Tag: supernatural

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

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I really don’t know why, but it took me forever to get through this book. I think it may have been because it was so similar to the show that it wasn’t really interesting to me, or didn’t really add anything to the story enough for me to stay interested. Honestly though, that’s a compliment to the show because it means they did really well with the details!

I will say, the story did get a lot more interesting once we got to the murders and what Grace did remember. I did also like that we got to see Dr. Jordan meeting with more people that knew Grace and that he went to the house where the murders took place.

I expected the hypnotism to be more exciting in the book, but I guess it can’t be too sensational if it’s supposed to be believable. The acting in the show was perfect and made this scene so creepy!

One thing I really didn’t like was how both Jeremiah and Dr. Jordan kind of fled after the hypnotism. It seemed like both of them were trying to be helpful and then it was like they both just gave up. I really thought that they would help her get out sooner, but I guess since this is fiction based on a true story we wouldn’t be able to have her get out of the penitentiary earlier than she actually did.

It was also disappointing that Dr. Jordan’s memory was affected in the war, resulting in him being no help to Grace whatsoever. Honestly it made his whole role in the story pretty pointless. I’m not sure how much of this is historically accurate, but if this is what really happened then that really sucks.

Although I’m not sure myself whether Grace was innocent or if she was suffering from some sort of mental/post-traumatic stress disorder, I am glad that she was pardoned and was able to live the rest of her life with some sort of freedom. She definitely was very unlucky in life, so it was nice that she sort of had a happy ending. Not sure that I wanted her to end up with Jamie, but honestly it could’ve been way worse.

I hope she did have a happy ending. It would be nice to know what really happened.

Sea Oak by George Saunders

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95024c7085e97836dcd4090658584936Last Thursday, our reading was the short story “Sea Oak” by George Saunders. My professor let us know that this was the first story we were reading that would stem away from realism and have some supernatural elements, so I was really excited to read this.

First of all, I should probably explain my choice of photo for this post. If anyone has read the story, they know that the narrator works at this weird sex restaurant-type place where the male “waiters” strip as they bring out food. It has a pilot theme apparently. I’m not sure if places like this actually exist, it seems pretty unsanitary. Anyway, all I could think about was Magic Mike and male strippers. It’s relevant, I promise.

This story was pretty interesting overall. Without spoiling it, the whole twist was pretty shocking and I’m not sure that it was completely believable for her to act that way after dying. However, it did give the family the push they needed to improve their lives and they probably would not have done that if all of this didn’t happen. I also thought it was pretty gruesome and awesome that she continued to decay after coming back.

It’s definitely something that I would be interesting in hearing how George Saunders came up with the idea and what it was like writing scenes like that. Something about the craft of writing is so interesting to me and I guess that’s why I take so many creative writing classes even though I’m a journalism major. I guess that’s a lot of writing too.

The only thing that sort of bothered me about this story was that the sentences were sort of difficult to read until I got used to them and the dialogue seemed sort of unrealistic. But, the whole thing I think is supposed to be sort of a parody, so I guess it makes sense then.