Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.
Carol Shields
Republic of Love
|
It’s May! Halfway through already! My library-addiction is in full bloom, along with the lily-of-the-valley in these parts.
I’m still dreaming of spending a few days with the stack of magazines that’s been virtually untouched for…oh, I don’t want to think about how long. (I know, I said the same thing in March. Er, April.) And new issues continue to arrive (they always do).
This month’s reading is (again) brought to you by the colour Orange. The longlist is out and I’m slowly reading my way through it. (Which prizelist is your current reading obsession?) So slowly that I’ve shifted to reading the jury’s shortlist for now, but I won’t be awarding my own personal Orange until I’ve read the rest of the longlist.
To try to squeeze in all that juicy bookchat (sorry, can’t help the Orange puns), I’m pouring six glasses of bookishness a week (fasting on Saturdays), including a magical potion on Sundays for Carl’s un-challenge, Once Upon a Time (including Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, which was also nominated for the Orange Prize).
I’m BuriedInAllKindsOfGoodPrint these days. How about you?
(First time here? Please don’t be shy: there’s no such thing as too much bookchat!)
The stories in Birds of a Lesser Paradise are so consistently good that I almost didn’t want to read them.
 Scribner - Simon & Schuster, 2012 Beginning Megan Mayhew Bergman’s collection, I had no expectations. She’s been much-anthologized, and has a nice list of publishing credits, but that doesn’t guarantee a good match between reader and writer.
I approached the work with the usual intentions, planning to read just the first story.
Normally, I take time between stories — a day, or so, at least — so that I can allow each story to settle on its own terms.
(I used to read collections straight though, like I read novels, but giving the stories some space works well for me as a reader which, in turn, works better for the stories; I’m more likely to appreciate them as individual works of art when I approach each story deliberately.)
But after finishing “Housewifely Arts”, my expectations swelled like the blister on a fresh burn.
I was content to just set the book aside at that point, just sit and think; I was fairly sure that the next story would leave me feeling let down.
It did not.
Neither did the next one.
Or the one after that.
Then, with “Yesterday’s Whales”, I started to get nervous.
A string of stories that all left me with the sense of satisfaction that I crave with short fiction? It was bound to break.
I loved “Yesterday’s Whales”.
On the first page, Lauren bursts out of the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test wand, prepared to discuss whether they should have a baby at this stage in their relationship, despite Malachi’s fervent belief that the human race is heading for extinction and human reproduction is not only foolish but irresponsible.
I didn’t know Lauren and Malachi on page 76, not until they burst into my reading life on page 77.
And, sure, we spent time together until page 100, but the details of their lives bear little resemblance to my own and we all know that I’m going to meet new people on page 101.
What we share are a handful of words in the bigger manuscript.
“When someone’s ideal is the absence of all human life, romance is kind of a joke.”
“I’d brought Malachi here a couple of times. He loved the solitude of Maine. It’s almost postapocalyptic, he’d said, as if that were a landscape he might enjoy, a place he might take vacations.”
“Mothers, I believe, intoxicate us.”
But, then, and largely because of the story’s final paragraph (and I won’t share that because you might intuit something of the wider arc of the story from it), I settled into the idea of loving this collection.
The stories are fundamentally about preservation.
Not only in the tangible sense. Though you could point to the bird sanctuary or the environmental activist group or the story set in 2050, or the story of the shelter rescues.
But in the wider sense of the word, in that they are rooted in relationships (often parental and care-giving relationships) between the two-legged and the winged, finned, and four-legged (even three-legged).
Birds of a Lesser Paradise is a strong and satisfying collection that I’ll be keeping on my shelves and contentedly revisiting. It reminds me why I read short stories and keep reading them.
As with Week One, this introductory bit will be spoiler-free and let’s continue to mark any spoilers in the comments below as other readers join us in mid-month. But next Monday, we’ll edge up to spoiler-territory and settle in there firmly on the final Monday.
 Last week we chatted (on various venues, see below) about the main characters, primarily Harriet. Several of you mentioned connections with other heroines, and the sense of parallels between Harriet’s experiences and the author’s experiences, which seemed to suggest a stronger connection between author and character than sometimes exists.
Harriet really is at the heart of the novel. And that’s not surprising for those who are familiar with the author’s work. Elizabeth Taylor once wrote, to a friend, that she was disappointed by letters that were filled with talk of what their senders had been doing: ”Just as my very dearest books are those in which people do hardly anything at all.”
One could say that nothing at all happens in A Game of Hide and Seek. Regardless of where one weighs in on that point, however, most would agree that the emphasis of the work is on the characters rather than the plot.
But is that all rooted in Harriet? There has been some discussion about Charles and Vesey, though we could perhaps say more about these men, as they are at the heart of Harriet’s story, as much as Harriet is at the heart of Elizabeth Taylor’s story. But even beyond this trio, what of the many other characters who contribute to the novel’s “real feel”? What of them?
Apparently an editor requested that the author edit the majority of the workplace scenes, which many of us particularly enjoyed in this work.
What if an editor had suggested eliminating some of the minor characters: Deirdre? Joseph? Kitty? Miss Lazenby? Caroline? Hugo? Lilian? Betsy? What would A Game of Hide and Seek be like without one of them?
