Why let pain your pleasures spoil,
For want of our patented Magic Oil?’
This is the living archive of the Abbott-Gran Medicine Show. Please visit early and often and we hope one day to return with new tonics, remedies, elixirs and, just maybe, that miracle cure.
We thank you all.
The occasion of this post on/interview with Lois Duncan is the reissue/updating of ten of her classic YA suspense novels, complete with Saul Bass-inspired covers. Thanks to Lois and the good folks at Little, Brown, I have in my hot little hands copies of these reissues: Stranger with My Face, Down a Dark Hall and Summer of Fear. If you’d like them, just drop me an email. The first three to respond get one copy of each book and many night terrors to follow.
I want to thank Sara and Megan for letting me into their world. I think you’ll find our brains think alike.
Valentine’s Day got me thinking about the greatest love story ever told. Well, in my opinion, that is. I’ve always needed some darkness to my love stories and this one’s got it. This story has all the hallmarks of a Noir: a perpetually morose wife on the verge, a philandering husband, post-war suburban streets lined with palm trees… and a dashing crocodilian sea creature on the loose.
Can’t imagine it? Rachel Ingalls has envisioned it for you in Mrs. Caliban. Dorothy simmers with the slow burn usually found in a marriage with the gaping holes of selfish husbands and dead children. Ingalls has the prim front lawn, but infuses the standard conventions with the fantastic when she introduces Larry, a sea creature that is more caring and thinking than any of the other characters running through these pages. I knew I had a problem when I started thinking, God, Larry is just amazing. He’s so honest and secure. She’s so lucky. *Swoon*
Let me set you straight. Mrs. Caliban is not a dabble your toe in sea creature/human female relations kind of book. This is sea creature sex by page 33 kind of fearless writing. Ingalls ratchets the tension in early pages, dropping hints of what’s to come and does it effortlessly, so when Larry finally arrives I’m begging him to save Dorothy from herself.
Let me just add… he loves smelling night flowers. Amazing.
But back to the sex. Right before taking off Dorothy’s bathrobe, Larry utters words to Dorothy that create havoc on my brain receptors –
“Before…There was nothing. Now there’s everything. I could do things. Couldn’t I? You wouldn’t prevent me?”
He’s talking about many things, including his escape from captivity, but the feeling belongs as much to the newly restored Dorothy as it does to Larry. I can’t help feeling it belongs to all of us. What an exciting feeling to be awoken after a long sleep with the possibility of… possibilities! Escape! No boundaries. How refreshing. How rare. How fleeting.
I won’t give away the rest of the book, because I want you to feel that sense of awe that I felt when entering Mrs. Caliban’s world.
Instead, let Larry lead you to salvation and for God’s sake cover your eyes! You know what happens in Noir.
Hey readers! You can now get the Abbott Gran Medicine Show on your Kindle. You can get it here and it costs like a buck-ninety-nine to subscribe. Megan and I are using the money to fund a theme park in Sarasota–details T.B.A. I’ll post a permanent link somewhere as well but for now, just go buy it! And let me know if there are any other formats/platforms/whatever that you’d like to use to read this blog, OK? Thanks! You guys rock!
The Abbott Gran Medicine Show 