Category: Pop

Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates

Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates (Knopf, 448 pages)

My desire to read books about abduction and murder of children was never strong even before I had children of my own. After becoming a parent, I wondered how anyone could.

As such, I wasn’t sure if I could get through even two chapters of the long-awaited novel from Joyce Carol Oates, which is built around a serial killer who specialized in children. Dubbed the “Babysitter,” because he abducted children between the ages of 11 and 14 who were neglected and unattended, the killer murdered five children near Detroit, Michigan, when the novel opens in 1977.

The victims speak collectively to reveal details: “When we died, our bodies were carefully bathed, the smallest bits of dirt removed from every crevice of our bodies and from beneath our (broken) fingernails, and the fingernails cut with cuticle scissors; rounded and even, as our hair was washed with a gentle shampoo, combed and neatly parted in such a way to suggest that whoever had so tenderly groomed us postmortem had not known us ‘in life’.”

Even as we may want to run screaming from what came before and what will surely come after, we cannot.

Joyce Carol Oates didn’t become one of America’s most celebrated writers for lack of talent, and with that horrific opening, she glides seamlessly into what at first seems an unconnected story: The budding affair between a wealthy housewife in Far Hills, Michigan, and a man she met only briefly at a fundraiser.

Hannah Jarrett is 39, beautiful, privileged, vapid, taught by her parents to prize elegance, simplicity and taste: “Never take a chance of appearing common” is a mantra to which she clings. Her life and her marriage somewhat resembles that of Don and Betty Draper in Mad Men — outwardly perfect, if vaguely hollow, with picture-perfect children, a girl and a boy. Unlike Betty Draper, Hannah Jarrett has a live-in housekeeper, who, despite Hannah’s belief that she is an attentive mother, seems to do a significant amount of the mothering in the household.

When Hannah is contacted by the man with whom she shared an electric moment at a charity event, she decides to meet him at an elegant downtown hotel, enabled by her husband’s business trip and the housekeeper, who will be with the children no matter how late Hannah returns.

On the drive to the hotel Hannah tells herself a reassuring story: she’s only going to satisfy her curiosity, to feel beautiful and desired for an afternoon; she won’t break any vows, but will have a satisfying and fulfilling conversation with the man in the hotel bar about their mutual and ultimately thwarted desires.

That, of course, is not what happens. In her skillful narrative, Oates makes Hannah’s drive to the hotel, and even the ride up the elevator to the man’s suite, suspenseful and chilling. It is a drama seemingly completely unconnected to the “babysitter” killings, but also, we know, somehow entwined. Moreover, there are hints of future — or are they past? — events that push their way into the telling, making it unclear if what happens on any given page is, as Ebenezer asked of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, things that definitely happened or things that simply could happen.

The dynamic between Hannah and her Manila-born housekeeper, Ismelda, is polite, but fraught, as perhaps all housekeeper/employer relationships are. Hannah is both grateful and resentful of the help, and at times the similarities between “the Babysitter,” serial killer, and the babysitter/nanny/housekeeper are a bit heavy-handed. While Hannah’s children, we are led to believe, are not neglected in the way that the Babysitter’s victims are, their mother’s deficiencies are revealed in her interactions with her housekeeper.

Coming home distracted after a tryst, Hannah is so consumed by her fantasy life (“I have a lover!”) that she is unaware that her daughter is gravely ill until the housekeeper apologetically wakes her. While in no way evil or even deeply unlikeable — she is much too bland a person for that — Hannah is not a sympathetic character, even though her upbringing was in many ways troubled. Which is why it’s a shock to so quickly care so much about what happens to her and her family.

When Oates writes, “Despair of women, that men are unknown to them, essentially,” she speaks not only of the overt monsters but also of the hidden lives of husbands and friends. But women, too, have parts unknown to others and also to themselves, as Hannah learns as she is drawn deeper into a relationship despite the frantic screaming of conscience.

