Author: Taryn

Can you imagine a world without sleep?

As the sun rises in each time zone, people around the globe realize that no one was able to sleep the night before. There’s no relief the next night or in the following days. Sleep Over is a collection of interviews with survivors who explain what it was like to live through the Longest Day.

If there had been a great bolt of lightning or a thunderclap, if the earth had shaken, if a blood moon had risen and cast a hellish pall over the whole world, we would have had some event to point to and say “There, there is where the end of the world began.” No dogs howled, no wave of prickling goosebumps swept over our skin, no measurable occurrence registered in any of the things we love to measure. The end of the world began not with something happening, but with something not happening. And because we don’t do well with understanding danger from absence, and most people didn’t know that going without sleep is fatal, the whole world began to die.

No one knows what’s happening at first. Maternity wards are swamped with expectant mothers, as even those tucked inside the womb aren’t safe. Children are among the hardest hit and their reactions are a harbinger of the horrors to come. The Center for Disease Control investigates the phenomenon, but even their scientists are struggling with the effects of sleeplessness. Going twenty-four hours without sleep leaves a person in a state equivalent to being legally drunk. What starts off as a global summer party quickly descends into chaos. It only takes a few days for the established order to break down. Decades-long feuds boil over and a number of international incidents erupt, as governments take advantage of the situation or act rashly due to cognitive impairment. Terrorists and rioters bring violence to the streets. Spiritual groups enjoy a resurgence as people flock to them for answers and absolution.

Stage one is a bummer; light insomnia, coupled with the panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias that develop as a result. Stage two is shit; basically escalation as the insomnia becomes more pronounced, and hallucinations get added to the increasing panic attacks as the body starts to realize just how hooped it truly is. Stage three: you’re fucked. It begins when sleep becomes completely impossible. Accompanied by rapid weight loss. Finally, in stage four (completely, ultra-mega-fucked), people exhibit what is essentially severe dementia. They become completely mute and unresponsive. If no one was taking care of people at this stage, they would die (as if they could even make it to this stage without being cared for). Death arrived from seven to thirty-six months after the onset of symptoms.

The people interviewed are from a variety of backgrounds and countries. Everyone dealt with the situation differently. There are those who tried to keep everything functioning normally, opportunistic people who profited off the desperation for a cure, people who simply did the best they could to keep a routine, and the unlucky ones who drifted into oblivion. The insomnia plague ends eventually, but Earth’s population numbers declined drastically. Could this second chance be an opportunity to create a better world? Will the survivors be able to convince future generations not to repeat the mistakes of the past?

It’s not like there was an enemy to fight. All our firepower, our armies, all our contingency plans, and the closest thing we had to help us were plans in place for influenza outbreaks. But how to you counter a disease (and we didn’t even know if it was a disease) which already had one hundred percent saturation? How do you enact plans when our collective competency was dipping past the point of klutziness and into danger?

I loved reading about how different people experienced a single, catastrophic event! The only issue was that everyone had the same voice, despite the fact they had diverse backgrounds and lived all over the world. I enjoyed the writing style, but my interest in collections like this plummet if there’s not a ton of character variety. The most memorable perspectives were the ones where the voice most matched the character: the internet vigilante, the gamer, the five friends who made a bet to stay awake as long as they could before they realized they didn’t have a choice, and the man who takes it upon himself to care for those who have ceased functioning. In terms of content, I was most interested in the perspectives of those who worked during the chaos: teachers, nurses, air traffic controllers, journalists, scientists, power operators, and the corpse collectors. What happens when even the first responders and problem-solvers can’t be protected?

Certainly, during those times it brought out the best in people, but also the worst—those ugly, dark parts of us that we keep covered up to be able to function in society. But when that facade is no longer needed? When things are crumbling all around you?

How long could you go without sleep? I pulled an all-nighter once in college and that was enough to turn me off the concept for the rest of my life! Sleep Over is so relatable because (ideally) we all spend one-third of our lives sleeping. Most of us have also experienced the days after the nights where sleep didn’t come so easily. The story is more open-ended that I would have liked, but it’s a really interesting thought experiment. The imaginative scenarios that the author concocted show the expected and unexpected effects of a global insomnia plague. The testimonials are sometimes humorous, but always horrifying. Chilling descriptions of the humanity slowly draining from peoples’ faces as the days passed will stick with me for a long time. The horrors and uncertainty experienced during the Longest Day show how important it is to support scientific research in the best of times, because it’s already too late by the time the worst hits.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about; I finally have time to read.” —On an otherwise blank page on the story wall of Champs-Élysées

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Related:
Fatal Familial Insomnia (Referenced in the book several times, though it may or not be related to what happened) – a genetic disorder that renders its victims unable to sleep. There’s a nonfiction book about this topic: The Family That Couldn’t Sleep: A Medical Mystery by D.T. Max
Timeline: The Effects of Sleep Deprivation  What happens after 24/36/48/72/96 hours of no sleep?
How 180 Hours Without Sleep Affects the Body: The CIA kept “detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions,” according to the Senate’s blockbuster report.
Here’s A Horrifying Picture Of What Sleep Loss Will Do To You (Diagram)
Waking Up to the Health Benefits of Sleep from the Royal Society for Public Health
What’s the Longest Amount of Time Someone Has Stayed Awake?
How Long Can Humans Stay Awake?

“You never really know what happens in someone else’s marriage.”

3.5 Stars. How far would you go to protect a friend? Three women begin to suspect that the fourth member of their group is being abused by her husband. Keeping her safe becomes their number one priority. One late evening their worst fears come true, but not in the way they expect. They must deal with the fallout from that night and the subsequent strain on their families and their friendship.

We were polite women living in a civilized society where people rarely did more than whisper about one another’s marriages. We tried reasoning with her and spent hours worrying about her, but ultimately we did nothing, watching from a distance like moviegoers at a disaster film, tense and expectant, waiting for the awful yet inevitable conclusion.

I recently watched the first episode of Big Little Lies, so it was impossible not to make comparisons within the first few chapters: women whose children attend the same school become close, they frequently meet at a local coffee shop, and their wealthy, beautiful friend is possibly being abused. That’s where the similarities end for me! The chapters alternate between four women with very different lives:
Sarah – Former lawyer, now a stay-at-home mom. Blunt and no-nonsense.
Julie  – Realtor. Type-A, effervescent, optimistic. Always wants to see the best in people.
Alison – At-home IT consultant. Pessimistic. There are parts of her past she’d rather keep hidden. Sarah and Julie were already friends when Alison came along.
Heather – (32) Former model. Now married to a well-known plastic surgeon. Generally appears relaxed, without a care in the world. She’s the newest member of the group. They’ve known her for almost two years.

