Book Review: Pet Semetary by Stephen King

Have you ever looked at a book or a movie and thought ‘this looks filled with all of the things that I don’t like so I should avoid it’ and then go ahead and read the book or watch the movie? That was exactly how I came to read this book. Stephen King’s classic horror novel has recently been adapted into a movie for the second time and there has been a lot of press about it.

I ended up reading an interview with King where he explained why he thought this was his scariest novel and I decided that I had to read it. I’ve read Stephen King before and I do enjoy his work, Misery is one of my favorite novels. That being said, horror really isn’t my genre. And I am that animal lover that can take human death in TV shows, books and movies but the animal ones leave me wrecked. Finally, losing my mom two years ago has left me sensitive to grief-stricken characters which isn’t a bad thing but the thought of resurrection of dead loved ones in a fit of grief is a bit much. All reasons to skip this book but once I’m intrigued, it’s hard to talk me off something.

I listened to this book on audio, which can be make or break based on the narrator. Micheal C. Hall of Dexter fame was the narrator and it was perfect. His monotone, dead sounding voice that he used on his narration of Dexter made this book all the creepier.

Though this book could’ve been triggering and traumatizing for me, surprisingly it wasn’t and I am glad that I read it. King is known for horror but beyond genre he really needs more accolades for how talented of a writer he is. The characterization and descriptions in this novel are gorgeous and literary. And in this book, he scares the readers not in the traditional sense of suspense of the unknown but instead from the tension and inevitability of what will happen.

The story follows the Creed family who moves to Maine from Chicago. Louis has accepted a position as a college physician at the local University and he brings his wife Rachel and two children, Ellie and Gage and their cat Church. Quickly, Louis makes friends with his neighbor Jud Crandall, an elderly man with a thick Maine accent (you have to listen to the audio book to fully appreciate it). The family lives on a dangerous road that is overrun by semi-trucks all day and night. Early on, Jud warns them about the dangerous ‘rud’ especially for pets and children. Foreshadowing at it’s most blatant.

Jud shows the family a pet cemetery on their property that the neighborhood kids have used to bury their dead pets for generations. Louis and Ellie think it’s cool, but Rachel is not amused. We learn that she has her own fraught relationship with death from losing her sister at a young age.

As the book foreshadowed from the beginning, Church gets hit on the road and dies while Rachel and the kids are in Chicago for Thanksgiving. Louis doesn’t know how he’ll tell Ellie that her beloved pet died so Jud takes him beyond the pet cemetery to bury the cat and the next day he’s back. But Church is different, he smells, he kills birds and hisses at Louis.

Tragically, their son Gage crawls into the road and also gets hit by a truck. And we watch a grief-stricken Louis try to talk himself out of bringing him back, but the internal battle is lost before it even begins and of course there are consequences.

“They don’t come back the same.”

– Jud Crandall, Pet Semetary

The terror in this book, at least for me, isn’t in what returns from the dead but the chokehold of grief on Louis that makes him do something that he knows is wrong. Intelligently, Louis knows this won’t work and that his son won’t be what returns, but he can’t stop himself at the thought that he could have one tiny shred of his little boy back.

As someone who has grieved, is still grieving, I completely understand. The horror relied in the building tension of a decision that the reader knows is coming and nothing can stop disaster from ensuing. I really enjoyed this book; it shows what a true master Stephen King is at writing a compelling narrative. At times I wished the plot moved quicker, but overall, I was entranced.

How Fiona the Hippo got me through my Darkest Days

If you are from the Greater Cincinnati area or anywhere within a 200-mile radius of the area – you know exactly who Fiona the Hippo is. Even if you aren’t in the area, the name should spark something in your back of your mind because this hippo took over pop culture in late January 2017 for a few months. I’ll give you a little refresher.

The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden opened their hippo exhibit, Hippo Cove in 2016 with two hippos – Bibi and Henry. By the end of the year the zoo keepers suspected Bibi was pregnant and it was confirmed on January 9, 2017 when scientists captured the first ever ultrasound image of a Nile hippo fetus. However, on January 24, Bibi gave birth six-weeks early.

Fiona was on 29 pounds at birth, 25 pounds lighter than the lowest recorded birth weight for the species. Her brain and muscles were very underdeveloped, and she was unable to stand. She had to be taken from her mother and fed with a feeding tube and had a special care team who cared for her around the clock. Everyday the zoo updated their website with Fiona’s progress which went up and down frequently. Even the Cincinnati Children’s Vascular Access Team assisted with her care. In June she was reintroduced to her parents and allowed in the exhibit. And in January she turned one-year-old as a perfectly healthy hippo. Get the much more detailed story here.

Ok, cute story but what’s the big deal, right? It may seem like a nice heartfelt story to be seen on Facebook and then to scroll by and forget about it, but it meant a lot more to a lot of people and I’m one of those people.

