Reviews! I don’t think I can call them weekly anymore, huh? But I’ve finished a lot of books of late, so here you go. Tomes brimming with romantic girl-cooties (sorry, fellas). Two of them made me cry! In this edition:
The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne
Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase
Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
Deed of Paksennarion by Elizabeth Moon
Since I posted earlier about the controversy surrounding Jonathan Strahan’s TOC in Eclipse Two, I am now linking to his apology about the matter.
It seems heartfelt and well thought out. I really commend him for giving it. I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for certain other editors to read it and take it as an example.
For those of you who have not heard, anthology editor Jonathan Strahan recently announced his final TOC for the upcoming Eclipse Two anthology, published by Night Shade Books. Now, you might have thought that given the brou-ha-ha surrounding the cover of Eclipse One, those associated with the project would now be very sensitive to gender issues and disinclined to repeat the spectacle. Well, apparently not.
The TOC is (as far as I can tell) entirely made up of white men, with one white woman. I’m with ktempest: I find this sort of thing wholly unacceptable. And no, I refuse to look at some sort of long-term trend to confirm bias when it comes to an anthology. Anthologies are books, meant to be consumed as single projects. It’s not like a magazine, with subscribers, a regular production schedule and an expectation of future issues.
I’m re-posting here what I just wrote in the comments section of the original SF Signal announcement:
Jonathan,
So, you have created an anthology of white men and one white woman. The publisher’s copy for Eclipse One reads:
“Set to become a major event on the science fiction and fantasy calendar,Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy gathers together new science fiction and fantasy stories by the best writers working today.”
This is a general interest anthology. It’s being promoted as some sort of compilation of exciting new talent. And yet, that talent is as race and gender limited as anything that would have been published 30 or 40 years ago. I bet those editors thought they were gender/color blind, too. 13 white men and 1 white woman represent the best writers working today?
Honestly, when the women dropped out, did it occur to you to cast a wider net and ask more women for stories? To open a few more slots from the open call or extend it? To recruit a few of the dramatically underrepresented pool of writers of color (especially female writers of color), very few of whom ever seem to break through to the relative mainstream of our genre?
No one is saying you should accept a story by a woman or a writer of color just because you need to fill a quota. But a solicited anthology is only as good as the writers whose stories you solicit, and judging by this TOC (no matter what unfortunate first-round dropouts you had), you need to broaden your list. Any editor of a magazine or anthology not only considers the internal quality of each story but ALSO their relationship with each other. I hear all the time that a story might get rejected not because it was bad, but because, say, Peter S. Beagle beat you to the unicorn story slot. If you have a preponderance of AI stories, you might reject one you would otherwise have accepted. This type of “not just the quality of the story, but the quality of the market” balancing is an accepted and, indeed, *expected* part of the job of the editor. When Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling put out their fairy tale anthologies, no one wanted to read six sleeping beauty re-tellings, no matter how good they might individually be.
So HOW is it any different to consider another “not just the story quality” valence when weighing the effect of the balance of an anthology? How is it “affirmative action” or “quotas” or any of those other bogeymen to look at your TOC and think, “gee, I seem to have stuffed this with a lot of white guys. My readership might not like that anymore than an anthology with 7 romantic zombie stories, so let me try to balance things a little.”
There are so many excellent women and writers of color working in the field today that I find it astonishing that (when the first round of women dropped out) you could not have solicited several other excellent stories from them to help round out your anthology in all the ways people clearly care about.
Because I’m with Stephanie: I’ve seen enough of these all-male anthologies to last my lifetime.
I’d really appreciate thoughts/comments about this. This sort of thing frustrates me so much I never quite know what to do, but interaction is always good.
I will never understand how it is that perfectly reasonable, intelligent, precocious and curious children can grow up into timid, hidebound, ideologically paranoid adults who feel the need to police every errant word that might pass their precious babies’ dewy eyes. And by this I mean: by what reasonable standard can an eleven year old child not be allowed to understand what the word “scrotum” means (especially in reference to a dog’s genitals, and in the most clinical manner possible)? Why is it that sexually curious (and possibly active) fifteen and sixteen year olds shouldn’t be able to read about teenage homosexual relationships (Boy Meets Boy)? What on earth are we trying to “save” these children from? Reading, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, is an act of discovery, one that in some way uncovers some heretofore unknown aspect of our world. Writing is humanity’s best method of conveying all sorts of knowledge, including the bewildering complexity of our human interactions. And reading is perhaps any person’s best chance of entering another person’s head, and really experiencing the world from their perspective. So, to me, it seems like it should be a crime for some wrong-headed adult to restrict any child capable of understanding the material from reading anything they wish to. Yes, I am opposed to censorship of any kind because I at least remember the joy of reading as a young teenager. I know that if my parents had decided to vet my choices before I was allowed to enjoy them, many of my fondest reading experiences would never have happened. Maybe I wouldn’t have been able to read the Alanna series when I was twelve because she gets her period and falls in love with a much older man.
