Decay and Disgust in 1664 London -- The Sweet Smell of Decay, a Book Review

Photo: from the book's Goodreads page.

I really liked this book despite its inconsistency. Some parts are very well-written, and some...well, aren't. Very odd. You can get a paragraph or two, or a few pages, with exceptional prose, or description; but then suddenly you get a dead-weight clunker of a paragraph, or sometimes just a line or two. There are shifts in tone, too. Suddenly--and I mean you can hear the screeches--a character becomes shady. Suddenly a scene changes, or you can't see it clearly. Towards the end there's a well-drawn action scene--and then suddenly you're at a trial, and it's very drawn-out. And the main character, Harry Lytle, does this and does that, and seemingly never stops, to do anything, and you realize that can't be, and it all doesn't come together, but it's okay because you're reading about yourself going through the motions as Lytle, and that's enough. In fact, that's the point, and undoubtedly the author's intent.

Very tough to explain.

But despite it all, you have a main character who is likable in his opaqueness. Who is he? What does he do? Not really ever explained, but he's a common enough bloke, and he's supposed to be you, the reader. He's just accessible enough to be us. We're the ones doing what he's doing, seeing what he's seeing. That transition is so seamless, you don't even realize it happened.

1664 London is really the main character, and it is supported well. The mystery isn't really mysterious. (The plot is more of a mystery, if you know what I mean.) It's all explained at the end, not very well, as the bow falls off and isn't neatly tied. But you won't care, because you're there for the sights and sounds of 1664 London, and you will get a lot of that, and you'll like it. The logistics of the ending is a head-scratcher, as are all of the characters when they take off their wigs to check for lice. Everyone's bald, and everything's filthy and gross, and 1664 London is just a disgusting place, where people get hanged but don't die, and their intestines are ripped out and burned and they don't die, and they're then tied hand and foot to horses and ripped apart, and if they still don't die, they're carted in a wheelbarrow to the nearest river and dumped in. And then their heads are stuck on a pike on a bridge or tower. And a prisoner about to die this way soils his pants, and that's described, and you realize that's what you're reading this for--the details, like you're there in 1664 London, and you're happy to be there by reading about it, because you sure as hell wouldn't really want to be there.

That's why this book works. If you like the history of historical fiction more than you like the fiction of historical fiction, you'll like this one. I'm on to the next, A Plague of Sinners.

Intelligently Believing : The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell

Photo: from KirkusReviews.com (which gave it a good review), at this website.

In America today, we are living through days that juxtapose intelligence versus blind faith. This book shows, as I also believe, that you can have blind faith without sacrificing intelligence. That you can believe and still think, and that you don't have to believe what someone tells you, but should instead read, think and believe for yourself. Having blind faith in someone like Jesus is fine; having blind faith in what someone tells you Jesus said and thought maybe is not. Why not read the Bible, think about it yourself, read about the Bible, think about that, and then read the Bible again? I did that, and still do. I don't know yet what I believe, but whatever it is, I assure you, it's mine, and not anyone else's. You're responsible for your beliefs, so they'd better be your own.

This book, blessedly, says that. Father Alex is a Gospel teacher, but not a blind believer. He's very religious, but doesn't believe everything--and for good reason. He reads and he thinks for himself, and his beliefs are stronger, and more pure, because of it.

A good lesson for us all. In politics, in religion, in everything.

Very well-written, intelligent and character-focused novel about a murder, an exhibit in Rome, and a "fifth gospel" that involves different branches of Christianity and the Shroud of Turin. There's a lot of biblical history here; never is it too much, or too heavy. There's a lot about the daily life of an Eastern Orthodox priest (who can marry and procreate) and his son in Rome. This man's brother, also an important priest, is accused of murder, and he still hasn't recovered from his wife's departure.

Despite the very good, but not over-long or overly-descriptive writing, and despite the biblical history, the Papal history, the Roman history, and the mystery itself, the crux of this book is actually the relationship between father and son. They need to survive together, which is difficult in itself, but also must survive the abandonment a wife, a mother, and, later, of a brother and of friends. All they have, it seems, is each other, and it's going to have to be enough. Yet he wants to teach his son to do what's right, including thinking for yourself amidst much theological noise. He also wants to live an authentic and honest life, and to teach his son to do the same.

