Next I read The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt*; honestly, I don't know why. It's been on my "list" since December 2009, I think: I'm pretty sure I had noted it down (pretty cover) around the time of my melanoma surgery, but, honestly, I am glad I never got around to picking it up - probably because I never was that taken by Possession, so I've been skeptical of the Byatt hype. I was so out of it, half the time with pain and half the time with sleepiness (thanks a lot, pain meds), and I would have been bored to death. Actually, maybe that would have been a good idea, because sleeping was the only time I wasn't hurting, and the medication was only useful for making me sleepier faster...
The book was wasn't all that bad, I guess, or even really bad, but it was sloooow. The book was set in the Victorian years through World War I, and focuses on a loose association (at times tight, at times vaguely incestuous) of families, mainly liberal and artsy, in England, and I enjoyed the basic premise and setting, but some of the characters were really annoying (Olive!) and Byatt would go off on these page-long digressions about what was happening in the theater or literature or politics at any given moment in the book.
Context is fantastic, and I can see where she was going with all the information, but it was like chapters from an encyclopedia got dropped down inside a novel. At one point she starts talking about the general nature of the Edwardian English on page 391 and keeps going, listing books published, theories propounded, and social behavior, until 397. That's seven pages of nothing directly related (or all even, really, related more than slightly) to any of the characters or plot points.
The thing is, I almost don't even blame Byatt. I totally get it - you do a ton of research, you learn a lot of cool stuff (and, of course, it seems extra cool to you, because you've been working for it, and immersed in it, even if it's not that cool to other people), and you can't bear not to use it. I've been there. But someone needs to edit that sh*t. So I mostly blame her editors, because it's their f***ing job, but she needs to take some of the blame. Because, yeah, sometimes you would rather lose flesh than a fascinating bit of trivia you've dug up, or even a (to you at least) marvelously well-crafted passage, but sometimes you just have to. That's life.
There's a better example of what I think she was aiming for on page 480, when she inserts just a brief paragraph about some books that were being published at a certain time; the type of literature hitting the English market is clearly related to the public sentiment and actions of her characters that she is describing, and it's mildly valuable context that's not intrusive. Or a hundred pages later:
"Wolfgang Stern was already on the battlefield, in the German Sixth Army, under Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. He was on the left of the Schlieffen scythe, retreating deliberately towards Germany to draw the French Army outwards, away from Paris. The French soldiers wore a uniform from the past, with red trousers, a long great-coat, broadcloth tunic, flannel shirt and long underpants, winter and summer. Their boots were known as 'Brodequins' which was the name of an instrument of torture. They carried a rifle, a kit weighing sixty-six pounds, and a regulation bundle of kindling wood."
Did we need all this information? No. Could it have been presented in a more organic way? Yes. Is it even accurate? I have no idea, and don't care enough to look it up (I should ask my brother; I don't think WWI is his bag, but he does military more than I do, and goodness knows, for some bizarre reason he seems to enjoy French history - stupid Napoleon). But it works. And she picks things up with the next line/paragraph:
"The French soldiers believed in attack, and then attack, and then again attack. They believed they had been defeated in 1870 because of a lack of firmness and elan [what is up with everything I want to cite tonight needing accents??]. They charged, heavily, drums beating, bugles sounding, their long bayonets held in their guns before them. They were very brave, and the German machine-gunners, including Wolfgang, mowed them like fields of grass."
MUCH better. Same tone and pacing, more or less, but so much better. Pretty d*mn good, actually.
There were also awkward points throughout the book when she would follow the trail of one of her digressions to a date, and then have to move back in time when she finally returned to the actual storyline. Sometimes this happened even within the story itself; Byatt would focus a lot on certain episodes in the characters' lives, and then advance the plot forward with a jump to a more interesting period. Fair enough, but it got awkward in places. For example, on page 408 we read,
"In 1904 Major Cain travelled [sic/B] with the Director, Sir Casper Purdon Clarke, and Arthur Skinner, who was to succeed Clarke, to the opening of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin: they went also to the Kunstgewerbemuseum, and Cain went on to Munich, where the display impressed him. They went in 1901 to the opening in Paris, in the Louvre, of the Musee [sorry, can't make the accent happen] des Arts Decoratifs [ditto]..."