Must they be included, or could the story have worked just as well without? Could you come to their defense as essential elements in this story, or would you be just as content to see them stricken with an editor’s ink? Could you make a case to rescue even one?
Or, what of the other characters that played such a role in earlier novels, their settings? Mrs. Lippincote’s house, the crumbling estate in Palladian, the harbour, the countryside? Is there a distinct sense of place in A Game of Hide and Seek that seems to play the role of a character?
Next week? Some readers may be joining in the later half of the month, and others may be thinking of re-reading or letting the story linger in their minds?
Stay tuned for some chatter about the two works that Nicola Beauman suggests are influences or works of importance for A Game of Hide and Seek: the short Chekov story “The Lady with The Dog” (available here and lots of other places) and the David Lean film, “Brief Encounter” (which is sooooo lovely and which influenced more than one writer in the VMC series).
And some chatter about the other consideration that Nicola Beauman gives to A Game of Hide and Seek in The Other Elizabeth Taylor.
Do hope some of you will enjoy playing along with these tangents to the work we’re discussing. I’m curious about the connections between the works and A Game of Hide and Seek.
Other event posts: Introduction, Week One, LibraryThing, The Elizabeth Taylor Centenary, Facebook Page.
Of course there are readers who gravitate towards fiction set in ancient times, with their battered Mary Renault and Robert Graves paperbacks, their beloved Rosemary Sutcliffe childhood favourites still lining their shelves.
 Harper Collins, 2012 But just as there were many readers who would never pick up a western but acclaimed the wonder of Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers, there are many readers who haven’t picked up a classical text but who have been struck by Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles.
Why Madeline Miller chose to re-tell this myth from the perspective of Patroclus might seem odd to classicists, but as Odysseus observes, it’s unpredictable which of the old tales survive.
“We are men only, a brief flare of the torch. Those to come may raise or lower us as they please. Patroclus may be such as will rise in the future.”
If Madeline Miller has anything to say about it, it would seem that’s true.
And this debut novelist knew, as soon as she discovered that she could combine her love of studying classic texts with her love of writing, that she would write from this character’s perspective.
“It was always Patroclus from the beginning.”
She was fascinated by this character who had been born a prince but lived as an exile, an ordinary person with an extraordinary love story.*
Of course other characters do play a role in the tale and there is a glossary at the back which could serve as an aid.
(It is placed at the end of the novel because the character summaries contain what will be seen as spoilers for those readers who do not know the story of Patroclus or Achilles).
Not only gods and immortals (Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Chiron, Hera, Scamander, Thetis, and Zeus), but legendary mortals (Achilles, Aeneas, Agamemnon, Ajax, Andromache, Automedon, Briseis, Calchas, Chryses and Chryseis, Deidameia, Diomedes, Hector, Helen, Heracles, Idomeneus, Iphigenia, Lycomedes, Menelaus, Nestor, Odysseus, Paris, Patroclus, Peleus, Phoinix, Polyxena, Priam, Pyrrhus) play roles in this first novel.
 2012 Oranges One might think that, with a list this extensive, readers who are not already familiar with the tale would risk confusion, but that’s not the case. Madeline Miller has been listening to these tales since girlhood, and she can retell them with a simplicity that smacks of the familiar.
One aspect of Miller’s craft that speeds the novel’s pacing is her use of language. Not only does she focus on simple sentence structure and word usage, but she has worked so steadily at the rhythm of the prose that it seems effortless.
Consider this passage:
“Powerful strides took him swiftly up the beach. His anger was incandescent, a fire under his skin. His muscles were pulled so taut I was afraid to touch him, fearing they would snap like bowstrings. He did not stop once we reached the camp. He did not turn and speak to the men. He seized the extra tent flap covering our door and ripped it free as he passed.”
There is nothing remarkable about it at first glance, and certainly when the reader first encounters the passage it’s with a concern to discovering what happens. But take another look: the rhythm and pacing of the paragraph is as measured and taut as the novel itself.
As a novel about war, this is fitting. When “the glint of swords and armor is fish-scale beneath the sun” on the shores of Troy, one expects to move steadily through prose.
However, The Song of Achilles is also a love story. Sometimes it speaks of lighter things, and the language works for that aim as well: ”Ifigenia. A tripping name, the sound of goat hooves on rock, quick, lively, lovely.”
This is not to say that the love story is without its sobering side. Patroclus’ love life is complicated by the fact that his lover is partially divine, complicated in epic and everyday ways.
“When he speaks at last, his voice is weary, and defeated. He doesn’t know how to be angry with me, either. We are like damp wood that won’t light.”
The figurative language is carefully controlled and consistently reflects images appropriate to the novel’s setting.
Frequently these are organic and sometimes they repeat. For instance, readers discover this passage later in the novel: ”Only that seems large enough to hold all of my rage and grief. I want the world overturned like a bowl of eggs, smashed at my feet.”
It is an effective image on its own, but it also recalls an earlier image of Patroclus and Achilles being taught by Chiron to prepare eggs. And, similarly, there is a death of a young woman against a stone, which recalls this earlier event, the cause of Patroclus’ exile:
His head thudded dully against stone, and I saw the surprised pop of his eyes. The ground around him began to bleed.
I stared, my throat closing in horror at what I had done. I had not seen the death of a human before. Yes, the bulls, and the goats, even the bloodless gasping of fish. And I had seen it in paintings, tapestries, the black figures burned onto our platters. But I had not seen this: the rattle of it, the choke and scrabble. The smell of the flux. I fled.