We read some really good writing about these characters, about characterizations, about Rome, and a Catholic trial, and a lot of history that never bores or overwhelms. The mystery is not over when you think it is, and the characters ring true, as does the final end of this mystery.

It's told in first-person, present-tense, which is an interesting choice. Normally an author chooses this tense when he wants to keep the writing thrilling, with a you-are-there kind of feel. That's not necessary here, and isn't really accomplished, and it's not a failure. My guess is that Caldwell chose this tense to make the reader like he's walking in Rome, in this mystery, with Alex, the main character, and with his son. This is done as much for the local flavor and sightseeing, like the reader is walking with a travel guide through Rome, through the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's, through the streets. It's a good choice, though I didn't realize it until the middle of the book and saw its effects.

This book took 10 years for Caldwell to write, and it apparently led to a lot of hardship, as he mentions in his acknowledgements. Ten years is a long time to follow up a monster best-seller (2004's The Rule of Four); this apparently upset his publisher at the time, and they apparently let him know it, probably by taking away an advance, or canceling a contract, or something like that. But he stuck with it, and his agent stuck with him--ironic, as the main theme of this book is faith, strength, integrity and abandonment. Art imitates life.

If you're interested in any of the things described above, read this book. It's not as esoteric as this genre often can be, and there's no judgement, and there's a fair share of intelligence and deep emotion--a hard balance. I didn't like The Rule of Four, but I took a chance on this. I'm glad I did.

Appreciation From Time to Time

Very enjoyable sequel to Time and Again until the ending that almost ruins the whole thing.  This book violates a rule that Finney seems to have established with the first book: a sense of wonder and fun is more important than a sci-fi plot device or message.  The ending is a cruel trick on a character who deserved much better, just to re-state a message already mentioned many times over. 

This also does an injustice to the sinking of the Titanic, treating like an "ah-ha" morality trope, rather then the world-changing tragedy (as the book itself says) that it was.  Also unfortunate were that the two characters who witness the sinking of the Titanic don't describe it--an impossibility, as it jarred for life every single survivor.  Here it's unmentioned, and the narrator offers a sort of epilogue and the thing ends.

There's also false advertising, as the back of the book blares the news that the novel revolves around the main character's attempt to change the course of history by changing the fate of the Titanic.  But, actually, the Titanic doesn't show up in the book until the last 20 pages or so, and the main character's only on it for 10.  Despite the ad copy, this book has almost nothing to do with the Titanic at all.  In fact, this book could have very easily ended without including the fateful voyage at all.  Had it done so, it would have been a much better book.

This time, everything I'd written about the wonder of the 1880s of Time and Again also fits here.  The era is 1912, of course, and it mostly focuses on Broadway, its plays, and an odd but entertaining digression about vaudeville performers and other circus-like performers.  They evidently graced the Broadway stage in the time, as did many other types of performances that may surprise you.

Again, the main reason to read this is the description of NYC in 1912.  The plot doesn't matter.  The tropes don't matter.  The messages don't matter.  If you can lose yourself in the world described here, and forget the ridiculousness of plot and morality--passed off here as philosophy, but don't be fooled, it's morality--then this book is still worthwhile.  It's taken me a few hours to get over the ending, and the movie Titanic has been on HBO all day, and is on now as I write this, which doesn't help at all, but the two books really are fantastic escapism into another time and place.  They are worthy of reading and of wonderment.

What isn't worthy, again, is Finney's treatment of his female characters, who are again very minor, very in love with the main character, and frankly treated like little girls who can't help themselves.  Both girls (Julia from the first one, and the unnamed woman [!] from this one) are better women than their author treats them, and deserved better.  You'll probably tire, as I did, each and every time the main character apologizes to the reader (and to Julia, by association) for kissing this book's heroine, which he does consistently and, apparently, uncontrollably.  Again, she deserves better than the ending she got, and the name she didn't get, and I'm getting annoyed about it all again as I write this.

Whatever.  Feel free to just let those things pass and to lose yourself once again into the very well-realized New York City of the past.  Again it'll seem like you're walking down Broadway yourself, seeing what he sees and living the life he lives.  It's worth it to do this.

If you do, let me know if the ending bothered you as much as it did me.  I can overthink things sometimes, which you already know if you've read my reviews. Too bad Finney died at approximately the same time this book was published.  As he re-wrote the ending of the first book to make this one possible, so too could he have changed the ending of this one in the beginning of a third.  These are now as stuck in time as his two New York Cities are in theirs.  It's a curious statement of the solidity and permanence of history, as their own unique--yet similar--times and places, to be experienced and appreciated, never to be either again.