So much in life hinges on chance—this date or that time, the myriad small, statistical variations which social scientists like to measure. . . . It’s only when I look back that I see this moment as the beginning, how everything started, though of course I didn’t understand the significance then. . . . This is the way of fate—all of these pieces that must slot into place, one leading to the other, a progression toward a conclusion that seems inevitable only after the fact.

LIKES
• The premise of several women working together to help a friend really appealed to me.
• The relationship dynamics – It’s hard to imagine these women being friends if their kids didn’t go to school together! The divisions between them start to widen when they’re under pressure: different backgrounds and personality quirks, economic divisions, parenting differences, working vs. stay at home. Sarah and Julie were friends before they met Alison, so Alison often felt like a third wheel before Heather came along.
• The little insights tucked into the story: “I’ve often thought successful marriages are as much about couples knowing how to create space for each other’s moods as they are about togetherness and communication.”
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• The kid’s conversations were adorable and hilarious. I appreciate when an author injects humor into otherwise dark subject matter!

Once when I was talking about the past with my brother, he said that being a police officer had taught him that the line that separates the civil from the uncivil is very fine, and that anyone is capable of anything given the right set of circumstances. I hadn’t believed him. There was a huge difference between the monsters and us, I’d argued. It wasn’t a fine line at all, but a gulf separating the law-abiding from the lawless. I hadn’t understood that dozens of smaller choices lead to those big moral decisions, as if each step were a point along an invisible map leading to what only feels upon arrival like a surprise destination.

DISLIKES
• “She’s talking to Alison? I thought I was in Alison’s chapter already!” – Unless I was in Alison’s chapters, I was always wrong about whose chapter I was in! The four women have clearly-defined personalities, but I had a hard time telling them apart. I kept having to stop and figure out whose brain I was inhabiting!
• I didn’t buy the event that set the journey to self-preservation in motion because the relationships lacked longevity and depth.
• There comes a point of absurdity where I either shake my head in annoyance or just sit back and enjoy the ride. The women have mild personalities and the first half was standard domestic fiction, so it was hard for me to accept the shift in the middle. I need a side of theatricality with my ridiculous! I had the hardest time imagining Sarah being so agreeable to some of the events in the book (though she did have the hardest time dealing with it all). Their escalating antics in the second half reminded me of the first rule of improv: “Say yes.”  Sure, one of them would occasionally pipe up with a few lines of dissent, but they quickly dived headfirst into whatever insane plan the other one had concocted.
• They started taking themselves too seriously and had an absurd conception of their abilities and expertise. Alison works in the technology field and her superior Googling skills are mentioned, but it was baffling to me when she seriously—albeit reluctantly—entertained the idea of hacking a government website.
• The husbands were way too clueless.

There are no monsters, just deeply flawed people, all of us given that power to choose, some of us making choices so damaging that they ruin the lives of those they claim to love. I believed once in those clear lines, the good and the evil, the perpetrator and the victim, and now I see that all of us end up playing both roles at some point in our lives. We hurt those that we love, we make choices that we can’t undo, we throw ourselves headlong into battles in the name of rescuing people who never asked to be saved. . . . . None of us are wholly innocent. We are all the damned and we are all the saved.

This book is about all the little choices along the way that lead us to unexpected places. Good people are capable of doing bad things. They may not even realize how far they’ve gone until they’ve already crossed a line. There’s also a message about talking to your friends and being less polite. Early on, one of the characters muses about how her generation is more open than her parents’ more polite generation. It turns out that the “openness” of the modern age is mostly superficial. At the end, she realizes how much she didn’t know about her supposedly closest friends. There were so many missed opportunities to provide her friends a shoulder to lean on because she was too polite to pry. You never know what’s going on behind closed doors, but sometimes all you have to do is ask.

I was actually smiling as I typed my dislikes! The second half was a lot of fun in a “What the heck are they going to do next!?” kind of way. It got a little too crazy for me, but I think readers of the genre will like this book. I enjoyed the writing and would read another book by this author.

3.5 Stars. It’s best to avoid reading anything about this book. It’s extremely easy to unintentionally slip into spoiler territory. A blank slate is best!

I’ve surrounded myself with lies. Sometimes I am tempted to succumb to them. It might be simpler that way, to quietly sink into the new reality I’ve created as though it were quicksand. To disappear beneath its surface. It would be so much easier to just let go, I think. But I cannot. Because of her.

The chapters alternate between a man’s ex-wife and his new fiancée. When his ex-wife finds out he’s engaged, she decides she must stop the wedding from happening. My immediate thoughts during the first few chapters:
The man: Walking red flag!
The fiancée: Sweet, but naive. She’s jumpy and the harassing phone calls she’s been receiving aren’t helping.
The ex-wife: *groan* Another suspense novel about a heavy drinker obsessed with a past relationship?
It’s a slow-starter that took me two attempts to finish, but once I finally reached “Part Two” it became an exhilarating read! My preliminary review went out the window when suddenly my every thought became a spoiler, even though I hadn’t actually predicted any of the upcoming twist-and-turns!
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We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.

This story deals with the imperfection of our perceptions and the incomplete pictures of ourselves we present to others. We see what we want to see and we present ourselves the way we want to be perceived. Sometimes the signs of what’s ahead are there all along, but we aren’t ready or willing to see them. Things that look obvious at a distance aren’t always so clear up close and it can be easier to focus on the details rather than deal with the whole messy picture. Romantic love can further cloud perceptions by softening our critical impulses and compelling us to disregard inconvenient details. Even our own bodies can betray us by making it easy to conflate romantic arousal and fear.

The most compelling part of this story was [spoilerthe gradual transformation of a woman as she is altered by the events in her life. We see a woman become a completely different person over the years, from vibrant and chatty to depressed and defeated. The changes happen so gradually that she doesn’t realize they’re happening, although those around her see it clearly. I loved the fiancée’s relationship with her best friend. I could relate to the difficulties of watching a friend fall head over heels with someone who sets off an internal alarm. Sometimes it seems like there’s only one acceptable answer to “So, what do you think?!”—especially when all you have is your intuition and concerns that can be easily explained away. The ex-wife’s relationship with her aunt was also great!/spoiler]

Maybe being in love carries the requirement of filtered vision; perhaps it is so for everyone. In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.

Part of the fun of this book was that at the same time these women are trying to sort their lives out, the authors also want the reader to confront their own blind spots and biases. In terms of enjoyable mystery/suspense/thriller stories, I’d place it in the Clare Mackintosh (I Let You Go) grouping rather than the Gillian Flynn/Tana French category. I’m rounding up to four stars because I really liked the execution of the story. It reminded me of a faster-paced thriller [spoiler](The Girl on the Train)[/spoiler] that most everyone has read, but it’s different enough to stand out on its own. I really appreciate a moment that makes me gasp and go reread sections (more than once in this case). I think this book is worth the read just to talk about it with everyone else!

