I'm pro-rivermonster and I vote.
Blackwater I: The Flood, by Michael McDowell:
Elinor wasn't Oscar's only mystery, of course. There were many things Oscar didn't understand. He didn't understand what was going on between Mary-Love and Elinor; he only knew that he was glad he wasn't at home all day the way Sister was. He didn't know what Elinor saw in him; he didn't know why she loved him, though apparently she did. He'd get up at five in the morning, and stand at his bedroom window and look out at the Perdido. There he'd see his wife, wearing her coarse cotton nightgown, swimming around and around in the swift water that would've drowned any normal person.
Synopsis: My comfort chick-lit, in which the heroine is a rivermonster and the river eats small children. Ymmv.
THESE ARE SPOILER!YOGAPANTS, BECAUSE A BODY IS TIRED.
I love the Blackwater series for so, so many reasons. It's not every day that a book begins its six-part epoch by coming right out and revealing that the heroine is a shape-shifting rivermonster. Or it wasn't back before the time of pararom, or whatever the term is, and besides, this isn't so much paranoroma as it is eco-gothic: the landscape here has sent powerful emissaries up onto land and they'll just unhinge a jaw and swallow you whole.
Elinor Dammert, heroine, protagonist, force of nature and shapeshifting rivermonster, lets herself be rescued by Perdido, Alabama's first son, Oscar Caskey, when the town of Perdido floods one spring in 1920, up to the second story of most buildings in town. Elinor is cool, collected, and clearly amused by what she finds when the water recedes. Oscar is sweet, simple and totally smitten. And Oscar's mother, Mary-Love, is horrrrrrrrified by what her darling son brings home from the flooded Osceola Hotel.
Cue shenanigans.
"Your mama," said Elinor, "is peering at us through the camellia bushes."
Oscar stood out of his chair, and called out, "Hey, Mama!"
Mary-Love, discovered, stepped from behind the cover of camellia. "Oscar, I thought that was you!" she called from the porch.
"Didn't you see the car, Mama?" he called out. He looked down at Miss Elinor. "She saw the car," he said, in a voice his mother couldn't hear.
NOT GETTING ANY LESS AMUSING.
This time through I was more struck by Oscar, who, let's not forget, is named after a type of fish -- one presumably consumed by rivermonsters when they are unable to find small children to eat. He's just so adorably earnest. He goes about wooing Elinor the best and most earnestly he is able, which is to say that he manages to do it despite himself.
"I don't know," said Oscar after a moment. "It only just occurred to me this minute -- while James was talking about not getting a letter from [his wife] -- that I ought to be married myself. And I looked up and there you were, just sitting there not married."
Oscar is a doll, and in my head, he looks an awful lot like this:
In case you need a visual on Elinor in her rivermonster state, allow me to assist there as well:
And if that isn't perfect, I don't know what is. Ssh.
Anyway, I've long been fascinated by why, exactly, we're all so fascinated by drowning girls, and Elinor Dammert is the living, breathing embodiment of The Girl Who Doesn't Drown. She's a creature of fierce currents and what kills other people simply allows her to feed, as you get to see in the scene where she swims into the Perdido, out into the deadly whirlpool, the one everyone's terrified of, and she lures in a small child and drowns and eats him.
There's some powerful subversion of the drowning girl trope at work there, and also how much do I love that McDowell's heroine is someone who, for all intents and purposes is sweet and kind, and the only person to call out racism where it stands in 1920s Alabama, and helpful as all get out, and also she eats children. I love this! I love that she is both and that's the whole backbone of the series. When Oscar's mother goes after Elinor -- and she hella does in all kinds of ways -- you're rooting for the rivermonster the entire time.
Another fun character is Sister, who is -- brace yourself -- Oscar's sister, who lives at home with her Mary-Love. She could be a stereotype of a spinster, and for the first few chapters I think she is. She runs her mother's errands to collect gossip about this mysterious new woman Oscar has brought back with him from the flood and gossips with her uncle James and does needlework on the porch while the main impetus of the plot (Oscar wooing Elinor vs Mary-Love wanting Elinor to gtfo and away from her beloved son) goes on without her.