Time and Again the main character states an appreciation for the moment he has just experienced, the thing he has just seen, the air he has just breathed, appreciated for the unique and temporal experiences that they were.  If only I could do the same, as often as I should.

A Sense of Wonder--Time and Again

I read this book partly because I'm researching a book of my own that takes place partly in 1892--ten years after the 1882 of this book, but still, I didn't have any 1880s information at all.  Turns out, Finney infamously uber-researched for this book.  In fact, it seems that the sole reason he wrote this book is to simply describe 1882 until it felt like he lived there.

This he does.  If you're at all interested in the past--and the 1880s in particular--you should read this book.  If you live in New York City and want to know how Broadway and Fifth Avenue and the many buildings constructed in that time became alive in their own right, and then grew into the life's fabric of the city, you should read this book.  If you're even a little bit a traveler or an explorer at heart--if you're even a little curious or interested in history and people at all--you should read this book.  And if you think it's interesting to understand the people of the era--the actual, flesh-and-blood people of a time--more than just the important historical facts themselves (as I do), then you should read this book.

In short, this was quite a little pleasure, a rare, quaint joy that reading should bring but often does not, even when reading a good or important book.  This gets you away.  Not just into 1882 NYC, but the mid- to late-Victorian Era of your own town and city.  Have you ever wondered what it was like in 1882 where you are?  This book may give you an idea.  Chances are, it was like this, just maybe on a lesser scale.

But the air was clean and the people were evidently a little more carefree than the early pictures would have us believe.  There were horses and sleighs everywhere; children played outside, even in the winter.  There were no screens to enslave us, no computers to weigh us down.  People awoke early, at sunrise, and went to bed just after sundown.  There were telegraph wires everywhere, like electric wires today, so the landscape wasn't as bare as you might think.  The el rattled the city, and electric trains shouldered aside horse-drawn carriages and coaches.  Everyone walked, and people probably spent more time with each other.

This is romanticized history, of course.  You won't see how the very poor live here; in fact, the author just barely refers to them at all.  Most of the action takes place in the richer Broadway, Fifth Avenue part of Manhattan.  There aren't minorities here, either--these things, and the way Finney handles female characters, make the book seem a little less sophisticated than what we may be used to today.  They aren't jarring, and they aren't what this particular story is about, but there it is nonetheless.

It was written by the guy who wrote the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers (that was the other reason I wanted to read this), so there's a slight sci-fi aspect here, but it is very slight.  This is more historical fiction than it is science fiction.  It's a bit of fantasy, too, if you think of 1882 NYC as another world, which it sort of is.

My favorite thing about this book (and books like it) is the sense of wonder that it instills in the reader.  Finney clearly was enjoying himself as he wrote this, and the writing and tone exude a sense of wonder that he himself must have been feeling while writing this.  You get the feeling that if Finney has the chance to walk into 1882 NYC and to stay there, he would have as well.

Would you want to stay in the 1882 of your own place?

History's Lost Treasures by Eric Chaline

Photo: The book's cover, from its Amazon page.

The second-to-last book I read in 2014 was this extremely interesting and informative book probably best read on The Throne, especially since each chapter is two pages long, max.  But the articles can teach the reader quite a bit about history, which the author, who I've never heard of, clearly knows thoroughly.  He writes about people, events and things very casually, as if he's so familiar with them that he forgets others may not be.
 
This could've led to pedantic and professorial prose, but it never does.  In fact, Chaline clearly took great pains to make this as conversational as possible, sometimes to a fault.  At points it becomes too author-intrusion opinionated.  At others, it becomes a bit pedestrian, like the authors' bios at the back of YA books that try too hard to connect to the YA reader.  The kids are much more sophisticated than that, I assure you; similarly, the author here at times forgets that his audience might be a little more sophisticated than he thinks.
 
I bought this in the remainder bin (for less than seven bucks), and I had to list this title manually on Goodreads (where you'll find my reviews for dozens of books), so take those for what they're worth.
 
All that notwithstanding, this is, as I mentioned, a very interesting and informative book that reads like it was written by scholarly-type on a scholarly-type website, and it probably is somewhere.  I'll guess you can find it on Amazon for a few pennies. (Not that I'm in favor of the public doing that, as the author generally loses out.)
 
