Liars and Saints

 Approaching my eight-year anniversary, I think the main marital challenge I face is weekends. The kids suddenly have hours and hours of unstructured time--this leads to sororal/fraternal conflict. Sometimes, there is a kind of refrain passed from one adult to another: "Oh my God, it's only noon." "Oh my God, it's only one..." My husband--the dad with energy--suggests trips, expeditions. A return visit to a petting zoo. A lengthy drive to "the Castle Playground"--a structure in a rival town. (The slides are surrounded by half-assed plastic "turrets.") By contrast, I think that weekends are for movies and books. Occasionally, an art museum. That's all. I would not travel to a petting zoo if I were a bachelor. Why must I do that now? There is--fortunately--a never-ending stream of mediocre animated films. Yesterday, the family found itself at "Stitch Head," which started strong, then traveled nowhere. My son, sensing the narra...

 "Shelby Oaks" has essentially just one character--but what a character. Mia very much wants to have a child but cannot. Meanwhile, her sister, an investigator of the paranormal, goes missing. Years pass. Childless Mia begins to contribute to a documentary on her missing sister. As the project gains steam, Mia hears a knock on her door. It's a stranger, a man, "Wilson Miles." He makes a mysterious apology and shoots himself in the head. Thus he drops a cassette tape--labeled "Shelby Oaks." Mia views the tape and suspects that it's a clue: Her sister is still alive, held captive, in a neighboring town. The ensuing quest is more than a little surprising--and it somehow relates to Mia's desire to have a child. On her quest, Mia will lie, will torpedo her own marriage, will even commit murder! That's just the beginning. This movie earned bad reviews, but I thought Mia was watchable. Also, the use of "found footage" kept me intrigued. ...

  A nice surprise in the later stages of Taylor Swift's career is "But Daddy, I Love Him," a tribute to the great Howard Ashman (and to "The Little Mermaid"). Here, Swift rewrites her own song "Love Story" in amusing ways. "Love Story" features a sort of homebound narrator who waits for things to happen to her. By contrast, the speaker in "But Daddy" is charmingly unpredictable and insane: Now I'm running with my dress unbuttoned-- Screaming, But Daddy, I love him! I'm having his baby! No, I'm not.  But you should see your faces.... Swift is addressing her own fans--the folks who pay her salary. The brattiness is intoxicating. I'll tell you something right now: You ain't gotta pray for me-- Me and my wild boy and all this wild joy... If all you want is gray for me-- Then that's just white noise. And it's just my choice. One can forgive the mixed metaphor--"vipers dressed in empath's clothing...

 Everyone knows that "Non-Stop" from "Hamilton" is a tribute to "One Day More" from "Les Miserables." But I want to argue that "Les Miserables"--a show I generally dislike--handles its "curtain number" more gracefully than "Hamilton." Because it's a work of fiction, "Les Miserables" can make a certain audacious promise. "You think Act One was crazy? You haven't seen crazy yet." And the promise is fulfilled.  Javert, the hero's antagonist, makes clear that there will be many violent deaths. "We'll be ready for these school boys. They will wet themselves with blood!" (Javert isn't wrong. But--in a bit of dramatic irony--it's true that Javert will *also* wet himself with blood. We can imagine that he might bash his head on a river rock when he jumps into the Seine.) A second war is implied. This is the war between Cosette and Eponine. It's a war between a head vo...

 My husband enjoys all kinds of civic events -- meetings of the town representatives, art festivals, parades, protests, outdoor music performances. I'm allergic to all of this; I tend to think of the elderly man in the St. Aubyn novels, the one who paints all of his windows black and locks himself in his closet. Dewy-eyed, awed before Norman Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech," my husband explains the source of inspiration. "Rockwell attended a town meeting --  and watched someone suggesting an unpopular opinion.  And no one agreed with this speaker. But everyone listened respectfully!" I nod and nod again. "That's nice, dear." I tend to sign on to the civic outings (because a part of my soul secretly enjoys them). But one that really tested me was called "Dogs in the Pool!" As you can imagine, my town opened its public swimming pool; all dogs were invited to swim. A more accurate title might have been "PAYING Dogs in the Pool!" ...

  "Unforgotten" is a British series about outrage, about the silos we live in now that it's 2025. In the present day, a white woman in a university position teaches a course about race. A particularly obnoxious (white) student asks for extracurricular reading. The teacher suggests a memoir by a Black scholar; the memoir has a provocative title that makes use of the "n" word. The student then cries foul; she believes she has suffered from a microaggression. Elsewhere, a former nun has a kind of "Kellyanne Conway" role on Fox TV. She shouts about immigration and transgender people. But--secretly--she believes that anyone should have the right to choose an abortion. And she is shtupping her priest. Meanwhile, the central character, an investigator, wonders about his own knee-jerk reactions. He has entered a relationship with someone who makes a reference to a cloudy personal history. The cloudiness is impacting the present; the new girlfriend becomes evas...

 There is so much that I dislike about Louise Penny's work. First, I think the novels are too long. I think a thriller should be around 200 pages; I'm thinking of the kind of book that Ruth Rendell wrote in her prime. Additionally, the amount of "telling" exasperates me. We are repeatedly told that Armand has a great love for Reine-Marie--but it seems to me that Penny can't make the effort to imagine what this great love actually looks like. Contrast this couple with Guido Brunetti and his wife Paola. We see Guido and Paola frequently disagreeing--with sharp, memorable dialogue. There is no question that Guido and Paola love each other, and that Paola is a three-dimensional character. Finally, the repetitive use of fairytale "clues" is irksome. I know that Penny isn't trying to be anywhere near the ballpark that could be called Literary Realism. But, in the new book, she has a scientist leave a river rock near a tree so that someone might say, "...