So we've traveled from 1904 back in time to 1901, and learned some not-so-pertinent information about the leadership structure of the Victoria & Albert. But time resumes its usual forward momentum - assuming we're sticking with 1901 as the starting point - because on the very next page,
"He [Cain] had his worries about her, also. In 1902 she was twenty-three..."
Really? I'm sorry, but this is a prize-winning author, and she couldn't come up with a less clumsy way of advancing the narrative through time? Then again, as far as I could tell at least two women wound up pregnant as the result of a single sexual encounter (for one woman it was her first time), and while I realize that can happen, honestly, what are the odds of two women, in the same circle, both getting knocked up so easily? Well, what are the odds, I mean, when the author doesn't need some surprise babies to shake up the narrative a bit... Lazy, is all I'm saying - this isn't General Hospital (which I watched two hours of today, because I was home and felt terrible and just sat around feeling bad for myself - anyhow, they ALSO love a random pregnancy to spice things up).
I feel bad that I am being so negative - that I came away from the book feeling so negative - because I thought it started out really strongly, and there were certainly a lot of elements that I really liked. Some of the characters were interesting and finely drawn (although she really let down the reader with Tom, I think, and let down Tom, for that matter, towards the end) - and she moved back and forth between different threads of the story competently. Maybe the bitterness is because I was disappointed...it's like the book and I had a bad breakup. And I had had such high hopes - because Byatt lured me in with early passages, like the one where she describes a complex, magical, macabre puppet show:
"An illusion is a complicated thing, and an audience is a complicated creature. Both need to be brought from flyaway parts to a smooth, composite whole. The world inside the box, a world made from silk, satin, china mouldings, wires, hinges, painted backcloths, moving lights and musical notes, must come alive with its own laws of movement, its own rules of story. And the watchers, wide-eyed and greedy, distracted and supercilious, preoccupied, uncomfortable, tense, must become one, as a shoal of fishes with huge eyes and flickering fins becomes one, wheeling this way and that in response to messages of hunger, fear or delight." [72]
In some ways it can be the same thing for a book. Obviously each reader brings his/her own background and experiences to a book, and every reading (even different readings by the same reader) is of a somewhat different book, because to read a book is an experience as much as an act, and there's so much more than just the words on the page. But the author still needs to control the reader somewhat, make the reader follow along, and if we, the audience, are the fishes, Byatt had me hooked initially, but lost me.
*I don't anticipate it really mattering, but the edition I read was the Chatto & Windus (London - obviously, the British punctuation was driving me nuts at first until my brain adjusted) 2009.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
A Month's Worth of Books, pt. 3
And now the American edition...
First up, Serena, by Ron Rash. This was one I had picked up a long time ago from the library. I don't remember why; I think maybe I just saw it when I was looking for something else on a nearby shelf, and something about the spine caught my eye. It was a while ago, but I still remember it more or less. It was interesting. A solid, unusual premise - stone-cold WITCH (and I'm not being coy, she's not just a b*tch, she's scary mean) and husband in a ye-olde-timey logging camp down south. She, Serena, is definitely a unique character, and there several other characters that stand out or are appealing. The ending felt like it was out of character with the rest of the book, though, and I particularly didn't like the way the second main character, her husband, was developed...it was both predictable and a bit of a let-down. It was worth reading though; I'd be interested in learning what other people think about it.
Then I read The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow. And it was GREAT. SO great. Just beautifully, gorgeously written. I'm loathe to refer to a book as "lyrical" because it sounds so unreasonably cheesy, but this book actually is. It's also sweet, funny, smart... Ha, I sound like I have a crush on the book! Let's see, how do I dial back the lovin' on the book...well, it's also terrifying in places. Except that it's terrifying when describing with admirable clarity what awful things people can do from and for love. So...yep, I would consider dating this book :)
Technically I suppose this is a coming-of-age story, and also about race, but both of those things inform the book, and lend it gravitas, without taking it over or getting predictable/stereotypical. The main character is a young half-Black, half-White girl, new to America (the child of a European woman and an African-American soldier stationed abroad) who is badly injured and loses most of her family in a horrific incident, and goes to live with her paternal grandmother. The story traces her twisting path to near-adulthood, as she tries to figure out if she's Black, and what that means, and how to process the tragedy she has barely survived, physically and emotionally. All of the main characters, and there are several, are fully-drawn and compelling. Durrow has a keen eye for just how to describe someone, and make a character come to life, and has her creations act in ways that feel completely true. She doesn't shy away from the negative or harder-to-accept aspects of her characters, but she approaches all of them with enough compassion that the reader always feels a respect for the character (well, not all of them, but a few of the minor characters do NOT deserve our respect). I wish I hadn't had to return the book today, because there is so much more I could say, and I had marked a bunch of passages that were just so fantastic I remember thinking at the time I wanted to post about them... Oh well, the only think I can really say about the book, the only thing that matters, is READ IT.
