Pseudopod 257: In “The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise”

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 257: In “The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise”

By Gemma Files
Aside from the THE GEMMA FILES under her name, you can also visit Gemma at the following blogs: Music At Midnight, Segregation, and Handful of Dust! A BOOK OF TONGUES, the first volume of her HEXSLINGER series can be purchased from Amazon.

Read by Julia Rios, whose blog is at the link under her name.

“‘Yet here we sit snug and warm and dry nonetheless, traders and settlers and immigrants bound for even more distant places alike, before this open, welcoming fire; here we may eat and drink our fill and go ‘round the circle in turn, each of we travellers swapping a story for our place beneath this roof ‘till morning. And I will be more than glad to add my own contribution to that roster, if only it should please you to bend your ear and listen.”



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[Scattercat]

I loved this one.  Great mashup of werewolf legends tossed in a pot and seasoned with a French-Canadian accent.  :-D

[Unblinking]

Didn't care for this one.  There were a lot of interesting ideas in there, and I can see the appeal in the mashup.  But for me the story started after the action ended.  Then I get to heard Grandma summarize everything, monologuing hardcore like a James Bond villain.  It felt like Grandma was the only fully-fleshed character in the story.  The girls are barely distinguished from each other, let alone other people.  The cannibals apparently had no traits other than being cannibals.  Grandma felt like a real person, but I didn't particularly care what happened to her, and in any case by the time the story started she had everything well under control.  So, with everything in the past, no particular tension, and most of the characters not feeling real to me, I just didn't get into it.

Does anyone know what the title is supposed to mean?  It seems like the title is referring to another title, but one which I've never heard of.

[Scattercat]

The name of the bar is "The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise."

[Unblinking]

The name of the bar is "The Poor Girl Taken By Surprise."

Ah!  I had completely missed that.  Odd name for a bar.  Perhaps fitting for a town of cannibals, though apparently not very smart ones (it would make better bait if it didn't sound like a trap).

[kibitzer]

Generally, I don't like "re-imagined" fairy tales. However, this one had such a different take on the original that I felt it was a genuinely different tale. Wonderful!

[Kanasta]

To me this story was a sandwich with a delicious meaty filling but made using stale bread. The beginning was a bit dull, the middle was brilliant and then it got dull again. I wish the middle bit had been written as a third person story telling the actual events. This way of telling the story as a monologue seemed a bit of a copout and there was way too much infodump. I would love to read/hear that juicy middle story some time though!

[yaksox]

I guess it was just me but I had trouble following this. If scattercat says the narrator had a french-canadian accent then okay but I thought she was a neutrally-accented north american doing a european (german?) accent and the upward intonation at the end of most sentences was throwing me. terrible excuse for not getting a story I know.

There were moments of that Northern (hemisphere) winter grimness that bit through that I really liked. As someone who grew up in the feel-it-to-believe-it ultra-mild climate of victoria, australia, northern hemisphere winters are grim. Grimms grim.

[Scattercat]

Well, she's *supposed* to be French-Canadian, is my point.

[slag]

I dig on anything that sounds like folklore, so I thought this one was pleasant for what it was. I didn't really think it was necessarily a horror story outright at first, but then they got to the eatin' parts.  What I did like was in the relating of how the horrors of the past became a part of the present when the old lady tells the people in the bar they were also her children now. And I love that it ended with that. That shock that the crowd has to come to grips with.

[Listener]

I agree with Unblinking that it was very, very, VERY talky. I kind of kept expecting Grandma to go ape***t (wolf***t?) on the bar's patrons at the end... but it didn't happen. Sort of disappointing.

Good performance though.

[Kaa]

I had a really hard time liking this story. I thought the story itself was okay, but it just went on and on and on and on and on. And on. And I was distracted by the accent of the narrator because it sounded to me like it went in and out as the story went on. And on.

[Fenrix]

I enjoyed the story, and it was an interesting new punishment for the transgression of cannibalism.

My only real gripe is that I didn't really understand the purpose of the name of the bar, other than an artistic conceit. The setting was evocative, but the bar's name detracted from it. The name of the bar is unusual enough to be confusing, and it was jarring enough to break verisimilitude.

[Sgarre1]

I don't consider it an artistic conceit - England (which may not be the setting of the story, but you get my drift) is rife with oddly named pubs and inns, usually with some kind of story connected.  Examples:  "The Duke without a Head", "The Cat & Custard Pot", "Donkey on Fire", "Sally Up Steps".  The name probably exists as the set-up for the telling of the tale in the inn to the inquisitive poor girl that eventually ends in the actual experience of the name.

I honestly found nothing jarring or odd about it - it did a nice job of signaling and "old world/European" tone of the piece.  YMMV.

[kibitzer]

The Slaughtered Lamb

[Fenrix]

That makes a lot more sense in that context. I withdraw the comment regarding artistic conceit. Maybe I missed it, as I lost some bits in the beginning to merging and lane changing, but I would have benefited from a greater description of the place and a luridly decorated sign out front.

[Marguerite]

Working my way through the last episodes of 2011 before I treat myself with the Trio of Terror.

The only problem I had with this story is, as others have said, it felt wordy. It's clear the author has a command of werewolf history, but I couldn't help but feel like the story was secondary to showcasing that knowledge. That being said, I liked the ending with it's even MORE horrifying implications that the punishment shall be much worse than the crime. 

And EXCELLENT pronunciation on the Québécois French. I admit to having a hit-or-miss appreciation of Ms. Rois' Podcastle readings, but this was certainly a tally in the hit column.