Wrap Up: November 2024

Hi everyone

Another month has come and gone. November is one of my least favorite months; it gets cold, wet, and dark here in Belgium. But there’s an upside: it’s perfect weather for cozy reading!

Here’s the list of books I finished, along with links to my reviews:

- Shelley Parker-Chan: She Who Became the Sun

- Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter: The Long War

- Ira Levin: Son of Rosemary

- Daniel Kahneman: Thinking Fast and Slow

What books did you read last month? Did you discover any new favorites or hidden gems? I’d love to hear about them!

Happy reading!
Helena

Ira Levin: Son of Rosemary

 Hi everyone

I just finished Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin. This is supposed to be the sequel to Rosemary's Baby though it was written 30 years later. I got my copy from Bol.com.

"Ira Levin returns to the horror of his 1967 groundbreaking novel Rosemary’s Baby with this sequel set at the dawn of the new millennium. Thirty-three years ago, Rosemary gave birth to the Devil’s child while under the control of a coven of witches. Now the year is 1999, and humanity dreads the approaching twenty-first century, desperately in search of a saviour for this troubled world.
In New York City, Rosemary’s son Andy is believed to be that saviour. But is he the force of good his followers accept him to be? Or is he his father’s son? As the war between good and evil rages on unabated, the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, in this shocking and darkly comic novel from the modern master of suspense."

This was awful.
I really don’t know why Ira Levin felt the need to write a sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, because this is absolutely horrible.

Rosemary’s naivety, which was charming or a sign of a rather simple mind in the first book, is now maddening and infuriating. Andy is sleazy; he really gives me the heebie-jeebies. And the incestuous tone throughout? Plain wrong and bile-inducing.
The overall plot was predictable, but the ending was the worst of all. Without the last five pages, I’d have given it two stars. But as it stands? One star.

Have you read Son of Rosemary? What are your thoughts? Did you hate it as much as I did, or did you find something to like?

Happy reading.
Helena

Ira Levin: Sliver

Hi

This is my review for Sliver by Ira Levin.
My copy has 198 pages of story and 3 pages Introduction and I got it at the Boekenfestijn.
Sliver isn’t my first Ira Levin so you can find all my Levin reviews here.

 “Kay Norris, a successful single woman of thirty-nine, moves into the posh Carnegie Hill district of Manhattan's Upper East Side, into an apartment in a slender high rise, a "sliver" building. A man watches her. He watches her unpack, watches her make her bed. He owns the building; a shocking secret is concealed within its brick and concrete."

I enjoyed the book. It’s easy to read, straight-forward, intriguing, suspenseful and funny.
The tension builds gradually and shines through every part of the book.

It definitely is Pulp. So don’t go in expecting great world-building and character development.
The characters remain very flat throughout the book.

The ending felt too rushed.

It reads fast and it’s entertaining but Sliver isn’t much more than that.

3 STARS

Happy reading!
Helena

Ira Levin: Rosemary’s Baby

Hi

This was my second time reading Rosemary’s Baby, the first book in the Rosemary's Baby series. I must have been around 15 the first time I read it.
My copy has 229 pages and I got it at De Slegte.
You can find all my Ira Levin reviews here.

 “Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor-husband Guy move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an onimous reputation and only elderly residents. Neighbours Roman and Minnie Castavet soon come nosing around to welcome them and, despite Rosemary's reservations about their eccentricity and the weird noises she keeps hearing, her husband starts spending time with them. Shortly after Guy lands a plum Broadway role, Rosemary becomes pregnant and the Castavets start taking a special interest in her welfare.
As the sickened Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castavet's circle is not what it seems.”

Having both read the book and seen the movie quite a long while ago, the plot wasn’t as suspenseful as the first time around.

Rosemary’s Baby is a quick, engrossing and easy read. The plot moves very fast, the characters are intriguing and the book is really intense. It builds slowly and subtly and I liked that a lot. But by the last few chapters it becomes predictable and overly dramatic.

I’m very conflicted about Rosemary (the character).
You see, I’m not blaming her for what happens to her.
But she doesn’t see sense, she doesn’t think and she certainly doesn’t question what’s happening to her body, her social life and to her husband. I can't see a pregnant woman not questioning the pain, the frequent doctor's visists or the reassurances.
AND the way Rosemary talks herself into accepting Guy’s reasons for ‘raping’ her makes my skin crawl. 