Lost treasures (some found, some not) include:

Wondrous burial goods: Tutankhamun's death mask • A real crock of gold: The treasure of Villena • Sunken plunder: The Nuestra Señora de Atocha • Religious rarities: The unique Jain bronzes of Chausa • Stolen artworks: The missing van Gogh paintings • Dazzling gems: The La Peregrina Pearl

No matter how you get a copy, you should do so, even if you read it in small doses, in the room I mentioned above.  There's no sin in that.

Book Review: Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate

Photo: Book's cover (and the Chiandros portrait) from mathomhouse.typepad.com.

Mostly-fascinating collection of essays, thoughts, theories and placing-you-there Elizabethan history that attempts to understand nothing less than the very mind of Shakespeare, as a man of his time, and--as Ben Jonson famously wrote--as a man "not of an age, but for all time."  Besides a couple of chapters about the politics and religion of his time that I found a bit too dry, the book succeeds at doing so.  It is at its best when it sticks to the literary and theatrical stuff: his plays, his theatres and the people he knew.  If anyone doubts the existence of a non-university man who got a woman eight years his elder pregnant, married her, and left them behind to find his glory and future in the theatres of London, England, let them read this, and they will doubt no more.

This book brings Shakespeare to life like few things I have read.  Michael Wood's book and a couple of others are just as good, in different ways.  And they all delve into the man and his time using their own conceits.  The conceit of this one is to break the book down into sections that correspond to Shakespeare's famous "Seven Stages of Man" speech from As You Like It.  (This is the one that begins with the even-more-famous line, "All the world's a stage.")  And so Bate chronicles the life of and mind of Shakespeare by breaking his life up into the seven parts that we all supposedly share.  I got the feeling that Bate had much of the book written already, via separate speeches and chapters, and tied them all together with the conceit of the seven stages, but whatever.  It doesn't matter, because it works.

The narrative is at its best when it brings us pell-mell into Elizabethan England.  We see it as Shakespeare may have, and we witness things, and become aware of city-wide and nation-wide news that he would have been aware of.  We meet the Burbages, and Heminges, and Condell, and the theatre and publishing climates of the time.  We see him as one of the many in these realms, and as one in the businesses he was in.  He is placed firmly in his time, and yet the book works well also when it shows him to be a chronicler of his time.  Shakespeare is renowned as being perhaps not just the best writer of our times, but also as the best mirror to his own time, without blocking the visage with his own image.  He is within his world, and yet surprisingly intellectually and philosophically detached from it, so he can show it to us, and paint a picture of our human nature, and yet not include his own views and preferences in it--all at the same time.

In short, we know what Hamlet thinks--but we never know what Shakespeare thinks.  Of course, no writer is his character, and no character is its author.  We know all of one, and very little about the internalization of the other.

But Bate's book gets us closer to it than perhaps anything I've read before.  The best compliment I'd give to this book is that it shows you something different about Shakespeare and his England, even if you thought you'd read it all before, like I have.  If you enjoy that kind of literary history, and a biography of him (a little) and of his time, and of his place in his time (a lot of that), then you'll enjoy this.

Dan Brown's Inferno and the Joy of Info. Dumping

Photo: Inferno's first edition hardcover, from its Wikipedia site

I liked Inferno, but I can't say that I really liked it, and I certainly didn't love it.  It's got some things going for it, but it's got a surprising number of things against it, too.

It depends on why you're reading this book, I guess.  If you're looking for really good writing, whatever that is, exactly, then you're going to strike out here.  Some parts made me shake my head, literally.  There are some parts that are so remarkably bad, you'll want to put the book down, but you won't.  (One aspect of the ending made me want to do this.  Actually, some parts are so bad that it reminded me of the famous Dorothy Parker quip, that "...this isn't a book to be put aside lightly.  It should be thrown with great force.")  Some parts really are that bad, so be forewarned. 

What makes them bad?  Well, in a nutshell, Brown's writing is at its worst when he tries to give his characters some depth, and I mean that in the best of all possible ways.  He just can't.  It is that simple.  His characters just say things.  And they just do things.  Anytime he tries to get beneath that surface, your eyes will roll, I assure you.