Another coming of age story, this one partially about race, is The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, by Susan Gregg Gilmore. So, this one is definitely one that I grabbed off the shelf while looking for another book, because the title just sounded funny. And of course it's library-bound, so it's not like I could read the back or anything, so it's been on my shelves at home for months now, and I had no idea what it was about, so then I started getting nervous that it might suck, and never read it. And, I'll be honest, I was on such a high after The Girl Who Fell From the Sky that I almost didn't want to read it because I was worried I would be let down. To my surprise, I wasn't. I mean, it wasn't a fantastic book by any means, but it ended up being a lot better than I expected.
The main character needs to grow up in the 60s and 70s with her dysfunctional on the inside, but ever so proper upper-class Southern family, while figuring out what she needs, and along the way falls in love with the African-American son of her family's driver (I'm not giving anything away - that part was pretty predictable). At first the book just seemed kind of fluffy, and after The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, I just wasn't feeling that. But I ended up getting drawn in the the story, and attached to some of the main characters (the ones you should be, anyways), and enjoyed it, and it even gave me a little to think about. I thought the ending was particularly good, in so far as it was satisfyingly unsatisfying - we don't know exactly what happens, we don't even know if it's a happy ending or a tragic ending. Especially for a book that in many ways is just a good old-fashioned story, it was a bold choice on the author's part.
First up, Serena, by Ron Rash. This was one I had picked up a long time ago from the library. I don't remember why; I think maybe I just saw it when I was looking for something else on a nearby shelf, and something about the spine caught my eye. It was a while ago, but I still remember it more or less. It was interesting. A solid, unusual premise - stone-cold WITCH (and I'm not being coy, she's not just a b*tch, she's scary mean) and husband in a ye-olde-timey logging camp down south. She, Serena, is definitely a unique character, and there several other characters that stand out or are appealing. The ending felt like it was out of character with the rest of the book, though, and I particularly didn't like the way the second main character, her husband, was developed...it was both predictable and a bit of a let-down. It was worth reading though; I'd be interested in learning what other people think about it.
Then I read The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow. And it was GREAT. SO great. Just beautifully, gorgeously written. I'm loathe to refer to a book as "lyrical" because it sounds so unreasonably cheesy, but this book actually is. It's also sweet, funny, smart... Ha, I sound like I have a crush on the book! Let's see, how do I dial back the lovin' on the book...well, it's also terrifying in places. Except that it's terrifying when describing with admirable clarity what awful things people can do from and for love. So...yep, I would consider dating this book :)
Technically I suppose this is a coming-of-age story, and also about race, but both of those things inform the book, and lend it gravitas, without taking it over or getting predictable/stereotypical. The main character is a young half-Black, half-White girl, new to America (the child of a European woman and an African-American soldier stationed abroad) who is badly injured and loses most of her family in a horrific incident, and goes to live with her paternal grandmother. The story traces her twisting path to near-adulthood, as she tries to figure out if she's Black, and what that means, and how to process the tragedy she has barely survived, physically and emotionally. All of the main characters, and there are several, are fully-drawn and compelling. Durrow has a keen eye for just how to describe someone, and make a character come to life, and has her creations act in ways that feel completely true. She doesn't shy away from the negative or harder-to-accept aspects of her characters, but she approaches all of them with enough compassion that the reader always feels a respect for the character (well, not all of them, but a few of the minor characters do NOT deserve our respect). I wish I hadn't had to return the book today, because there is so much more I could say, and I had marked a bunch of passages that were just so fantastic I remember thinking at the time I wanted to post about them... Oh well, the only think I can really say about the book, the only thing that matters, is READ IT.
