The Greatcoat

By -
The cover was the best part.
The Greatcoat, by Helen Dunmore

I'd heard this was a great spooky ghost story, and I got it through ILL.  Although I enjoyed it, I'm not sure it was worth using an ILL on (I only get 12/year from the public library).  I hadn't realized that it is really a novella--it's very short indeed.  And somehow I hadn't realized what the main point of the story was.

Isabel and Philip are newlyweds in 1954, adjusting to married life in a new Yorkshire village.  Philip is working hard at his new position as the village doctor, and is rarely home, while Isabel is having great difficulty adjusting, and hates their tiny rented flat.  It's so cold at night that when she finds an old RAF greatcoat stuffed far back in a cupboard, she uses it as an extra blanket--and then the owner of the coat starts visiting her.  It's not long before she is re-enacting the events of 10 years before and forgetting her own life.

It was all right, but not my favorite ghost story.  I hadn't realized how much it would center on an affair, albeit one prompted by some sort of possession thing.  So: meh.

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 25, 2013 at 5:45 PM

    Awwww. I wish I could donate you an ILL to pay you back so that you wouldn't feel this one had been wasted. Only twelve? How did they arrive at that number in particular?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanNovember 25, 2013 at 8:17 PM

    One per month probably seemed reasonable. It used to be unlimited, but it cost too much. You *can* get more but they charge so much you might as well buy the book. It's really 12 free per year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AmyNovember 28, 2013 at 6:00 PM

    I'm always tempted by a ghost story, even one that's been described as "meh." :) I guess I'll start looking out for this one.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more