Robert Langdon, for example, is (in)famously described, very simply, as Harrison Ford in tweed.  Brown describes him that way in every single book, and he makes Langdon describe himself that way, and he makes many of the other characters describe him that way.  Everyone, in fact, in Brown's universe, describes him that way.  This is very lazy writing, of course, as if nothing else about him needs to be said.  And, in a way, that's true.  Nothing else really is needed.  He's smart and erudite.  He's tall and handsome.  He has a deep voice and he wears tweed.  And that's it, throughout four books now.  Nothing else is needed because, frankly, there isn't anything else.

But there's a method to this madness.  Is Brown simply incapable of giving him individual depth, or is there another reason?  Well, there is something else.  Langdon is a blank slate because the reader needs to have room to put himself in Langdon's clothes.  In short, we are Robert Langdon.  He is the audience figure, perhaps one of the better ones in contemporary fiction.  And if he had more specific personality, that would shut us out, because he would be too uniquely himself.  There wouldn't be room for us in there.  We would have to watch him do things, rather than us being him, thereby allowing us to do those things, instead.  It's the difference between playing a video game and watching the character do things, and playing more of a reality role-playing game, and feeling like it's us actually doing those things.  This, plus the world-traveling, the codes and puzzles, and the info. dumping, are the reasons why his books work like they do.

Of course, Brown also carries this into his minor characters, which is bad.  And he tends to get a little preachy about his themes, which Inferno certainly does.  By the end, you'll wonder about how Brown actually feels about what his antagonist feels.  I think they're one and the same.  Brown gets just as fever-pitched as his antagonist does.  And he, and his characters, are severely repetitive about it, too.

For the record, their point--that this world is so overpopulated that we could potentially create our own cataclysmic demise--is well-taken, and well-known.  I know that we don't need a super-villain (or not, depending on your point of view) to create a virus that will become our present-day Black Death; there are plenty of them out there right now, including two presently incurable viruses written about this week, one in California, the other in Saudi Arabia.  We are very overdue for another pandemic like 1918's super-flu, which originated in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and which killed hundreds of millions throughout the world, more than every war combined.  The population-thinning virus before that?  The tuberculosis of the mid- to late-1800s.  One herd-thinning virus tends to hit the world every fifty years or so.  Nature has a way of cleaning its own house.  The book will hit you over the head with this, and then stuff it down your throat, about fifty times over--and then it will end with a horrific event that all of the characters just shrug their shoulders about.  Very, very odd.

Having said all that, there is a lot to like about this book, which isn't as good as Angels & Demons or The Da Vinci Code, but is a bit better than the slower The Lost Symbol and Dan Brown's others.  In fact, the best (and perhaps only) good thing about The Lost Symbol is what works really well with Inferno.  In The Lost Symbol, I was surprised to learn about how much like a deity George Washington was treated.  The painting of Washington standing like God, or like Jesus, in the clouds, in a giant painting on the ceiling of The Capitol, is flat-out creepy and fascinating.  Without The Lost Symbol, I wouldn't have ever known about that, or about the painting, or a few other things about D.C. in general.

I felt the same about Inferno.  Though lots of writers have used Dante's work as a focal point for a novel of historical fiction--the best is perhaps Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club--this book works because it brings the world-famous work of Dante to light, to better historical context, and to a better present-day understanding.  It made me want to take out my (very nice) copy of The Divine Comedy and to read it, which I'd never really done before--well, beyond line 50, anyway.  (I have a feeling that Dan Brown would be very happy if his book was well-received and that it made people want to read Dante again.)

Dan Brown's Inferno also will show you a lot of Dante's death mask, St. Mark's, Venice, Istanbul / Constantinople, Florence, The Hagia Sophia (mentioned before in Brown's works), the Palazzo Vecchio, and seemingly dozens of other things.  All of this was so interesting that I found myself wanting to buy The Illustrated Inferno once it comes out.

And that's why you read this stuff, right?  To place yourself as Langdon into all of the places he goes, to see all of the things he sees, to think about and to know all of the things he thinks about and knows.  To learn about all of the stuff that Dan Brown teaches us with the info. dumps.  To Google all of the things he refers to that we find interesting.  To travel to all of the places he travels to.  (Dan Brown clearly has his very favorite places in Florence, Venice, Rome, Vatican City, and Istanbul.  You have to spend a lot of time in all of these places to know their nooks and crannies, to have favorite spots.  I mean, I know Fenway Park like that, because I practically live there.  That's how well Brown knows these places, and there's a large amount of envy on my part involved with that.)

