Is it OK to like the baddies?

From Maleficent, Tom in Tom and Jerry, Captain Hook, and even Peter Pan (in the original book) right through to the dark and twisted fictional characters like Dexter and Christian Grey we seem to revel in a bit of 'baddie love'.

Is it OK to love a baddie? Do we always have to be rooting for the good guy and must the white hats always triumph for a story to be 'right'? Do we need happy endings?

For a long while I've felt that children's fairy tales are designed to be dark and scary and I've blogged about specific stories before. Fairy tales help children to manage difficult situations in the relative safety of a book (don't tel Bastion in the Never Ending Story of course, he may disagree about the safety aspect). Children deal with the loss of parents (almost all fairy stories pit lone children against monsters - you can't blame Disney for this one), fear of survival, they learn about rules and the consequences of keeping or breaking them, the same with promises. Children see huge and evil things defeated and while they can have nightmares about monsters in the dark they can also learn of the selflessness of love and the strength of truth.

Does adult fiction follow a similar vein? Are we able to look into the dark and deal with it rather than live its horror if we read dark and terrifying books. Having read a few dark stories I often emerge feeling glad I'm not trapped there in the pages of the novel. But sometimes I might admire the 'baddie'; sometimes it feels good to see someone stretch outside of the confines of the rules and do what we might all like to do...but daren't.

Have you watched Fargo and wanted someone dead? Have you cheered a villain? Am I unusual or is this extra step one that helps us deal with the mundane and the ordinary. Does empathy with a bad guy sometimes help us to stay good? Could it be that James Bond, sneering, rich, and deadly, can help us live gentler lives purely because in our minds we can cheer for him, just for a second, before popping the veg on to boil and waiting for the children to wash their hands for tea.

What do you think?

Book Review - Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

For Christmas the lovely Mr TM bought me a book token, for a HUGE sum of money as he cunningly remembered how I cannot walk into a bookshop without needing all the books.

I'm sure some of you know that feeling. The smell of the paper, the rustling sounds of the words wriggling impatiently on the pages, itching to be picked up, read, taken home...

So a couple of weeks ago we went out into the cold and wandered into the warm and cosy land of the book shop. A proper bookshop with tables of enticing new reads, an upstairs with a coffee shop, with carpet in all book sections and randomly spaced comfy leather sofas, the sort of shop that wants to envelope you and keep you until you are one with it.

I had asked twitter for some book suggestions and had been recommended 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' by Rachel Joyce, and while looking through the H-K section in hope I stumbled on a rather interestingly covered book, 'Elizabeth is Missing' by Emma Healey. The cover looked fascinating, a scrap of paper, a drawing and some rather good reviews...I turned the book in my hands. I knew I needed it when I saw it was about a woman called Maud, what a super old lady name.

Maud has dementia, maybe Alzheimers, she is not stupid but she struggles to keep pieces of her life in order, to keep words together, to remember things. She leaves notes but what do they mean? And is the note about not cooking really for her? Who keeps buying tinned peaches? One note says that Elizabeth is missing. Maud is convinced of this one fact and no one, not her daughter, not the police, will make her give up her search.

The book twists through Maud's days, entwining her past with her present, sometimes even the reader cannot see what is real, what is remembered, what is dreamed. But Maud is a stubborn old bird, she will get to the bottom of the mystery, she will find out what has happened to Elizabeth, and we are swept along with her to the end.

The book is harrowing at times, I had a neighbour very like Maud, who would pop round to tell us the same thing each day and at all hours, who would forget who we were, or forget she lived next door to us when she had left her driveway, the portrayal of Maud in this book was terribly accurate, heartbreakingly poignant.

And the writing..I was caught by the brilliance of the style and the phrasing in this book, often more poetry than prose in it's clever use of imagery. I leave you with one of my favourite bits from the book.

"A bang, somewhere in the house , makes my eyes skitter across the sitting room, there's an animal, and animal for wearing outside, lying over the arm of the settee. Its' Carla's. She never hangs it up, worried she'll forget it, I expect. I can't help staring at it, sure it will move, scurry away to a corner, or eat me up and take my place. And Katy will have to remark on it's big eyes, it's big teeth.

...

The front door clicks shut and I hear Carla locking it after her. Locking me in. I watch her through the window as she crunches across my path. She wears a coat with a fur-edged hood over her uniform. A carer in wolf's clothing."

I cannot recommend this book highly enough, it made me laugh and cry by turns. Read it. You can follow Emma Healey on Twitter

Oh, and I bought 'The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry' by Rachel Joyce too - next to read and review!

See what else is being read at

Granpa Guff, The Accidental Astronaut - a review

Gosh! Granpa Guff, the Accidental Astronaut is now available in paperback as well as on Kindle!