After over a year of avoiding her family, Nora sends her younger sister Quinn a cryptic text: “I have something for you.” Quinn is eager to see Nora after all this time, but she’s surprised when Nora shows up to their meeting with a six-year-old girl. No explanations, no timeline—just a plea to keep the girl safe and hidden for a few days. Nora flees before Quinn has the chance to refuse. What has Nora dragged Quinn into?

Sometimes the surface is not an accurate indicator of what lies beneath.

The Sanfords appeared to be a typical suburban family to the outside world, but there were deep fractures forming behind closed doors. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the three Sanford women:

• Quinn and Nora’s mother Liz is a problem-solver, though she’s never been comfortable examining any problem too deeply: “sometimes getting lost in the details was better than stepping back to look at the whole, ugly picture.” Anytime her thoughts get too close to the heart of an issue, she immediately shifts her attention elsewhere. Over the years, she made many compromises trying to keep her family together and maintain their perfect facade. It cost her; time flew by and everything she was trying to preserve disintegrated. She centered her identity around being a wife and a mother, but now her husband is dead and her children want little to do with her. After years of taking a back seat in her own life, she’s finally in charge. She’s determined to fix her family’s problems, even if things have to get a little messy first.

Liz was no idiot. She knew that their lives were far from perfect, that things simmered just beneath the surface of their shiny facade. Shadowy things that hinted of discontent, of darkness that she could only begin to imagine. Weren’t they all just a knife blade away from madness? From obsession? From giving in to every lust and desire and impulse? Or even just one. One slip would be more than enough.

But life was hard and self-flagellation was for the weak. People pitied those who refused to help themselves. Who couldn’t make a mistake and then, proudly, stand back up in the middle of their own mess and smile. I meant to do that. I knew all along.

Liz chose dignity.

• Nora (27) is the middle child. She’s rebellious and passionate. She escaped her family as soon as she could.

• Quinn (26) is an eternal optimist and eager to be loved. She idolizes her older sister Nora who is kind of a mythic figure to her. Quinn craves stability and will do anything to keep the peace. It surprised everyone when she ran off to Los Angeles and married an artist. Now both Quinn and her husband Walker are unemployed and temporarily living at her mother’s rental property in Key Lake, Minnesota. Not only do they have financial stress, but Liz has made no secret of her disapproval for Walker.

[Liz] was a good peacekeeper. Shush now, be content, let it go.
Peacemaking—now that was a different thing altogether. That was bombs and battles, wars waged for the sake of starting over, from the scorched earth up, on something pure and worthy. Peacemaking meant casualties, and Liz was all too willing to fall on a sword of silence if it meant life could go on the way it always had.

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• This book is recommended for fans of Liane Moriarty. Both Baart and Moriarty have a talent for examining complex emotions and uncomfortable thoughts, but what I like most about Moriarty’s writing are the moments of lightness and her wicked sense of humor. Little Broken Things didn’t make me feel the same range of emotions, though I liked the rare moments of joy that appeared.
• Nora’s character was elusive to me. I never fully understood Nora’s complete devotion and self-sacrifice for her best friend. The one thing that would have made sense to me didn’t pan out. It was interesting that all the Sanford women experienced uneven relationships, or at very least felt on unequal footing with their partner.
• I liked when Liz reflected on her marriage and her alienation from her children, but overall she was so unlikable and self-serving that I kept looking to see how many minutes were left in her chapters. I was not interested in her party planning, even though her focus on the superficial made sense! To be completely fair, I think my recent reading of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere reduced my tolerance for this type of character (and for meaningful art projects at the end). One small thing that endeared me to Liz was her reflexive impulse to make passive aggressive comments or offer unsolicited advice and the immediate regret she felt as she was doing it! Nora and Quinn both have positive manifestations of Liz’s most annoying qualities, so it would’ve been interesting to get more of a glimpse of pre-marriage Liz.
• The characters had a tendency jump to conclusions and repeatedly assert those conclusions as fact. This is especially annoying when it happens so early in the story that you can assume they’re probably misguided!
• “I think I have a God complex.”  These characters had a frustrating habit of trying to handle HUGE problems on their own. I often wished they would consult the police, a lawyer, or even each other and let me get on with my life. 😀
• Predictable. I figured out all the twists as the characters were introduced, so the reveals were underwhelming.

Kids grow out of the sweet mommy stage so quickly, morphing overnight into titles that sound more adult. Don’t be fooled—it’s a sort of letting go, that moment when the near-perfect queen of the universe becomes a little more human, a little less divine. 

LIKES:
• I enjoyed Baart’s writing and insights. I wanted to see how the story played out.
• Quinn! I related to her the most and I really liked her character arc from beginning to end. I especially enjoyed reading her conflicted feelings about marriage, motherhood, and her sister. One of my favorites scenes was when she becomes overwhelmed during a gathering of old high school friends. She no longer fits into the small town life that she once reveled in. She has difficulty being surrounded by all the young families while she is trying to get pregnant.

Quinn was not a woman who knew. Who had crossed the divide and bore the scars to prove it. She both loved and loathed herself for it.

• The BEST part was Quinn trying to win over six-year-old Everlee—all the painful rejections and the small victories. If you read the “Acknowledgements” section at the end, you’ll understand why those scenes were so special!  While Quinn is trying to bond with Everlee, Liz is trying to reconnect with Quinn and failing. She wants so badly to have a relationship with her daughter, but she can’t overcome her own flaws to make any progress.

They were too far apart and far too close all at the same time. Perpetually missing each other.

Who is Everlee? What is Nora running from? What tore the Sanford family apart—was it one big explosion or the build-up of multiple tiny fractures? Will this broken family be able to put themselves back together again? Will the Sanford women learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable? I preferred the small family conflicts over the big central drama. This book is at it’s best when dealing with conflicted family relationships. The characters can’t help feel the inescapable pull towards their family (biological or chosen) even after they’ve been hurt numerous times: “How could she begin to explain the way she felt for her husband? The pretty layers that peeled back to reveal something dark and rotting beneath? They had lived a good, solid, respectable life. But that didn’t mean that she loved him. That she would mourn his loss. And yet.” I’ve overdone it on the suburbia/”behind closed doors” type books lately, so that might have affected my enjoyment. Fans of domestic dramas like Cruel Beautiful World by Caroline Leavitt and The Fall of Lisa Bellow by Susan Perabo might enjoy this story.

Taken together, these vast powers can confer god-like omniscience on whoever has control over them. In the hands of a vengeful, ideological, or irrational person … Who knows how these powerful weapons could be used against us?

This book made me want to delete all my online accounts and go completely off the grid. Okay, maybe not–I’m addicted to the convenience of the Internet and the comforts of modern life–but I can’t say I wasn’t warned!