By book four, in fact, the Alanna series is rather singular among YA fantasy novels, which tend to be dramatically more conservative than their “realistic fiction” YA shelf mates. Judy Blume was telling young girls about their periods and (possibly ill-advised) sex with boys while YA fantasy authors were cleaning up after dragons and vain wizards. Now, I adore Patricia C. Wrede and Diana Wynne Jones (ask anyone), but at a certain point in my youth I had to wonder: where on earth was the sex? The periods? The sexual uncertainty? Why was it that these issues never seemed to make it into YA fantasy, but were staples of many realistic YA novels? And I think the reason goes straight back to these self-imposed gatekeepers of Young People’s Pristine Minds: librarians, parents and editors. For some reason, fantasy was always seen as skewing younger than more realistic YA, and thus much less adult content was tolerated. (I wrote an essay for Beatrice about the amorphous distinctions between YA and adult fantasy, but those distinctions of qualitative focus are, I think, a little separate from the sex, etc. I’m discussing here.)
But this is all ridiculous. Tweens and teens are perfectly capable of understanding and appreciating the subject matter of Boy Meets Boy or The Higher Power of Lucky. I treasured every morsel of truly adult content I gleaned form my reading in middle and high school. Every serious (not titillating) explanation of a sexual act or interaction was to me a valuable window into a world I wanted to know more about. And when I see adults struggling to board up these windows for kids far more isolated than I ever was, I get furious. Not every child is willing to rebel. Some willingly go along with their parents’ or librarian’s well-meaning (I suppose) damming of their intellectual outlets.
And even when the parents and librarians don’t censor, I sometimes feel like there is far too much self-censorship on the part of authors and editors, especially in fantasy. I mean, why is it that twenty years after Alanna had some decently explicit sex with Jonathon and George do we still see so little in YA fantasy? Why do we have to turn to realistic YA for some decent homosexual relationships? Why are we so afraid of “polluting” young minds with information that we all know, and could benefit ourselves from exploring further? What amazing condescension to these people we were, not so very long ago.
Yes, teenagers know about sex. Yes, they’d like to read about it. Yes, they know what prostitutes are, what drugs are, what death is, what war is, what disease is…THEY ALL KNOW. It isn’t some big fucking secret. Authors should write what they feel compelled to write, without the pinpricks of self-censorship, about subjects they feel are interesting to the people they want to reach, and that audience should in turn be able to read whatever the fuck they want. Does something make you feel uncomfortable? Then stop reading it. Or, even better, keep going. But for god’s sake, don’t you dare tell me or anyone else, no matter how young or impressionable you think they are, what you think they should read.
Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. Scrambling to write a few short stories and finish editing a novel. Something more regular should resume soon. But in the meantime, I thought I’d direct you to particularly moving post about the intersection of a very personal loss and the more abstract knowledge of the loss several orders of magnitude larger occurring right now in Iraq. It’s a much noted facet of the human condition that while we are capable of profound empathy for those close to us and with whom we share certain in-group bonds, we are also adept at distancing and dehumanising those with whom we don’t share ties. Thus, the million-plus Iraqi deaths are disputed and trivialized and the death of the 4,000th American soldier is met with appropriate solemnity and mourning.
But before you think humans are hard-wired into this destructive combination of in-group empathy/out-group demonization, read IOZ’s post. We’re capable of overcoming the tendency with enough self-examination.
I once had an idea for a (dys/u)topian science fictional society where the Great Overlords simply enforced empathy on the population, thereby ensuring that they’d be reluctant to fight bloody, tragic, costly things like wars. A little like in Buffy, actually, when Spike’s chip zaps him every time he feels predatory. Would that be a free or fair society (terms of arguable use, but fine)? If every time you hurt somebody you felt that same hurt, would the choice to abstain be your own? But maybe I’m being too Puritan. What does Personal Responsibility matter when countless millions are dying in wars across the world, and billions are starving and suffering in the kind of extremity I can only imagine? If most humans can’t extrapolate their own pain onto others, then maybe it’s to the greater good to make them.
