T. Kingfisher’s THORNHEDGE opens with a nervous, ugly fairy watching over a castle. She’s cut it off from the world with a thick wall of thorns, almost everyone’s forgotten it’s even there — only now a Saracen warrior has arrived, determined to find a way in and awaken the princess Which would be a Very Very Very Bad Thing … (a twist that’s been used at least once previously).
As my short story “Obolos” is a Sleeping Beauty riff I was curious what Kingfisher would do with the tale, and if they’d be too much alike. Nope: very different approaches (phew). I liked it, though the nature of the unspeakable monster felt a little off to me (for my taste she’s too powerful for the given origin).
While I saw British pantomime as a kid, I only remember bits of it. Becoming curious (for reasons too convoluted to explain) I checked Millie Taylor’s BRITISH PANTOMIME PERFORMANCE out of the library. Less of a historical perspective than I’d hoped for but a good look at the odd mix of fairytale riff, cross-dressing, slapstick. topical humor and musical that created this distinctive, much beloved form of stage entertainment. Taylor looks at how increasing costs have affected everything from the size of the dance troupe to the “slosh scenes” (slapstick) — sure, a pie fight might be cheap, but cleaning it up later can get pricey. The book looks at the way the pantomime cast invites the audience to participate (while carefully controlling their involvement), the key roles, the different methods for drawing an audience (from big name stars to local connections) and the occasional controversies — apparently some companies are nervous about the tradition of a woman playing the male lead role because they worry it gives the main romance a lesbian overtone (I’d be more freaked out over the Chinese stereotypes in Aladdin). A solid job analyzing the genre.
While TOPPER is novelist Thorne Smith’s most famous work, I’ve never particularly cared for it; as my Genre Book Club was doing “satire” this month I picked it up again and … nope (much as I love the movie).
Cosmo Topper is a successful banker smothering in his own stuffy respectability and the burden of his manipulative, hangdog wife. To perk himself up, he buys the car in which free spirits George and Marion Kerby died recently, drives by the scene of their death and oops, discovers he now has them for a companion. Having two drunken ghosts causing chaos around him soon makes Topper a pariah; not to worry, off he goes for a long, hedonistic vacation accompanied by Marion (George having duties elsewhere). However all vacations have to end …
The movie had the advantage of Cary Grant in the lead; more than that, it has a clear story arc — the Kerbys are stuck on Earth because they’ve never accomplished anything worthwhile so they set out to make Topper’s stuffy life worth living. Here, they drift along until the Kerbys run out of ectoplasm and have to leave. We soon drop the idea of Cosmo becoming a scandal in favor of him drifting through life for a while — and the book drifts with him. And much like James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen, the happy ending of Cosmo realizing his rather miserable marriage isn’t all that bad doesn’t convince. Overall it’s a dry run for better work by Smith later; I’m curious if the sequel, Topper Takes a Trip, improves on it as it’s the one Smith fantasy I haven’t read. Not curious enough to check it out just yet, though.
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