Another coming of age story, this one partially about race, is The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, by Susan Gregg Gilmore. So, this one is definitely one that I grabbed off the shelf while looking for another book, because the title just sounded funny. And of course it's library-bound, so it's not like I could read the back or anything, so it's been on my shelves at home for months now, and I had no idea what it was about, so then I started getting nervous that it might suck, and never read it. And, I'll be honest, I was on such a high after The Girl Who Fell From the Sky that I almost didn't want to read it because I was worried I would be let down. To my surprise, I wasn't. I mean, it wasn't a fantastic book by any means, but it ended up being a lot better than I expected.
The main character needs to grow up in the 60s and 70s with her dysfunctional on the inside, but ever so proper upper-class Southern family, while figuring out what she needs, and along the way falls in love with the African-American son of her family's driver (I'm not giving anything away - that part was pretty predictable). At first the book just seemed kind of fluffy, and after The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, I just wasn't feeling that. But I ended up getting drawn in the the story, and attached to some of the main characters (the ones you should be, anyways), and enjoyed it, and it even gave me a little to think about. I thought the ending was particularly good, in so far as it was satisfyingly unsatisfying - we don't know exactly what happens, we don't even know if it's a happy ending or a tragic ending. Especially for a book that in many ways is just a good old-fashioned story, it was a bold choice on the author's part.
A Month's Worth of Books, pt. 2
Okay, so, my thoughts on some of the books I read over the last month - we'll call this the "Foreign Mystery" edition:
S.J. Parris, Heresy - I read this one a while ago, but I got the sequel from the library, so i figured I'd re-read the first one so that I'd remember who/what was going on. I guess that was a good idea? In any case, the book was also fine, I guess? I read it either right around the time of the wedding (my best friend's wedding, yay!) or right after, so I was really just looking to relax with something mindless. And mindless it was, despite being a period mystery starring Giordano Bruno. What does it say about me that I find it more interesting to ponder if it should be "S.J." or "S. J." than the book itself?
S.J. Parris, Prophecy - I suppose this one deserves a review of it's own, since it's not a re-read, but I don't really remember it all that well at this point. More Giordano Bruno in England, working as an information-gatherer. I think it was...fine? Not so bad I stopped reading, or that I remember having a strong negative reaction, but certainly not good. I do vaguely remember thinking that I'm done with the series; even if there's another one written, I don't have any desire to read it (or them). I've stuck with plenty of other series before, even when they weren't all that well-written, but I'm not invested in the character, either, so it's just not worth the time.
Teresa Solana, A Not So Perfect Crime - I'm not sure if "Murder and Mayhem in Barcelona" is part of the title or just a snazzy teaser line they put on the cover. In any case, apparently the book won a prize for being the best crime novel written in Catalan in 2007. I'm thinking maybe there weren't a lot of competitors? I feel bad being snarky, but it really wasn't all that impressive. Not sure if maybe it was a translation issue, but I just didn't feel like the story was that good. It wasn't gripping, or compelling, or even, really, interesting, and in the case of a mystery, that's a pretty bad thing. The basic premise was interesting: a man and his brother work as fixers, more or less, but nobody knows that they're brothers, and their company is more or less literally a shell. They have an office, and there are fake doors in the wall that lead to the "offices" and when clients come they greet them in the main area, saying the other offices are being painted, and the receptionist is out - and even leave a bottle of nail polish on "her" desk to help sell the illusion. In that sense I felt like the author put a lot of thought into the book - her main characters and their setting, the world they live in and move through, is creatively and vividly imagined and fleshed out. The plot was boring though - no suspense, no surprises. Some humor, but nothing that stood out.
S.J. Parris, Heresy - I read this one a while ago, but I got the sequel from the library, so i figured I'd re-read the first one so that I'd remember who/what was going on. I guess that was a good idea? In any case, the book was also fine, I guess? I read it either right around the time of the wedding (my best friend's wedding, yay!) or right after, so I was really just looking to relax with something mindless. And mindless it was, despite being a period mystery starring Giordano Bruno. What does it say about me that I find it more interesting to ponder if it should be "S.J." or "S. J." than the book itself?
