Brian Jacques has passed away at the age of 71.
I don’t really know what to say right now.
Author: Emera
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, by Shirley Jackson (1962) E
Date read: 1.24.11
Book from: University library
Reviewer: Emera
Penguin Ink editions, when will you stop being awesome? Cover art by Thomas Ott.
Shirley Jackson is the queen of opening lines:
“My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.”
We Have Always Lived in the Castle was the capstone in my mini Jackson-marathon of January; for some reason I’ve decided to review it first. It was her last novel, and contains almost all the Jackson trademarks: persecutory villagers, a haunted (not literally, in this case) house, thinly veiled wickedness and brutality, a split psyche, embodied here in sisters light and dark. Jonathan Lethem’s excellent introduction in the Penguin Ink edition situates these usefully in Jackson’s own life as the formerly shy wife of a university professor isolated in small-town New England, and in her sad decline as she succumbed to agoraphobia in her later years.
Merricat Blackwood. Oh, Merricat. She’s a typical Jackson heroine in that she’s determinedly childish and presexual; it’s hard not to read her relationship with the Blackwood house (like that other great Jackson house, Hill House) as an attempt to return to the womb. I also had a hard time remembering that she’s supposed to be 18, and not 12 or 13. A capricious, spiteful witch-child, she delights in hiding, in secrecy, in burying and nailing charms around the family estate, repeatedly drawing lines of protection around her and Constance and the house. (When interloping cousin Charles appears, Merricat hates him almost more for resembling her and Constance’s father than for his obvious mercenary aims; she strenuously rejects any masculine influence from their domain.) Her black cat Jonas follows her everywhere, and they “talk” to each other fluently. She loves thinking about the deaths of others: of her family, scandalously and mysteriously poisoned six years ago; of the villagers who hate them and blame fearful, fragile Constance for the murder. Above all, she’s monstrously selfish, a sort of funnel constantly drawing off Constance’s maternal attentions and lovingly described cooking.
Like any good trickster character, she’s both hateful and seductive. I couldn’t not identify with her flighty witchery – a good chunk of my childhood in a nutshell – all the while that I was increasingly repulsed by her emotional stranglehold on Constance. The violence in the book crescendoes shortly before the end, but the ugliness goes on from there, quietly, as Merricat proceeds to get exactly what she wants; it left me feeling more disturbed by a book than I have for a long while. At the same time, I couldn’t help remembering how much fun Merricat was, her wicked humor and her mocking embrace of dysfunction. Lethem’s introduction highlights Jackson’s talent for slyly “instill[ing] a sense of collusion in her readers,” reflecting “the strange fluidity of guilt as it passes from one person to another.” You can’t get much better at that than Merricat Blackwood.
Lorem Ipsum, Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum Books
1299 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA (Inman Square)
Really nice space, complete with small couch-y area and prints etc. by local artists. Decent selection of sff, great selection of YA. I forgot to check out the poetry section, which gives me a good excuse to go back ASAP. In general, really carefully organized and curated. Since they have a lot of floor space, they don’t have the slightly frantic, overstuffed feeling that most used bookstores end up having.
Loved all the extra-pretty old books selected for display:
The Bell at Sealey Head, by Patricia A. McKillip (2008) E
Date read: 12.30.10
Book from: Public library
Reviewer: Emera
The Bell at Sealey Head contains the most outright sexual passage I can recall reading in any of Patricia McKillip’s work. Tellingly, it’s also a tongue-in-cheek commentary on bibliomania:
“The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. Judd knew that about himself: just the sight of Ridley Dow’s books unpacked and stacked in corners, on the desk and dresser, made him discontent and greedy. Here he was; there they were. Why were he and they not together somewhere private, they falling gently open under his fingers, he exploring their mysteries, they luring him, enthralling him, captivating him with every turn of phrase, every revealing page?”
A-hem.
McKillip was possibly my most protracted love affair during my high school reading. Though I’ve grown away from her work a bit since then (particularly since I wasn’t much taken with her last two novels), reading The Bell at Sealey Head was a pleasant return. It’s a bit like Georgette Heyer meets Ombria in Shadow. Much of the novel concerns itself with gentle comedy and small dramas of courtship, set in the titular seaside town “at the edge of the known world.” But the underlying mystery that drives the plot concerns a ghostly bell that rings at sundown, and a strange world of knights and ritual occasionally glimpsed through the doors of a decaying manor.
