You should be reading Phil Rickman

Phil Rickman is an author who should be better known in the United States, because his books are terrific.

I used to work at a large Borders Books, and one day I was shelving books in the mystery section.  Now, I love mysteries, but reading them is like eating potato chips.  You can’t stick to just one, or even a few, but after you’ve finished, you feel kind of guilty and not very well nourished.  Still, I’m always searching for a good one to sink my teeth into.  Anyway, I recognized the picture on the cover of one of the books I was putting away.  (“Hey, I’ve been to that town!”)  It was Ludlow, Shropshire, on the Welsh border.  The book was by Phil Rickman, and it was the seventh in the Merrily Watkins Mystery series.  The description sounded intriguing, but I like to start at the beginning, so I bought a copy of Midwinter of the Spirit. I thought it was the first in the series, but I was wrong.  The Wine of Angels is actually the first title.  It didn’t matter.  I was hooked from the first page, and Midwinter is a better book than the first one.  I tore through the series, and then I came to the part I hate, where I have to wait a year or more for new books in a series to be released.  It’s even worse when it’s a British author, since the UK gets the books months before we do, and I have to decide whether to pay extra to get them sooner or to just wait.

Phil Rickman's books

Merrily Watkins is a young widow who’s just become an Anglican priest.  She moves to the English/Welsh border with her rebellious teenage daughter Jane, becoming the parish priest in the small village of Ledwardine.  Her encounters with a restless spirit in the old vicarage lead to her appointment as “deliverance consultant” for the diocese of Hereford, which is just a newfangled term for exorcist.  

Now, this could lead to standard horror or to silly supernatural stuff, but Rickman is too smart and too subtle to let that happen.  You won’t find any teenage vampires or rabid zombies wandering through these pages.  Instead, the paranormal elements are just spooky enough to send shivers down your spine but always rooted in human emotion and human (dare I say it?) evil.  Rickman always lets the reader decide whether to believe in God and Church and Religion, whether to believe in ghosts and hauntings, whether to believe in witches and ley lines and ancient pagan rituals.  Nothing is dismissed and nothing is assumed.

What keeps me coming back, though, are the characters.  My favorite is Gomer Parry, because you can’t help admiring an old fellow who’s so passionate about his JCB.  That’s a big digging machine, and Gomer is never happier than when he’s digging a ditch or working on a septic tank.  You’d be surprised how useful a guy like Gomer can be in a supernatural mystery.  Another favorite is Lol Robinson, a timid musician who spent time in a mental hospital.  His gradual blossoming as a performer and his romance with Merrily never fails to delight me. 

One of the richest and funniest characters is Merrily’s daughter Jane.  She’s sixteen, and like every teenager, she truly believes she knows more than her mother.  She’s smart and passionate, but she’s also terribly impressionable.  Her fascination with paganism and witchcraft is obviously a reaction to her mother’s traditional religion.  It’s fun to watch Jane grow up, grow wiser, fall in and out of love, and gradually learn that her mother may know a thing or two.

Once you’ve read all the Merrily Watkins books, while you’re waiting for another one (and the eleventh title The Secrets of Pain will be released September 1, 2011 in the UK), you’ll want to read more of Rickman’s work.  His first two books are Crybbe (also called Curfew) and Candlenight, and they’re traditional horror novels that are just average (and I know I’m going to get some arguments about that from other Rickman fans!)   I’ve tried and failed to make it through his third novel, The Man in the Moss, but I will probably keep trying.  Rickman hits his stride with December.  It’s delicious and probably my favorite non-series book by Rickman, about a group of psychic musicians recording an album in an old abbey.  Rickman has a lovely habit of introducing characters in his early books that are so vivid, they keep popping up in Rickman’s later works, like old friends dropping by for a visit.

But wait, there’s more.  Phil Rickman has written two books under the name Will Kingdom and two children’s books as Thom Madley.  His latest book is The Bones of Avalon which has not yet been published in the US, and I haven’t read it yet.  It’s about the  John Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, and the search for King Arthur’s remains. 

Be sure to visit www.philrickman.co.uk to learn more.  You can even order a Gomer Parry tee shirt or a CD of music inspired by the books.  You can also join The Phil Rickman Appreciation Society on Facebook.