Babysitter is no cheap thriller but offers sharp cultural commentary on racism, class, religion and modern-day parenting. Give all the credit to Oates, who has crafted a finely tuned horror story that, like the film Fatal Attraction, is all the more horrific because of its placid suburban setting. A

Book Events

Author events

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

• RENEE PLODZIK, Concord author, visits Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. to present her cookbook Eat Well Move Often Stay Strong.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOSH MALERMAN, horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to present his newly released bookDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present his newest release, The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

• LYNN LYONS, psychotherapist and anxiety expert, returns to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. with The Anxiety Audit: 7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them.

• JOSH FUNK & KARI ALLEN Children’s authors Josh Funk and Kari Allen present their newest books, The Great Caper Caper: Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast Book No. 5 and Maddie and Mabel Take the Lead, atGibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m.

Album Reviews 22/10/06

Alexis Castrogiovanni, Someday My Thoughts Will Be Like a Range of Mountains (self-released)

Debut EP from this Canadian singer-songwriter/cellist, steeped in ’90s throwbackism in the vein of Tori Amos and tinted with Minski, more or less. Castrogiovanni loves her some angst, as the above influences would handily indicate, but lyrically she’s more concerned with her own inner journey than the usual suspects on which “angry girl music” of the ’90s (exes, bad boyfriends and the patriarchy) focused. This is no Alanis clone, in other words, more an Ani DiFranco thing, characterized by her rapid-fire ranty-singing in “Ex-Girl,” whose beat is driven by the artiste plucking a bass-like line on her cello. I expect most listeners would hit Eject right off if they’re not into Ani or Tori or even PJ Harvey, and that’d be too bad, because the title track fares a lot better, sort of a Bjork-on-meds trip, and the effects she put on her instrumental weapon of choice keep it from being entirely disposable. B-

Chez Kane, Powerzone (Frontiers Music)

Cheerio, Bob’s your uncle, I’ll take any excuse to go check out a gorgeous British hard-rock-singing girl who dresses in basically nothing to shoot her videos, and bonus, fam, she’s actually a sweet, rather shy person, or at least she plays one on YouTube. This is her first solo album, one that doesn’t involve her sisters, who play with her in a band called Kane’d, whose 2013 single “I See Ya” was a pretty neat cross between Alanis Morissette and Joan Jett, if you can imagine. That wasn’t bad, even if it was kind of derivative, but time’s passed. Now Chez is older and is on a mid-1980s Heart trip; opener “I Just Want You” is basically “What About Love” but without an orchestra. “The Things We Do When We’re In Love” rips off Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ’69,” and so on and so forth. It all sounds great, but it’s also literally all been done. B-

Playlist

• Watch out, kids, here comes Friday, Oct. 7, bearing albums aplenty, and with that, you can make a note that I have indeed used the word “aplenty” in this award-winning column, as of today! No, there will be lots of albums coming out on the 7th, I’m sure of it, since Halloween is over and it’s basically the holiday shopping season until we get to the snow-and-abject-misery quarter of our year, can’t we just get it out of the way now so we can start thinking about eating fried fish and chips on the beach? I’d love for it to be over already, wouldn’t you? But there’s nothing we can do other than to press on, do our best to avoid getting frostbite, and listen to all the great new rock ’n’ roll albums, like for instance Under The Midnight Sun by U.K.-based ’90s-hard-rock fellers The Cult, you know, the band where the guitarist and the singer beat each other up on stage when their drugs wear off and they remember how much they despise each other. One of those two guys definitely earned some hatred, and I’d nominate whichever of them decided to abandon the slithery, almost psychedelic awesomeness of their breakthrough 1985 album Love — you know, the one with “She Sells Sanctuary,” “Revolution” and all that groovy hippie stuff — and decided to turn the band into some sort of straightforward and boring Buckcherry tribute band on their 1987 Electric LP, with all those stupid bonehead tunes like “Love Removal Machine.” Ha ha, I’ll bet it was the singer’s idea, remember how he had that stupid possum-fur hat on the album cover and all the songs were extra dumb, and you were “RIP, rock ’n’ roll, again?” Man was that album a disappointment, but hey, a lot of water’s gone under the bridge with these guys, so hey, man, maybe there’s something to like about this new album, as in maybe they realized how awful they became 35 years ago and there’s something cool on this album. Just call me a dreamer, folks, I’m going to go listen to the latest “cut” (I hate when that moron bass player Needle Drop uses that word to describe a “song” or “tune” in his CD reviews on YouTube; I only used the term to remind you that I detest Needle Drop as much as the guys in the Cult detest each other) “Give Me Mercy,” and frankly I already have high hopes, because the sample loop of the video shows Ian Astbury dressed like Anton Lavey at a devil conference, and there’s a spooky tree. OK, to the song itself, because that’s why we’re even here in the first place. Huh, look at that, they’re dancing in devil robes, and the guitar sound is awesome, almost kind of emo, maybe they did figure out that they needed to sound like they did in 1985. But wait, singer Ian Astbury’s voice is boring and old-person-sounding. Eh, it’s just the shell of The Cult, but with a great guitar sound, a lot of you would probably like it.

• Holy cats, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has a new album coming, called Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms And Lava – do I even have room for all that text? “Ice V,” one of the tunes, is an electro-tinged Flaming Lips thingie, it’s OK. Needle Drop had words to say about that “track”/”cut” but I didn’t listen to them.

• Ermagerd, look out, it’s super-heavy (from what I’ve heard) metal band Lamb of God, with their new one, Omens! The title track is metalcore, surprise, and it isn’t as fun or cool as Heriot, if that affects your buying decision.

• In closing we have idiotic ’90s band Bush with The Art Of Survival. Leadoff single “Mor Than Machines” is ’90s-hard-pop oatmeal but with bendy guitar bits reminiscent of Korn added for no reason whatsoever.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy, by Moiya McTier

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy, by Moiya McTier (Grand Central Publishing, 244 pages)

In college, I once signed up for an astronomy class. I dropped out after two weeks, having painfully discovered that astronomy isn’t so much about looking at celestial bodies in awe as it is about doing complex math. After that, other than a star-gazing class at a local community college, my knowledge of outer space hasn’t evolved much beyond watching Men in Black, which I maintain is a documentary.

So I was excited about the publication of Moiya McTier’s promised examination of the Milky Way in down-to-earth terms, billed as “an autobiography of our galaxy.” Finally, I could get the astronomy class of my dreams, on my couch, in a mere 244 pages, with an instructor who studied both astronomy and mythology at Harvard and went on to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia.

And I could have, and should have, except for the dumb gimmick that cripples the book: the Milky Way as narrator.

Maybe if this had been a kindly, wise Milky Way, a sort of cosmic Gandalf the Grey, the gimmick would have been easier to stomach. But we are instead given a haughty, snarky, disparaging galaxy, whose persona is made even worse by its perception that it is talking to puny, finite creatures not really worth its time. “I know it’s likely a lot for you to take in, and your brain is fully formed!” the narrator says at one point.

Another time, it says, “Sadly, your ignorance compels me to explain so much to you that I’m still not at the part about me yet.” And then there’s this: “A mayfly can live its entire life in one room of your homes. Isn’t that sad? Don’t you ever wonder why the mayfly even bothers to do anything at all? Because that’s how I feel about you.”

He seems nice, right? Or she. Who knows? This middle-school snark is hard enough to stomach for one chapter; it’s wearisome for the whole of a book. And this persona is so unnecessary; plenty of people write autobiographies without constantly addressing “dear reader.”

The implication of “Dumb reader,” over and again, is even worse.

To be fair, McTier is trying to convey the unconveyable: the vast chasm between small, finite creatures like human beings and the unknowable expanse of space and, if you’re into that sort of thing, a cosmic Intelligence, with a capital I. But Ed Yong did this without talking down to us in An Immense World, and for that matter, there are Twitter accounts that do as much without even using words, like ones that consist of nothing but photos of outer space or microscopic images.