S.J. Parris, Prophecy - I suppose this one deserves a review of it's own, since it's not a re-read, but I don't really remember it all that well at this point. More Giordano Bruno in England, working as an information-gatherer. I think it was...fine? Not so bad I stopped reading, or that I remember having a strong negative reaction, but certainly not good. I do vaguely remember thinking that I'm done with the series; even if there's another one written, I don't have any desire to read it (or them). I've stuck with plenty of other series before, even when they weren't all that well-written, but I'm not invested in the character, either, so it's just not worth the time.
Teresa Solana, A Not So Perfect Crime - I'm not sure if "Murder and Mayhem in Barcelona" is part of the title or just a snazzy teaser line they put on the cover. In any case, apparently the book won a prize for being the best crime novel written in Catalan in 2007. I'm thinking maybe there weren't a lot of competitors? I feel bad being snarky, but it really wasn't all that impressive. Not sure if maybe it was a translation issue, but I just didn't feel like the story was that good. It wasn't gripping, or compelling, or even, really, interesting, and in the case of a mystery, that's a pretty bad thing. The basic premise was interesting: a man and his brother work as fixers, more or less, but nobody knows that they're brothers, and their company is more or less literally a shell. They have an office, and there are fake doors in the wall that lead to the "offices" and when clients come they greet them in the main area, saying the other offices are being painted, and the receptionist is out - and even leave a bottle of nail polish on "her" desk to help sell the illusion. In that sense I felt like the author put a lot of thought into the book - her main characters and their setting, the world they live in and move through, is creatively and vividly imagined and fleshed out. The plot was boring though - no suspense, no surprises. Some humor, but nothing that stood out.
A Month's Worth of Books
The pile of books threatening to topple over and take out my laptop may be a sign that I haven't written about any books in a while. I've been meaning to, but I kept waiting to write something thoughtful, and now there might be a book avalanche and the library wants some of the books back, so I need to at least just list them out.
So, after the most awesome wedding of all time (YAY, my best friend is married!!!), I suddenly found myself with tons of free time for the first time in months, and as well as catching up on my coffee and adult beverages with other friends, and tv, and READING. Roughly in order:
Heresy S.J. Parris
Prophecy S.J. Parris
A Not So Perfect Crime Teresa Solana, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
Serena Ron Rash
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Heidi W. Durrow
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove Susan Gregg Gilmore
The Children's Book A.S. Byatt
The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead Sara Gran
The Red Garden Alice Hoffman
I ALSO read Ransom Riggs' fantastic Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but I'm not sure where in the order it goes...maybe between Serena and before The Girl Who Fell From the Sky? I know the Parris books came right after the wedding, if not during; I figured more-or-less brainless period mysteries would be nice and relaxing. Then I think I grabbed the Solana off my bookcase one day because I needed a paperback (something light) to carry with me some where (which is funny, because I totally took it on a trip to DC to visit E for the same reason, and never got around to reading it). And those all feel like they happened a while ago, but the Durrow seems relatively recent, so I think Ransom must have been before it...
In any case, Miss Peregrine's is going to get its own glowing review, just not now. And when did I read the even more awesome, although very different, River of Smoke (Amitav Ghosh)?
So, after the most awesome wedding of all time (YAY, my best friend is married!!!), I suddenly found myself with tons of free time for the first time in months, and as well as catching up on my coffee and adult beverages with other friends, and tv, and READING. Roughly in order:
Heresy S.J. Parris
Prophecy S.J. Parris
A Not So Perfect Crime Teresa Solana, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush
Serena Ron Rash
The Girl Who Fell From the Sky Heidi W. Durrow
The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove Susan Gregg Gilmore
The Children's Book A.S. Byatt
The Sisters Brothers Patrick DeWitt
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead Sara Gran
The Red Garden Alice Hoffman
I ALSO read Ransom Riggs' fantastic Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but I'm not sure where in the order it goes...maybe between Serena and before The Girl Who Fell From the Sky? I know the Parris books came right after the wedding, if not during; I figured more-or-less brainless period mysteries would be nice and relaxing. Then I think I grabbed the Solana off my bookcase one day because I needed a paperback (something light) to carry with me some where (which is funny, because I totally took it on a trip to DC to visit E for the same reason, and never got around to reading it). And those all feel like they happened a while ago, but the Durrow seems relatively recent, so I think Ransom must have been before it...
In any case, Miss Peregrine's is going to get its own glowing review, just not now. And when did I read the even more awesome, although very different, River of Smoke (Amitav Ghosh)?
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