But then, I’ve always had this thing for benevolent tyranny.
A large review installment to make up for missing the last two weeks. I’ve been on the road and so didn’t have much time to sit down and read. But now I’ve had a chance to catch up, and for some reason all of these books made me loquacious. Perhaps because the theme of this batch (excepting Lord of Light) seems to be the ever-frustrating Disappointing Romance. Well-done romance reads effortlessly, but it’s incredibly hard to write. Brandon and Dianora in Tigana, Mating by Norman Rush, The Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee…maybe I should create a big list of my favorites. And I’d adore any suggestions, of course.
Inside this issue:
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
To Feel Stuff by Andrea Seigel
A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcombe
Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny
The Winter Mantle by Elizabeth Chadwick
I’m reading Zelazny’s Lord of Light, which I’m actually enjoying quite a lot so far. However, I plowed to a stop when I came across this:
(For context, Sam has just ascertained that the person reincarnated into an aggressively male body of the god Brahma was originally female. You’d think these distinctions would cease to matter after getting dumped into dozens of bodies over the course of centuries but, hey, what else were the sixties for?)
“Yes, Madeleine,” said Sam, “and did anyone ever tell you how lovely you are when you’re angry?”
Brahma sprang forward off th throne. “How could you? How could you tell?” screamed the god.
“I couldn’t, really,” said Sam. It was just a guess, based upon some of your mannerisms of speech and gesture which I remembered. So you’ve finally achieved your lifelong ambition, eh? I’ll bet you’ve got a harem, too. What’s it feel like, madam, to be a real stud after having been a gal to start out with? Bet every Lizzie in the world would envy you if she knew. Congratulations.”
[Skipping the bit where he's angry and about to curse Sam for mocking him.]
“Nay, my Lord. I did but jest with you as any one man might with another when discussing these matters. I am sorry if you took it amiss. I’ll warrant you’ve a harem I’d envy and which I’ll doubtless try to sneak into some night. If you’d curse me for being surprised, then curse away.” He drew upon his pipe and wreathed his grin in smoke.
Finally, Brahma chuckled. “I’m a bit quick-tempered, ’tis true,” he explained, “and perhaps too touchy about my past. Of course, I’ve often jested so with other men. You are forgiven. I withdraw my beginning curse.”
This passage features such breathlessly backwards gender politics, that the only thing I can give Zelazny credit for is the courtesy of at least using a masculine pronoun in his reference to Brahma.
So, apparently, you’re only a real man when you can bandy about sexist jokes and compare harems along with penis size. Oh, and such desires are of course the innermost wish of every man-hating “Lizzie.”
I guess that’s golden age fiction for you. I can only hope that Zelazny got out a bit more after he wrote this.
First, my reading on Saturday at KGB bar went really well. There were tons of people, and my fellow readers, Matt Kressel and Eugene Myers, were great. Here are some pictures from the event, for the curious.
I figure I might as well make this reviewing thing regular. Thus, every Monday I’ll put up capsule reviews of stuff that I’ve read recently, and maybe a few of my older favorites. This week features…
Skin Hunger by Kathleen Duey - Well, this book came so highly recommended to me that I could barely wait to get my hands on it. The recommender described it to me as a dark, “anti-Harry Potter” wizard school book, and it delivered the goods. I mean, I like Harry Potter and everything, but there were a lot of unsavory implications about the supposedly “good” side of that world that Rowling never explored. Well, Duey gets down and dirty with it here. The plot follows two apparently independent threads, separated by several hundred years. In one, Hahp, a young merchant’s son, is essentially disposed of by his abusive father into a wizard school. His father knows full well he will probably die. After all, only one boy from each “class” survives to become a full-fledged wizard. This is dark, dark, dark but the imagery is lovely and the relationships very deftly drawn. I adored the slow, creeping friendship between Hahp and Gerrard, his ambitious peasant boy roommate. Also, the magic was oddly enough some of the most realistic-feeling I’ve encountered in fantasy. I’m increasingly fed up with the “wiggle your nose, chant a few Latin words” variety of magic I so frequently see, but I really felt like Duey had thought through her magic system to an unusual degree. The other story line follows Sadima, a young woman with magic in an era where magic was forbidden. She falls in love with the servant of Somiss, a rich lord who wants to resurrect magic in the world. But his desire for power drives Somiss completely insane and their story starts to get darker and more desperate as well. The alternating story lines do eventually find some connection, but not very much, and I was frequently desperate to get back to Hahp and Gerrard. Sadima is an interesting character, and I probably would have enjoyed her story more if it had just been its own book– but not much can compete with the intensity of the evil wizard’s school. I mean, Hahp is in the middle of essentially a medieval, magical Battle Royale, and he’s watching every one of his classmates die. What can compete with that? Still, very recommended. Be warned that this is the first of a trilogy, and it ends on a cliffhanger. I can’t wait for book 2.