In The News

Back on April 23rd, I wrote about Jeremy London, and this week he’s back in the news.  It’s not good news, unfortunately.  While changing a tire in Palm Springs on June 10th, London claims he was kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to drive around for hours doing drugs before finally escaping.  An arrest has been made, but the young man says he’s innocent.  Who are you going to believe?

Jeremy London has been struggling with drug problems and undergoes regular drug testing in a custody battle for his child.  Some believe he invented this story to explain the drugs that will now be found in his system.  The similarities between his story and a plotline on Six Feet Under have also been noted.  If London is lying to cover a relapse, then a young man (who’s probably no saint but also probably doesn’t deserve to have his life ruined)  has been falsely arrested and charged with a lot of serious crimes.  If London is telling the truth, a bizarre truth, then he must be hurt that his story is being met with so much scepticism. 

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There is both good news and bad news regarding two of my favorite TV shows, NCIS and Criminal Minds on CBS. 

On NCIS, key members of the cast have been renegotiating their contracts.  It was kind of scary when Sean Murray, Michael Weatherly and Pauley Perrette were all going into the summer without signed contracts.  Now only Sean Murray is  unsigned, and he’s expected to work things out with CBS.  This means the show will come back in fall with everybody in place.  I just hope the new season will be stronger than this last one, and that they get rid of the annoying lady lawyer.

UPDATE:  And now Sean Murray has signed a new contract, too!

I’ve mentioned before how much I like Matthew Gray Gubler, the skinny young genius on Criminal Minds.  I watch the TV show because of him, even though I often find it very disturbing.  I wish the people behind Criminal Minds understood that people like me watch the show for the cast and not for the stories.  Then perhaps they wouldn’t make crazy decisions like this latest one, to drop A.J. Cook from the cast and to reduce Paget Brewster’s role to occasional appearances.  What are they thinking?  The females on this show help to balance the harshness of the storylines.  Since the victims of the serial crimes portrayed are most often women, it’s empowering to see women help to solve the crimes and catch the bad guys.  I believe CBS will regret trying to fix a show that doesn’t need fixing.

Bookends (2)

There’s nothing like a bout of flu to help you catch up on your reading!  I read three interesting books in the last few days.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson is a debut novel about a 68-year-old widower living in a small village in Essex, England.  His life is quiet and rather lonely until he becomes involved with the 58-year-old Pakistani widow who owns the village shop.   Feelings between them grow, but everything gets complicated by family obligations and duties, not to mention the bossy village ladies who rope both Major Pettigrew and Mrs Ali into helping with a disastrous country club dance.  I really enjoyed the dry humor and warm heart of this novel.  The climax seemed a little too much like a Bollywood melodrama, but I’m pretty sure it was deliberate.  I hope the author has another good one in the works.

Operation Mincemeat by Ben McIntyre is the true story of a top secret plot in 1943 that successfully misdirected the Nazis into believing that the Allies would invade Greece instead of Sicily.   British Intelligence took the corpse of an itinerant Welshman who died of phosphorus poisoning, dressed it as a British officer, attached a briefcase filled with false papers, and then had a submarine float the body onto a beach in Southern Spain.  They hoped the Spanish would leak the false papers to the Germans, leading them to believe an invasion of Greece was the next big Allied target.  This is not the first book published about Operation Mincemeat, but it’s the most complete story, since it incorporates official secrets which were only recently made public.  Parts of the story are very funny, others macabre, and it all makes for a fascinating read.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann is about the explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett, who disappeared in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for a lost civilization deep in the rainforest.  It’s one of those enduring mysteries of history, like Amelia Earhart’s disappearance, that has captured the imagination of generations.  Grann himself went into the Amazon to try to find out what happened to Fawcett.  His adventures are interwoven with the story of Fawcett’s expedition and subsequent rescue attempts over the years.  To tell you what Grann found, or didn’t find, would spoil the book,  so read it yourself!

Strange fact:  in three of the last five books I’ve read, howler monkeys are mentioned.  What’s the deal with howler monkeys?  Why are howler monkeys suddenly so popular?

The Tony Awards 2010

Watching the 64th Annual Tony Awards last night, I felt my usual sense of longing, since I used to dream of accepting my own Tony Award.  One of these days, I need to sit down and write a brilliant play that will take Broadway by storm. In the meantime, here are my impressions of this year’s broadcast. Please note: I avoided reading any other press about the Awards before writing this, so I wouldn’t be influenced by other opinions. I’m really taking this blog thing seriously!