Without an acquaintance with the source material, these repeated images resonate solely within the novel itself. (Perhaps someone with greater familiarity with The Iliad and other relevant mytholgies can suggest whether there The Song of Achilles is more multi-layered than it appears to be to me without that added reading experience.)
Nonetheless, the novel is as tender as it is entertaining, even for readers with very little experience of this story; The Song of Achilles takes a character who has not been afforded a central role in this tale historically and roots him in the hearts of Madeline Miller’s readers.
 Solid orange Still curious? Discusses her inspiration for writing the novel, from Bloomsbury.* Browse inside. The author’s website. Other mythic retellings.
ORANGE Prize Nominee 2012: Book 3 of 20
Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles
Originality Rooted in a traditional tale, but with a new slant
Readability Style, structure, form combined = relentless pacing
Author’s voice Consistently presented as a song of the ancients, gods and immortals and mortals
Narrative structure Chronologically told: uncomplicated and steadily progressing
Gaffes None spotted (I am no classicist and the presentation was clean.)
Expectations Debut novel but general consensus is admiring
What makes for a love letter during the Cultural Revolution in China would have Heathcliff and Catherine shaking their heads.
Maybe two or three pages of discussing China’s excellent international and domestic circumstances, then the fortunate conditions of provincial and city life, and those of friends and class-mates.
These formalities cannot be overlooked, and, indeed, one love letter might look a lot like the next.
But, at the end, one might speak of admiring and respecting another’s talents, as one intelligent person observes another, recognizing and validating.
Finally, a simple request to be their girlfriend. The shift from comrade to “something more” is regimented, monitored and restrained.
This is what love amounts to on paper.
Millions were persecuted and displaced throughout China’s Cultural Revolution, but Ai Mi’s narrative takes place in its waning years (the last of the Maoist reforms were abandoned by 1978).
 House of Anansi, 2012 It is a love story, but the changes in the political climate — the instability and remnants of tyranny — directly affect the characters in Under the Hawthorn Tree.
So it is not a love story that the Brontë sisters could have told from their Yorkshire parlour, but a love story which will challenge many readers’ expectations of a romance.
Still, Jingqiu has read Jane Eyre. In the earlier years of the Revolution, she would have never dared to touch, let alone read such a book, but she has read it and embraced it, like many young girls her age.
She remembers one scene in particular, wherein “in order to let go of her love for Rochester, Jane looks in the mirror and says something like, You’re a plain girl, you’re not worthy of his love, never forget that.”
Jingqiu tries to apply this restraint to her own emotions and takes an oath herself.
“I promise to draw a line between myself and any capitalist thoughts, and put all my efforts into studying, working, writing this textbook, and taking concrete actions to thank the leaders of my school for the trust they have put in me.”
Jingqiu knew what she meant by capitalist thoughts; she meant no more imagining what it would be like to be loved by Old Third and to love him in return. No more capitalist thoughts.
She met Old Third when she travelled to West Village in 1974 as a senior high school student. With three other students, she worked to compile a new school textbook, gathering the tales of the poor and lower peasants, reforming the traditional textbooks which were spoiled with stories of capitalism, feudalism and revisionism.
West Village is a world apart from the life she knows in the city, where she lives with her mother, who ekes out a living as a teacher in a local school, her earnings not even enough to cover food and shelter for the two daughters and the son who has been “sent down”, since her father was imprisoned for political crimes.
“The students rushed to the edge of the cliff to admire West Village spread out before them. They could see a small jade-green river that snaked down from the foot of the mountain and circled the village. Bathed in early spring sunlight and surrounded by bright mountains and crystal water, West Village was beautiful, prettier than the other villages Jingqiu had previously worked in. The panoramic view showed fields spread like a quilt across the mountainside in patches of green and brown scattered with small houses.”
Readers share Jingqiu’s sense of having been carried elsewhere. Discovering it along with her, it is doubly strange.
“Jingqiu was mesmerized; she felt that she had been transported into a fairy tale. Dusk enveloped them, kitchen smoke curled up to the sky, and village smells drifted through the air. Her ears with filled with the sounds of the accordian and the low rumbles of the men’s voices. This strange mountain village was at once familiar; its flavour had to be savoured, she thought, as she struggled to express it in words. Her senses were steeped in what she could only think to describe as a petty capitalist atmosphere.”
Jingqiu is constantly struggling to make sense of the lines that she draws. Between herself and her capitalist thoughts. Between herself and her erroneous expectations.
“That’s not what the characters from the books he lent me would have said, she thought, disappointed.” ”
Even once she does permit herself the most tentative of motions in Old Third’s directions, she continues to draw lines, in her attempt to keep herself (and her family’s reputation) pure, even while yearning for something that she can barely articulate privately.
“Why doesn’t he sound like the young men in those books? The books may well be politically poisonous, but they do describe how love ought to be, at least.”
This is what love amounts to on paper.
But, really, that’s only the barest hint of what Anna Holmwood’s translation of Ai Mi’s narrative contains.
Readers are pulled into Jingqiu’s daily life wholly (from collecting stories in West Village to the various gruelling temporary jobs that she holds after graduation, her efforts to support her family, and beyond, but that would be spoilery).