“Unfortunately, when the NSA created Stellar Wind after 9/11, they took away the controls that I created and turned it on you and I’m sorry for that! This was something the Stasi, the KGB, or the Gestapo would have LOVED to have had! Just because we’re a democracy doesn’t mean we will stay that way.” – Bill Binney

Verax is graphic nonfiction that covers whistleblowers, drone warfare, and mass surveillance in the post-9/11 era, with a focus on events during the Obama administration. Journalist Pratap Chatterjee was already investigating software contractors and the big business of spying technology, but the story becomes personal for him after he travels to Pakistan and meets with relatives of drone victims. Just three days later, one of the soccer-loving teenagers he spoke with was killed in a drone strike. Throughout the book, Chatterjee seeks to track down connections between the NSA’s mass surveillance program and drone killings. If you’ve ever followed any of the news on mass surveillance, you’ll recognize many of the people featured: Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, and Glenn Greenwald. “Verax“ is the Latin word for “truth teller” and was one of Snowden’s code names.

It’s not just about an invasion of privacy. It’s also about blanket surveillance of innocent people who then become targets for killing.

The methods the intelligence agencies use to gather information and how that information is used is reported in a concise and accessible way. How do they sort and draw conclusions from the mass quantities of information they collect? How accurate are their results? According to Chatterjee, not well and not very. People are broken down into a bundle of traits that are used to predict terroristic threats; there can be an awfully thin line between a terrorist and an ordinary civilian. Rather than listening to the content of every call, they collect and analyze the “metadata,” the who/what/whens of the communications.  Their analysis software can answer questions as broad as “My target speaks German but is in Pakistan. How can I find him?” in a method similar to how Google returns search results. A common dismissal of mass surveillance concerns is that there’s nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide, but Chatterjee shows how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusions from the data. We’ve also seen repeatedly throughout history that a motivated authoritarian can use the most insignificant details to ensnare potential political enemies. Western spying technology has been sold to repressive regimes and leaders in Syria and Egypt have used it to quash dissent.

“Snowden once said that the problem was not that we didn’t have enough data. The problem with mass surveillance is that we’re piling more hay on a haystack. But more hay won’t help you find a needle! Likewise more bad data can just make you more likely to make mistake.”

One of the most enlightening sections was the part about drone warfare and how targets are chosen. The Obama Administration claimed the drones strikes occur with “surgical precision,” but just how reliable is the targeting? It can be really easy to draw the wrong conclusions from half a world away. A single Predator drone is operated by over a hundred people located all over the world. These people have to analyze mountains of data and an unfamiliar culture, while also dealing with unclear images and occasionally inaccurate information. Even something as seemingly insignificant as a wrong digit in a phone number can lead to a faulty identification and a wrongful death. Chatterjee investigates the effects of drone warfare on the drone operators who work thousands of miles away from the combat zone and meets with drone pilots who suffer from PTSD.

“During President Obama’s two terms in office, he approved 542 such targeted strikes in 2,920 days–one every 5.4 days. From his inauguration through today, President Trump had approved at least 75 drone strikes or raids in 74 days–about one in every 1.25 days.” – Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations (Related: October 2017 article related to increasing civilian deaths in drone strikes.)

It’s difficult to pinpoint exact numbers of innocent civilians killed in drone strikes, but as of 12/12/2017, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that 7% to 22% of the 7,207-10,511 killed in 4701 confirmed strikes across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen were civilians. Several situations in which the wrong people were killed are highlighted, including the story of two US marines who were killed in a friendly-fire drone attack. In Chapter 13, there’s an intense depiction of the conversation preceding a drone strike where twenty-three Afghan civilians were killed after they were wrongly identified as enemy combatants. This book focuses on the criticisms of drone warfare, but are also many who support the drone program as it stands. The supporters say that drones are more accurate than other methods, that there will always be “collateral damage” in a war, and that it saves US soldiers’ lives. (Related article: Drones: Actually the Most Humane Form of Warfare Ever by former Navy pilot Michael W. Lewis)

“Technology can occasionally give you a false sense of security that you can see everything, that you can hear everything, that you know everything.” –Air Force Major General James Poss

LIKES:

• The graphic format: Mass surveillance programs are a complicated, sleep-inducing topic for the average person. As one of Chatterjee’s editors says in the beginning, “software contractors are not sexy!” The graphic format makes it easier to process new an complex information. It also allows the author to avoid boring the reader with giant walls of techy text! Chatterjee does a good job of comparing the more complex concepts to things the average person will be familiar with.

• It shows what happens whistleblowers who’ve went the legal route and why some people have chosen to go outside the bounds of the law.

• It discusses the problems and potential consequences of mass surveillance and drone warfare.

DISLIKES:

• It’s just as much about chasing down the story as it is about mass surveillance. Journalists investigating government overreach face obstacles while researching, even in “free” countries. Citizens, and consequently editors, are disinterested in the story despite its far-reaching implications for us all. However, I was more interested in the the last third of the book than the details of chasing down the story. I enjoyed the book much more after “Chapter Ten,” when the focus shifts to the methods of mass surveillance and details of drone warfare.

• Too much Edward Snowden! I’ve heard the Snowden story a million times at this point, so dedicating almost a quarter of the book to him–from information theft to fleeing to Russia–was excessive. He’s a big part of why we are even talking about all of this to begin with, but I was more interested in the details of what Snowden released than Snowden himself. I think it was a mistake to focus on him so much, because the controversy surrounding the whistleblowers tends to completely eclipse any conversation about mass surveillance. Right or wrong, the information is out there now.

“The greatest fear I have regarding the outcome of these disclosures for America is that nothing will change. That people will see in the media all these disclosures, but they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.” – Edward Snowden

Verax is a critical look at mass surveillance and drone warfare that raises issues that are important for everyone to consider. Are we being true to our values? Can we do better? How much privacy are you willing to give up for security? Has mass surveillance foiled any terrorist plots or is it actually creating more terrorists? Are we trading innocent peoples’ lives for the illusion of safety while simultaneously making ourselves less safe in reality? Has government dependence on mass surveillance simply caused terrorists to change their tactics? In a book I just read about far-right groups, it’s mentioned that terrorist groups have shifted more towards lone wolf attacks because it’s easier to remain undetected. (Related: Chart on page 6). Verax also addresses some overarching principles, such as the dangers that come with tribal loyalties. Too often people are in favor of expansive powers when their own political party is in charge, forgetting that those same powers will still apply when the opposing party or an unsavory leader is in power. It’s important to look beyond party loyalty to the flaws and potential consequences of our decisions. Our leaders should never be able to take our approval for granted. It’s also necessary to periodically reassess our opinions when there’s hard data about the effectiveness and the consequences. There were sections of this book that I thought could be more concise, but overall it’s accessible introduction to the topic.