On December 31, 2016, my mother died. It was sudden and unexpected. I was devastated. I was my mother’s only child and she was my person. She was my best friend, my mentor, my inspiration, and my adversary and enemy at times. Our relationship encompassed every emotion. I called my mother every day, I’d never gone more than a few weeks without physically seeing her and suddenly she was gone.

On January 14, 2017, we held a memorial service for my mom. I naively thought that would be my darkest moment, if I could get through that day then it would start to get better. I didn’t realize that the time between her death and the memorial service that I was too busy notifying friends and family and making sure that I honored my mother in the right way that I hadn’t started to grieve yet. No, the grief didn’t begin until all the flowers and condolence cards were given, and the people left the service. I had called everyone that needed to know, I had written the obituary, I had given the speech at her memorial service, I had honored her last wishes and now I had nothing left to do but to hurt.

At that time in my life, I also was unemployed. I had no distraction from the pain. I woke up, grieved, slept – repeat. Soon I didn’t even get out of bed. What was the point? I no longer had purpose and I no longer had my person. On January 24, Fiona the hippo was born. It was clear by the zoo’s statements in the first few days that they didn’t expect her to live. And why would they? There had never been a hippo born this early that survived, she wasn’t even half the weight she was supposed to be at birth.

I found myself checking in on Fiona daily. At first it wasn’t on purpose, any scroll through social media held stories and photos of this baby hippo, I couldn’t avoid it even if I wanted to. But then I started to seek it out. My routine changed ever so slightly – wake up, check on Fiona, grieve, sleep. Everyday, I checked on the hippo’s progress and everyday I expected to hear the news that she lost her fight.  I didn’t feel like I had any reason to keep going in my life but something that seemed as trivial as the survival of a premature hippo gave me a reason to live to the next day.

Following Fiona also gave me the feeling of being apart of a community. The city of Cincinnati rallied around this hippo like nothing I’ve ever seen before. From t-shirts, car magnets, ice cream, beer, cookies – they put Fiona’s face on everything and sold it to raise money to pay for her care. And these items sold out. Everyone checked in for their “Fiona Fix” daily and when she was out of the woods and the care team said they would stop their daily updates, there was such an uproar that they quickly went back to the updates. With everything negative that divides us daily, everyone seemed to unite around this hippo and her fight to live.

My mother wasn’t supposed to die. She was 54 years old and still had so much life left in her. Fiona the hippo wasn’t supposed to live. She was born six-weeks early at a zoo that hadn’t cared for a newborn hippo in 75 years. This world doesn’t follow anyone’s rules and some days it is extremely hard to see the good in it. But watching this hippo defy the odds and not only live but thrive gave me enough good on my worst days to keep moving forward.

Fiona napping

Fiona with mother Bibi

Seeing Fiona in person – May 2018

#TeamFiona T-shirt

Book Review: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

Last night I did something that I haven’t done in years. I stayed up really late and finished this book. I sat on my couch, put on a Lifetime movie in the background (The Midwife’s Deception to be exact) and read more than 200 pages to finish this story. This put me to sleep after 1 AM and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel it today. I just finished an 8 AM Cyclebar class and in 45 minutes I will be at a yoga class – then I demand a nap! Anyway – as tired as I am, I missed the feeling of not being able to do anything else until I finished a book. I felt like a book person again, not just someone who reads books. I have no idea if that makes sense, but give me a break, I’m sleep deprived.

Emily X.R. Pan’s debut novel, The Astonishing Color of After, follows fifteen-year-old Leigh as she loses her mother to suicide and searches for her in the form of a bird. Her quest to find her mother (who she thinks is a bird), she travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents and discover why her mother had a falling out with them years ago. There is also a side plot of a romance between the narrator and her best friend who happened to kiss her on the day her mother died.

X.R. Pan does some interesting things with genre in this novel. It is classic YA mixed with a small but significant dose of fantasy elements. The chapters are short and jump between the past, the present, and memories before the narrator was born. Leigh is also an artist and as the title suggests, color is a major theme throughout this novel. I think the theme of color was an intriguing choice to make but at times it felt overused to me, like X.R. Pan was afraid the reader wouldn’t understand the connection so she told us instead of showed us.

The plot had unique pacing – big events seemed rushed and smaller events seemed drawn out. I was often left with questions about big plot points but was given long paragraphs describing drawing instead. I also think this book could’ve worked better in a different form like a graphic novel. There is so much rich imagery that I just wanted to see it. I wanted to see the intricate colors and the Taiwanise landscape.

Overall I enjoyed the book. I felt connected to Leigh’s character and her struggle with grief and abandonment with the maternal side of the family. As a person who normally doesn’t like fantasy, the elements that were included in this novel worked for me. I thought it could be shorter – I could’ve done without the romance storyline but it didn’t negatively effect my experience. I’d definitely recommend it.

Moving Day

Big life news, I’m moving tomorrow! The move itself isn’t that huge, I’m staying in the same apartment complex, just moving to a bigger unit. While it may seem like a small thing – it means the world to me.