The view ranges — from the immediacy of an evening’s sights and sounds to the vast perspective from a cliff-side — contributing to the sense of a single young girl’s experience of having glimpsed an era.
Readers will feel transported, as though they have been pulled across the line into the tale which begins in the “strange mountain village”.
Do you want to travel there?
Note: Ai Mi is a pseudonym. The novel has been a bestseller in China, and has been adapted for film by Zhang Yimou, and billed as “the cleanest romance in history”.
This story was originally published in Ms in September 1978, under the title “The Honeyman’s Daughter”.
 Thinking about this changes the focus of the story somewhat because the honey-dumper goes around cleaning toilets. That’s his job. And Cora is his granddaughter.
Rose greatly admires Cora (and Rose is at the heart of this collection of interconnected stories, with her mother, Flo).
“Cora had plenty of clothes. She came to school in fawn-colored satin, rippling over the hips; in royal-blue velvet with a rose of the same material flopping from one shoulder; in dull rose crepe loaded with fringe.”
Everything about her impresses Rose. Her grown-up hairstyle, her richly painted lips, her cakily powdered cheeks, her “tall, solid, womanly” form. The way that Cora responds to the boys who torment her. The chummy relationship she has with her two girlfriends.
Rose wants to be Cora. Flo is not impressed. “She is a far cry from good-looking. She is going to turn out a monster of fat. I can see the signs. She is going to have a mustache, too. She has one already. Where does she get her clothes from? I guess she thinks they suit her.”
And, it’s true, that Rose does not continue to idolize Cora for long. She begins to think her rather ordinary. “So long after, and so uselessly, Rose saw Flo trying to warn and alter her.”
It’s clear from the beginning of the story that going to the toilet is, in some ways, a great equalizer. Everybody does it. And lots of children actually watch old Mr. Burns do it. Peering in through the bottom boards of the outhouse.
But it’s also clear from that early scene that there are those who watch and those who are ashamed to have been watched using the toilet. (And, soon enough, we learn that there are those who empty the toilets.)
Rose does everything she can to avoid the shame that surrounds using the school toilets, but in her struggle, she actually wets herself two or three times because she doesn’t make it home in time to go.
“Justice and cleanliness she saw now as innocent notions out of a primitive period of her life. She was building up the first store of things she could never tell.”
What is it that she could never tell? What was unjust? What was unclean? Was it simply too much to consider the reality of these incidents?
The only thing that is “captivating, lovely” about school for Rose is that year were the pictures of the birds in her classroom: the woodpecker, the oriole, the blue jay, the Canada Goose.
(From Ethel Wilson to Martha Ostenso, the appearance of feathered friends having symbolic importance to young heroines in Canlit is familiar.)
These images seem to represent “some other world of hardy innocence, bounteous information, privileged light-heartedness. No stealing from lunchpails there; no slashing coats; no pulling down pants and probing with painful sticks; no fucking; no Franny.”
Ah, now readers realize what it was that Rose couldn’t tell. In fact, she has not told it. But there is plenty to consider in “Privilege” all the same.
What makes the renaming of this story to “The Honeyman’s Daughter” so interesting is that readers might have expected it to have been named The Honeyman’s Granddaughter.
But it is re-named not for Cora but for Cora’s mother. Cora’s mother does not appear in this story. Not even a glimpse.
“Her mother worked somewhere, or was married.” Cora was illegitimate. Cora’s mother was elsewhere.
So readers are forced to wonder, if Rose is leaving out all the heavy-heartedness, what has been left out of Cora’s mother’s experiences.
Whether Alice Munro’s characters live in or out of town, in town on one side of town or the other side of town, in town on the right-side of town but on a street of lesser status: these details matter.
The “various scandals and bits of squalor” that Rose offers to readers are revealing and as revealing when they are not offered but neglected.
Note: This is part of a series of posts on Alice Munro’s story collection Who Do You Think You Are?, which will continue on subsequent Thursdays. Please feel free to join in, for the series, or for a single story. Next week: “Privilege”. My Alice Munro reading project began with Dance of the Happy Shades, followed by Lives of Girls and Women, and Something I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You, and I aim to read through her work to date. She is one of my MRE authors.
Next week’s story is “Half a Grapefruit”, one which I remember being particularly good. Care to join in?
If you don’t already follow Black Coffee Poet, you should definitely check it out. (You want a cup of coffee now, don’t you? It can’t be helped.)
Black Coffee Poet started his own reading program — an alternative to the typical DWM syllabus — in September 2010 and the posts will continue until September 2012, with each week containing three installments: a review of a work, an interview with the writer, and a video.
That’s how I learned about Jim Nason‘s work (Black Coffee Poet learned about him from Maureen Hynes — the bookish world is delightfully interconnected).
 (Black Coffee Poet is better versed in poetry than I, so do read his review of Narcissus Unfolding, and suss out the interview and video, shot on a wintry day in a Toronto alley, a scene I know well.)
Even without investigating, however, you can guess something from simply the titles of Jim Nason’s most recent works, his Narcissus Unfolding volume and his collection of short stories, The Girl on the Escalator.
He is preoccupied by the small details that are too-easily overlooked, by a barely recognizable gradient of change (when is the narcissus unfolding and when is it blooming), by the transitory points of contact in our daily lives. Regardless of the form, this preoccupation holds sway.