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• The CIA’s unaccountable drone war claims another casualty by Pratap Chatterjee
• Trump will have vast powers. He can thank Democrats for them. by Glenn Greenwald: “The problem [civil liberties advocates] encountered was the same one they’d faced during the Bush presidency when trying (and failing) to persuade putatively small-government conservatives to oppose these expansions of presidential power: namely, many people are perfectly content to have such authority vested in leaders they trust, and fear them only when a politician from the opposing party wields them.”
• Newtown kids v Yemenis and Pakistanis: what explains the disparate reactions? by Glenn Greenwald
• Laptop seizures by US government highlight 9/11-era climate of fear by Glenn Greenwald
• NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily by Glenn Greenwald
• President Obama’s Dragnet – by NYTimes Editorial Board
• Edward Snowden is No Hero by Jeffrey Toobin
• Public Documents Contradict Claim Email Spying Foiled Terror Plot: Defenders of “PRISM” say it stopped subway bombings. But British and American court documents suggest old-fashioned police work nabbed Zazi. by Ben Smith
• NSA surveillance played little role in foiling terror plots, experts say by Ed Pilkington and Nicholas Watt
• Our Drone War Burnout by Pratap Chatterjee
• Obama Killed a 16-Year-Old American in Yemen. Trump Just Killed His 8-Year-Old Sister. by Glenn Greenwald

RELATED:

• Busting Eight Common Excuses for NSA Mass Surveillance by Cindy Cohn and Trevor Timm
• The best books on Drone Warfare recommended by Hugh Gusterson – Really interesting conversation on drone warfare. “We saw in the case of the Iraq war that the American people were largely happy to invade Iraq until the war went really wrong – until Americans started coming back in body bags – and then they turned against it and said that George Bush had been an idiot to invade. The same with Blair. We wouldn’t have the Chilcott report, and the turning of American opinion against the war in Iraq, if it hadn’t been for those 4,000 Americans who died there. They are the hostages of the democratic war-making process, in a sense. But drones have broken that link in the chain. They make possible perpetual war without costs.”
• 41 men targeted but 1,147 people killed: US drone strikes – the facts on the ground by Spencer Ackerman – See chart
• Good Kill – (Ethan Hawke) A drone pilot questions the ethics of his job.
• Eye in the Sky – Drone pilots are about to strike a terrorist target, until a 9-year-old girl walks into the kill zone. Officials debate whether or not to go forward with the strike. I watched this movie at the theater and was perturbed at how immediately (and vocally) exasperated the audience was with the official arguing against the strike.
• A quote from Liam Brown’s Broadcast, a story about a man who a has a microchip installed into his skull so that he can stream his thoughts directly to his subscribers:

‘That’s the trade-off, isn’t it? I get the convenience of free email or knowing how many calories I’ve burned at the gym or whatever and they get to know me a bit better so they can show me more relevant advertising. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. Besides, I’m not a terrorist or a paedophile. Why should I care …”

“Why should you fucking care? We’re talking about intelligence gathering on an unprecedented scale. Forget data mining. This is mind rape. The end of privacy as we know it. It’s not about advertising, you idiot. It’s about power. Control. Sure, the marketing men might be the first to come knocking, but sooner or later this information is going to end up in the hands of agencies whose only interest is the total suppression of your freedom. In the whole of history, no system of mass surveillance has ever existed that hasn’t ended up being hijacked by malevolent forces. All it would take is one bad election, and suddenly your populist-fascist government has access to the thoughts of every single citizen in the country.”

• Tangentially related: An interesting chapter in SuperFreakonomics: Can a Banker’s Algorithm Help Catch Would-Be Terrorists?

Since this book is more about the series of events that led something to happen than what actually happened, my full review is a probably a bit too revealing! Here’s the short version: In nineteenth-century Ireland, a new widow grapples with the hysteria surrounding her grandson, a four-year-old boy stricken with a mysterious condition that renders him unable to walk or talk. Desperate for a cure, she seeks the assistance of the village handy woman. It’s a slow-moving story full of nature descriptions and introspection. The atmospheric setting and community dynamics were engrossing, so I quickly settled into the story. Alternating between the perspectives of three women, Hannah Kent explores the capacity for depravity in otherwise “good” people and shows the terrible effects righteous certainty. Warning: child abuse.

Nóra had always believed herself to be a good woman. A kind woman. But perhaps, she thought, we are good only when life makes it easy for us to be so. Maybe the heart hardens when good fortune is not there to soften it.

(Ireland, 1825-1826) Nóra Leahy’s husband dies unexpectedly. Suddenly, she’s a widow and the sole caretaker of their four-year-old grandson Micheál. Micheál cannot walk or speak; he stares blankly into space and wails intermittently throughout the night. Unlike her husband, Nóra never bonded with the boy. She resents that he can’t show her any affection or appreciation. Since the “bone-racked” boy arrived, her life and the lives of her neighbors have been plagued by misfortune: the untimely deaths of Nóra’s husband and daughter, bloody eggs, and dry cows. There are whispers that he’s a changeling and predictions that there’ll be another death in her family soon.  She keeps Micheál hidden indoors, away from the eyes of prying neighbors, but that only fuels the gossip. Nóra is tormented by the suggestion that her grandson is responsible for everyone’s recent woes, including her own. With her mind clouded by grief, loneliness, exhaustion, and alcohol, she becomes obsessed with restoring him to the lively boy he was before he came to her.

She had the sense that something terrible was happening. That in some irreparable way the world was changing, that it spun away from her, and that in the whirl of change she was being flung to some forsaken corner.

Nance is the village handy woman. She provides herbs and cures for various ailments and assists in births and deaths. She has always lived on the fringes of society because of her differences: “She stood in for that which was not and could not be understood.” While people usually keep her at a distance, they aren’t afraid to come to her when they have no other options. She’s been allowed to make a home for herself at the outskirts of this village for the past two decades, but the new priest is turning the townspeople against her. He preaches that their Catholic faith and superstitious beliefs are incompatible. People are beginning to make connections between Nance’s mysterious work and several unfortunate incidents that have occurred around the village. She can feel the heavy weight of the community’s doubt and suspicion bear down on her. She knows that she can’t handle being exiled at her advanced age. Rather than abandon the old ways, she clings tighter to tradition. If she can cure Nóra Leahy’s grandson, she’ll be able to prove her knowledge and usefulness to the townspeople.

There was no telling the shape of a heart from the face of the one who carried it. (Mary)

Fourteen-year-old Mary was forced to leave home and seek work to help provide for her large family. Nóra hires her to help with chores and the boy. When she meets Nóra, she thinks she has found a safe place to live for the next six months. Nóra wasn’t fully forthcoming about her situation, so Mary is shocked when she enters the home and discovers the child’s condition. She is frightened at first, but becomes very protective of the boy.

