Fiction, Reviews

Agnes Mallory, by Andrew Klavan

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‘Look,’ she said wearily from the stairs. I was leaning against the stove, studying her stupid sneakers. My arms crossed, my soul leaden with sorrow. ‘I just don’t want to approach you too fast. I know you don’t like journalists. I saw you on TV: slamming the door? That’s why I was watching…’

‘Oh, admit it: you were being mysterious and romantic.’
‘Jesus!’ One of her little sneaks gave a little stomp. ‘You sound just like my father.’
Fortunately, this arrow went directly through my heart and came out the other side, so there was no need to have it surgically removed, which can be expensive….
Back in 1985, the young author author Andrew Klavan had a novel published in England which didn’t find a home in the U.S. This novel is Agnes Mallory, which is now, thankfully, available in a Kindle edition from Mysterious Press.
The narrator of the story is Harry Bernard. Harry lives in a secluded cabin, outside the New York suburb of Westchester. He is a recluse, a broken man, a disbarred lawyer who has left his family behind.
He wants nothing to do with the young woman who follows him home one evening, in the rain. Klavan introduces her in such a way that the reader isn’t sure at first whether she’s real or a ghost. And that’s appropriate, since this is a kind of a ghost story—but the ghosts are the memories we carry with us and the dreams we’ve buried in the cellar. Continue reading Agnes Mallory, by Andrew Klavan →

Authors

C.S. Lewis Day

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On this day in 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, making our favorite Oxford don more Irish than English (wait, is Tolkien our favorite or Lewis?). Despite being productive mostly with my cough, I put several C.S. Lewis facts on our BwB Twitter feed in honor of the day.

  1. On this day in 1898, C.S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland. What follows today will be #CSLewis facts.
  2. A good starting point for Lewis’ birthday is following @CSLewisDaily 414,861 followers can’t be wrong. (n.s.)
  3. My #CSLewis facts today come from Colin Duriez’ biographical book ow.ly/7IDKt
  4. Lewis met Owen Barfield, one of his best friends, first in 1919 at university. Learn more about Barfield ow.ly/7IDue #CSLewis
  5. G. MacDonald’s “Phantastes” is a very influential book in Lewis’ life. He first found it on March 4 at a train station. #CSLewis facts
  6. One of #CSLewis poems hangs on a wall on Addison’s Walk, Oxford. ow.ly/7IKkU
  7. When his father learned #CSLewis had been elected Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, he cried for joy.
  8. Oxford, Magdalen College, The Kilns, and The Eagle and Child #CSLewis facts ow.ly/7IJGi
  9. #CSLewis first met JRR Tolkien during his first year at Magdalen, 1926. They become life-long friends.
  10. Tolkien described the Inklings as “undertermined, unelected circle of friends who gathered around #CSLewis”
  11. #CSLewis Tutor Kirkpatrick said of 17yo Jack, “He has read more classics than any boy I ever had or indeed…I ever heard of.”
  12. #CSLewis was an great literary critic. He wrote essays on Bunyan, Austen, Shelley and topics such as myth, story, lingustics, and metaphor.
  13. You’ve heard of The Eagle and Child, but #CSLewis “local” pub, that closest to his home, The Kilns, is The Six Bells ow.ly/7IWYE
  14. #CSLewis fully believed “Jesus Christ was the Son of God” on Sept 28, 1931, a few months after his brother Warren did the same.
  15. On receiving #CSLewis letter of praise, Charles Williams replies, “My admiration for the staff work of the Omnipotence rises every day.”
  16. #CSLewis adopted mom, Mrs. Morris, argued furiously with him over his Christian faith.
  17. What books most shaped #CSLewis vocational attitude? Charles Williams’ “Descent into Hell” Chesterton’s “The Everlasting Man”
Fiction, Reviews

When the Devil Whistles, by Rick Acker

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I’ve been pleased, especially since I got my Kindle, to discover some writers who are lifting the Christian fiction genre to a higher level. When the Devil Whistles qualifies for that kind of praise.

Rick Acker’s novel centers on a young woman, Allie Whitman, who leads a sort of secret life, taking temporary jobs at corporations that do business with the government, nosing out fraud, and then filing lawsuits against them through a company of her own called Devil to Pay. She works closely with her lawyer, Connor Norman, who does the litigation while she stays anonymous. Each of them is attracted to the other, but any romance would spoil their profitable business.

Then Allie is caught out by an employer, a deep-sea salvage company. Instead of just firing her, they blackmail her into investigating another company, a business rival. Continue reading When the Devil Whistles, by Rick Acker →

Uncategorized

Zombies and the Abortion Taboo

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Kate Arthur describes a fascinating kerfuffle over a personhood issue touched on in an episode on AMC’s The Walking Dead. A character decides to abort her weeks old baby, but can’t go through with it.

“What’s also troubling,” Arthur writes, “is that this discussion coincided with a storyline in which Lori’s hosts—at an idyllic farm seemingly untouched by the zombie apocalypse—are discovered to be keeping a group of “walkers” alive in a nearby barn. When asked why, one of the characters responded, “They’re people.” The show’s heroes, however, accused of “murdering” such people, had a much more limited definition of what life is.”

Authors, Fiction, Publishing

Under the pseudonym of Keith Peterson

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Phil has already mentioned this in prospect, but Andrew Klavan’s early novels, written under the name Keith Peterson, are now in print again from Mysterious Press.
I especially recommend the John Wells novels, the first of which is The Trapdoor.
I do not recommend The Animal Hour.

Authors, Religion

J. R. R. Tolkien, human rights activist

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Our friend Dale Nelson sends the link to this piece from the Tolkien and Fantasy website:

This letter isn’t referenced in any of the usual sources, so it makes for a minor discovery. The letter is signed by Tolkien and nine others, comprising the Honorary President of the Newman Association and nine Honorary Vice Presidents, the latter including Tolkien. The letter registers protest at the arrest of the Cardinal Primate of Hungary by the Hungarian government.

Sometimes even Brandywine Books throws a bone to the Catholics.

Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Authors

"Men must endure their going hence…"

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In their way, these last weeks were not unhappy. Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both.

(Warren Lewis, on the last days of his brother C. S. Lewis, from his Memoir published in The Letters of C. S. Lewis [1966].)

Every year at this time I note the anniversary of the death of C. S. Lewis in 1963. There’s been a lot of speculation in recent years as to exactly when it was that Western Civilization began to collapse. Some choose the year 1968, the year the Counterculture came into its own in America, but others fix the date in 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated. I tend to go with 1963, but because that was the year we lost Lewis, not Kennedy.

One way or the other, it’s been downhill ever since.

From the University of Notre Dame, this article on recent scientific findings that indicate there’s a genuine physiological reason why we so often forget what we’ve come for, when we go from one room to another.

New research from psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky suggests that passing through doorways is the cause of these memory lapses.

“Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away,” Radvansky explains.

“Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.”

I expect passing through Wardrobes has a similar effect.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture