Remote Control and Nasty Little Cuts
Dec. 17th, 2024 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearRemote Control is a novella by Nnedi Okorafor, about a young girl who gets strange powers from an alien seed she finds beneath a tree in her family's garden. It takes place in Ghana in the near future and the setting is very clear and immersive, greatly aided by excellent audio narration. I found the plot a bit nebulous, though - but the emotion is strong and the protagonist goes through a heart-wrenching developmental arc, as she wanders the countryside, being treated with both fear and reverence. It's very sad and quite grim in places, but it's also very effective and well written.
Nasty Little Cuts by Tina Baker tells the story of very early one Christmas Eve morning, when Debs comes down into the kitchen to find her husband, Marc, disoriented and wielding a knife. It charts the progress of what happens over the next four hours, as Debs comes to realise that she and her children may well be in terrible danger. It also goes back over the course of her marriage to Marc (and further back into both of their childhoods) to show how things have reached this point of crisis. It's compelling from the start and extremely well constructed, with the picture of their relationship gradually built up from pieces shown in flashback. I liked the fact that we occasionally got Marc's viewpoint as well as that of Debs, since it added perspective and provided a greater understanding of what was happening. All the chapters are only a few pages long, so the flashbacks never drag, and the scenes in the kitchen on Christmas Eve are brief enough that the tension remains high. It did get a bit repetitive in the latter third, and it also became clear that Marc's behaviour wasn't quite such a shock as the blurb on the inside front cover led me to believe initially. The deterioration of their relationship and Debs' inability to do anything about it are well portrayed and it kept me engaged right to the end. However, there were a lot of questions left unanswered - and Debs herself asking them in the last few pages didn't do anything to mitigate my annoyance about that. Still, a very effective and propulsive read that I was impressed by, if not wholly swept away by.
Nasty Little Cuts by Tina Baker tells the story of very early one Christmas Eve morning, when Debs comes down into the kitchen to find her husband, Marc, disoriented and wielding a knife. It charts the progress of what happens over the next four hours, as Debs comes to realise that she and her children may well be in terrible danger. It also goes back over the course of her marriage to Marc (and further back into both of their childhoods) to show how things have reached this point of crisis. It's compelling from the start and extremely well constructed, with the picture of their relationship gradually built up from pieces shown in flashback. I liked the fact that we occasionally got Marc's viewpoint as well as that of Debs, since it added perspective and provided a greater understanding of what was happening. All the chapters are only a few pages long, so the flashbacks never drag, and the scenes in the kitchen on Christmas Eve are brief enough that the tension remains high. It did get a bit repetitive in the latter third, and it also became clear that Marc's behaviour wasn't quite such a shock as the blurb on the inside front cover led me to believe initially. The deterioration of their relationship and Debs' inability to do anything about it are well portrayed and it kept me engaged right to the end. However, there were a lot of questions left unanswered - and Debs herself asking them in the last few pages didn't do anything to mitigate my annoyance about that. Still, a very effective and propulsive read that I was impressed by, if not wholly swept away by.
