Book 82: Yesternight

"I had tried to be a good girl. Oh, my Lord, after hopping into boys' beds, how I worked until my brain ached; how diligently I had played by the rules. I had stopped seeing men altogether, dressed in skirts that fell well past my knees, and wed myself to the 'female-appropriate' stratum of a male career."

Dates read: August 23-25, 2016

Rating: 3/10

Like most people, I hold some irrational beliefs. I've always had a soft spot for astrology (which I know is making my husband shake his head as he reads this), and I've made a visit or two to palm readers/psychics (neither of which told me anything that was particularly true). When you acknowledge your own irrational beliefs, it's hard to draw a line and say that yours are truer than any other. If the position of the stars in sky when I was born has an influence on my life, why couldn't ghosts be real? If my crooked little fingers are significant to who I am as a person, why couldn't someone have a guardian angel that watches over them?

At the beginning of Cat Winters' Yesternight, Alice Lind doesn't believe in anything irrational at all. A female psychologist in the 1920s, she's been shoved into the pink ghetto of school (and by extension, child) psychology rather than the doctoral research she desperately wants to conduct. She mostly administers intelligence tests, but has dealt with a few significantly disturbed children who were thought to be supernaturally influenced and revealed their troubles to be the product of entirely mundane phenomena. Her own childhood had a mysterious event of its own: at age four, she violently assaulted a group of neighborhood children. Her family refuses to provide her with more information regarding the incident, and it would seem it precipitated her interest "solving" the mystery behind the troubled children she encounters. When she steps off the train in Gordon Bay, Oregon, though, she soon finds herself confronted with her most perplexing case ever.

The seven year-old niece of the local school teacher, Janie O'Daire is a math prodigy, able to perform complex calculations in her head and working on college-level proofs. More than that, though, she's claimed since the time she could talk to be a young woman from Kansas named Violet, who drowned. With a set of acrimoniously divorced parents (which would have been very rare in that time period), it would seem she is ripe for the kind of emotional issues that might provide a prosaic explanation for her claims. But as Alice digs deeper, it becomes more and more probable that this might, in fact, be a genuine case of reincarnation. As she becomes convinced that Janie is telling the truth about her past life, Alice finds herself wondering if her violent outbursts might be the product of her own previous existence as a notorious murderess. 

So I know my policy around here with regard to spoilers has been to avoid them as much as possible without compromising my ability to fully discuss the book, which usually means no or minimal spoilers. While they don't ruin a book for me personally, I know other people feel differently and I do my best to respect that. However, the ending of this book had a substantial impact on how I ended up feeling about it, so if spoilers bother you, please close this window and come back when you've read it (or don't, I guess, I'm not the boss of you, but I hope you do!). 

It turns out that Janie is in fact a reincarnated spirit, and a visit to Kansas to see Violet's sister proves it. Alice has convinced herself that her childhood outburst, as well as an experience in college when she attacked a classmate who impregnated and then dismissed her, is the result of her own past life as the homicidal owner of an old hotel not too far away. No sooner has she convinced herself (and her new lover, Janie's father) that it's true, then Alice's sister reveals that the details Alice recalls about the murderess in question were actually told to her by that sister when she was very young. She's not expressing the violence of a vengeful presence inside her, she just has anger issues. Soon thereafter, Alice and her lover have a fight that becomes physical and he ends up dead. We're treated to an epilogue in which Alice is now raising her young son, the product of that relationship, and he's revealed to be...the reincarnation of his own father. Which, no. That's stupid and terrible. Until the end, the book hums along pretty well. It's nothing particularly special, but the plot moves quickly and it's entertaining to read (I'd have rated it at a 6). The end, though, just completely ruins it. It's awful. I'd had some quibbles with the book previously (Alice doesn't make much of an effort besides taking people at their word to determine whether Janie has ever experienced any abuse and the unlikelihood of an actual divorce at that point in history...it would have been much more realistic to have Janie's parents estranged than divorced) that were enough to keep me from finding it anything more than slightly above average, but that ending just torpedoed it. I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Tell me, blog friends...do you have any irrational beliefs?

One year ago, I was reading: The Song of Achilles

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Book 82: Yesternight

Book 2: Unbelievable

"But physicists initially argued against evolution because it didn't fit their view of the physical world at the time. In order to incorporate Darwin's discovery, cherished views had to be sacrificed. The kind of damage a new discovery inflicts is not merely intellectual, but emotional."

Dates read: October 11-15, 2015

Rating: 3/10

When I was in middle and high school, I went through a period where I was fascinated with the occult. Doesn't every teenage girl go through that stage? I'd be lying if I said I didn't still have a lingering interest in some parts of it (like astrology and tarot cards), but for the most part, it's not something I think about very much. But when this book was on Kindle sale, I read the title and that little teenage girl part of me wouldn't let me pass it by.

Before beginning this book, I was vaguely aware of the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory...as in I was aware that it had been a thing, wasn't sure if it still was a thing or anything that might have come out about it. As a reference text about Dr. J.B. Rhine, who founded the Laboratory, and the work of the Lab, this is a very solid work. But much like the Lab and its refusal to trade in sensationalism, the book's steadfast sticking to a "just the facts, ma'am" approach means that it doesn't really go anywhere.

Things like ghosts and poltergeists are the kind of juicy stuff that makes for page-turning reading. It's also the kind of thing that donors gave money to the Lab to research. But Dr. Rhine's primary interest wasn't keeping dollars flowing, it was establishing parapsychology as a legitimate field of research and scientific thought. Seances, mediums, telekinesis...those kind of talents, even if there was some intriguing anecdotal evidence to support them, weren't able to be performed on demand and couldn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. So while they were dutifully investigated, the Lab focused mainly on ESP research and mind-reading with the famous Zener cards. They did have success at these experiments, enough so that that the Parapsychological Association was eventually able to join some scientific groups, but that was about the total of what they were able to achieve.

At the end of the day, I just didn't really enjoy reading the book. It's not really about parapsychology or mysterious happenings, it's about Dr. Rhine and his struggle to gain scientific legitimacy for his work. That's why the rating is so low: it's not poorly written, it's just that ultimately, it's not very interesting.

Tell me, blog friends, what do you think about life after death? Do you believe in ghosts?

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Book 2: Unbelievable