Maybe this is just the kind of unintentional dumbing down that occurs when astrophysicists try to talk to regular people. There aren’t that many of them, after all, and they’ve got their own peculiar brand of humor. As McTier says while trying to explain red dwarf stars, the most common ones in the Milky Way, astronomers don’t all agree on the “initial mass function” of red dwarf stars: “If you ever want to cause an uproar among your astronomers, stand in a crowded planetarium and claim that the Kroupa IMF is better than the Salpeter. Most won’t be able to refrain from loudly asserting their opinion back at you.” Astronomers are clearly the life of the party.

McTier awkwardly hobbles from the Big Bang (“Don’t concern yourself with thoughts of what came before the Big Bang. That kind of knowledge is not for the likes of you — or even me, though I am fabulously worthy on nearly all other counts — to understand”) to the creation and destruction of other galaxies, to black holes, to the modern, mind-boggling telescopes to myths about space, to theories about when and how the world will end. It’s not all terrible, but it’s like eating pistachios with shells; at some point, you question the effort, particularly when she answers the question of extraterrestrial life, “Well, that’s for me to know, and hopefully for you and your scientists to find out.”

What’s most disappointing is that McTier does have a fascinating story to tell: her own.

In a much-too-short foreword written in her voice, McTier throws out a tantalizing morsel of her life story: how a girl who grew up in a cabin with no running water after her parents’ divorce fell in love with the universe and launched herself on an intellectual journey that found her, in her undergraduate studies at Harvard, having an internship that involved spending hours “analyzing five-dimensional data cubes to measure properties of a distant star-forming galaxy.” This from a girl who had to cross state lines to visit a bookstore when she was child.

It speaks to the power of imagination — she used to imagine the sun and the moon were her celestial parents — but also an incredible internal drive and intellect. I would gladly read 500 pages of McTier’s autobiography. But spare me her version of the galaxy’s in half that. D

Book Events

Author events

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

• RENEE PLODZIK, Concord author, visits Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. to present her cookbook Eat Well Move Often Stay Strong.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOSH MALERMAN, horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to present his newly released bookDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present his newest release, The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

• LYNN LYONS, psychotherapist and anxiety expert, returns to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. with The Anxiety Audit: 7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them.

• JOSH FUNK & KARI ALLEN Children’s authors Josh Funk and Kari Allen present their newest books, The Great Caper Caper: Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast Book No. 5 and Maddie and Mabel Take the Lead, atGibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m.

Album Reviews 22/09/29

Maraton, Unseen Color (Indie Recordings)

Well, here’s a nice attempt at prog rock by a bunch of Norwegians, whose first album, 2019’s Meta, set the band off in the direction of serious things like festival concerts and all that happy stuff, not that basically every European band doesn’t get to play at those things. On this one, their fifth in three years, believe it or not, the singer is growing into his own as a Seal-soundalike, at least in album opener “In Syzygy,” which is probably indicative of a desired future as some sort of New Age festival staple band, a la Shadowfax and such. Do I mind this stuff? No, to be honest; it’s not Yes or Return To Forever, it’s slightly like Asia, but with a gentler, less in-your-face melodic approach. “Blind Sight” is really ’80s-sounding; they’re probably big into Tangerine Dream, which works for me, given other tacks they could have taken. It’s OK. B+

Kristian Montgomery and the Winter Kill Band, Lower County Outlaw (self-released)

It’s really not hard for me to keep up with eclectic Vermont-based folk-rocker Montgomery, what with the friendship we hatched on social media, but that’s not why this six-song EP gets a high mark. I was drawn to his stuff from the first time I heard it, a couple of records back; it’s fedora-rock but with top-drawer melodic urgency and no filler. I’m sure the ever humble Montgomery would attribute that to the synergy he’s developed with drummer Andrew Koss, but he’s had it in him the whole while, I assure you, and these songs are yet another quantum leap. His trip is a hybrid that melds bluegrass-tinged folk-rock to, well, name an arena band and he’s probably tried it on for size. “Gypsy Girl,” for instance, starts out with an early Yes guitar line, down to the backward-masked reverb effect, and then goes all-out Allman Brothers like a boss. “Easy To Forget You When I’m Gone” has a Chris Whitley angle to it, if that’s your thing; “Annie Pay Your Band” is a swampy Cajun beef-fest whose lyrics are directed at a Massachusetts concert promoter. A+