McKillip occasionally writes overwhelmingly large, hectic casts, but here the slow pace and loose plot give the characters room to breathe. I found most of them endearing, if not all terribly memorable as individuals. There’s a book-obsessed innkeeper’s son (Judd); a merchant’s daughter being courted by a cloddish squire, but who would much rather write novels; an itinerant scholar with a keen interest in the history of the phantom bell; a maid who has befriended the princess who lives in the manor’s past; and so on.
As in The Tower at Stony Wood, there’s a strong feminist thematic, with a particularly pointed attack being made on the conventions of the courtly romance: the princess is made to constantly fulfill fractured, meaningless rituals in service of the faceless knights who ride in and out of the castle, with the expectation of eventually being married off to one of them purely for the purposes of bearing another child to carry out the rituals. (Spoiler: We eventually learn that she has literally been imprisoned in images out of a storybook.) Several of the other female characters are quietly rebellious, and seek self-determination or otherwise subvert social expectations. One of the most interesting, though least-seen characters is a woman of wealth who is forced to conceal her intelligence and private desires by perfecting a mask of exquisite boredom and frivolity.
All in all, a sweet, thoughtful, and frequently witty read. Not as urgent or eerie as my favorites of McKillip’s works, but as usual, it’s full of memorable, otherworldly imagery, rich and occasionally glinting with menace. It also has some wonderful lifestyle inspiration, in the form of an herbalist who runs around barefoot and lives in a book-filled, garden-surrounded house built in and around a hollow tree trunk. Excuse me while I radiate envy/aspiration…
—
P.S. Happy 2011, all!
Dystopia in YA
The New York Times interviews a bunch of notable YA/sff authors (and one academic) on what they think is driving the “dystopian trend” in current YA fiction.
It struck me as being a little bit silly that they didn’t interview any actual young adult readers, but it’s still interesting to see the varieties of cynicism and optimism represented.
– E
The Folk Keeper, by Franny Billingsley (1999) E
Date read: 12.19.10
Book from: Public library
Reviewer: Emera
“Here in the cellar, I control the Folk. Here, I’m queen of the world.”
The Folk Keeper is much darker and stranger than I expected based on the title and cover art alone – which is awesome, since that’s the way I prefer it. Corinna Stonewall is a proud, vengeful orphan girl who by wit and trickery earned the position of Folk Keeper. In subterranean dark, she appeases the anger of the vicious, cave-dwelling Folk – described as “mostly wet mouth and teeth.” Summoned by a dying lord to be Folk Keeper of his island estate, where the Folk are particularly voracious and mysteries abound, Corinna sets about uncovering any secrets that might give her more power, whether over the Folk or the estate’s various inhabitants. At the same time, it comes clear that she must begin to come to terms with her own secrets: her unknown parentage, her odd powers and desires.
Billingsley’s angular, vivid prose is an absolute pleasure, full of sharp dialogue, intriguing detail, and unsettling, obliquely beautiful imagery; she’s one of the most successful stylists I’ve encountered in recent years. If you have any familiarity with Celtic folklore, the key to Corinna’s secrets is pretty obvious, but Billingsley puts a number of creative spins on this and other traditional elements within the novel. Some are more convincingly organic than others, but all are beautifully described. And Corinna’s friendship with Finian, the estate’s eccentric, ship-loving heir, is genuinely endearing, with his good heart and gentle quips countering and eventually thawing her chilly Machiavellian pragmatism. I would gladly welcome a sequel just to read more of their [ADORABLE] exchanges. (<— ill-concealed fangirling, exhibit A.)
The only point on which I was less happy: the last few pages seemed overburdened by their obvious instructive agenda and labored symbolism, which cost the narrative some of its earlier leanness and fluidity.
