it’s all in the keys

the cursor sat blinking before I started writing this post. I’m not sure what to say without giving away the plot to this thriller, family drama original, now available on netflix. it is called BLOODLINE, and like one of its predecessors, HOUSE OF CARDS, it is one of the most brilliant shows to line up in my netflix queue. the acting alone is phenomenal.

the Rayburn family has done some things. “John Rayburn”, one of the brothers is heard throughout the promos, “we’re not bad people, but we did a bad thing.” in thirteen episodes, the first season, you’ll meet each Rayburn family member and by the thirteenth episode you’ll know the bad thing, or will you? is there just one bad thing, one black sheep, or maybe there is a wolf in sheep’s clothing among them?

the cast is diverse with show stoppers, Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard playing matriarch and patriarch, and their grown children are portrayed by actors, whose rosters you may or may not be familiar with. the performance by Ben Mendelsohn as “Danny Rayburn” is extraordinary and should be recognized during awards season. just mail him the award, already!

it all takes place in Key West where there is a big house, a couple fish, a loading dock, a boat, a few cops, more than one shady neighbor, drug dealers, and traffickers, and childhood secrets swept under the sand, but you know what they say….

the sea will tell

blackout

I did not like the main character (the protagonist!) in this story, A SMALL INDISCRETION by O. Henry award winner, Jan Ellison. it is anything but a small indiscretion as the title implies, but multiple, reckless and thoughtless choices.

in a previous post, I talked about the book DESCENT by another O. Henry winner, Tim Johnston. like Tim, this is Jan’s first attempt at long form fiction, and like DESCENT, this book is a trail mix, too.

the writing is eloquent and reminded me very much of the stories by Sue Miller, where everything and sometimes not anything at all can happen in a few pages, and the story builds suspense in this way and you can visualize it unfolding before you on the page. for this, the writing, I liked the book, and for this, only!

of course, who would read a story without at least one scandalous character, a devious plot device, or a small indiscretion, but really, the character of Annie Black is unlikeable. her choices in youth define her, make her who she is now in middle age, a wife and a mother, and those choices were so peculiar, and bordered on perversion (several of the flashback confessionals will just leave your mouth formed into an oh!), and not one so called indiscretion, but at least two, and then another later in the book when she no longer has her youth as an excuse.

also this book is written as some sort of letter, a confessional to one of her children, her son, and really there are some details that I don’t think mothers discuss with their sons, at least considerate, respectful mothers of sons. it did not work quite right as a whole in the story.

please read this book at your own discretion

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