The valley was beautiful. The slow turning towards winter had left the stubble on the fields and the wild grasses bronzed, and the scutter of cloud left shadows brooding across the soil. It was its own world. Only the narrow road, wending through the flat of the valley floor, indicated the world beyond the mountains.

I *had* to read this book because the description reminded me so much of The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, one of my favorite books from 2016. They are very different stories, but both books are based on real events and have an immersive setting. There was a little too much description of the landscape in Nance’s chapters, but her bond with nature is central to her story. Spending time in the claustrophobic village was so hypnotic that I thought I misread the genre. The haunting atmosphere makes it feels like there’s really something supernatural lurking in the periphery. I think that’s a credit to how objectively the author approaches her characters. She captures how mysterious and unknowable the world must have felt to these people. It was jarring when we finally broke outside the confines of the community and are forced to recall how secluded these villagers were.

The people in the tight-knit community are “tied to one another by blood and labour and a shared understanding of the traditions stamped into the soil by those who had come before them.” Mary is the outsider’s perspective but she also places faith in the superstitions. Isolation and lack of education create a fertile ground for panic:“A lot of fears are born of sitting too long alone in the dark.”  Once suspicion is cast and the suggestion of supernatural causes grips the community’s imagination, hysteria thrives. Reason exists in the town, but it doesn’t hold the same power that superstition does. Deep-seated beliefs and power differentials make it difficult for even those with conflicted consciences to follow their moral compass. Sometimes their closeness to the people involved prevents them from seeing how dire the situation has gotten until it’s too late.

“It is out of respect that I call them the Good People, for they do not like to be thinking of themselves as bad craturs. They have a desire to get into Heaven, same as you.” (Nance)

Well, here is news for you: you are not completely healthy! Read this article to keep your pancreas healthy, clean, and strong. order viagra As both of these aspects contribute to cause impotence The Neurological & Nerve problem Numerous neurologic circumstances may lead to enhance the risk of ED. buy levitra from canada The Silagra tablets are taken orally once daily, at least brand cialis online an hour before indulging in sexual activity. If a male is sexually aroused, his brain releases a chemical enzyme cGMP and nitric oxide which cause canadian pharmacy sildenafil erection. I expected a more uplifting story based on the description: “three women in nineteenth-century Ireland are drawn together in the hope of rescuing a child from a superstitious community.” From an outsider’s perspective, it actually seemed like the opposite was happening! This makes The Good People far more disturbing than The Wonder. A helpless boy is being mistreated in increasingly awful ways and there doesn’t seem to be anyone who is capable of effectively advocating for him. The title refers to the fairies (“said to be of middle nature between Man and Angel“), but also to the characters. As sickening as some of their thoughts and choices are, no one in this story thinks of themselves as a bad person–even their worst acts are rationalized with “noble” intentions. At Nóra’s weakest point, Nance provides her with both a reason and a remedy for her grandson’s suffering; surely it would be a disservice to the boy to ignore Nance’s offer. Nance truly believes her contributions are essential to the community and that her skills can help the boy. There are also those in the community that weaponize belief for their own rationalized purposes.

“All this talk of fairies. Sure, people will tell themselves anything to avert their eyes from the truth of a matter.”

Trauma, desperation, and tradition converge, driving people to commit terrible acts that they see as justifiable. This work of historical fiction felt like a horror story, because it’s a reminder of the wickedness lurking in ordinary people. Does almost everyone have a breaking point? Are some people’s thresholds for pain and suffering much lower than others? Nóra’s transformation was one of the most chilling parts. She had never visited Nance for a cure before. She didn’t have a history of bad behavior. However, something shifts inside of her after she experiences one too many traumas in short succession. I don’t think the Nóra or her neighbors could’ve ever predicted the position she’d end up in. [spoiler]It was interesting to see how the women see themselves after they’ve been exposed and the (figurative) spell has been broken. I was also intrigued by the community’s reaction. They harshly judge the women, but at the same time the results of the women’s actions seem to bring a disturbing sense of relief to the community.[/spoiler] It’s a very uncomfortable story to read, but I really liked the sense of place and the way Kent approached her characters. I’m really looking forward to reading Kent’s debut Burial Rites!

‘The cod swims in deeper waters. There’s a mighty peace in the deep, and that is all the cod is after. The untroubled deep. But a storm will toss the water about like a devil. Fish, weed, sand, stones, even the old bones and bits of wrecked ships, ’tis all tossed feathers when the storm hits. Fish that like the deep are thrown into the shallows, and fish that have a need of the shallows are pushed into the deep. ‘Begod, I tell no lie. But what does the cod do when he senses a storm in the water? He swallows stones. Faith, ’tis true or I’m not your da. Your cod will fill himself with stones to stay out of the mighty swell of the sea. He will sink himself. All fish are afraid of thunder, but only some know how to keep themselves out of the way of it.”

RELATED:
• “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law.”―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (pulled from Everything You Love Will Burn by Vegas Tenold)
• An expert asks: Do we all have an evil, dark side? (USA Today, March 2007) – “• So-called inner character seldom survives if familiar social guideposts, such as family and normal routines, fall away. • Few people will challenge a widely accepted injustice.” I came across this article while following a recent case (Dallas Morning News, October 2017) that reminds me a little bit of Micheál’s story.
•”True horror can prove so quiet that one almost believes nothing is happening.” – Stephane Gerson
• A Qualitative Analysis of Power Differentials in Ethical Situations in Academia – Saving to read for later!

Alexis Okeowo interviews citizens of four African countries to showcase acts of rebellion, both big and small. These courageous people of faith have seen their communities terrorized by extremist groups, but they refused to let those extremists determine their life’s course.

Liberty, that precious, delicate right, is fleeting in so much of the world. Sometimes it is there for you to take and enjoy; other times it suddenly and violently disappears, as if it never existed in the first place. But there are always people who go looking for that freedom, even at personal risk. They are not only activists and vigilantes, but also ordinary people.

In A Moonless, Starless Sky, Okeowo brings faraway places into stark view. Through her objective eye, we are introduced to complex people who’ve survived extraordinary situations. Many people might not be familiar with the political situations of these countries, so she adds context by delving briefly into the histories of each nation and extremist group. This book’s one big flaw is the structure. The book is divided into two parts; half of each story is in part one and the other half is in part two. That’s easy enough to overcome though! I read the accounts by country rather than the order presented.

Uganda
This is the story of two people who were abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army as teens. After fifteen-year-old Eunice was abducted, she was forced to marry nineteen-year-old Bosco. What happens to these forced unions if the abductees escape and why do so many of these couples choose to stay together? How are the children of these marriages affected? Okeowo also explores the difficult relationships between the former child soldiers and the communities they may have been forced to harm. Most community members recognize the former child soldiers as victims too, but it’s an understandably uncomfortable situation. What efforts are made to reintegrate them back into society and how do their neighbors handle their presence?

