I’d like to review The Parliament by Aimee Pokwatka, but I’d also like to complain about book marketing a bit.
So first, a quick review. I rather liked this book. I feel like it has one of the better representations of anxiety and an overactive mind. Our main character Mad’s narration gives us insight into how she thinks and how she copes, without getting repetitive or causing me anxiety (which has sometimes happened in the past with other anxious characters). The author also doesn’t beat us over the head, allowing us to make our own conclusions about why when X happens, Mad has Y thought, for example.
The basic story is that Mad returns reluctantly to her hometown to teach a group of tweens ‘n’ teens to make bath bombs. Mad is well-known in town for the tragedy she survived (I will discuss this in the CWs and TWs section, but won’t spoil it in the main review), and this is one reason why she doesn’t want to go back, but she’s doing a favor for a friend. So of course she, the kids, the librarians, and an assortment of library patrons (including a guy she has a messy past with) all get trapped by a flock of tiny killer owls.
Of course.
In between alternating between waiting for the inept local town government to save them, and trying to take matters into their own hands, various members of the trapped group engage with one of Mad’s favorite books from her childhood, The Silent Queen. Chapters of that book are interleaved with the chapters of the main story, and we get to see the characters react, debate, and have big feelings over the book.
My only real complaint about this book was that there were too many people in the library, and some of them never really clicked for me. Even at the end of the book, someone would do something and I’d be like “Wait, who was that again?” so probably a couple of the book club members or kids could have been removed from the story to streamline the cast just a bit.
Now let’s talk about marketing. First of all, the comp title rains supreme, and I’m a little tired of the promo for almost every book starting with “It’s like X meets Y” or “For fans of X and Y.” In The Parliament’s case, it’s “The Birds meets The Princess Bride”. And yes, I guess that’s true in a sense, in that there are killer birds, and there is a story within a story. But let’s unpack that.
Here’s where I admit that I have never seen The Birds, and had to Google to learn that it was loosely based on a short story, which I obviously have not read. Reading a quick synopsis, I can see some similarities between this book and the movie, and so I’d call that a fair comparison. Like The Birds, The Parliament is a story about people being attacked by birds for unknown reasons. Under “Interpretation”, the Wikipedia article states: “One interpretation of the story suggests that it reflects the British experience during the Second World War, evoking anxieties about the government’s failure to protect their citizens and intrusions into domestic spaces by aggressive interlopers.” The Parliament deals both explicitly and implicitly with anxieties about the government’s failure to protect us.
But then let’s turn our attention to The Princess Bride. I have seen the movie approximately one hundred billion times, and have read the book once. While I recall that the book has a little bit more of a framing story than the movie, the framing story in that case is still primarily about the book. In the movie, it’s just a grandpa reading a book to his sick grandson, who occasionally interjects. The story within the story is the primary story there. In The Parliament, the stories have almost equal page counts (I believe the framing story is slightly longer, and it definitely gets more chapters), and I would argue that the framing story is the primary story.
More importantly, The Princess Bride is a family movie. It’s incredibly funny, it’s got some fun action, there’s romance and friendship and they all live happily ever after. It’s a feel-good movie with some genuinely tense moments. The Parliament, I would argue, is horror.
I’m arguing this, because it’s being marketed as contemporary fantasy, and was published by Tordotcom, the sci-fi fantasy imprint, rather than Tor Nightfire, the horror imprint. And while the story-within-a-story is a fantasy, I strongly feel that the framing story, the primary story, the story the book is named for, is horror.
Why do I feel like it’s a horror story?
- Being trapped in a library sounds nice, but being trapped in a library by a parliament of killer owls sounds horrible.
- There are a couple of horrific deaths and violent attacks; while they are not described in gory detail, they certainly would have been terrible for the characters to witness.
- Aside from the owls, there are no other elements that separate the framing story from normal, modern-day America.
- The themes that the book explores, about small-town life, governance, library funding, etc, all felt like the sort of thing that would be explored more in a horror novel than a contemporary fantasy.
- I’d just like to emphasize the murder owls.
Sure, this book isn’t as gory or tense as some horror novels, but I’d say it feels pretty similar to a couple of books I read last year, in terms of scariness level — namely Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, and A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher.
Anyway. I’m not thinking of a good conclusion to my argument. I just think this is a good example of lighter horror with a social message, with a fantasy story woven into it. I also think it’s worth a read if you can deal with the content.
CWs and TWs: Spoiler time — Mad’s classroom was the site of a school shooting and she witnessed her best friend being killed. She has lingering anxiety and probably PTSD or something similar — I don’t recall we’re ever given her official diagnosis, but it’s pretty clear through the book that she’s got triggers and coping mechanisms. I know that school shootings are a controversial subject for books and I respect anyone who doesn’t want this terrible reality in their fiction. In addition to this, there’s murder owls. There are violent bird attacks, and violence against birds. There are children in peril. There are multiple people with serious illnesses. There is death, and discussion of death of children.
Format and Source: I got this as an ebook from Sno-Isle Libraries.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): Books About Books. I mean, how can a book about being trapped in a library not be about books? Not only do the characters read and react to The Silent Queen, but they turn to the books, magazines, newspapers, music, and other items available in the library for research, entertainment, and reassurance as they wait for rescue. The book is a pretty compelling argument about the importance of libraries.
Current Bingo Challenge Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 6 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 4 out of 25 prompts complete. 0 bingos.
Brick & Mortar: 14 out of 25 prompts complete. 1 bingo.