Playlist

• Friday, Sept. 30, is the next big date for CD releases, and we may as well kick off the anti-festivities with Slipknot’s new album, The End So Far. There are many people who like this pseudo-metal band, but I am not among them. In fact, one of the least enjoyable interviews I ever did was when I talked to their DJ, Sid Wilson, back when he was trying to sell himself as a massively indie jungle/dubstep edgelord. He went by the name DJ Starscream back then and had a sort of MF Doom trip going on, with some stupid metal facemask thing and all that. Anyway he was really annoying when I spoke to him, like he expected me to know all the obscure underground dubstep guys he was referencing, and the whole interview got bogged down with him trying to “OK boomer” me with a barrage of nonsense. The interview was for a show he was doing in Miami if I recall correctly, and the article had to be full of nice words, so as much as I wanted to simply write a bunch of jokes about how contrived and stupid he is, I wrote some nice things I didn’t want to. Karma did win in the end though, folks — Wilson did send me a couple of vinyl singles that I immediately sold on eBay. But that’s all neither here nor there, Wilson is just one cog in the Slipknot “juggernaut,” so let’s leave behind my memories of wanting to bake him in a pie and see how much I can stand of sampler single “The Dying Song (Time To Sing).” Yup, there we go, it’s the same old Slipknot: half the song is death metal lunchmeat and the other half is old-school emo/nu-metal. A lot of people dig this stuff, which I find is the only interesting thing about it.

• Wait, here’s something I can deal with, the new album from Yeah Yeah Yeahs, titled Cool It Down. As you may or may not know, the New York-based post-punk-revival band features South Korean-born American singer Karen O, along with a guitarist and a drummer who looks like he’s 12 years old. Pretty bratty stuff from this band, historically, not as mentally ill as Hole or whatnot, but pretty jagged and always interesting, so hopefully the new single, “Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” which features Perfume Genius. Well, listen to that, it’s a departure from their norm, but a nice departure: slow, melodic, epic shoegaze, with Karen coming off as an asexual moonbat, which she plays rather well. I love stuff like this and hope you do too.

• I’d be a complete loser if I didn’t mention Doggerel, the new album from Pixies, a local band that helped bring about the fall of the Boston rock scene that was actually happening during the 1980s after The Cars got big. Anyone remember that? If it hadn’t been for bad bands like Pixies and all those guys, Boston would have been a pretty happening place, a legitimate mecca of music that would have attracted major-label guys and big producers, which would have resulted in about 30 Led Zeppelins taking over the world from our dumb New England area, but alas, when all the big shots came to Boston from L.A. and New York, they weren’t impressed by Del Fuegos or the Neighborhoods, but they did sign the Pixies. That brings us to now, and the new tune “There’s A Moon On,” a rockabilly-tinged garage song that is decidedly OK, nothing to hate and nothing to be impressed over.

• We’ll close with Nymph, the debut album from British rapper-DJ Shygirl, who cites Aphex Twin and Madonna as influences. That makes no sense, but the kickoff single, “Coochie,” is nice enough, with its bloopy, half-there, Billie Eilish-ish beat, Empire Of The Sun-inspired melody and Shygirl’s pretty soprano. My stars, the record company’s bots have gone nuts posting comments on the video. Whatever it takes, I suppose.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Message me on Twitter (@esaeger) or Facebook (eric.saeger.9).

At the Sofaplex 22/09/22

Beast (R)

Idris Elba, Sharlto Copely.

Idris Elba fights a lion in this most “exactly as advertised” thriller. Sure, everybody gets a bit of backstory: Elba plays a father of two daughters (Iyana Halley, Norah Samuels), the older of whom is nearly levitating with rage at him for separating from their mother right before the mom got sick and later died of cancer. Copely is a guy in charge of a South African nature reserve who has maybe tangled with poachers. And the lion they eventually fight has the backstory of watching poachers kill his pride and then going all John Wick, lion-style. But all that is very secondary to “Elba v. Lion,” which is why we’re all here.

