Book Review: THE REAPER'S QUOTA

Title: The Reaper's Quota

Author: Sarah McKnight

Publisher: Indie

Pages: 199

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

Grim Reaper #2497, or Steve as he likes to think of himself, is in big trouble. He is summoned by the Big Boss because he has not been meeting his quota of 30 Random Deaths each month. The Big Boss threatens him with dire consequences, complete annihilation, if he does not kill 30 random people over the next three days.

The premise seemed interesting at the beginning. People who have killed someone during their lifetimes become Grim Reapers after their death. But the premise was arbitrary; there was no explanation for why murderers were chosen to do this task. Steve doesn’t have an answer to the question, and thinking about it too much gives him a headache, he tells us. This lack of information causes us to lose the sense of novelty soon enough. The plot wasn’t particularly well thought out and the pace palled after a while.

There was a slapstick quality to the humour and the author steered clear of talking about deep philosophical questions or even themes like immortality, regret etc, which are inextricably bound with death.

An abysmal lack of diversity plagued the book. Considering that the Grim Reapers are supposed to work throughout the world, #2497 spends all his time killing people in America, mostly in Nevada, where he is based. Even the names of those who are selected to die are mostly of Anglo origin and parentage.

Granted the killings are supposed to be random, but the reasons should at least make sense. #2497 kills an African man because ‘Green is so not his colour’. Rude and racist.

Incidentally, Reapers International is headquartered in the US and operates as per US Central time.

Since each Random Death must take place more than a mile away from the Reaper’s previous killing, it gives #2497 space to hang around in Nevada. Very rarely does he venture outside the US.

Each random act of killing is preceded by a longish vignette on the basic nature and character of the chosen victim and how #2497 puts them to death in order to meet his quota. This is the only place where the author has put effort into researching various ways in which people have died. The methods of execution are not repeated, not once. #2497 is truly a death artist. He tells us that he likes to express his creativity through the manner in which he executes each Random Death.

Of course, the individual vignettes are interesting. But on the flip side, the exercise seems pointless because we are given details about people’s lives, causing us to see them as human and to relate with them, only for #2497 to sweep in and cut off their wicks.

Additionally, after a point, the story began to seem tiresome, because of the repetition involved. There were no real challenges that the protagonist faced, other than the threat of disappearance if he failed to meet his target. All he had to do, and even in the afterlife, despite being a skeleton, he was unmistakably a ‘he’, was kill people.

I found the whole deal about Heather, the only person to have had an encounter with a Grim Reaper and to have survived, a non-issue. There was a hint of romance that wasn’t called for. #2497’s final act was unconvincing. The twist at the end of the tale was totally unimpressive.

The author seems to have taken the idea of the Grim Reaper and run with it. There was no attempt to build an original world around it. The setting lacked lustre.

 

Spoiler: The scythe is supposed to cut off human wicks. How would it work on #2497, who is already a skeleton, and therefore has no human wick?

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

Book Review: MORNING PAGES

Title: Morning Pages

Author: Kate Feiffer

Publisher: Regalo Press

Pages: 384

My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐

I loved the premise of this book, but I wasn’t satisfied with the execution.

Morning pages is a technique popularized by Julia Cameron in her book, The Artist’s Way, where she encourages writers to write unstructured every morning as part of a process that helps them to get out of their own way.

 

Playwright Elise Hellman is commissioned by The Players Playhouse to write a play for the 25^th anniversary of the theatre; Elise is one of five playwrights, whose first plays were huge hits at the theatre when it first opened, to be selected for this honour. The earning of $50,000 for an original play is a huge motivation. But when Elise gets down to writing, she finds out that she can no longer write. She simply doesn’t feel inspired enough. There’s far too much going on in her life for her to be able to write the way she did.

Before long, her real life starts influencing the play she’s writing, until both are chaotic mirror images of each other.

Elise finds herself struggling. She cannot focus on her writing, particularly when her son, Marsden, won’t communicate with her, and her mother has dementia.

 

The writing is intentionally journal-like, stemming as it does from the morning pages. Each chapter of the book is a day of the Morning Pages. Interspersed with the journal entries are small snatches of the play that Elise is writing.

The letter from the theatre is dated January 5, 2013, and Elise is told that they need her finished play by December 1 that year. That’s a few days short of eleven months. And yet, on Day 1 of her Morning Pages, Elise informs us that she has 65 days to complete her play. She doesn’t tell us how she ended up losing so much time. Why did she start writing so late in the year?

We get to know of her problems in real time. We get drama with her mother, her aunt Rosemary, her cousin, Julie, her ex-husband Elliot and his girlfriend, Midge, and her son, who seems to have no motivation regarding his future.

With nothing but her morning pages to guide her, Elise’s play soon begins to run parallel with her own life. With fiction imitating real life, it becomes tricky for us to keep the characters straight. Because there are the ‘real’ characters and their close counterparts from the world of the play. And every character in the play is influenced by someone in Elise’s own sphere. For instance, her main character, Laurie, also has divorced parents, just like Elise.

With her dead love life, ex-husband and his girlfriend, and Elise’s father and his current wife, Nicolette, besides her mother and son adding their own antics into the mix, there’s drama aplenty in Elise’s life but no signs of the play writing itself out. So much for the morning pages.

One thing I must say. Her morning pages were more entertaining than the play which was literally based on her own life.

 

The play was dull for the most part. In one page of writing from the play, we read of Laurie staunchly defending her father in an argument with her mother. She says, of her father, he fell in love with someone else. And there’s not the slightest hint of irony when she says that. Does Laurie have no sense of loyalty towards her mother? How could Elise write such a line, considering that she is still cut up about Elliot falling in love with Midge?

We are told that Elliot made his fortune with a unique business model that he founded, one that matches consumers with an appliance based on their personality type. This was inane. It sounded like one of those dumb quizzes that aim to solve for you the burning question of How much of a Gryffindor are you? Or what breed of dog would you have been had you been a dog? I cannot imagine making money out of this business model.

Despite the basic plot hinging upon the writing process, there wasn’t much in the plot about Elise’s writing process or about dementia, which her mother has.

There were some parts I liked, many I didn’t, and large parts that felt disconnected. Marsden’s sudden change of heart and behaviour were unconvincing. The story, as a journal, felt removed from the reader. 

Also, I tried but I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. They were all unremarkable.

 

 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)