Nonetheless, The Folk Keeper is destined to become part of my permanent collection, and likely the subject of numerous re-reads. Fans of traditional fairy lore, Patricia McKillip, Holly Black, or Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard, go forth and read! In the meantime, I’ll be eagerly anticipating Billingsley’s next YA novel, which is apparently slated for spring 2011…
Go to:
Franny Billingsley: bio and works reviewed
Author’s Note for The Folk Keeper
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill (1983) E
Date read: 12.21.10
Book from: Public library
Reviewer: Emera
The cover-flap copy for this book is so absurdly, inveiglingly charming that I just have to post the whole thing:
What real reader does not yearn, somewhere in the recesses of his or her heart, for a really literate, first-class thriller – one that chills the body with foreboding of dark deeds to come, but warms the soul with perceptions and language at once astute and vivid? In other words, a ghost story by Jane Austen.
Austen we cannot, alas, give you, but Susan Hill’s remarkable Woman In Black comes as close as the late twentieth century is likely to provide. Set on the obligatory English moor, on an isolated causeway, the story has as its hero one Arthur Kipps, an up-and-coming young solicitor who has come north to attend the funeral and settle the estate of Mrs. Alice Drablow of Eel Marsh House. The routine formalities he anticipates give way to a tumble of events and secrets more sinister and terrifying than any nightmare: the rocking chair in the nursery of the deserted Eel Marsh House, the eerie sound of pony and trap, a child’s scream in the fog, and, most dreadfully, and for Kipps most tragically, the woman in black.
So, yep, a good old English Gothic. Hill provides a smoothly paced, carefully detailed ghost story, meditative in tone and full of lovely, eerie descriptions of the silvery salt marshes and sudden “sea frets” (fogs) that surround the requisite abandoned mansion.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of much other praise for the book beyond words like “accomplished” and “polished.” Hill’s easy mastery of all the conventions of the genre – the meticulously built-up suspense, the confident young narrator whose rationality slowly buckles – has the effect of making it all feel rather tidy and expected, particularly since her prose feels about the same. In the twisty-turny thrillery department – I guessed the overall shape of the plot about 20 pages in, and foresaw most of the twists after that well in advance.
All in all, a pleasantly chilly read for a winter night, with one or two lingeringly unsettling images, but nothing that really bit deep.
Raise your hand…
…if you love the feeling of going into a library and coming out again with more books than you know you can read in the time available.
Ohhhhhhh yeah.
(I’ve been working hard on whittling down the ratio of unread to read books in my collection, but for the holidays I decided to indulge and sneak in a huge library trip, and it feels so good.)
Also, fun Nebula Awards interview with Cat Valente, wherein she provides all sorts of interesting tidbits about Fairyland.
Also also, may I squee about the fact that a week and a bit ago I got to see Valente read from her newest novel, The Habitation of the Blessed? (Unfortunately I forgot my camera, otherwise I’d have a few event photos, but I’m hideously backed up with any kind of blog-posting anyway and etc. etc.) As always, it looks to be tender, strange, and luscious; can’t wait to spend some quality time with my copy.
– E
Go to:
Catherynne M. Valente: bio and works reviewed
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781597801997?
Beastly, by Alex Flinn (2007) E
Date read: 12.10.10
Read: Borders piracy
Reviewer: Emera
Quick skim after my interest was momentarily piqued by seeing the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation. Alex Flinn‘s take on Beauty and the Beast casts Kyle Kingsbury, a New York prep-school prince with daddy issues, as the Beast. After playing a cruel prank on a (token subcultural) classmate, Kyle is horrified to discover that said classmate is, in fact, a witch, who proceeds to perform the requisite curse. Kyle is exiled by his father to an apartment in Brooklyn, where he sulks, is encouraged to read classics by his blind tutor, cultivates an interest in rose-gardening, obsesses over how he’s going to find someone to love him, and engages in mildly amusing repartee with a chatroom full of other modern-day fairy-tale characters. After an altercation with a drug addict, Kyle ends up welcoming into his mini-domain the addict’s daughter: one of his former classmates, a token scholarship student/girl named Lindy, who happens to like books and roses. You know where it goes from there.
For a book that’s supposed to be about learning not to rely on good looks and privilege, Beastly is distinctly concerned with, well – good looks and privilege. When Kyle first meets the witch, she’s described as an overweight Goth girl with a hooked nose and green hair. Luckily, when she reveals herself to Kyle as a witch, we learn that oh, actually, she has long eyelashes and a nice nose and a “hot” body. This is how we know she’s cool and powerful! And apart from his personality makeover, pretty much everything that Kyle accomplishes in the book (constructing a greenhouse and growing roses, buying a library’s worth of books for Lindy) is contingent on his still having access to his daddy’s credit card. Also, have a wise Latina (in the film version, magical negro) maid while you’re at it!