The publisher’s description of The Girl on the Escalator calls them “gender- and expectation-bending stories”. And I suppose that’s true.
And, yet, while the stories do contain unexpected elements, they have a startlingly ordinary feel to them. Anyway, what is more bizarre than real life?
These stories were inspired by “everyday people riding the TTC” and as someone who spends a fair bit of time travelling public transit, I am certain that I’ve seen every single person who appears on the pages of these eleven stories.
Some of the subway and streetcar scenes felt so realistic and familiar that I had to remind myself, after a couple of weeks had passed, that I had read them, not lived them.
 (Of course that’s bound to sound hyperbolic, but it’s simply a reflection of the fact that strange things happen every single day.)
Even though I am predominantly a prose reader, I found the poems in Narcissus Unfolding to be very accessible, and offered the same sense of familiarity.
Partly this is a Toronto-thing, a Canadian thing. I love scanning the index and seeing “Union Station”, “Montreal, Two in the Morning”, and “Waiting at Chester Station”.
But even more so, it’s a reflection of the poet’s attention to recognizable details and universal emotions.
The collection opens powerfully, with “Huron”, which considers the death of a lover, against a backdrop of ”green-grey rowel of water / and form”, storm and winter, night sky and cloud.
And it ends quietly with “Laneway Home”: “Kitchen light reaches across / the lawn, pale and willing, we enter the house.”
These are scenes and feelings that can reach every reader, even those who are usually more comfortable with stories and novels. And the settings are as often in the natural world (at the cottage, in a canoe, on the lakeside) with trees, frogs and nests, as in the city (in the subway, on a bike, in a lobby) with streetcards, briefcases and khakis.
These works are clearly constructed deliberately and sensitively, and there is a slight hint of formality that rests in a sense of sophistication, but they seem to emerge from someone sitting next to you. Maybe even someone sitting next to you on the subway or in a streetcar.
 Kergan Edwards-Stout’s work also affords a glimpse into the perspective of a gay man in his novel, Songs for the New Depression.
Gabe, too, is grappling with questions about mortality and universal emotions — also predominantly love and loss, and is puzzled by the accidental, by the way that an entire existence can turn on a single moment.
He, too, is searching and querying and struggling — inwardly and outwardly.
But whereas Jim Nason’s pages are dotted with John Ashbery, Kergan Edwards-Stout’s pages are sprinkled with Katie Couric, Sally Jesse Raphael, Farrah Fawcett, “All About Eve”, Denny’s, Oz, Velveeta, and “The Price is Right”.
Of course it’s not surprisingly that there would be a lot of pop culture references when the novel is named for a Bette Midler song (written by Tom Wait).
And it’s even less surprising that musical references would abound beyond that: Melissa Manchester, Alison Moyet, Mary Chapin Carpenter, John Denver, the Partridge Family, Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Kiss, Jimmy Hendrixmand the soundtracks to Cabaret, Oklahoma, and On the Town.
The song reflects the novel’s main preoccupation; Bette Midler begins by singing, “”Well, I’m leavin’ my family, leavin’ all my friends. / My body’s at home, but my heart’s in the wind.”
Songs for the New Depression is a novel, which was twelve years in the making, which chronicles Gabe’s life in the years 1995, 1986, and 1976, moving backwards in time, beginning with a prologue which is really an epilogue, when his heart is in the wind.
In that prologue, he explains: “Were my life a play, it could easily be broken into three acts: before, after, and redemption. But while living, I never was able to step back, untangle myself, peel back the layers, and see things for what they were.”
At this point, the novel’s tone is exceptionally reflective and, despite the narrator’s sharp humour and the novel’s scenic quality (including lots of graphic sex scenes), the bulk of the action is internal, solidly rooted in Gabe.
Gabriel Travers is a fully realized figure, with the kind of personality that might be called ‘spirited’ or ‘irascible’ or flamboyant’, depending on the observer’s relationship to him. Although his voice changes slightly in each of the story’s three parts, he is consistent enough to be believable throughout the novel, even as the challenges he faces escalate. He is not always likeable, but readers don’t need to be friends with him.
“To have HIV is one thing. Almost any gay man can deal with that these days. But to be a diseased, down-trodden, worn-out victim of AIDS, spending my days wrapped in a fringed shawl…”
From the time that he discovers the “Gay Studies” shelves in a local bookstore (with shout-outs to Giovanni’s Room, The Front Runner, and City of Night), Gabe’s identity is, of course, under consideration, but the focus is always on his relationships with others (mothers, lovers, friends) and these folks, too, are believable.
But whether they are successful as characters inhabiting a fiction is debatable; the writing in this work may disappoint those readers who are accustomed to reading literary fiction.
The style incorporates an element of distance in the language and phrasing which seems to stand in contrast to the kind of voice that I would imagine Gabe’s character to have.
(Perhaps I simply have a penchant for a different kind of style, one that feels more organic, as in Brian Francis’ Fruit, or more sharply stylized sentences, as with Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle or April Sinclair’s Coffee Will Make You Black.)
Kergan Edwards-Stout’s content is intimate and revealing, but his style feels more journalistic.
For instance, below are two passages, one from the 1995 segment of the book and one from the 1976 segment (I won’t say which is which, and I’ve chosen them deliberately so that you can’t guess which time is which, so that the plot won’t be spoiled).
