Friday Friyay: 'With Regrets' by Lee Kelly

Happy Friday! It's been one of those weeks where I've definitely put in the hours but I feel like I have very little to show for it. I think I'm making mental progress, if that makes sense, but it's not being reflected in any kind of word count. I think me being at a conference last weekend kind of had an impact, cause I missed out on the weekend so a certain exhaustion dragged into this week. But I think the mental progress I've made will hopefully help me get words on the page next week! This weekend I've got a family getaway from my grandmother's side, so while I'm in the train I'm gonna read With Regrets by Lee Kelly. It came out this week and I'm really in need of a thriller/suspense/Sci Fi novel to kick me into gear!

Seven courses, seven guests, twenty-four hours that will obliterate everything.

When recent NYC-transplant Liz Brinkley and her husband are invited to an exclusive soiree by their neighbor, “lifestyle guru” Britta Harris-Che, Liz’s immediate thought is hell no. Britta is insufferable, and Liz is wary to leave her young children with a barely-teenage babysitter. And yet she RSVPs anyway, trying to extend an olive branch to her withdrawing husband, who seems desperate to get in with the cliquey elite.

They’ve barely made it through their first round of champagne when a “red alert” comes through their phones, and every channel on the television tells the same story: strange atmospheric masses, reported to look like “glimmering clouds,” have been spreading through major U.S. cities and killing anyone they touch. Authorities have just one clear directive: Find shelter. Immediately. 

 A collective panic seizes the dinner party; all the guests have children at home. In the mad dash to their cars, they see it: a shimmering net floating over the town. The street is littered with wrecked cars and dead bodies. Leaving now is not an option. Instead, the group launches into survival mode, grabbing supplies to take shelter in the hosts’ wine cellar. But everyone has very different opinions about the best plan from there.

Liz becomes increasingly willing to do anything it takes to get back to her children. As the glimmering clouds continue to kill anyone who steps outside, the tensions and suspicions among the party guests near a boiling point. But she begins to realize that there may be others in that cellar even more desperate than she is.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. All quotes are taken from an ARC and may be different in the published book.

BB:

'Google Alerts

April 3rd Weekly Update - Inspiration Search results for <"eerie" and/or "uncanny" and/or "catastrope" and/or "apocalypse" and/or "widespread problems" and/or "no known cause"...>

United Kingdom Still "IN The Dark" Governments and Civilians Scramble to Establish Contact with Non-Communicative Isles 
New York Times' 1%

Love this kind of set-up at the beginning which throws you into the story kind of in the middle. Something is clearly up in the UK and I can't wait to see how it spreads to the US and how it saves Liz from an interminably boring dinner party.

F56:

'She has a sudden, desperate need to have someone hold her. How is cagey, lying, erratic Joel the "good parent" between the two of them? It's so unfair it's laughable.' 56%

Not quite sure whose perspective this is from, maybe Liz or Britta, but a global catastrophe seems like  a perfect time for marital issues to arise. Remember that Scandinavian film where a family is hit by an avalanche and the husband abandons his family, and when they all survive it turns into a massive drama? Yeah, that's the vibe I'm getting here. Can't wait to dive in further!

BBH: 

This week's question comes from Billy: 

Do you agree that libraries should ban books?

Very much a disagree from me, but there's nuance here. I think libraries should be easily accessible repositories of knowledge and art, regardless of where they are and what the current political climate is. Banning books is like the opposite of what libraries are there for. But "banning" has kind of become one of those terms that has lost a bit of meaning. If a library doesn't have the book you want to read, due to funds or space, that doesn't mean it's banned. When a discourse gets started about whether a book is "appropriate" and whether it should be available to, for example, students at all, then it becomes, in my eyes, a different conversation. Books are representative of their time, so some books may feature language or stereotypes which we no longer deem acceptable, but as representations of their time, they should remain accessible. Some books also feature more extreme representations of things, be it violence or sex or anything we might consider shocking. Not every reader is ready for that but I also don't think we should be encouraging readers, especially younger ones, to only read perfectly sanitised books in which nothing bad or weird ever happens. 

It's the responsibility of parents to keep an eye on what their kids are reading and making sure they have a space to discuss things they're reading and encountering, not just in books but also just in media generally. It is not a library's responsibility to cull anything potentially painful from its shelves. I encountered so many amazing books in libraries which opened up my mind to different points of view, etc., including books I was probably a little too young for at the time. If a parent wants to ban certain books from their household, so be it, even though I think that's probably misguided, but a library should be an objective space in which all kinds of things can be found. Kids are meant to learn about the world, and literature is one of the best ways to do that. When parents want to have certain books removed from teaching syllabi, for example, I always get confused because surely you'd rather your kid encounters certain things in a supportive environment like a classroom rather than on the Wild West that is the internet? These requests also often carry very strong overtones of what is and isn't appropriate and that is often marked very strongly by religious, class, and racial background.

Now, do I think certain books should maybe not be stumbled upon within a library by a curious youngster? Yes. I don't think, for example, that Hitler's Mein Kampf should just be chilling alongside the biographies and works of political figures. That is an example of a book which requires a lot of context and awareness and shouldn't just be in open distribution. It does need to be stored and preserved, however, for the warning it provides against rightwing and fascist thinking, so it should be available, but within a secure framework where it's properly contextualised. That's a bit of an extreme example, I admit. But books like, I don't know, Conrad's The Heart of Darkness or even Nabokov's Lolita don't require a similar kind of restraint although they do require context. The latter, Lolita, is an incredibly rough read and one which you maybe don't want to read at too young an age when you can't necessarily understand what it's trying to do. But it is a very powerful novel which demonstrates the power of words and the insidious nature of abuse of power, so it should be accessible to readers. 

So that's it from me this week! Very curious to see what everyone thinks on the BBH question! And what do you think of With Regrets?