More information: Former Ugandan child soldiers rebuild lives after years of terror (ABC Austrailia, October) | The Bizarre and Horrifying Story of the Lord’s Resistance Army (The Atlantic, October 2011)

Mauritania

Mauritania became the last country to abolish slavery in 1981, but the government did little to actually eradicate the practice. Okeowo explains how slavery became such an accepted part of Mauritanian society and how demographic divisions contributed to its the practice’s endurance. This section focuses on abolitionist Biram Dah Abeid’s fight to end slavery in Mauritania, a crusade that has put him and his family in peril. What makes someone stand up for others, even at great risk to themselves? Okeowo also spends time with a woman Abeid helped rescue. Haby is one of the millions of people who were born into slavery. When she finally had the chance to escape in 2008 at the age of 34, she was insistent that she would never leave her owners. Captivity was all she had ever known. Through Haby’s story, we learn how slaveowners are able to enslave people without chains and about the obstacles that arise when adjusting to sudden freedom.

More information: Mauritania: Slavery’s last stronghold (CNN/YouTube, 2012)/ Article | The abolitionist fighting to free Mauritania’s slaves (2017) – Biram Dah Abeid’s story | The Global Slavery Index 2016 – estimations of the number of people living in slavery today.
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Nigeria

“Nobody rescued them,” a Chibok government official said of the girls who made it back. “I want you to stress this point. Nobody rescued them. They escaped on their own accord.”

In recent years, Boko Haram has terrorized northern Nigeria and kidnapped thousands of boys and girls. Rebecca Ishaku was one of the hundreds of girls abducted from a boarding school in Chibok, Nigeria. This is an account of one young woman’s risky escape and the enduring effects of terror. Okeowo also interviews a government clerk who refused to stand idle while his community was being relentlessly attacked by Boko Haram’s members. Elder became a unit commander for the Civilian Joint Task Force, a volunteer group that sought to reclaim their communities from the terrorists when the government failed. The story of ordinary citizens fighting Boko Haram is remarkable, but issues arise when the behavior of some of the vigilantes begins to mirror the group they’re fighting.

“God gave me the opportunity to think about my future, so I can’t let them stop me from going back to school.” – Rebecca

More information:  On Boko Haram front line, Nigerian vigilantes amass victories and power (Reuters, June 2017) | Boko Haram Fast Facts (CNN, September 2017) | Chibok girl ‘happy’ over schoolmates’ release – interview with Rebecca (BBC, October 2016)

Somalia

“I see it as something very powerful, to be young and a woman in a country that is not safe and has gone through a lot of war, and to have a dream and wear pants and a shirt and hold a basketball—there’s nothing more powerful and strong to me,” Ilhan said. “To think about what I want for myself and to do it.”

Aisha received her first death threat from terrorists when she was thirteen. Her supposed crime? Playing basketball. Somalia went from having one of the best women’s basketball teams in the region to a place where it’s unsafe for women to play sports at all. This is the story of young women who continue to play the game they love despite the risks. One thing I liked about this section was getting to see a different side of Somalia, like its vibrant nightlife.

More information:  The Fight Over Women’s Basketball in Somalia by the author Alexis Okeowo (New Yorker, September 2017) | Who are Somalia’s al-Shabab? (BBC, December 2016)

What are the ethics of resisting? When extreme circumstances are forced upon a person, what is she allowed to do to survive? Can she commit apostasy as a religious person,  or kill a relative? The answers are complex, possibly unknowable. The idea of survival becomes hazy: It can mean more than just staying alive; it can mean leading the life she feels entitled to have. And in order to do that, the morals she was taught, that she has long lived by, could shift and mutate into something she no longer recognizes. They could shift because she believed she was fighting for good, or at least for her right to have a good, sane life, and, along the way, she had to resort to actions she would have never committed in her past life. They could shift because, when extreme circumstances overtook her life, subverted what she knew and held dear, resorting to radical measures was the only way to resist, and to live.

These accounts of ordinary people trying to live their lives freely are both distressing and inspiring. Rebellion doesn’t come without sacrifices and many of these people endured death threats, survived harrowing escapes, and/or remained steadfast against relentless outside pressure. In the face of adversity, these people stand firm in their beliefs and manage to preserve their autonomy. What I liked most about this book were the complete portraits of the interview subjects. Okeowo explores their flaws, hopes, and fears without judgment. They may not make the choices one would expect or that are easy for outsiders to understand, but they’re all doing the best they can to live their lives of their own free will and/or cultivate a society where everyone can live freely. If you’re possibly interested in this book, I recommend reading the author’s article The Fight Over Women’s Basketball in Somalia to get a sense of her style.

Attack of the Moon Woman Who Made Bad Life Decisions.

Jazz has lived on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, for two decades. To make ends meet, she smuggles contraband to those willing to pay. One day, a rich client has an intriguing request. He needs her help to sabotage Artemis’s sole aluminum company so that he can enter the aluminum business. This is far beyond any criminal act that she’s performed before, but he makes her an offer she can’t refuse: one million slugs (Artemisian money). Four days later, Jazz’s life is in danger and she’s on the run. Her initial suspicions were correct. This goes much deeper than gaining a controlling stake in the lucrative aluminum industry.

Jazz and her father moved from Saudia Arabia to the Moon when she was six-years-old. Now she’s twenty-six-years-old and in a bit of a rut. She and her father have a contentious relationship because of a mishap that happened when she was sixteen. He wanted her to be a welder like him, but she has no interest in following in his footsteps. She’s a quick learner and an intuitive problem solver but has no ambition. Everyone is constantly telling her how much untapped potential she has and she’s sick of hearing it. She doesn’t want to spend her life working herself to death only to live paycheck to paycheck. She wants to make money quickly and painlessly. Her goal is to earn 416,922 slugs and purchase a living space in a wealthier area. She’d at least like a private bathroom!

•  I LOVED listening to Weir’s The Martian. Artemis didn’t wow me as much. I think it’s the difference between a person who has to work their way out of an unexpected life-and-death situation (Mark) and a person who repeatedly has to get themselves out of life-and-death situations of their own creation (Jazz). I also couldn’t identify with Jazz as much as Mark. Her initial assignment is mundane and I wasn’t invested in her money-making schemes or survival. Greed actually isn’t her driving motivation, but we don’t learn about that until much later.

• Setting: The Moon city was awesome! It was interesting to learn about the methods they used to overcome the hostile environment. I also liked the parts about the society and how Earth problems transferred to the Moon.

