I spent the day with my parents on Sunday--my father's birthday was last Friday,
so I, along with my brother and sister and their families, went out for lunch.
I stuck around after everyone else had left and had dinner out there, too. I
can't remember now how it came up, but somehow we started talking about psychics
and various spooky things. My mom is fascinated by John Edward, and was telling
me about a recent show she had seen.
Something about what she was saying made me think of The Sixth Sense, and
I asked if they had seen it yet. She said no, they hadn't, but asked me if it
was true that Bruce Willis's character was actually dead in the movie.
I said I hadn't been going to mention that, since I thought I might buy it for
her for a birthday or Christmas gift, but she said one of her neighbors had
talked about it, and had told her that. So I gave them a one-paragraph
synopsis. I think I still might buy it for her for Christmas; I think she'd
enjoy it, even if she does already know the ending.
I'm always pretty careful when I talk about a movie or a book--I never want to
tell the ending or give too much away in case the person I'm talking to
wants to be surprised. When I saw Sixth Sense, I was surprised--I
didn't have any idea what it was going to be about. Actually, I sort of wished
I had known, but I guess that would have spoiled the effect. I can always
watch it again, knowing what I know now. When I saw it the first time, Bob had
already seen it, and I could tell that he was kind of watching me out of the
corner of his eye, waiting to see if I would figure it out. I didn't.
I'm not very good at figuring out things like that--I don't even try, actually.
I almost never really try to figure out a mystery in a movie or book, I just enjoy
the experience of watching or reading, and don't really care what the end result
is. I can enjoy the story whether or not the answer is obvious; the only thing
that really annoys me is when the ending is completely ridiculous and
unexpected. That's when I remember that it's just a book, and the writer can
end it however they want, that they can introduce a completely new character
and have them be the villain, and there's no way the reader could have predicted
it.
So I try not to worry about the outcome, and just enjoy a good story for it's
own sake.
Right now I'm reading an excellent one--Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I've wanted to talk about it,
but I'm not sure how much I should say. Part of the fun in reading a book like
this is the little surprises, but reading some of the reviews at the Amazon
site, I guess there's nothing wrong with talking about the basic premise.
I knew I wanted to read it just because I love Gaiman's work; I would have read
it regardless, so I didn't read a lot about it beforehand.
Shadow, the protagonist, is released from prison in the first few pages. He's
just finished doing three years for bank robbery--keeping his head down, not making
waves, just doing his time until he can get out and return to his wife, Laura. But the day
before he's to be released, Laura is killed in an automobile accident, so he gets
out of prison with nowhere to go, and no one to return to.
Through a series of apparent coincidences, he hooks up with Wednesday, a conman who
turns out to be Odin, one of the old gods who were brought to America in the minds
and hearts of immigrants from the old countries. Laura continues to make
appearances throughout the book--Shadow unwittingly brings her back to life through
a leprechaun's mistake, and she keeps showing up to help him when he gets into tough
places.
I'm about half-way through the book right now. My favorite part so far has been the
sequence about the Egyptian gods who currently run a funeral home in Cairo . . .
Georgia. Ibis and Jacquel's is a pretty standard small-town funeral home--Ibis does
the sales part and Jacquel does the embalming. Set disappeared two hundred
years ago, Horus has gone mad and
remains in his guise as a hawk, and Bast, in the form of a small brown cat,
sleeps in her basket in the kitchen and comes to Shadow in his dreams.
And then, as if someone else were holding his hand, he raised the straight
razor, placed it, blade open, against his throat.
It would be a way out, he thought. An easy way out. And if there's anyone who'd
simply take it in their stride, who'd just clean up the mess and get on with
things, it's the two guys sitting downstairs at the kitchen table drinking their
beer. No more worries. No more Laura. No more mysteries and conspiracies. No
more bad dreams. Just peace and quiet and rest forever. One clean slash, ear to
ear. That's all it'll take.
He stood there with the razor against his throat. A tiny smudge of blood came from
the place where the blade touched the skin. He had not even noticed a cut. See,
he told himself, and he could almost hear the words being whispered in his ear.
It's painless. Too sharp to hurt. I'll be gone before I know it.
Then the door to the bathroom swung open then, just a few inches, enough for the
little brown cat to put her head around the door frame and "Mrr?" up at him
curiously.
"Hey," he said to the cat. "I thought I locked that door."
He closed the cutthroat razor, put it down on the side of the sink, dabbed at
his tiny cut with a toilet paper swab. Then he wrapped a towel around his
waist and went into the bedroom next door.