The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine - I’ve probably read Ella Enchanted four or five times (it doesn’t take that long) and it’s probably my favorite Cinderella retelling ever. The only other of her books I’ve read was Fairest, a snow white retelling that I liked, but not nearly as much as Ella Enchanted. Two Princesses isn’t quite as good as Ella Enchanted, but it’s vintage Levine and very enjoyable. It’s about two princesses who grow up in a kingdom beset by a strange plague that kills whomever it infects. One is brave and the other timid and domestic, and they both dream of the time when the brave one will save the kingdom and the timid one will marry and have children. But when the brave one falls ill with the deadly plague, it’s up to the shy princess of Bamarre to find herself and defeat all the dragons she never intended to face. A simple set-up, but deftly done and very sweet. Not genius, but a fun read.
The Naming and The Riddle by Alison Croggon - These are the first two books of the Pellinor series, which I’d read good things about and so decided to check out. I was almost ecstatic when I saw how big and fat they were, settling in for a nice and long YA fantasy read. Unfortunately, after a few pages I realized what I’d actually gotten myself into: a big fat epic fantasy novel, for some reason dressed up as YA. I mean, on some level all epic fantasy is YA (there’s a reason why the age almost everyone I know first read Tolkien was between nine and twelve), but I object to people labeling this as different in any fundamental way from, say, David Eddings or Terry Goodkind.
These books are literally by-the-numbers epic fantasy, faux-author’s notes about the discovery of the “lost epic of Pellinor” and an invented bibliography and supplementary materials notwithstanding. Usually I like those sort of metafictional touches, but in a world as basic-generic-fantasy as this one, they struck me as a bit of handwaving, attempting to distract the reader from realizing that Croggon had written an utterly pedestrian fantasy novel. The writing is serviceable, but not much more inspiring than that. Maerad, as the lead character, seems to have some potential at the beginning (typically humble slave girl beginnings, with hints of grandeur in her lost childhood), being very fierce and determined, if utterly humorless, but she quickly devolves into a typical whining teenager. And yes, I know that teenagers whine a lot, but spending over eight hundred pages with one doing it with very little introspection or leavening humor started to make these two books a slog. The one bright spot in this utterly rote tale of the forces of the generic “light” being corrupted by the generic “dark” (replete with plot coupons, lost wisdom in ancient civilizations, wizard schools, evil wizards in deep dark hoods, fierce northerners, lush dark-skinned southerners, pre-literate faux gypsies and every other stock fantasy cliche you can toss in) was Cadvan, Maerad’s mentor. He has a dark past, and his relationship with her does not work quite the way you’d expect. He’s less Obi-Wan Kenobi than an actual three-dimensional human with a checkered past and his own, somewhat contradictory reasons, for wanting to help her. Of course, she’s also The Chosen One ™ and beautiful and and multi-talented and, like, everyone totally falls in love with her. Did I mention that in addition to being whiny, Maerad becomes a bona-fide Mary Sue about halfway into The Naming? I skimmed the end of The Riddle and just gave up. I can’t handle another one of these slogs. I don’t what the hell everyone is praising. Even if you wanted to read generic YA fantasy, in many ways you’d be better off reading Eddings. But really, I think someone should have sent Croggon a copy of The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, so she could have spared me all this trouble.
Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt - I got this on the strength of reviews and the beautiful cover. And, yippee, no disappointment here. I enjoyed pretty much every minute of this ethereal romantic fantasy. In some ways it reminded me of Patricia McKillip’s work, in the way it focuses on a relatively small, almost domestic, story filled with realistic characters in situations that still feel very true to their fairy tale roots. Keturah isn’t “hip” or “kick-ass”– she’s a girl who has grown up as a serf in a realistically detailed medieval village, with those sorts of attitudes and personal expectations. The basic story: Keturah follows a stag too deep into the forest and gets lost. She wanders for three days, and then lays down to die. She sees Lord Death approach her, and she attempts to forestall him by telling him, Scheherezade-like, a tale. This tale sounds suspiciously like her own, and Death is curious enough that he agrees to let her go for one day, if she promises to finish the tale. She returns home, and discovers that if she can find the man she truly loves, she can evade Death’s claim on her. So, Keturah goes through all the men in the village, but her thoughts keep returning to her strange bond with Lord Death…this was lovely. The sort of book you’d like to re-read by a fire over the holidays.