Rewind. Two years ago, I had just landed what I thought was my dream job and made the decision to move from my parents house in Cincinnati, Ohio to Lexington, Kentucky. One of my milestones of sucess was being able to pay for my own place. After touring five different complexes, I chose my place. A 740 square foot 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment across from Fayette Mall.

I still remember calling the water and cable companies to turn in my services and signing my lease. I was finally an adult. I didn’t have a cosigner – it was 100% on me for the first time in my life.

A lot has changed since the spring of 2016. I went from my “dream job” to no job to a brand new job outside of my industry. I went from living alone to living with my boyfriend, Anthony. I went from petless to adopting my dog Atticus.

It’s time to move on. My 740 square foot apartment felt like more than enough space when it was just me but now I have a roommate and a dog and the walls seem to be closing in on us. I feel stable enough to move to a bigger place and overly excited to get a dining table (it’s the little things in life).

But I can’t lie. It’s hard to let go. This place was my first place. I lived alone here, made it alone here. My mom visited me here. That’s a hard hurdle for me.

When you lose someone so close to you – life divides itself into before you lost them and after. You hang on with white knuckles to anything from the “before” era. My mom came to this place, she stayed here, gave me decorating tips.

Tomorrow I move to a place that she will never have seen. That’s hard. It feels like I’m leaving her behind, every step I take without her. I have memories of her in this apartment, I won’t have any memories of her in my new place. It’s time to move on but it isn’t easy.

This is hard but it’s also exciting – I’m gaining 200+ square feet, an extra bedroom and bathroom and starting a new life chapter. I’m thankful for everything my first apartment has given me and excited for what is to come with my next place.

Grief isn’t a Linear Journey

Today was overall a good day, just a typical Wednesday. But it was a bad grief day. I left work and the only thing I wanted to do was the one thing I couldn’t do, call my mother. It was like a light turned on my head reminding me, “oh yeah, remember that your mom died and it’s been over a year since you saw her and spoke to her?” I tried to go on with my day but I kept being brought back to it. I finally pulled out my old cell phone to listen to the last voicemail I have from her. Tonight I found a bunch old messages in my deleted folder. I lost myself in all the old messages. Hearing her voice again hurt but in a good way. I found a message where she said “I love you.” Cue the floodgates. I hadn’t heard her say I love you to me in 15 months. I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that until I heard it.

Tonight felt like a backslide. I made so much progress and here I am in a ball of tears and frustration. But I’m reminded that grief isn’t a linear – that journey takes you up and drop you down, time and time again. It’s the most infuriating thing, to feel that you’ve made so much progress and then a thought pulls you back into the abyss.

Grief sucks. It’s the worst. It’s a journey that I don’t want to be on. But I don’t have a choice. I’m thankful for the good days, I get through the bad ones. And I keep moving.

Book Review: After The Eclipse by Sarah Perry

It’s about halfway through February and I finished another book. I was on a bit of a lag coming out of January but I’m hoping I’ll pick back up. After The Eclipse was my Book of the Month choice for October of 2017. The reason why I hadn’t read it yet was not because of how behind I am on my TBR list (for once), it’s because I wasn’t sure if I was ready to read it yet. This story is a memoir written by a woman whose mother was murdered when she was twelve years old and the following years of finding justice and peace with herself. I was very intrigued by this book but the firsthand account of a daughter losing her mother suddenly hit very close to home for me.

I finally decided to read this book and from page one, I was captivated. Perry wastes no time describing the night that her mother was stabbed to death while she was just a couple feet away, in her own room. It is heart wrenching, raw, and brutal – but above all else, it feels so real. Not only does your heart break for Sarah but you literally feel like you are sitting on the bed next to her listening to the screams.

This memoir jumps back before Crystal Perry was killed and jumps forward to the hours, days, weeks, months and years after the murder. Sarah shares a special bond with her young, beautiful, and single mother. As an adult she can see the strengths and faults that her mother possessed and it is so refreshing to see such a complete portrait of a strong but also damaged human.

The plot loosely surrounds the search for Crystal Perry’s murderer. It takes over 10 years to catch the man that stabbed Crystal Perry more than 50 times. We see Sarah grow up and grapple with abandonment  from her remaining family and reckon with the guilt she feels from the that night and finally achieve justice.

Despite the mystery of who killed Crystal Perry – I think the real heart of this memoir is the grief and guilt that Sarah had to spend the rest of her life working through. She exhibited such strength and resilience through the toughest situation imaginable and she did it alone, she didn’t have the love and support she needed to get through such a traumatic experience. My heart broke for her but at the same time I was in awe of her strength and commitment to finding justice for her mother.

This is probably the best memoir that I have ever read. Perry has a beautiful narrative style and captivates the reader from the first page to the last. While the subject matter is sad, it also provides hope that out of the worst possible situations – not all is lost.