First: ”Clare was right. But there was something so disquieting about how I felt when they made an attempt, any attempt, at intimacy. Everything about it felt wrong. Whether it was the time or the place or them or me, it always felt scary.”
Next: “You see, Jon and I, though completely enraptured, were still in the first phases of young love. It was tender, passionate, and focused solely on each other. The swift entrance of friends, I feared, no matter how charming, might shatter our fragile coupledom.”
Stylistically, this is the kind of prose that many readers will expect to find in a memoir, and in personal essays rather than in fiction. It is well-written — mechanically-speaking the prose here is more carefully structured than that of many a novel from a mainstream publishing house — but possesses a slightly formalized tone.
I think if I had read Songs for the New Depression marketed as a memoir, I would have had different expectations, and I don’t think I’d've found the writing style jarring. (Alternatively, I think I might have accepted the same style if presented as a series of letters or diary entries; I wonder what kind of a story this would have been, had it been written in another format.)
And perhaps this tendency can be explained. This is taken from the author’s acknowledgements:
“Wile a work of fiction, Songs for the New Depression was inspired by the life and passions of Shane Michael Sawick…I would not be the writer, father, or person I am without having known him. He changed my life — and me — for the better, and I am forever grateful.”
Clearly Songs for the New Depression is, at least in some ways, a very personal story; for this reader, it would have been a more powerful experience to have read it presented as such, but its determined tenderness and compassion are to be commended, even when viewed from a distance.
That’s how Zoe says she feels about a recurring dream that she’s been having; she’s both terrified by and curious about how it plays out.
 Simon & Schuster, 2012 That’s exactly the response that a number of readers will have to White Horse.
Alex Adams’ debut novel contains a lot of conflicting emotions.
Falling in love is described as “‘Great and terrible. Like Oz.”
And when Zoe Marshall opens a fortune cookie, she finds “Welcome change.” So ironic. ”I read my fortune until I laugh. I laugh until I cry. I cry until I sleep.”
The kind of change in Zoe’s life is the unsettling sort. This is not the little white horse of Elizabeth Goudge’s magic tale for children.
“A few months ago I was living a normal life, doing a whole lot of not much, and a couple weeks ago I was stopping a rape in progress so that a young woman might have a chance at survival.”
White Horse is an infection. Humans who are infected with it mutate in unexpected ways.
Ninety percent of the infected people die. Of the remaining ten percent, five percent live on (immune maybe) and five percent mutate in a way which allows them to continue living, or, more accurately, surviving.
Because living just isn’t what it once was.
Nothing is.
The book is populated with the kind of nearly-familiar language that reflects this new reality, and the structure mimics it as well.
“The once-woman twitches like a dog mid-dream.” There is enough of the human left in her that it’s recognizable, but barely. This monstrosities are all-the-more monstrous, however, not because of the mutation, but because of the remaining human elements.
The narrative, too, is structured in segments which begin either “Now” or “Then”. Because of course that’s how you would measure time.
Then, the world ran with money. Now, money is useless; a ticket can be purchased with a pint of blood.
Then, Zoe worked for Pope Pharmaceuticals. Now, she journeys towards an end that she has imagined for herself.
It’s nearly always raining. Most days include a fight-to-the-death, which she hopes won’t be her own. How likely it is that her destination has anything to offer other than the new reality she faces every day of her journey?
It doesn’t matter how likely; what matters is that she still hopes.
After what happened, is there still room for hope? One often hears dystopia readers complain when there isn’t enough information about how this world turns that apocalyptic corner.
(That always makes me smile; it seems like a veiled request to be excused for living a life that has nothing sustainable about it, as though, if only the novel declares that it’s a nuclear war or a mutated virus, every reader can shelve their personal concern about peak oil and climate change.)
White Horse does grapple with the “How” question; it doesn’t simply introduce the reader to Now and leave Then wholly to the imagination. And the answers that are provided are slowly released throughout the novel, adding to the suspense.
The structure is somewhat complex; those readers who seek a straightforward chronological recounting might be frustrated by the literary back-and-forth-ing. Zoe is at the heart of the novel, her characterization developed through scenes and her inner thoughts, rather than through oblique narrative statements, but this is primarily a plot-driven novel that succeeds because the characterization remains strong.
Alex Adams adds to the suspense by pulling the reader across time sharply, establishing tenuous present-day alliances against the backdrop of other relationships that have, since, crumbled. She moves from scene-to-scene abruptly, so that the tension naturally rises exponentially.
The language is straightforward, with only the occasional figurative bit. “The clouds lift their petticoats for just a short time, long enough for the sun to dazzle us.”
Throughout, the emphasis is on fast-paced prose — some very short sentences, even some fragments, designed to keep the pages turning — with a good bit of dialogue.
Raging and retching, gnawing and snarling, bruising and beating, hysteria and, yes, hope: White Horse is a horrifying gallop of a read.
Want more? Critical acclaim here. Reading Guide here. The author’s site here. Enjoy!
There won’t be any spoilers in the body of these posts, and as many of you are still reading, let’s clearly mark any significant spoilers in the comments.
And, speaking of, who is still reading?
Who is waiting to be convinced to re-read?
Who is planning to read but doesn’t have their book in hand yet?
Regardless of where you are at in your reading, let’s chat about Harriet.
She is at the heart of A Game of Hide and Seek.