And on this score the movie delivers. It is fine, maybe even good if probably not great. Elba is exactly what you expect him to be — the movie doesn’t make him superhuman but does make him an Elba-amount of strong and increasingly capable at fending off the angry lion. It offers you exactly the action and suspense you expect and doesn’t get bogged down by trying to do anything more. B Available for rent or purchase via VOD.

Pinocchio (PG)

Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo.

The already disturbing story of Pinocchio does not get cuter in this shiny plasticine live-action adaptation of the 1940 Disney cartoon. Here, Hanks (presumably involved because of director Robert Zemeckis? Or is this a “sea witch gives you legs but at a price” situation?) is Geppetto, a sad widower made even sadder by thoughts of his young son who has also died. He makes a large-ish puppet, wishes on Cynthia Erivo (a blue star/Blue Fairy) and wakes to find that the puppet is now sorta alive (with a voice by child actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) but his new “son” is still wooden. Jiminy Cricket (voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a cricket and the movie’s narrator with meta tendencies, is tasked with serving as Pinocchio’s conscience, which is a tough job when a kid knows nothing about the world, is chucked out the door to go to school and is immediately preyed upon by a con artist fox (Keegan-Michael Key) who sells Pinocchio to a traveling puppet show producer.

This movie sort of pokes fun at some of the crazier aspects of the story and gives us some of the songs — “I’ve Got No Strings” etc. — but that’s just not enough to make your olden-days cautionary tale to kids about the untrustworthy world entertaining or charming or funny. It’s weird — its strange spread of accents is weird, its general joylessness is weird and its ending is so weirdly abrupt I rewound to make sure I didn’t miss something. C- Available on Disney+

Luck (G)

Voices of Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg.

In this animated movie, 18-year-old Sam (voice of Noblezada) ages out of the foster care system and has to make her own way — working a job at a gardening store, taking online classes, navigating her new apartment. But she’s worried about something that has always plagued her: bad luck. How bad? She accidentally locks herself in her bathroom, drops her toast jelly side down and gets a flat tire, all on her first day of work. But then she meets Bob (voice of Pegg), a black cat. Bob is an employee in the Land of Luck and he accidentally drops his lucky penny right next to Sam. She picks it up, planning to give it to Hazel (voice of Adelynn Spoon), a young girl she bonded with at the group home who yearns for a forever home just like Sam once did. While holding the coin (and absorbing its luck) she experiences how the other half lives, with computer uploads that work and streetlights that are always green.

When Sam accidentally flushes the lucky penny, she tracks down Bob to get Hazel a new one. She follows him to the Land of Luck to score herself another penny, and Sam and Bob reluctantly work together to try to get the coin but find themselves upsetting the delicate balance of good and bad luck.

This movie is light and generally sweet and has a lot of cuteness in the form of cats, leprechauns, a colorful dragon and adorable hazmat bunnies. It also has a fair amount of talking and while my elementary school kids basically stuck with the movie I could tell that their attention waned a bit in the middle as the movie gets bogged down in a bunch of tasks for its characters to complete. A richly textured Pixar movie this ain’t but it was acceptable for family movie-night entertainment. B- Available on Apple TV+.

Me Time (R)

Kevin Hart, Mark Wahlberg.

“Regular person in crazy situations” is the formula for this buddy movie about a stay-at-home dad who gets a week by himself. Sonny’s (Hart) wife Maya (Regina Hall) urges him to chillax at home while she takes the kids to her parents for spring break. Maybe he’ll even attend the multi-day 44th birthday party of his longtime friend Huck (Wahlberg; sure, ha, “44”), who he hasn’t seen for a while due to Huck’s “woo-hoo, Burning Man!” lifestyle while Sonny is more focused on PTA meetings and family schedules. Huck drags a bus full of his weirdly young friends out to the desert for their own off-the-grid music-festy experience full of alleged fun that just sounds like a parade of horrors (Forage for food! Sleep in this yurt! Poop in this bucket!). But this overplanned, underplumbed event is only the start to the craziness Sonny encounters now that he has taken a step into Huck’s world.