What happens to her is scary. She trusts the wrong people, dismisses the good ones and bad things happen to the one who truly wanted to help her. She has no say in her own life. Guy slowly takes it all away from her. She is subtly manipulated by her husband and her neighbors.
And that’s what makes the book so scary. It starts slowly and gets progressively worse but it takes Rosemary a very, very long time to see it. Way too long to be realistic.

4 STARS

Happy reading!
Helena

Enjoying this.

Ira Levin: The Stepford Wives

Hi

You can find all my Ira Levin reviews here.
The Stepford Wives has 139 pages and an introduction by Chuck Palahniuk of 5 pages.

“For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.”

The Stepford Wives is my third Ira Levin novel. And I enjoyed all of them though they were all very different. The Boys from Brazil is still my favorite but I enjoyed this one very much.

This novel is a genuine page turner. It’s too much so in my opinion. It goes so fast the novel doesn’t come to its full potential; it’s not as creepy and full of foreshadowing as it could be because it’s too short and too fast.
But it’s very suspenseful, engrossing and
The writing is pretty straightforward, short, clear and to the point but not very elegant. Levin’s writing is always like that I suppose.

The story on its own is very good but Levin didn’t think further than the story. What will these men do when their own daughters grow up?

                * SPOILERS *

It’s scary how these husbands didn’t decide to build a robot to do all their household chores. No, they killed their wives and replaced them with robots. Those wives were perfectly good women with their own careers, talents and hobbies. But they weren’t good enough and they wanted to be free, liberated. So they had to change.
The one person who should love you the way you are ultimately doesn’t. Their husbands lie to their faces, saying they are perfect the way they are. Now that is very frightening.
Even Bonnie’s son likes her more as this robot.
Turns out, everyone likes a woman best when she’s the perfect housewife.

Food for thought!

Happy reading.
Helena

Ira Levin: A Kiss before Dying

Hi

This review is about the first novel by Ira Levin; A Kiss before Dying.
It has only 275 pages and they flew by.
You can find all my Ira Levin reviews here.

 “A Kiss Before Dying not only debuted the talent of best-selling novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews, it also set a new standard in the art of mystery and suspense. Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing—not even murder—to get where he wants to go. For he has dreams; plans. He also has charm, good looks, sex appeal, intelligence. And he has a problem. Her name is Dorothy; she loves him, and she's pregnant. The solution may demand desperate measures. But, then, he looks like the kind of guy who could get away with murder. Compellingly, step by determined step, the novel follows this young man in his execution of one plan he had neither dreamed nor foreseen. Nor does he foresee how inexorably he will be enmeshed in the consequences of his own extreme deed.”

It’s almost a pulp novel; character development is lacking and it’s simply written. But it reads like a train; it just goes by so fast.

The first part is not really suspenseful. From the very beginning we know he’s going to murder her. But man, the process of deciding, making a plan, changing the plan and executing it is horrifying. He is so cool and determined. It is really creepy to read about his meticulous planning and scheming. So exciting!
The second part, when Ellen goes in search of the murderer is much more suspenseful. I was dreading every moment she was with one of the possible murderers. Because suddenly the novel is told from her point of view, and we don’t know who the murderer is. This was the best part.
And by the third part I couldn't stop reading.

Highly enjoyable, not Great Literature, but definitely very entertaining. 

Happy reading!
Helena

Ira Levin: The Boys from Brazil

Hi

This review is about The Boys from Brazil, a novel by Ira Levin.
I read Rosemary’s Baby years and years ago; when I saw this one in a second-hand store I had to have it.
It has 258 pages.

“Alive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed.”

Oh my word. I did not see this coming. When everything finally clicked (somewhere around page 170) I had to put the novel aside for a moment to digest the plot. I mean, it’s a huge revelation.
It is a real page turner. It’s smart, it has an optimistic note underlying the whole novel, it’s something out of the ordinary.
The prose and the characters aren’t that good. But the story is.
And it’s still a chilling plot because it’s not so far-fetched anymore as it was back when it was written.

A relaxing read that is quite different and makes you think for a moment.

Happy reading!

Helena