Nicola Beauman suggests, in her biography, that Elizabeth Taylor’s “best novels – At Mrs Lippincote’s and A Game of Hide and Seek – would stand out because their heroines, Julia and Harriet , are her (Madame Bovary, c’est moi).”
Whether Harriet is still a teenager (and you’re at the beginning of your reading) or whether you have followed her throughout several years to the end of the novel, how do you respond to her character?
[If you would rather simply comment, please go right ahead. If you prefer prompting, here are some more questions. And if you end up discussing something other than Harriet, that's absolutely fine, of course!]
If you’ve read other Elizabeth Taylor novels/stories, do you sense similarities and differences between her and other heroines you’ve met in these works?
How much do you think your impressions of her impact on the degree to which you enjoyed this work?
Do the connections that Harriet forges (and strains) in the novel effect your overall response to A Game of Hide and Seek, or do you feel that you separate out your feelings about characters from the way that you respond to a work as a whole?
If you had to introduce someone to Harriet without their reading the book, which scene do you think is most revealing of her personality, her preoccupations, the essence of her character?
Any other thoughts? (There will be another ET bookchat next Monday too. The introductory post for this event is here. The link to the Elizabeth Taylor Centenary Page is here.)
 Simon & Schuster, 2011 Just as in the Harry Potter stories, the William Joyce tales begin with a younger reader in mind and, then, as the pages turn, both child and story grow.
The first volume, The Man in the Moon, scarcely seems to be in the same series as the later books.
It’s a picture book, though an advanced one, whereas the next two books are elegantly bound chapter books.
Although seemingly-level appropriate, with just enough demanding vocabulary to keep it interesting and not overwhelming, my eight-year-old reading companion was not as smitten with this story as I expected. (Mind you, her older sister was playing “Minecraft”: hard to compete with that.)
But I thought the artwork was brilliant, literally. The colours are vibrant, the lines are bold, and each image creates a strong atmosphere. The darker images, devoted to the sombre tones of the Nightmare King, Pitch, are equally striking. (The snapshot below doesn’t do the artwork justice, only hints at the expansive style of each piece.)
Of course, when it comes to the story, one has to buy into the archetypal dark=bad and light=good motif for this story to work.
Moonbeams traditionally battle shadow creatures, fearlings and nightmare men. As the story explains, many children are afraid of the dark and the nightmares that live within, so the epic battle begins. (All of that is changed by the Man in the Moon, or, Mim, as the story goes.)
 Illustration of the Guardians If you have strict ideas in place about the Man in the Moon, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, Mother Goose and Santa Claus, this series might contradict that doctrine; each of these is a Guardian of Childhood and they come with their own histories and personalities, which might challenge those who consider these personages sacred.
I read this series as folklore rather than myth, heavily influenced, from a very young age, by L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which presents his tale as just that.
(I’ve long been troubled by the idea that though one wants to teach children to be honest, it’s acceptable — even encouraged, to lie to them throughout their younger years, in saying that Santa Claus is real: surely the corollary should be that one is okay with hearing “but it was a nice story to tell” later on, when the same children are spinning “stories” for you.)
The first volume for older children introduces Nicholas St. North and, in some ways, it feels like a tale distinct from The Man in the Moon.
Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King does hearken back, however, to The Man in the Moon by recreating a Moonbeam Vs. Fearling battle while two children sleep at the opening.
It’s clear that Pitch and Tsar Lunar (more commonly known as the Man in the Moon) are still at odds. The story is summarized and retold a little later, as “The Story of the Golden Age”, so that readers who have missed the first volume can understand the history of the battle between light and dark.
 But this tale introduces many more sophisticated elements of the story that will be particularly satisfying for slightly older children (the jacket suggests ages 8 to 11).
Clever means by which children avoid bedtime (including hiding in paintings), insect languages (slug is a variant of the worm dialect), and a beautiful home in a magic tree (which can sprout bunkbeds): these details add a pleasing dimension to the outline presented in the earlier volume of the series.
Nicholas St. North is a well-known bandit who becomes embroiled in the events of this story because a wizard draws him into the plot. So it’s not surprising that magic abounds; spells go wrong, and spells go right, and both states are equally entertaining. And then things get serious: the battle takes hold.
In E. Aster Bunnymund and the Warrior Eggs at the Earth’s Core, readers are reminded of their Heroes with a double-spread of illustrations. (Itemizing them would reveal some key plot points.)
But readers have yet to meet the “most ancient, mysterious, and peculiar creature the world had ever known. Or not known, actually.”
He has not been glimpsed in living memory, but he knows about the battle depicted in the last volume and he knows about “the terrible battles to come”. His nose twitches. His massive ears flinch. (The cover — and the covers are gorgeous, so readers cannot complain about the slight spoilers — gives it away.)
And this is not the only new character in this volume; readers also meet Mr. Qwerty, the librarian. He is a glowworm”who loved books above all other things”, who could often be found “meandering up the spine of one book or down another, cleaning the covers or repairing torn pages”.
 There are familiar characters though, of course. Early on, the residents of the village of Santoff Claussen get updates from Katherine about all the goings-on far away where she (and her fellow travellers, well known to readers) remain.
She updates them using a magic book, which resides in Mr. Qwerty’s library; she can sketch the events on the page using ordinary ink and paper, and her imagination empowers her listeners to feel as though she is sitting right there with them. That’s the magic of storytelling, right?
