Black Gate

Rouge by Mona Awad (Simon & Schuster, August 1, 2024). Cover uncredited

Red footwear is a powerful metaphor in folklore and fantasy. Dorothy clicked her red slippers to go home. (Yeah, I know, the slippers were silver in the Baum book, and only became red as a better fit with new Technicolor filming, but stay with me here.)

Let’s go back to the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Red Shoes in which Karen is given a pair of red shoes as (it turns out) an inappropriate confirmation present; the shoes stay stuck to her feet and force her to dance incessantly to the point where the only remedy is to cut off her feet.  The story forms the basis of the British film, also called The Red Shoes, in which a ballerina dancing in red shoes commits suicide. The film inspired the Kate Bush song (you guessed it) The Red Shoes.

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The Great Eastern by Howard A. Rodman (Melville House, June 4, 2019). Cover artist unknown

Pop quiz. What do Captain Ahab, Captain Nemo, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel share in common? Okay, if you don’t know the first two, you have no business reading anything here at Black Gate. But you are forgiven if you haven’t a clue as to Brunel. I know I didn’t until I read Howard A. Rodman’s wonderfully inventive novel,  The Great Eastern.

Let’s look first at the main difference. Captain Ahab and Nemo are fictional. Brunel was a real person, and not just any person, but a renowned 19th century engineer who not only worked on Britain’s the Great Western Railway and Clifton Suspension Bridge, but also designed a series of of steamships called the Great Britain, the Great Western, and the Great Eastern.

So you can start to see where this is going.

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