Look, I’m not, like, mad that this movie exists. It’s not terrible. Kevin Hart is in movies like this for a reason; he is skilled at being the comedy straight man who can also go a little zany. And there are nice touches — the big friend-relationship step of learning the name of a fellow parent previously only known as “Kid’sname’s Dad.” But there aren’t as many truly askew moments as you’d want to really sell the “wild ride”-ness of this movie. C+ Available on Netflix.

Easter Sunday (PG-13)

Jo Koy, Lydia Gaston.

Comedian Jo Koy plays a version of himself called Jo Valencia who is a comedian with a big Filipino-American family, a sullen teenage son called Junior (Brandon Wardell) and a shot at landing the lead in a sitcom pilot. Jo is having a hard time balancing co-parenting Junior with giving his all at his audition, where they knock him off balance by asking him to give his character a Filipino accent. He’s wrestling with this angle to the job opportunity and trying to help Junior figure out his teenage life when his mom, Susan (Gaston), asks him to travel from the L.A. area up to the Bay Area for Easter. It’s a whole to-do — church, a big meal, family drama — and Jo decides to go and drag Junior along. Family and work become even harder to balance as Jo tries to make a surprise second audition a five-hour drive away and deal with family nuttiness that includes a half-baked gangster and a stolen pair of Manny Pacquioa’s gloves.

Easter Sunday has a lot of good ideas but it still has some very rough draft-y qualities, like an impromptu comedy set Jo Valencia does at his church and some of the sillier gangster stuff. There is a subplot about Junior’s not quite fitting in with the wider community of his Filipino-American family that makes for some good “first- and second-generation American kids in an immigrant family” stuff, but it is never quite as fully realized — more a pitch for a thing that could be a part of Jo Valencia’s story than something the movie fully examines.

And ultimately, I hope that’s what Easter Sunday turns out to be — a starting point for a stronger, more fully filled in story that Jo Koy gets to tell in some future vehicle. C+ Available on VOD.

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean

The Book Eaters, by Sunyi Dean (Tor, 298 pages)

Does the world really need another story about mythical un-human creatures who hide in plain sight among us and need to destroy human beings in order to eat?

Why, yes, as it turns out, we do.

Despite its vague resemblance to Twilight, The Walking Dead and others in popular humans-as-foodstuff genre, Sunyi Dean has penned a marvelous, mind-bending novel about a class of creatures deposited on Earth as a science experiment of sorts. The majority of them don’t eat people, but instead eat books. Yes, that sounds ridiculous and would be garbage in the wrong hands, but Dean — an autistic American-born writer of fantasy novels who now lives in the U.K. — brings a sly wit to the enterprise and has produced a sophisticated fantasy world that will doubtless beget movies and sequels.

The story revolves around Devon, a young mother who is part of six family lines that hide among humans on Earth, their purpose being to absorb human knowledge through eating books and, for some of them, through consumption of human brains. You can’t tell them apart by looking at them; they all look like humans, but book eaters grow “bookteeth” at about age 3, and mind eaters have a mosquito-like proboscis and a serpent-like tongue.

Devon is a book eater. Her 5-year-old son, Cai, is not. And Devon has the choice of watching him starve to death, or bringing home some hapless human whose brain is suitable for consumption about once a month.

This is not a good way of living for either Devon or her son, so she is intent on finding a class of book eaters who possess an elixir called Redemption that can turn brain eaters into book eaters. (It’s not just a question of will, as it was for the Cullens in Twilight.) But there is more to her story than that.

Despite being fed a carefully planned diet of fairy tales as a child, designed to suppress her imagination and keep her from questioning the Family Rules, Devon grew up with a rebellious streak and would sometimes sneak a book she wasn’t supposed to consume. She would even do something that was forbidden — read the book. (Book eaters cannot write, and they are only supposed to consume books, not read them.)