I was given a copy of this rather fun story on Kindle to review it, and DD and I enjoyed the story, I dare say it would entertain many a nipper.

First I must say I loved the illustrations, I read on a Galaxy Tab Kindle app so I saw them in glorious technicolor and they really are great, very funny.

I read the book with 13 year old DD and you might think we'd be too old for this sort of story but the fast pace (and some funny asides) and the rude humour amused us both.

Do you believe all that your grandfather tells you? You know the tall tales of an exciting youth or 'how things used to be'. Well this Granpa has some tall tales indeed, tall enough to reach to the moon! but are they true? They sound horrible enough to be :-) Could you accidentally be shot into space? What would life on the spaceship be like? What if you need a wee, or feel sick o_0, how would you eat? and what if there were spiders on the spaceship, spiders that bite!

A great story to start some rather bizarre discussions and for children that enjoy 'gross' things. With the recent excitement created about space by the wonderful tweets of Cmdr Hadfield I think this is the perfect time to buy a space themed story! (and try and work out the real from the *ahem* not so real)

Any fan of Spiders from Mars (wink) will like this story. A fun read for you and the kids, especially if you are grandfather with tall tales of your own, because you will sound even more believable after this one!

Power is cheap

Once upon a time an elf company sold a magic product. They sold it to 100 people, each person had a chat about what they wanted and paid what the elves suggested. They were all very happy with what they paid and it suited them.

Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos

 
50 people paid £1000 a month for the ongoing use of the magic. 50 people paid £100 a month but the elves were happy, they needed £55000 to make a profit.

Then a wizard said it was unfair, everyone should get the cheap price. So he cast a spell enforcing the cheapest price for everyone.

Now the company only made £10000 a month! Disaster!, quickly the company elves recalculated the prices,if everyone was on the cheapest price, then they needed to raise it!

£55000 divided by 100 was £550,so they made that the new cheapest price and the higher price £10000. Now everyone paid £550

50 people were very happy, but the other 50 were very, very sad.

The wizard was very happy indeed. But no one had ever liked the wizard anyway.

The End

A war time memory.

"My daughter was born at my sister’s house in November 1944. I returned home with her when she was three weeks old. I had photos taken at a studio soon after we arrived home. These were to be the only photos of my daughter before the accident. I hadn’t collected them from the photographers at the time of the plane crash so they survived.

Mosquito De Havilland

The plane crash was on the morning of Saturday 17th February 1945.

I had put my daughter outside the front door in her pram. I then went into the bedroom to tidy myself and to put my coat on. I was looking in the mirror when I saw this huge plane coming into the garden, it was silent, no engine. I thought that my baby would be all right as the plane was coming toward the back of the bungalow, so remembering what we had been told to do during raids etc. I lay on the floor. The last thing that I remembered was debris falling on me, which must have knocked me out for a few seconds. I came to and my wardrobe was holding up the ceiling where I was lying. I scrambled up, thinking that I must get to my baby, I walked through the bedroom to the lounge, there wasn’t a wall there any more and no glass in the windows. I fell out of the window and my friend was there and she helped me out.

I rushed round to where the pram was shouting “MY BABY!” by that time the bungalow was alight and burning rubble had fallen onto the pram. I was pulled away, still screaming for my baby but I was held back. A man who was visiting his brother’s family across the road ran over, and with his bare hands got my daughter out of the pram. When I saw how badly she was burnt I wished that God had taken her, as her little face was burned also her arm and hand. The man who lived opposite was about to take a bride to her wedding, but no more ado he came and took us to the hospital, ribbons flying.

I don’t think that I have ever spent a more unhappy night, my baby was crying and I couldn’t pick her up as my hands were bandaged, so I continually called the nurse. Eventually the Matron came and said, “ What are you making all the fuss for?”

The next day a Doctor came from East Grinstead hospital and we were taken there and we stayed for three months. Fortunately my baby was still able to breast feed. Which helped to save her life. She had saline bathes everyday and was the youngest patient they had ever had.

My husband was serving in India at the time of the crash and didn’t even know that he had a daughter until she was about four months old. He didn’t know about the accident because his mother had written to him and just said that I couldn’t write as I had hurt my hands. (I used to write several times a week).

The first thing that he knew about it was when one of the fellows that was with him had the Local newspaper sent to him and this news was on the front page. You can imagine the shock. He put in for leave but wasn’t allowed to come home. Our daughter was nearly two years old before he came home and saw her, he walked through the door and she was in her high chair, my husband kissed me and she said, “Oh Mama!”.

We spent years going to and fro to East Grinstead for her to have skin grafts; she had the last one when she was sixteen.

There were five people killed that day including both pilots, we were the only two saved."

The memorial to those that died

Record of the crash on Flight Safety Org
(My Grandmother, Jan 1917 - June 1999  wrote this account in about 1995, the baby is my mum)