Overall, I found the Tony Awards too Hollywoodized. Just because the broadcast has never had the popularity or the ratings of the Academy Awards, there is an ongoing practice of padding the presenters and audience with “movie stars.” It’s so sad to see all the talented Broadway actors shoved in the back rows so more recognizable movie stars can hog all the reaction shots. Granted, this year saw an especially large number of movie actors appearing in Broadway roles. I was suspicious of the number of movie stars who ended up being nominated for Tonys and then dismayed at how many ended up winning.

I thought Sean Hayes made a good host, and I particularly liked his Billy Elliot costume. His knees in the Annie costume, on the other hand, were downright scary.

I didn’t see Scarlett Johansson in her Broadway debut, but her acceptance speech was pretty terrible. It can’t be easy going first, and she could have learned a valuable lesson from Viola Davis, whose acceptance speech was moving and inspiring. I liked how both Viola Davis and Denzel Washington weren’t afraid to mention God in their speeches.

The weirdest team of presenters was Daniel Radcliffe and Katie Holmes. How tall is that woman?? Radcliffe looked so tiny next to her. ( Imdb.com lists Radcliffe as 5’8″ and Holmes as 5’9″)  I was very surprised to learn that Radcliffe will be playing the lead in the upcoming revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. The role will really be a stretch, since the character of Finch is brash, hyper-confident, charismatic and quintessentially American. Oh, and it’s a musical. I’m not saying Radcliffe can’t pull it off, and I have to admire him for taking risks.

Eddie Redmayne won the Tony for featured actor in a play, for his performance in Red, which went on to win best director and best new play. Redmayne was very sweet accepting his award and also strangely sweaty. His director Michael Grandage gave his speech directly to the award in his hand, barely glancing at the audience. Perhaps he’s shy! Anyway, I was very pleased that women were nominated in both directing categories, for best play and for best musical.

Technical difficulties marred the acceptance speech of Katie Finneran for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, when the caption across the screen named the wrong actress. Eventually they flashed the correct name.

The award for most stunning has to go to Helen Mirren. I thought she looked marvelous. Angela Lansbury was lovely too, and I’m so pleased about her new honorary position with American Theatre Wing. Jada Pinkett Smith gets my award for shiniest skin. She looked positively oiled.

Catherine Zeta-Jones performed Send in the Clowns from Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, and it was distinctly odd. I’m no judge of singing, so I can’t comment on that aspect of the performance. What I found strange was all her snappy head swings during the song. The entire song was delivered sitting on a bed, and I was seriously distracted by her head twisting left and right. Her acceptance speech later, when she won Best Actress in a Musical for the performance, was also odd but kind of endearing, though I can’t help wondering if her “shock” at winning wasn’t also a performance.

The “In Memoriam” section of Awards shows always make me cry, and this time was no exception. I was particularly moved by Lena Horne and the last Ziegfeld Follies girl.

During every single commercial break, for two and a half hours, the announcer promised Glee‘s Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele were coming up next. It was such an obvious ploy to get young viewers to stay tuned in. Then when they finally appeared, it was pointless filler which belonged earlier on in the program.

I live on the west coast, so by the time I watch the Tonys, they’ve been recorded from an earlier broadcast. This would explain, I suppose, how they were able to bleep out the four-letter words in the American Idiot musical number. It was after 10:30pm by then, but I guess they have to protect those young people who make up most of American Idiot‘s target audience. Or maybe it was the old folks they were trying not to offend. Anyway, I was pleased that Memphis won for best musical, even though I haven’t even seen it yet. As the night progressed, it seemed like the obvious popular choice. Of the nominated musicals, I’ve only seen American Idiot, and it wasn’t strong enough to deserve the Tony.

So now I have a new list of plays and musicals to see, and I hold out hope that next year I will see more Broadway faces in the front rows of the Tony Awards, favorites like Sutton Foster and her brother Hunter, Christian Hoff, and Casey Nicholaw.

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I woke up to the sad news that Jimmy Dean passed away. As a huge fan of the Daniel Boone TV series, I was deeply affected by Fess Parker’s death only a few months ago, and now we’ve lost another cast member. Jimmy Dean became Boone’s sidekick on the TV show after Ed Ames left to pursue his singing career. In the memorable final episode of the series, Jimmy Dean adopts feisty little Jodie Foster. My condolences to Mr Dean’s family.

