The Spiral Staircase by Ethel Lina White

 This is one of the books I'm reading for the "Friends" book club; the one the Stonebridge Ward women are in. I will be curious about who recommended this one, since it's very old-fashioned. Not great literature at all, but a story that would have been much better as a novella. There were so many redundant ups and downs and around the place, that I had trouble keeping track of who was who and where were they in the big house. It's a mansion, set off by itself, and is very spooky, and is full of spooky characters; most of them related. The central character, Helen, is riddled with fear and trepidation the whole time. Her imagination fools her, she pulls herself together again, and then it fools here again. And again. It gets very redundant.

The whole book takes place in one day, and so it gets rather plodding. There's a storm, and the trees are banging against the windows. There's fear around every turn. The characters are mildly interesting, although Helen is the only one we really get to know. Her altercations with the frightening nurse go on and on and get very boring. 

The notes say this author was as popular and well-known as Agatha Christie in her time. Well, I think Christie is miles ahead of this author.

What was interesting for me this time, though, was to attempt to read this in my Kindle app on my phone. The only library version available was electronic, so I decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did. I now know how to down-load and borrow this kind of book, but I would never choose it. It's convenient to have a novel on my phone, but it's too easy to be distracted to other apps. And, I like to read before sleeping, and I don't want to sleep with my phone in the room, so I have to get up when I'm really sleepy to go plug it in in the laundry room. Another annoyance is that I can't tell how I'm progressing through the book. I can tap and see a percentage, but I'd rather feel the thickness of the pages going by in real paper. Yes, I'm paper trained! Yet, I'm grateful for this experience, and grateful I could borrow and read this one for free. Because it certainly isn't something I would want to pay for or pass on...

It was kind of a fun read for upcoming Halloween...especially as I'm working on a Halloween table runner for Alice Jane. Fall is in the air, and it's early September!

The Heart is a Lovely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Why do I keep finding stories set in such dismal environments? I'm not sure why, but here's another depressing time and place. However, the characters are fascinating, and the story portrays life in the 1930s as very hard and hungry. These are people who struggle and work and still don't get ahead. I almost gave up multiple times, but then there would be some eloquent speech by one of the characters, primarily the maid Portia's father, the black doctor in this small mill town. And then I would try to follow the thinking and the pain that this man was living. Fascinating.

The other fascinating character was Mister Singer, a deaf mute, who was completely embraced and revered by the other characters. He listened so sympathetically and meaningfully...It was perhaps intended irony that this character couldn't respond, and the ones who revered him projected his responses. At any rate, that was interesting. Also, the 13-year-old Mick was a girl with great musical power and memory...another interesting character. But these characters were in a story and setting so bleak and without any visible hope, that I almost stopped reading several times. The story ends without any hopeful rays apparent, or any resolve.

I did marvel at the sophisticated thinking and speaking of the characters since McCullers was only 23 when she wrote this. I picked this up at the used bookstore, thinking it was a classic. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't...but I won't be picking it up again. It will go into one of the Little Library boxes around Bismarck.