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Houdini Heart Ki Longfellow 9780975925515 Books

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Houdini Heart Ki Longfellow 9780975925515 Books

-10/5 stars. This was the most awful, pretentious, inane, inauthentic drivel I've ever read. Longfellow borrows all her metaphors from others, directly quotes Shirley Jackson every other sentence, plays with narrative devices in a childish, inept way (there is a book within a book; there are the episodes of past revelations; there is the haunted house and there are the hidden stairs in the closet and invisible people; there is madness slowly revealed; there is the helpless anti-heroine, abused and wronged and egotistically filled with pity for herself...).

These techniques, badly handled, jut out of the work at odd angles, never quite cohering into a coherent vision. In their fragmentation, they do not interact as related, messy pieces that organically shape an arc that is more than the sum of its discrete parts - worse, they interfere with each other.

Ugh - so many awful things about this "book", but the worst of all is the message:
"Real Artists" are those who live on the edge of madness, on the outskirts of "normality", those who are driven to create out of a passion to escape the boundaries of the conventional, "real world", those who self-destruct in their pursuit of their art, those who abuse and neglect their loved ones in egotistical self-absorption...

Longfellow's world is such a shallow, hollow one- one in which fame is a measure of one's artistry, in which drink is a solution to problems, in which people are driven mad by the natural consequences of their thoughtless actions, and do not learn anything about how to shape themselves into better people along the way, in which suicide is an expected form of ultimate denial, in which egotistical characters love to wallow in self pity and helplessness, in which damaged people damage each other and the world around them while not growing one single bit in the process.

No wonder, with this outlook, that Longfellow sounds so inauthentic, confused, and like she is trying so hard to write a story worth of Shirley Jackson (her apologetic tone, at not being good enough, strikes even more discordant tones, for indeed, the reader is led to admit to herself, Longfellow's drivel is bad mimicry at best)


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Houdini Heart Ki Longfellow 9780975925515 Books Reviews

Like Gilman's classic, "The Yellow Wallpaper" this tale is told from the perspective of a woman descending into madness, but unlike Gilman's powerless and subservient heroine, Longfellow's protagonist is violently propelled through her madness by the tragedies in her past and takes an actively macabre part in molding each fresh confusion into ever more terrifying and inexplicable events. No fanciful monsters or alien beasties serve as deus ex machina to explain the unexplainable...there is nowhere to lay the blame or the credit, but the damaged and fertile mind of the creator. While we read along, struggling to make sense of the events, wondering how the author will make sense of them, Longfellow's refusal to provide "plausible" explanations cunningly illustrates that reality is quite simply, never more than what we perceive it to be. Creation itself is the (Houdini) heart of this story, as the character creates other characters for a living, acknowledges that she has created her own life situation, and ultimately, surrenders herself to her own creations. As unlike Longfellow's other works as this is, both in content and style, it will not disappoint anyone who has (like me) come to love her ability to mesmerize, her educated prose, her audacious wit and her unflagging brilliance.
The reviews of this book were very positive and while I can see the merit in a book about a woman losing her mind, that doesn't make it a horror story. I am disappointed with the product I got after paying $9.99. I don't think this is at all interesting or worthwhile and I would recommend it to no one.
Deep and dark are it's passages. They draw you into insanity along with the author Ki Longfellow. This crumbling Victorian hotel,once known for its glamourous stars.It's ghosts will keep you company. Forever.
The author's voice is a creepy,dry,rustling one,echoing with nostalgia from the past,quietly.grimly taking you on a tour of madness.
Houdini Heart is one of the best horror stories you will read.
This is one of those books that takes you very gently down a seductive path that gradually entangles you in brambles of increasing identifiableness and madness, then won't let you go. Ki Longfellow Stanshall's first person narrator weaves you into a world that may seem perfectly ordinary at first, but as her skewed universe is fleshed out, the things that are wrong slowly snowball into a full blown inner view of psychosis. This lady is driving the car, but you can't get out.

I don't know any other book with a story vector quite so perfectly paced. It's rather like swimming in a clear, serene pond, floating languidly, amidst a mastery of language and descriptors delicious, rich and funny as Tom Robins, Thomas Pynchon, or even sometimes Joyce, and almost lazily sensual. But as one floats, the sense of a current slowly and subtly increases, until before you know it, it's as though you're swirling in a mad blender with blades swirling beneath the surface that are sure to chop you up. You want to scream for it to stop, but it's so beautifully and masterfully done that you need to see what happens next.

Flashing between the glamor of Hollywood and a small, bucolic town in Vermont, this book's protagonist invites empathy even as she leads you into her full blown insanity. She's a monster you've never met, yet somehow you know. By the time she's done with you, you've gone through her three dimensional circus of dementia right along with her.

If you like Steven King, Lovecraft, Alfred Hitchcock movies, and even a touch of Jaqueline Suzanne, this is a dark, lovely, wonderful and harrowing tale full of movie stars, sardonic humor and good old fashioned horror. It shakes you up, and then spits you out more than a little changed. Devilish fun. Highly recommended.
-10/5 stars. This was the most awful, pretentious, inane, inauthentic drivel I've ever read. Longfellow borrows all her metaphors from others, directly quotes Shirley Jackson every other sentence, plays with narrative devices in a childish, inept way (there is a book within a book; there are the episodes of past revelations; there is the haunted house and there are the hidden stairs in the closet and invisible people; there is madness slowly revealed; there is the helpless anti-heroine, abused and wronged and egotistically filled with pity for herself...).

These techniques, badly handled, jut out of the work at odd angles, never quite cohering into a coherent vision. In their fragmentation, they do not interact as related, messy pieces that organically shape an arc that is more than the sum of its discrete parts - worse, they interfere with each other.

Ugh - so many awful things about this "book", but the worst of all is the message
"Real Artists" are those who live on the edge of madness, on the outskirts of "normality", those who are driven to create out of a passion to escape the boundaries of the conventional, "real world", those who self-destruct in their pursuit of their art, those who abuse and neglect their loved ones in egotistical self-absorption...

Longfellow's world is such a shallow, hollow one- one in which fame is a measure of one's artistry, in which drink is a solution to problems, in which people are driven mad by the natural consequences of their thoughtless actions, and do not learn anything about how to shape themselves into better people along the way, in which suicide is an expected form of ultimate denial, in which egotistical characters love to wallow in self pity and helplessness, in which damaged people damage each other and the world around them while not growing one single bit in the process.

No wonder, with this outlook, that Longfellow sounds so inauthentic, confused, and like she is trying so hard to write a story worth of Shirley Jackson (her apologetic tone, at not being good enough, strikes even more discordant tones, for indeed, the reader is led to admit to herself, Longfellow's drivel is bad mimicry at best)