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Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
1992 | Action, Comedy, Horror

"Ok, I know this one’s cheating. I don’t care. So it’s not a movie, so what? It did start as a movie, so it totally counts. No TV show has meant more to me than Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Stop laughing, I’m serious. It’s one of the greatest things ever created in the history of mankind. I said stop. How dare you?! I will fight you! I will fight you and I will win. It’s the best. Every right-thinking person knows that. When Buffy was on the air, I recorded every single episode on my TiVo. I’m pretty sure my DVR thought I was a fourteen year-old girl. Whatever. The show was incredible. It refused to be pigeonholed. It defied, merged, bent, and blended genres, masterfully commingling fantasy and reality. It dealt with issues of real substance. It treated its audience intelligently, with the utmost respect. Over a decade after it went off the air, it still had residence in my head and heart, and served as a model for what Kubo became: real life wrapped in metaphor. Like Buffy, we explore triumph and tragedy, loss and healing, and compassion, and forgiveness through the stylized prism of fantasy. We acknowledge that part of life… is death. That lives can be thrown away and lost and upended in an unfair and random act of casual violence, without the grandeur and rousing speechifying often found in heroic movie deaths. People we love are often ripped away from us, in an instant. And we need to find a way to reconcile that a part of life is struggle, and it has a cost. Kubo and the Two Strings, like life, like Buffy, is wonderfully bittersweet. So thank you, Joss Whedon, for giving me so much high-spirited joy and gut-wrenching heartache. You saved the world. A lot."

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The Illustrated Child
The Illustrated Child
Polly Crosby | 2020 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry, Mystery
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Romilly and her father Tobias move in to a run-down house in the countryside when she is 9 years old. Her father is an eccentric artist, and she doesn’t know anything about her mother. Later, Monty the cat joins Romilly and her friend Stacey on adventures in the local countryside, in what seems to be an idyllic childhood.

Tobias creates a series of beautifully illustrated books starring both Romilly and Monty, and their lives are changed. They find fame, as readers believe that the books are a kind of treasure hunt - which, incidentally, reminded me of the Kit Williams book, Masquerade, published in the late 1970’s. Strangers start to camp out in their garden, digging holes all over their land to find the treasure - meaning that Romilly is unable to leave the house.

Life changes again when Tobias’ behaviour becomes more and more erratic, Romilly’s mother comes back in to her life, and she meets her grandmother. Things seem to be continuously changing, and nothing is consistent - there’s no stability in Romilly’s life.

This book was not at all what I expected. It started out as something of an idyllic childhood, but as time went on, Romilly’s life is irrevocably changed. I felt so much sadness for her, and there were times when I was almost in tears (you might need a hanky!). This deals with some pretty serious themes: dementia, mental illness, death and child abuse. All the way through I was rooting for Romilly and hoping that she would get the help that she needed and deserved. This is such a beautifully written book, and I would have no hesitation in recommending it.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my e-ARC.