And the series does remain rooted in magic and wonder. In this volume, readers learn that there are not only seven wonders of the known world, but there are wonders of the unknown world as well. And, of course, the epic battle continues.
Beyond the power of belief, other themes which endure across the volumes are the vital importance of friendship, and the need for bravery when one feels their courage is tested with a long battle; these two themes are intertwined throughout the tales.
Some of the stories’ elements are overtly predictable (when a spider appears, there is no question that it’s an agent of evil and darkness), but this stereotypical approach fits with the traditional theme of light battling the dark and will undoubtedly satisfy many young readers.
Older readers, who are looking for something more, may well be seduced by the lovely illustrations (I mean, illuminations) and the attractive packaging, even if some of the characters and magical details do not win their readers’ hearts.
Still curious? You can check out this video from the author’s point of view. If you’re looking for more Once Upon a Time reading, look no further!
It’s not all cozy rooms with lace curtains, plants in pots, ticking clocks, ornaments and coronation mugs, the wireless playing, and tabby cats waiting.
 1949; Penguin Books, 1984 It’s true that, when A Wreath of Roses opens, Camilla is waiting for the train which will take her to the countryside, to vacation for a month with her friend, Liz, and their hostess, the aging artist, Frances.
But this is not a summer country-house story. And the reader knows that within two pages, though this ominous passage appears thirty-odd pages into the novel:
“Whereas in the centre of the earth, in the heart of life in the core of even everyday things is there not violence, with flames wheeling, turmoil, pain, chaos?”
The women do spend large chunks of time lounging about, perhaps reading or painting. They gossip and laugh and reminisce about past summer holidays they’ve shared in this old house.
On one hand, it is a very ordinary story with its cozy rooms and quaint hotels.
On the other hand, the bar is blue with smoke, the pavement blisters, and the dog slobbers.
There is a graveyard scene and a suicide. Windows are dusty and framed pictures seem to have been dipped in soup.
The chalk breaks through the earthworks like bones beneath the soil.
But Elizabeth Taylor’s way with description (isn’t that last bit striking?) can make even harsh observations a little lighter.
Take this brief exchange between the aging Frances, who lectures Camilla about men and, in particular about Liz’s husband, who is a vicar:
“A man’s work is twisted into the roots of his existence. His conscience is involved. He can’t divide himself.”
But Camilla’s response is quick-witted and acute, not at all dimmed by Frances’ claim to superiority on the matter:
“On the contrary, Arthur seems to have a genius for cutting himself up into little pieces. He hands himself round among the ladies as if he were a plate of scones.”
Camilla’s wit has an edge to it, however; she does not view herself as someone who fits easily into the world around her.
She thinks of herself as “stiffening into an old maid, recoiling fastidiously from life”. She is awkward with other relationships.
The two people who matter the most to her are Frances and Liz. And she is accustomed to spending a great deal of time alone, when she is not on holiday.
“She made the mistake always of thinking people would like what she herself liked; she put herself too much in other people’s places, instead of allowing them to stay there themselves.”
Nonetheless, she does find herself entangled in new relationships in A Wreath of Roses. Expected relationships — Liz’s infant boy and, on occasion, Liz’s husband — and unexpected ones.
“He wants security from me. I want adventure from him. Two opposite things. The dullness of my life attracts him, seems a refuge from all the adventure he has been through, the tension he suffers.”
Elizabeth Taylor’s fourth novel is characterized by a quiet tension; it embodies the heavy heat of summer, that sense of having an itch that you cannot reach to ease.
Readers will want to read on to discover the root of that sensation. But readers will also be impressed by the crafting of this novel.
As with her other works, this novel’s structure appears organic, but contains subtle links throughout.
Some of the connections are drawn with a broad stroke, like common sets. There are, for instance, multiple scenes at train stations: Camilla begins her journey, in the middle of the novel she travels to pick up a visitor at the same station she once arrived at herself, and there is one last scene as well.
And there are other images which repeat with less overt images. There are many windowpanes and mirrors in this novel, means by which the self can be reflected.
[In one striking scene, Camilla appears in a mirror next to a man, and the observation is made that it's as though the reflected selves could have independent existences. Several pages later, two short scenes appear in parallel, one with Camilla and one with the man, and it's clear that each feels tremendously lonely. Camilla again appears in a mirror, but in a very different manner, and the man appears with his diary, writing in a frankly confessional style. Two selves reflected, literally and figuratively.]
These are such tiny details, that readers new to Elizabeth Taylor might think the connections are accidental. But she is all about the little stuff.
That’s what a visitor observes about Frances’ paintings too, insisting on the value of these little things.
“But not little. That is life. It’s loving kindness and simplicity, and it lay there all the time in your pictures, implicit in every petal and every jug you ever painted.”
It sounds lovely, when he puts it like that, doesn’t it?
But here is Frances’ response and it suits Elizabeth Taylor’s view of the world as it appears in A Wreath of Roses too:
“Life’s not simplicity,” she said slowly. “Not loving kindness either. It’s darkness and the terrible things we do to one another, and to ourselves.”
What makes it all bearable, is that there is loving kindness alongside those terrible things. That, and Elizabeth Taylor’s skill.
Have you read this novel of hers — or others? What do you think?
|
|
