The Possessions. Finished 3-1-17, rating 3.5/5, fiction, 368 pages, pub. 2017

In an unnamed city, Eurydice works for the Elysian Society, a private service that allows grieving clients to reconnect with lost loved ones. She and her fellow workers, known as “bodies“, wear the discarded belongings of the dead and swallow pills called lotuses to summon their spirits—numbing their own minds and losing themselves in the process. Edie has been a body at the Elysian Society for five years, an unusual record. Her success is the result of careful detachment: she seeks refuge in the lotuses’ anesthetic effects and distances herself from making personal connections with her clients.

But when Edie channels Sylvia, the dead wife of recent widower Patrick Braddock, she becomes obsessed with the glamorous couple. Despite the murky circumstances surrounding Sylvia’s drowning, Edie breaks her own rules and pursues Patrick, moving deeper into his life and summoning Sylvia outside the Elysian Society’s walls.    from Goodreads

What started slow, but interesting, gained strength as we neared the midway point and finished with and acceptable end.  Because there was no place or even time frame given to the novel it had a dystopian feel, even though society was operating just as it does today. The story without context and the protagonist who kept us at arm’s length left the story in some parallel universe where the only thing different is that ‘bodies’ like Edie could open themselves up to spirits beyond the grave so that loved ones could continue to have a relationship with the deceased.

Creepy.  The whole book was creepy, but not in a bad way. The idea of renting a body to talk to a lost loved one (think séance without the candles or theatrics) was new and the Elysian Society seemed like a well run operation.  Edie, one of the longer serving bodies was a blank slate for the bereaved and the reader.  Until the end you really had no idea who she was, where she came from or what she was capable of and by then it was almost too late to care much.

I liked it because it was different and the concept was a fun one to ponder.  There were enough subplots to keep the story moving and at least one character I ended up caring about more than Edie.  But there were some issues too, the slow start being one.

I  thought this was a solid debut and very different.  Kudos to Murphy for bringing something new to the table.

Thank you to TLC Tours for the allowing me to be a part of this tour and sending the book to me.  Here are the other stops if you’re interested in checking them out.

Almost Famous Women. Finished 2-8-17, rating 4.5/5, short stories, 236 pages, pub. 2015

The fascinating lives of the characters in Almost Famous Women have mostly been forgotten, but their stories are burning to be told. Now Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Birds of a Lesser Paradise, resurrects these women, lets them live in the reader’s imagination, so we can explore their difficult choices. Nearly every story in this dazzling collection is based on a woman who attained some celebrity—she raced speed boats or was a conjoined twin in show business; a reclusive painter of renown; a member of the first all-female, integrated swing band. We see Lord Byron’s illegitimate daughter, Allegra; Oscar Wilde’s troubled niece, Dolly; West With the Night author Beryl Markham; Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister, Norma. These extraordinary stories travel the world, explore the past (and delve into the future), and portray fiercely independent women defined by their acts of bravery, creative impulses, and sometimes reckless decisions.       from Goodreads

I don’t read short stories. I like big books where I can really get to know a character and spend time with a story that has the time to develop and take a few twists and turns.  But for book group this month we read Almost Famous Women  and I was pleasantly surprised. As it turns out, I was the only one since the other seven ladies didn’t care for it as a whole.

Each story started with a picture of the woman so that you could have a visual when you were reading and that was important for the first story.

Violet and Daisy Hilton were joined at the hip, literally.  This one was both disturbing and fascinating. People that you know showed up in the stories, Marlene Dietrich, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Lord Byron, Butterfly McQueen, Beryl Markham…but like the title says, most of the women in the book were almost famous.  I liked some more than others but particularly liked the one about Joe Carstairs and her private island, Romaine Brooks and her very creepy nurse, and Lord Byron’s illegitimate daughter broke my heart.  I liked the mix of known and unknown and it made me check out more information on a few of the women.

The book group as a whole found the stories needlessly depressing and I can’t really argue on that point.  They were dark. There was a PTSD link in a few and more than one death.  We all noticed a homosexuality thread throughout the stories.  Most of us could pick out a favorite story or two and the book read really fast so that’s a plus.

So, I really liked it but I was the only one.  Read at your own risk 🙂

This counted as one for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge, story collection by a woman.