Hi all, I hope your summer is going great and you’re not sweltering too much. I have been away reffing a provincial junior tennis tournament for 11 hour days in a city 90 minutes north of here, so I was gone all of last week. It was really hot, but now it’s so nice to be home and relax with the dogs and spouse. The girls Stella and Willow have been swimming most days in the river here. They love it and are pros.
I also have some pretty exciting news that came about sort of suddenly, but I think I will share it next week when it’s fully confirmed. I don’t want to jump the gun and then have to retract it. You can try to guess what it might be, if you want or just stay tuned.
Meanwhile I’m excited that Tuesday is the pub date of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. I was able to snag an early review copy and quite enjoyed it.
It’s about Carlota, age 20, who lives with her beloved father, a doctor/scientist, on a farm in the outback of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula in 1877. Carlota had been saved by her father Dr. Moreau when she was young of a serious malady and now he experiments on creating hybrid creatures that are part animal and part human.
So far though he has not perfected their full health or longevity. Still the hybrids live on their property and are Carlota’s best friends, especially since she’s grown up so isolated and without knowing her deceased mother. Yet Dr. Moreau’s benefactor is growing impatient waiting for better results from the doctor’s lab so he can use the hybrids as workers on his land.
It’s a mysterious plot that lured me from the start, especially with Dr. Moreau’s hiring of a 29-year-old British property caretaker named Montgomery, who seems quite taken by Carlota and drowns his past sorrows in alcohol. Fast-forward six years and life on the farm takes a turn when the benefactor’s son Eduardo falls for Carlota and the unpleased benefactor pulls the farm’s funding and plans to take what he thinks is his. The consequences set off a reckoning that will change everything.
I found the novel a fun summer read and a page-turner, which is based loosely on the H.G. Wells classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896. There’s been a couple of movies made of it, notably the one I recall from 1977 had actor Michael York playing a shipwrecked survivor who comes upon a remote island where a mad scientist is carrying out sinister experiments on the island’s inhabitants. It was scary for me then and I think I only watched glimpses of it.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau takes a different tack than the original, re-imaging the story all quite creatively and plausibly on the Yucatan peninsula in 19th-century Mexico. I liked the daughter Carlota’s perspective who seems to find out things about her father’s secrets, lies, and obsessive scientific creations along the way that ruptures her world. Montgomery, too, is an enticing character, who alternates chapters with Carlota and takes up the hybrids’ cause.
This is my first read of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books and I was impressed by her writing and historical details of the times. I’d like to read more of her work. Have you read her novels: Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night? This latest novel could be my pick of the summer. It has the allure of being a bit eerie, mysterious, and something you can’t turn away from till you find out what happens. Check it out, if it sounds like something for you.
Thanks to Sabrina at the publisher Del Rey for providing me with a copy to review for my thoughts.
Next up I listened to the audio of the actor Brian Cox’s 2021 memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, which he narrates well and entertainingly. I normally don’t pick up actor or celebrity memoirs, but every once in a blue moon when something calls to me I’ll do it. For whatever reason, I’ve listened to actor Michael Caine’s 2018 memoir Blowing the Bloody Doors Off and now this one.
At age 75, Brian Cox wrote this looking back on his life and career. I didn’t really know much about him before this but found out he grew up in Dundee, Scotland, with his parents who had a grocery store and his four older siblings. His father died when he was 8 which changed his world, leaving the family dirt poor and his mother with mental problems. He began acting in local theater productions and trained as an actor in London before gaining fame on the London stage and working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played King Lear among other roles. He eventually left for Hollywood becoming a character actor in numerous movies.
In the book, although he talks a bit about his family life, more time is spent talking about one production he’s done after another. I had no idea he had been in so many plays and movies, including that he played the first Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter from 1986. Apparently he’s been in hundreds of productions, but what I mostly remember him for is his part as the father in the TV series Succession about a media mogul family, and as Winston Churchill in the movie from 2017.
He’s a talented actor. But I wonder if readers (like me) are trying to figure out in his book if he is like the mean father he plays in Succession. I didn’t exactly get that sense from the memoir. He seemed pretty good natured recounting his life, his family (he’s been married twice with two kids with each wife), and his thoughts on acting and life lessons.
But I still wonder a little if he has some prima donna to him. Still his bluntness on a range of topics and his fellow actors make parts of the memoir a bit refreshing and juicy. For instance he has high thoughts of director Spike Lee but doesn’t think much of Quentin Tarantino. His favorite actor is Spencer Tracy but he looks pretty disparagingly on Johnny Depp and others. He also doesn’t proscribe to “method acting” in playing characters nor does he do much research on roles when he’s playing real people. He says the character is in the script.
He recounts many of his long-ago productions and co-workers, which I didn’t know so those sort of passed me by. But other mentions of such actors as Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Judy Dench, and Eva Marie Saint were much appreciated. All in all the memoir was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but still I learned a bit about being on movie and theater sets and how acting works. And he recounts it all pretty entertainingly, though it does run on a bit long.
That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these authors or actor and what did you think?