Anyway, to rate this, I'd probably give it three stars if I was in a writerly mood at the time, because the characterization, and sometimes, the plot, really are that bad.  But I'd give it four, maybe even five, stars if I was in the mood to remember that we read his stuff for the globe-trotting, for the vast amount of info. he has about history, about art and architecture, about stuff that you wouldn't normally think about.  And, if I was to remember that to do all this, for the reader to feel this way, the main character would have to be such an empty shell so that there'd be room for us to step in to experience these things.

So if that's what you want, you should read this.  If it isn't, if you want characterization and plot, you'd be better off with almost anybody else.  Read and choose accordingly.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe

photo: First edition hardcover, from its Wikipedia page


Very well-researched and captivating book about witches and healing, past and present.  The author wisely switches back and forth between the two, sometimes focusing more on one than the other, to create the feeling that the past influences the present, especially amongst families.  The author also manages to write about present-day witchery without the muddlesome, and mostly inaccurate, hocus-pocus that goes with it, making it seem more like Wicca than anything like the witches with broomsticks and dressed in black, such as those found in what we think of Salem or The Wizard of Oz.  This book's witches seem more like herbalists than spell-casters, and their witchery is always used for good.

The characters always seem real, especially the Danes of the past, and Connie of the present.  The author also manages to create real minor characters, which is no easy feat.  My favorites were Connie's mother and the elitist researcher who points Connie to Harvard's Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection.  His lines were priceless; I actually read them again out loud.  I have to admit that the antagonist is not much of a mystery.  You feel like knocking Connie upside the head for constantly being oblivious to the adversary's obvious meddling.  And it's obvious to me that the author has seen The Silence of the Lambs.  A character in that movie shares the exact same name, mannerisms and speech-patterns, and oily-slick aura and presentation, as his namesake in this book.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this book for me was its writing.  Sometimes it got a bit purple; in some passages, the author is trying way too hard.  But most of it is really good writing.  I was blown away by some small touches, such as how in one scene, Connie and Sam are talking, and we leave them, follow the dog for a couple of sentences as it walks away from them, then re-join them as the dog does, thereby showing the passage of a short amount of time.  Clever, without shocking us out of our suspension of disbelief.  There are a lot of small passages in there like that, and the writing is simply good, and exact, without bogging the reader down with so much specificity that it stops the story's progress. 

The reader does need to be interested in the mid- to late-1600s to enjoy the book, however; a healthy knowledge of The Crucible also helps, as part of the interest is to see what the author will do with the characters of that play, as well as the other real-life personages.  Overall, she remains true to them and to history, and so creates a captivating book that plops you more into the past than it does into the present--well, into the early 1990s, anyway.  I also guess that the book was placed in the early 1990s--rather than in 2009, when the book was actually published--because of the numerous scenes in which Connie talks to her mother on an actual phone.  I also suspect that too much present-day technology would be too jarring for us, especially since we want the author to return to the 1690s scenes, anyway.

Elyssa East--Dogtown

I just completed Elyssa East's Dogtown.  Really well-written, in a very pondering, smooth way.  It does not read like other non-fiction books.  It has a workshop-like feel about it when you read it, a book version of a grainy documentary.  It goes back and forth between the colonial history of the place (it's a remote part of Gloucester, MA, so there's lots of history) and the murder of a young woman by a local whistling kettle in the 80s.  But mostly it's about the feel one has in the place itself.  East shows that the entire acreage of Dogtown is, for lack of a better word, haunted.  Not cursed, exactly.  There's just a certain...something about the land, the air, and everything in between.  Eccentric artist-types have made a pilgrimage to Dogtown, MA for a long time now, and a part of the place's weirdness is why that is.  What is it about the land, she asks, that draws the lost, the eccentric, the weird?  (She, and others, include themselves and the local madman in that group.  They are all the same, she says, just in different ways.)  In the end, she is driven away by the place, as others who cared for the land had been before her, and the conclusion is that the same weirdness that drew them to the land also pushed them away from it.  The writing is well planned and carried out, and I think that adds to the documentary-feeling of it.  It seems choreographed, but in a good way.  It badly needed some photos of the people and places described; hopefully in the next edition.  It's a quick read; check it out.