with him, but knowing fine well that it is his imagination playing around with him. With a main character who is strongly introspective, paranoid and has a strong feelings of solitude, The Terror is like nothing I’ve ever read from Maupassant before, and to be honest, knowing what happened to him in reality, it’s all a bit unsettling.
Sadly no time left for the second story Who Knows?, right now. It’ll have to wait until later.
22:00 – My journey through Bryony Doran’s The China Bird (Hookline Books) marches on. Now up to Chapter twenty-four and getting drawn into it more and more. Relationships are deepening and I’ve also found out why the novel comes with the title that it does – very clever! Also getting more and more impressed by Doran’s powers of observation. She’s one of these writers who has the real ability to see things. I want to say more – lots more, but then we enter ‘spoiler’ territory.
Off now to read that second Maupassant story I spoke about earlier.
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