• Humor: Jazz has a snarky rapport with her neighbors and a self-deprecating sense of humor. She may be approaching thirty, but she’s really a teenage boy at heart. Here’s Jazz describing the multi-dome city of Artemis: “The city shined in the sunlight like a bunch of metallic boobs. What? I’m not a poet. They look like boobs.”  There are constant jokes about identity, breasts, sex, excrement, and prostitutes. By the end, I was so over the constant jabs at Jazz’s sex life. At one point, even her dad made a sex joke at her expense! (And what was the purpose of the reusable condom prototype, besides giving a Svoboda a reason to constantly inquire about her sex life? He asked about it so much that I was surprised it didn’t play a part in the end.) I know there were similar critiques of the humor in The Martian, so maybe my love of stories about people trying to get back home overrode any potential annoyances. But with Watney the humor felt like a pressure-relief valve—Jazz just felt like she was trying way too hard to be edgy: “I looked like a leper. Or a hooker who gave handjobs exclusively to lepers.” and “I’d have to blow the remaining two at the same time. Please don’t quote that last sentence out of context.” She did tell one total dad-joke that made me smile though:

“Don’t joke around. Not with airlock procedures.” 
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• Science: The technical explanations were so boring to me this time around. The intricacies of welding just aren’t as thrilling as potato farming! Who knew? Jazz constantly stops to explain concepts to the reader, so sometimes I felt like I was on a museum tour or reading a textbook.

• The expression super-duper was used three too many times. It’s a really juvenile term, so it really jolted me out of the story.

• My favorite part was the relationship between Jazz and her father: “Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me three 366 percent more than he loves anything else.” Aww!! I loved how much pride he had in her!

This story was a slow-starter for me, but it became more of a page-turner once the stakes were raised about 1/3 of the way through.  I loved the setting and the plot reeled me in by the second half, but Jazz didn’t ring authentic to me. I think I may have enjoyed the audiobook more, especially since Rosario Dawson is the narrator. Artemis had its entertaining points, but I don’t think it will necessarily be a winner for all fans of The Martian.

I received this book for free from Netgalley and Crown Publishing. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. It’s available now!

Fifty-four-year-old Marion and her older brother John have lived together for the last twenty years. Marion is jealous of the time John spends in the cellar with his “visitors.” She never sees the mysterious inhabitants, but she doesn’t dare go down the dark stairwell to investigate. It’s best not to ask too many questions!

Like a white bird, the scream flew up from the depths of the cellar, then became trapped inside Marion’s head. As it flapped its wings against the inside of her skull, she wondered how it had got through three floors of the big strong house to her dusty little room in the attic?

The eccentric siblings live in the six-bedroom home they grew up in. The house and its inhabitants are perpetually stuck in time. Their neighbor’s home is exactly the same style, but “[seems] to exist about a thousand years in the future.” Their mother meticulously maintained the estate when she was alive, but its condition has rapidly deteriorated in the two decades since her death. Every surface is covered in dust and cobwebs and the hallways are littered with broken appliances and old newspapers. The home is filled with so much junk that Marion feels “like a little mouse trying to burrow through it all.” Mother would not approve!

The specter of the visitors is always hanging over the story, but most of the book is about Marion and John’s unhappy childhood and the disturbing episodes that shaped Marion. After years of mistreatment, Marion is frumpy, unassertive, and emotionally stunted. She’s been largely ignored her entire life, but the people who do notice her repeatedly tell her that she’s unattractive and unintelligent. Her brother once said that if the human race was more like Marion, “it was unlikely they would have evolved much beyond the level of jellyfish.” Her parents had little ambition for her; her temperamental father once said that Marion was “just too sensitive for the big wide world, and more suited to staying at home.” Their mother clearly favored John and seemed to resent Marion’s existence. There were many finicky rules in their home and Mother was always fussing at them do things in the proper manner. Even decades after Mother’s death, Marion continues to hear Mother’s passive-aggressive voice berating her from the great beyond. Their mother constantly told them stories of all the horrific things that lurked in the outside world, while willfully ignoring what was going on inside her own house.

Marion is offended when people see her as old because she still feels like a child inside. She’s never experienced life outside of her family home. Life has passed her by, but she feels powerless to change her circumstances. She’s internalized every rude thing that’s been said about her and doesn’t think she’s capable or deserving of obtaining anything better. She feels trapped, but part of that is self-inflicted. She feels like she needs a physical barrier between her and the outside world. As meek as Marion is, she also has a nasty streak. She has a tendency to blame the victim in the television shows she watches. The harsh judgments give her an intoxicating sense of power that she doesn’t usually get to feel in her day-to-day life.
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John is arrogant and cruel, but Marion has always idolized him. She always defers to his “superior” judgment and he knows exactly how to manipulate her. Sometimes she stands up to him, but she quickly backs down because she can’t withstand the crushing weight of his silent rage. There’s no way she can betray her beloved brother. What would happen to her if he left? Plus, Marion has a vivid imagination and isn’t confident in her perceptions. She often escapes to a rich fantasy life in her head, where she has a dramatic and meaningful existence that mirrors the Lifetime-esque movies she enjoys watching. Sometimes her daydreams become a little too real, causing her to wonder if she’s going mad like her Great Aunt Phyllis. Did she conjure up the cellar dwellers to make her life more exciting? 

“You are the kind of evil that comes from nothing, from neglect and loneliness. You are like mould that grows in damp dark places, black dirt gathered in corners, a fatal infection that begins with a speck of dirt in an unwashed wound.”

If you like character-driven stories that embrace their unrelenting darkness, this book might be for you. It was my ideal type of creepy slow burner: bizarre family dynamics, damaged characters, and a large, decaying house. It’s the type of twisted book that makes me think there is something wrong with me for liking it! 😀 (Perhaps an attraction to dark tales is a side effect of being born near Halloween!) While reading, I felt discomfort, dread, uneasiness, horror, and a little bit of nausea. I hope I’m not being too misleading in saying this, but the general mood and atmosphere reminded me of Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily (but really, it’s no worse comparison than Room!) I recommend not reading the publisher’s description, because it reveals something that happens in the last quarter of the book. I don’t think I would’ve been a fan of this one if I was anticipating anything specific, especially something so deep in the story! Warning for animal lovers: Animals tend to meet terrible fates around this family.

Sometimes Marion imagines what awful things must be happening in the cellar, but she quickly dismisses those unpleasant thoughts. It’s much easier not to think about it! Throughout the story we see how easy it can be to turn a blind eye to the obvious, even things inside of ourselves. The characters in this book have no trouble living with their sins. It makes you wonder what secrets the most unassuming people could be hiding and what unseen dangers could be lurking close-by. The Visitors is a chilling tale that’s sometimes a little too terrifyingly real.

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“Frequently, people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late.” – John Brennan, the former director of the C.I.A, testifying in front of the House Intelligence Committee (May 23 2017)

“Sometimes we think that shielding the truth will protect those we love the most.”