There's a line in those chapters about how everyone in Perdido knows Sister will never marry, and little_tristan pointed out that as, later in the series Sister does marry, what the line really means is that her mother has caused everyone in Perdido to believe that Sister will never marry.
But the whole stereotype gets peeled away once Oscar realizes what his mother is up to and becomes desperate to take Elinor and escape. The one person he goes to for advice is Sister, and she pins his ears right back and gives him the key to moving forward. And from there, in the series, you see a totally different arc for her. She begins to plot. She begins to hope, and foment.
It's a complicated and delightful family drama. So many machinations! So much Mary-Love thwarting her children's desires for their own families, which is kind of ironic, considering her name is nearly "marry-love". She wants them to do no such thing! Everyone stay where they are until told otherwise! Mm. Mary-Love does a lot of sitting on the porch and fanning herself while Sister does all that needlepoint and the party goes on next door at Uncle James' house.
Uncle James by the way, is coded by McDowell as "bearing the stamp of femininity" and everyone and their chickens (including Mary-Love) explicitly state he never should've married. He collects silver flatware.
And he's a hero of the story!
He's not side-lined by his unspoken homosexuality, he doesn't die to it, he's a fantastic father -- and this was published in 1983. James is one of my favorite characters in the series. He's so unstintingly generous and so happy hosting Elinor while she's playing the role of the single school-teacher, and having Oscar come to dinner each day and again after work while he woos her. He loves being in the thick of things and very little seems to discomfit him -- the notable exception being his wife, Genevieve, who he pays to stay the hell away from him.
Overall, this book has an awful lot to say about motherhood.
Author's Note: Perdido, Alabama, does indeed exist, and in the place I have put it. Yet it does not now, nor ever did possess the buildings, geography, or population I ascribe to it... Yet the landscapes and persons I describe, I venture to say, are not wholly imaginary.
Elinor wasn't Oscar's only mystery, of course. There were many things Oscar didn't understand. He didn't understand what was going on between Mary-Love and Elinor; he only knew that he was glad he wasn't at home all day the way Sister was. He didn't know what Elinor saw in him; he didn't know why she loved him, though apparently she did. He'd get up at five in the morning, and stand at his bedroom window and look out at the Perdido. There he'd see his wife, wearing her coarse cotton nightgown, swimming around and around in the swift water that would've drowned any normal person.
Synopsis: My comfort chick-lit, in which the heroine is a rivermonster and the river eats small children. Ymmv.
THESE ARE SPOILER!YOGAPANTS, BECAUSE A BODY IS TIRED.
I love the Blackwater series for so, so many reasons. It's not every day that a book begins its six-part epoch by coming right out and revealing that the heroine is a shape-shifting rivermonster. Or it wasn't back before the time of pararom, or whatever the term is, and besides, this isn't so much paranoroma as it is eco-gothic: the landscape here has sent powerful emissaries up onto land and they'll just unhinge a jaw and swallow you whole.
Elinor Dammert, heroine, protagonist, force of nature and shapeshifting rivermonster, lets herself be rescued by Perdido, Alabama's first son, Oscar Caskey, when the town of Perdido floods one spring in 1920, up to the second story of most buildings in town. Elinor is cool, collected, and clearly amused by what she finds when the water recedes. Oscar is sweet, simple and totally smitten. And Oscar's mother, Mary-Love, is horrrrrrrrified by what her darling son brings home from the flooded Osceola Hotel.
Cue shenanigans.
"Your mama," said Elinor, "is peering at us through the camellia bushes."
Oscar stood out of his chair, and called out, "Hey, Mama!"
Mary-Love, discovered, stepped from behind the cover of camellia. "Oscar, I thought that was you!" she called from the porch.
"Didn't you see the car, Mama?" he called out. He looked down at Miss Elinor. "She saw the car," he said, in a voice his mother couldn't hear.
NOT GETTING ANY LESS AMUSING.
This time through I was more struck by Oscar, who, let's not forget, is named after a type of fish -- one presumably consumed by rivermonsters when they are unable to find small children to eat. He's just so adorably earnest. He goes about wooing Elinor the best and most earnestly he is able, which is to say that he manages to do it despite himself.