Devon had a happy childhood, however, despite never knowing her mother. Among book eaters, women are precious and rare because of a genetic flaw that causes ovarian failure in their late 20s. Their marriages are both arranged and “enforced” — because of the dangers of inbreeding, the patriarchs of the families must place brides like chess pieces, and so at age 19, Devon had been sent to another family for the requisite term of three years to be a wife and bear a child, after which she is to return to her family of origin.

Book eaters, who drink “inktea” and large amounts of alcohol, are big on ceremony, and the lavish weddings give Dean’s fertile imagination room to run wild: The bountiful spread of food includes a “salad” — “shredded pages of Midsummer Night’s Dream that were dyed different shades of green” along with edible origami made of pages torn from books and made into the shape of swans, and a wedding “cake” in the shape of the biblical Tree of Knowledge, “printed pages carefully shaped into origami apples.” When Devon tastes wine for the first time, she reflects that it tastes a little bit like “a well-crafted romance novel. Complex, sweet, and a little stinging.”

The wedding cake is a metaphor for what is to come: Devon’s knowledge expands first with the consummation of her marriage and then with the birth of her first child. With that birth comes the first of several surprises that alter our perception of what is happening. The shrewd plotting switches constantly from present-day to the past but is easy to follow and reveals Devon’s back story and motivation in slow motion.

Another smart literary device is in the telling of the book eaters’ history in snippets of quotes from a book called Paper and Flesh: A Secret History, written by an unfortunate reporter who tried to infiltrate Devon’s family and paid a price for his interest.

To preserve their secrets, the families must keep distant from humans, whom they largely disdain. But Devon must navigate the human world — and learn the secrets of the other five book eater families — in order to get Redemption for her son, who, as he grows older, will need to eat not just once a month, but once a week.

Like baklava, The Book Eaters has complexity in its many layers: as a jacket blurb says, “Truth is found between the stories we’re fed and the stories we hunger for,” and readers can chew for days on the points the author is trying to make. But at the center of her sharp criticism of patriarchy and the cage of tradition and extended family, is a rollicking good story. Twilight had one, too, but the series was poorly written. The Book Eaters, in contrast,is sophisticated, thought-provoking and as immersive as a quality video game, whether or not you’re a fan of the fantasy genre.

And readers will become conversant with a wonderful, rarely used word: bibliosmia, which means the enjoyment derived from sniffing a good book. A+

Book Events

Author events

• DAMIEN KANE RIGDEN will be at the Toadstool in Nashua on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. for his novella All Manor of Beast and Man.

• SUSIE SPIKOL, a naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock, will come to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St. in Concord; gibsonsbookstore.com, 224-0562) to “teach your kiddos how to find critters in their neighborhood” on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 11 a.m. with her book The Animal Adventurer’s Guide: How to Prowl for an Owl, Make Snail Slime, and Catch a Frog Bare-Handed, according to a press release. The book, which is slated for release Sept. 13, features “50 hands-on activities and adventures that bring you closer to wild animals than you’ve ever been,” the release said. Spikol will also bring supplies to do one of the crafts from the book.

• BETSY THOMASON will discuss her book Just Breathe Out: Using Your Breath to Create a New, Healthier You at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 2 p.m.

• HUMA ABEDIN The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host Huma Abedin, longtime political advisor and aide for Hillary Clinton, to discuss her bookBoth/Andat the Music Hall on Tuesday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m.Tickets are $15 and include a book voucher.

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

History & lectures

• FRAN LEBOWITZ Author, humorist and social commentator Fran Lebowitz will appear at the Capitol Center for the Arts (44 S. Main St., Concord) on Friday, Sept. 30, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $45 to $65, plus fees.

Poetry

• KATHARINE GREGG & HOWARD FAERSTEIN will read from their collections of poetry (Mere Thread by Gregg and Googootz and Other Poems and Dreaming of the Rain in Brooklyn from Faerstein) at the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough (12 Depot Square; toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Sept. 24, at noon.

• MARTHA COLLINS and L.R. BERGER hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

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