So yeah, I was not so much a fan, although I did find parts of Kyle’s voice and mannerisms surprisingly convincing, particularly his mixture of half-formed self-awareness and “buuut I couldn’t be bothered to give a crap about it” attitude, and some of his painfully telling remarks about his childhood perception of his father. The result is a character who balances depressingly realistic self-absorption and callousness with a believable eagerness to learn and do good.
I did appreciate Flinn’s obvious desire for readers to further investigate fairy tales and literature – the book is littered with references to other adaptations and parallel works, e.g. The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the afterword includes extensive recommendations for other fairy-tale retellings. If I could rewind, I might have read only the afterword, really, since I enjoyed her reflections on how she decided to approach the tale, particularly her observation that Beauty and the Beast can be read as two abandoned children united by circumstance. Nonetheless, I’m going to be incredibly predictable and recommend instead either of Robin McKinley’s retellings (Beauty or Rose Daughter; review of Beauty here) or, if you’re interested in the Beast’s perspective, Donna Jo Napoli’s Beast, whose historical and descriptive detail I remember enjoying.
Go to:
Alex Flinn: bio and books reviewed
Beauty, by Robin McKinley (1976) E
Visual, aural, other?
Two blog posts on reading that piqued my interest lately:
- Ari Marmell talks about being “Blind in the Mind’s Eye.” That is, when reading or writing descriptions, he does not visualize them, and if he takes the conscious effort to do so, “it doesn’t seem to add much value.” I would have loved to know what he does perceive foremost when reading…
- …an answer to which might be provided by Matthew Cheney’s discussion of “Ways of Reading,” in which he describes his own, primarily aural experience of the written word. Cheney also comments on the general usefulness of reading analytical (versus evaluative) criticism as a way of gaining access to other people’s perceptions of the same works – which is indeed a major part of why I love reading detailed, descriptive essays.
Since I’m always fascinated by differences in how people process and organize information – how do YOU read? Do you hear sounds first, or create images in your head, or some combination of the two, and/or something else entirely? Have you noticed that it affects what types of writing you prefer to read, or what you remember from what you’ve read and how you remember it? Somewhat on a tangent/more generally, do you feel that books demand you to read them in any particular way? (I have one friend who can’t read a book unless she’s concurrently taking exhaustive notes and marking bits off with Post-Its. You should see her copies of Thomas Pynchon and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.)
I’d describe myself as being primarily visual – although since I perversely have rather bad spatial and cognitive mapping skills, I suck at visualizing expansive and/or complex architecture and geography, except in a very impressionistic way. (Hence why sci-fi description frequently demands multiple re-reads from me – alien architecture and three-dimensional battle scenes are Right Out.) I notice aural qualities mostly on a subconscious level; if I’m interested in paying explicit attention to them, I either have to make a conscious effort of it, or read things aloud. (I suspect that’s not uncommon.) Secondary to my visual perceptions, I tend to form an overall sensual/synaesthetic impression, which is not infrequently influenced by the cover art. (Yep, I really, really do judge book covers, on more levels than one.) A random sampling:
- Ursula LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is flat, grey-white/blue-grey, and concretey. Her Earthsea Cycle is twilight-purple and gold, fading warmth, sun just gone under a horizon of black waves.
- Robin McKinley’s Sunshine is dark, warm, glossy, and… squishy. Like a molten chocolate cake (appropriately).
- A. S. Byatt’s short stories are greyish-gold light filtering through shallow water.
- Orson Scott Card’s Ender books are austere, even greyness, shading towards graphite, and a few degrees below room temperature.
That impression is a huge factor in my decision to re-read things – if I really, really like the feel of it, I want to have it recreated. It’s analogous, for me, to being attached to particular aspects of a season or time of day – wanting to see late-afternoon autumn sunlight coming in through a particular window, or to feel a particular temperature of breeze, say. I feel like there has to be a word for that in German…
– E