"I don't know," said Oscar after a moment. "It only just occurred to me this minute -- while James was talking about not getting a letter from [his wife] -- that I ought to be married myself. And I looked up and there you were, just sitting there not married."
Oscar is a doll, and in my head, he looks an awful lot like this:
In case you need a visual on Elinor in her rivermonster state, allow me to assist there as well:
And if that isn't perfect, I don't know what is. Ssh.
Anyway, I've long been fascinated by why, exactly, we're all so fascinated by drowning girls, and Elinor Dammert is the living, breathing embodiment of The Girl Who Doesn't Drown. She's a creature of fierce currents and what kills other people simply allows her to feed, as you get to see in the scene where she swims into the Perdido, out into the deadly whirlpool, the one everyone's terrified of, and she lures in a small child and drowns and eats him.
There's some powerful subversion of the drowning girl trope at work there, and also how much do I love that McDowell's heroine is someone who, for all intents and purposes is sweet and kind, and the only person to call out racism where it stands in 1920s Alabama, and helpful as all get out, and also she eats children. I love this! I love that she is both and that's the whole backbone of the series. When Oscar's mother goes after Elinor -- and she hella does in all kinds of ways -- you're rooting for the rivermonster the entire time.
Another fun character is Sister, who is -- brace yourself -- Oscar's sister, who lives at home with her Mary-Love. She could be a stereotype of a spinster, and for the first few chapters I think she is. She runs her mother's errands to collect gossip about this mysterious new woman Oscar has brought back with him from the flood and gossips with her uncle James and does needlework on the porch while the main impetus of the plot (Oscar wooing Elinor vs Mary-Love wanting Elinor to gtfo and away from her beloved son) goes on without her.
There's a line in those chapters about how everyone in Perdido knows Sister will never marry, and little_tristan pointed out that as, later in the series Sister does marry, what the line really means is that her mother has caused everyone in Perdido to believe that Sister will never marry.
But the whole stereotype gets peeled away once Oscar realizes what his mother is up to and becomes desperate to take Elinor and escape. The one person he goes to for advice is Sister, and she pins his ears right back and gives him the key to moving forward. And from there, in the series, you see a totally different arc for her. She begins to plot. She begins to hope, and foment.
It's a complicated and delightful family drama. So many machinations! So much Mary-Love thwarting her children's desires for their own families, which is kind of ironic, considering her name is nearly "marry-love". She wants them to do no such thing! Everyone stay where they are until told otherwise! Mm. Mary-Love does a lot of sitting on the porch and fanning herself while Sister does all that needlepoint and the party goes on next door at Uncle James' house.
Uncle James by the way, is coded by McDowell as "bearing the stamp of femininity" and everyone and their chickens (including Mary-Love) explicitly state he never should've married. He collects silver flatware.
And he's a hero of the story!
He's not side-lined by his unspoken homosexuality, he doesn't die to it, he's a fantastic father -- and this was published in 1983. James is one of my favorite characters in the series. He's so unstintingly generous and so happy hosting Elinor while she's playing the role of the single school-teacher, and having Oscar come to dinner each day and again after work while he woos her. He loves being in the thick of things and very little seems to discomfit him -- the notable exception being his wife, Genevieve, who he pays to stay the hell away from him.
Overall, this book has an awful lot to say about motherhood.
- Mary-Love is a terrible mother who tries to strangle her children with her own apron strings.
- Genevieve is nearly a worse mother who seals her own demise by beating her daughter. Pro tip: don't beat your children where a rivermonster can find out about it.
- Elinor, when push comes to Mary-Love's shove, gives her mother-in-law her first-born daughter in order to win hers and Oscar's freedom. And it's surprisingly unemotional, this exchange. You never feel like she's in pain and you as the reader certainly aren't in pain for her.
Author's Note: Perdido, Alabama, does indeed exist, and in the place I have put it. Yet it does not now, nor ever did possess the buildings, geography, or population I ascribe to it... Yet the landscapes and persons I describe, I venture to say, are not wholly imaginary.