Rich People Behaving Badly

Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden

Dead End Gene Pool is a memoir by the great-great-great-great granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, another in a long line of books about severely messed up families. In the book jacket photo, the author Wendy Burden looks like she’s in her mid-thirties and possibly a sister to Reese Witherspoon. In reality she’s 55, so either the photo is old or those genes ain’t so bad. The rest of the photos on the book jacket are intriguing but frustrating, since they are never explained anywhere. I want to know who the people are and what they’re doing. I assume they’re some of those wacky family members the author describes inside.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. It’s certainly vivid, and parts of it are unforgettable, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Burden describes her dysfunctional family in such brutal detail, you end up feeling like you’ve been caught staring too long in fascination at a car wreck. It’s certainly a remedy to any misplaced belief that tons of money can buy happiness. This family she describes has everything material they could want and nothing emotionally that they need.

Burden’s description of their material wealth includes a drawer-by-drawer inventory of her grandparents’ bedroom and office. Her grandparents loved food, so much of the book is focused on various chefs, kitchens and elaborate meals. This attention to detail can be almost cruel when she’s describing her family. Her grandmother had chronic gas, so the book does too, punctuated by variations of “brrrfffttt.” As a little girl, Burden would wander into her grandparents’ bedroom when they were undressed, and she leaves nothing to the imagination here, either. Later in the book, she details the physical deterioration of her elders, and her drug-addicted brothers, with the same unflinching honesty. I found myself wishing she’d shown a little more compassion or at least some discretion. In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Burden claims she left out the “real dirt,” so you can’t help wondering…

Burden was a little girl filled with rage, and she certainly had reason. Her father committed suicide when she was six, so she and her brothers were shuttled back and forth between a neglectful mother and grandparents who treated her brothers like princes because they happened to be born with a Y chromosome. She was surrounded by adults who were either related by blood diluted by copious amounts of alcohol or chemical imbalances, or who were paid staff unprepared to cater to the emotional needs of a neglected rich kid.

How you feel about this book will depend on your reaction to this bratty, sad little girl.

GLAAD Media Awards 2010

Last Saturday I participated in my second San Francisco GLAAD Media Awards, volunteering as a talent escort.  It’s such a privilege to spend a day with the GLAAD staff, who are all so capable and competent and hardworking.  The volunteers are also great, and I’ve been on facebook with several of the folks I met last year, so this year was like a big, happy reunion.  Of course, there were many new faces, and I really enjoy meeting new people, especially the young volunteers who are so full of energy.

 I volunteer for organizations like GLAAD because of my favorite uncle.  He died ten years ago from HIV-related complications.  I also have someone close to me who’s gay and in the military. Besides, I majored in theatre production, so I’ve always been fascinated with the entertainment industry and the media.  How lucky am I to live in San Francisco where the GLAAD Media Awards are held?  Of course, I’d love to participate in the Los Angeles and New York Awards as well, and who knows what the future will bring!

 This year’s Awards were held in a big hotel, and after we first gathered in the volunteer room, we were taken on a tour of all the places we would be escorting our assigned talent.  The GLAAD Awards consist of a pre-ceremony reception, a silent auction, a banquet, the Awards program itself, and then an after-party.  It’s a long, exhausting day, but for a few hours you get to feel a part of something bigger and better than yourself.

As a talent escort, you are assigned one of the guest presenters, or one of the award recipients, or one of the performers.  You take them where they need to go, making sure they make it onstage when needed, so they can relax and enjoy themselves.  It’s exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time. All of us have radios with headsets, and that is the secret to knowing where to be and when.  In between escorting, volunteers get to watch the Awards show, and it’s always very moving and inspiring.

 The GLAAD people really treat their volunteers well.  We get lots of great food, free T-shirts, books and badges, but the best part is being appreciated and treated as a member of the team.  The hardest part is leaving the hotel and standing outside waiting for the bus to go home.   Both years, I’ve felt like Cinderella after the ball, my coach turned back into a pumpkin, or should I say, a MUNI bus.  Going back to regular life, after being a part of something so special, is a shock to the system.   But at least there’s always next year!

GLAAD talent escorts on the red carpet