As always, please recommend books for me to read! I actually have a few (gasp!) adult novels coming to me from the library, so next week you will probably have a wider variety of reviews.
(The Shift began its life as a proposal for a SF television show, but I’m now in the process of turning it into a graphic novel script. The world is post-apocalyptic and sprawling, and I’m going to post various bits of things I write about both the world and the characters from the series. This helps with my creative process, and even better if I can interest other people in the project. At some point, I hope to find someone willing to work with me on sketching the characters and certain key locations.)
Jade Syndicate doesn’t throw their trash in the wasteland. Boss Jade is the only female syndicate head—and no woman with power takes for granted what she doesn’t understand. No one understands the Shift, that charred, virus-ridden stretch between the human protective force of teeming North City and the high, old-technological walls of Delphi University. Everything that isn’t City or University is Shift. Every part of the Earth, maybe, but no one in North City knows shit about geography. Pre-virus humans glorified their civilization, forgetting that without their supermarkets and computers and customer service centers, the majority of people on earth had a roughly stone-age grasp of technology. And when a virus eats up the land and kills 85% of them? The climb up that hill suddenly looks pretty damn steep.
So she doesn’t mess with the Shift, but Jade still has to do something with the living carcasses, the mind-bleached leftovers of her Goyles. Their power comes from the Shift, and until it drives them insane, she can use it to help control her corner of the city. Jade is grateful for your service, the disposal managers like to say to the incoming loads of gibbering half-humans. The Goyles are dispatched in a nominally humane way—no warm baths and soothing music, but sharp blades and a speedy efficiency that minimizes both pain and mess. Boss Jade tolerates pain; she hates unnecessary waste. Most bodies are kept in a giant cold room deep underground, protected by three levels of University-grade technological security. On any given day, as many as sixty Goyle bodies are laid out on identical silver gurneys. Jade Researchers use scalpels and saws and pickaxes to hack through the variegated hides of scales, feathers, rock and skin to see what lies beneath. Something in the Shift, the virus, has profoundly changed these humans; turned them into Goyles. With typical pragmatism, Boss Jade reasoned that she might gain an advantage over the other syndicates if she learned what else changed when one turned Goyle. In the cold room, anatomical anomalies are catalogued, photographed and detailed. Their bodies resemble animal carcasses if you squint in a certain way that all Researchers have learned to squint. And when these blood-drained cadavers have fulfilled all possible function, they’re shipped to a meat processing plant on the outskirts of her district, providing Jade with a hefty discount on the costs of producing glue, pet food and hot dogs.
Goyle family members are not notified.
Hmm…it’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. I think I’m going to do things a little differently on this blog from now on. I’m going to post excerpts and outtakes from projects I’m working on, and discuss good novels that I’ve read (I might as well, since I read obsessively). Unfortunately, I have no immediate plans to discuss black hair soon (WHY do I get fifty hits a day just for this post?) but hey, I could be persuaded to write some more about it.
So…books I’ve read recently:
Austenland by Shannon Hale - Latest in a long line of “OMG I love P&P with Colin Firth he’s SOOO hot” chick lit novels for both teenagers and adults. This is nominally for adults, though nothing in it wouldn’t be appealing to the YA crowd. It was fine, as far as it went, but it suffered from a problem I generally have with chick lit novels, namely that I find the main characters to be unbearable, neurotic, status-obsessed clones of Meg Ryan from, uh, about a dozen Nora Ephron films. I gather that the neuroticism over men and babies is supposed to be funny and relateable, but I do not relate and I didn’t crack a smile. On the other hand, what woman hasn’t imagined what she’d be like back in the time of Jane Austen? The central conceit of the novel is extremely clever. In brief: there are exclusive resorts for very rich women, where for three weeks they get to dress in period clothing, sleep in period housing, and interact with gorgey actors who are pitch-perfect period men. They also, of course, get to conduct clandestine affairs with these men, who have been trained in their personality types and know exactly how to fulfill their fantasies. The main character in Austenland is so obsessed with Mr. Darcy-as-Colin-Firth, that she goes there (via a gift from a rich aunt) as a kind of detox to try to get over the obsession so she can like regular men again. But of course…well, you don’t need a crystal ball to guess how it’s going to turn out. Amusingly enough, Hale is so much better at the period interactions than the modern ones, that I only ever really bought the romance when the main characters were acting their roles. And can I just say: much as I adore the BBC mini-series of Pride and Prejudice (and believe me, adore is the word) the novel is BETTER. Much better. Without the biting, mocking tone of the narrator, the absurdities of the characters can be glossed over. It edges closer to soap opera than social satire. Why can’t people just appreciate the damn book?! Ahem.
But, I thought, parts of this were good. Maybe Hale just was writing the wrong novel. Which led me to…
The Book of A Thousand Days by Shannon Hale - This was great! The narrator’s voice was so authentic, the setting and world-building was original and intriguing, the romance was squee-inducing (hey, I read YA novels for a reason) but not overpowering, and all the plot elements worked together very neatly at the end. This novel is told in the form of a journal by the servant of a steppe princess who has decided to brick herself into a tower for a thousand days instead of marrying the evil man her father wishes her to. But something is wrong with the princess…Hale is very deft at depicting a condition that might be autism from the point of view of a culture that would have no recognition of it. In some ways, this reminded me of Summers at Castle Auburn, which I love. Check this one out.
Extras by Scott Westerfeld - Well, like I need to really tell anyone about this, but yes, I read it, and yay! it was really good. What else did you expect? I loved seeing Tally from someone else’s perspective (a bit of a bitch, like you didn’t know), and of course it was fascinating to see how the changes from the first three Uglies novels changed the world. Even neater, I got to do a reading with the author 
The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray - When the third novel in this trilogy finally came out, I nearly did cartwheels. And it’s so deliciously long. Have I mentioned how much I dislike this imposed word-limit on YA novels? I mean, it has become obvious over the last several years that people like me who read YA novels are voracious readers who hardly mind the occasional tome over 80,000 words. But the only time you see really long YA novels are later books in the series’ of major authors. Oh well. Lucky for me, this falls in that category, so I had over 600 pages in which to love, and say goodbye to, these characters. And characters are what this series is all about. Bray’s plotting can sometimes be confusing and intensely contrived (this was no exception: Gemma overheard sensitive conversations by following people down dark hallways an improbable number of times), but her characterization is easily some of the best I’ve ever read. She has this knack for creating very real characters who are utterly the products of their times, but hide deeper facets that you might mistakenly think are only modern afflictions. In this novel, she takes on cutting, lesbian relationships, incest and interracial dating, just to name a few. The veneer over Victorian society has never been thinner. By the end of this, I was just weeping. Okay, novels make me weep all the time, but this was particularly satisfying.
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson - Hey, I’ve got to leaven a diet of YA novels with some adult fare every once in a while. This is one of Gibson’s most famous books, and deservedly so. A lot of it is masterfully done. Unfortunately, the plot seems to fall apart in the climax, where the main character literally passes out during the messy resolution of what has turned out to be an old cold war holdover spy game. She wakes up, and it’s all resolved. A little dissatisfying. And shall I say that I understand that this was written in the year after 9/11, but I am deeply suspicious of all novels that attempt to use that event to generate extra pathos in their characters. Particularly when the repercussions of that event, in terms of two long-term American wars, aren’t discussed at all. But still, very worth reading. Cayce’s peculiar derangements are a genuine accomplishment.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald - I’ve been trying to read the classics of 20th century literature lately, and this was one of the first on my list because it neatly coincides with research I’m doing for my roaring 20s vampire novel (oh yes). My opinion of the work, I know, matters not at all, but for what it’s worth I enjoyed it. The pacing is a little elegiac, but all the better to draw out the foibles of the characters. Also, I suspect that Nick Carraway is a little gay. And for the record, I thought that before I read about the great debates online.
The Quiet American by Graham Greene - Another one of my classics. What beautiful writing! I felt like I could smell the jungle humidity and opium smoke. I’m not sure how I feel about his portrayal of Phuong in this–in some lights it might be construed as patronizing and shallow, but on the other hand, couldn’t that just be more revealing about how little she reveals to Fowler and how little he can see in her? Because there is a scene at the end that seems to subtly reveal a depth of emotion we don’t see from her otherwise. Right, no need for a dissertation, but this is well worth reading. A view of the Vietnam war that I haven’t read elsewhere and heartbreaking.
If you’ve read any of these, let me know what you thought. And, of course, all book recommendations are very much appreciated.
