Jul 14, 2009

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia by Ursula K. L Guin

And yet my part of them, the life he gave me in his poem, is so full, except for the one moment when my hair catches fire—so colorless, except when my maiden cheeks blush like ivory stained with crimson dye—so conventional, I can’t bear it any longer. If I must go on existing century after century, then once at least I must break out and speak. He didn’t let me say a word. I have to take the word from him. He gave me along life but a small one. I need room, I need air.
Lavinia is a minor character in Virgil’s The Aeneid. She is the daughter of Latinus, king of the Latins, and she becomes Aeneas’ second wife. In Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin gives her a voice of her own. The book tells the story of her childhood and youth before the arrival of the Trojan warriors, of the war that follows their arrival, of the early years of what was to become the Roman empire, and of Lavinia’s life after Aenea’s death.

What I liked the most about Lavinia was how Le Guin took an epic and used its silences and omissions to create a deeply personal story. And when I say deeply personal, I don’t mean it erases the political implications of a war and of the birth of a new nation, nor that the social organization of Bronze Age Italy isn’t explored in detail. It doesn’t, and it is—but unlike what sometimes happens with epics, I never felt distant from the characters or the story. Quite the contrary.

Kailana and I read this book at around the same time, and so we decided to ask each other questions about it. One of Kailana's was, "What did you think of Lavinia as a character? Did you have any problems with her?

I really loved Lavinia, most of all because Ursula Le Guin was able to give her a voice that felt completely authentic. As a young woman of marriageable age, Lavinia is aware of her powerlessness, of the fact that most see her as nothing but a prize. Le Guin doesn’t strain credibility by giving the characters too modern a sensibility, but she does give her narrator the ability to make injustice visible, and the insight to think about its causes.

As for my favourite scene in the novel (which is another one of the question), it was probably a conversation Aeneas has with his eldest son Ascanius about what it means to be a man. Ascanius believes that it is only in war and violence that a man can truly show his glory. His restrictive definition of both masculinity and of “glory” makes him, unsurprisingly, an unwise ruler, and also someone who is deeply suspicious of women and has trouble dealing with his own sexuality. What Aeneas tells him—which I won’t give away, because you really need to read it in context—is both subtle and incisive.

One of the questions I asked Kailana was about Ascanius, because he really intrigued me. She said that in the end she mostly felt sorry for him, and despite everything I agree. The way he was portrayed was very human, and so I felt for him. And not making him unsympathetic in the end worked very well because it called attention to the fact that his sexism and the fact that he idealized violence were part of a system, of a culture, rather than being individual traits. This doesn't excuse him, of course, but it humanizes him and it puts things in context.

Kailana also asked, "What did you think about the use of the spiritual world in this novel? Was it believable or do you think it was just a dream? (ex: The Poet)" I didn't necessarily interpret Virgil's appearance as a manifestation of the spiritual world, though of course that also makes sense. But I really loved all the religious rites that were included in the story. They were - I guess we could call them pagan, though we tend to associate different things with that word these days. I don't always identify with religious worldviews, but I really felt close to Lavinia's, mostly because she sees humankind as being a part of nature and not as being its master. All her rites involved awe and wonder and a deep respect for her land, and I loved that.

"On the same topic as the poet, what did you think about the fact that this was a story within a story to Lavinia? Did it take anything away from the novel knowing what was going to happen?" We find out very early in the novel that Lavinia is aware of her mythical status, and, as Kailana mentioned above, there's even an appearance by Virgil himself. I think making a character aware of her own fictionality without making the story crumble takes tremendous skill, but Ursula Le Guin manages it perfectly. I loved that.

Knowing things in advance really didn't lessen their impact for me. I think this might have to do with how I feel about Le Guin's writing: it's very subtle and contained, and yet the emotions are all there. She often merely suggests them, but to me that only adds to their power. For example, we know all along when Aeneas is going to die, and yet when it happened it still broke my heart. Lavinia doesn’t dwell on her grief, but I was still able to feel it.

Kailana's last question was, "You mentioned on your blog that reading Lavinia inspired you to buy more female-narrated novels (uh, right?). What are some others that you have read and recommend?" Yes, I mentioned it inspired me to pick up The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley, which retells the Trojan War from Cassandra's perspective. I love myths retold, especially when they're told from the perspective of those who remain voiceless in the originals, which is often the case with women. Everyone knows The Mists of Avalon, but it's really one of my favourites. The Penelopiad is another good one, though now that I've read more Atwood I think it sort of pales in comparison to her others. And this question reminded me of a book I read in my early days of blogging: Inside the Walls of Troy by Clemence McLaren. It uses Helen and Cassandra's perspectives, and although it's short, it's a very good book.

What about you? Are there any retellings of myths or other well-known stories from the perspective of women that you recommend?

Some of my favourite passages from Lavinia:
He was a city man, a politician. To him, my mother and I were unimportant persons in tactically important positions. We had to be managed. He saw women as he saw dogs or cattle, members of another species, to be taken into account only as they were useful or dangerous. He considered my mother dangerous, me negligible, except insofar as I might be made use of.

But what am I to do now? I have lost my guide, my Vergil. I must go on by myself through all that is left after the end, all the rest of the immense, pathless, unreadable world.
What is left after a death? Everything else. The sun a man saw rise goes down though he does not see it set. A woman sits down to the weaving another woman left in the room.

I was fated, it seems, to live among people who suffered beyond measure from grief, who were driven mad by it. Though I suffered grief, I was doomed to sanity. This was no doing of the poet’s. I know that he gave me nothing but modest blushes, and no character at all. I know that he said I raved and tore my golden tresses at my mother’s death. He simply was not paying attention: I was silent then, tearless, and only intent on making her poor soiled body decent. And my hair has always been dark. In truth he gave me nothing by a name, and I have filled it with myself. Yet without him would I even have a name? I had never blamed him. Even a poet cannot get everything right.
Other Opinions:
The Written World
What Kate's Reading

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Jul 13, 2009

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

In 1913, a ship arrives in Australia from London with a four-year-old girl travelling alone on board. She carries nothing but a small suitcase with a book of fairy tales inside, and she says she cannot remember her name. All she remembers is that a lady she calls The Authoress told her she would come back for her. In Brisbane, 2005, Cassandra inherits an old cottage in Cornwall from her recently deceased grandmother, a cottage of whose existence she had no idea. Her grandmother, Nell, was once the little girl on that ship. Cassandra follows her footsteps and travels to England to help solve the mystery of her past.

And so begins a story that is full of things I love: an old house in Cornwall, Blackhurst Manor, full of family secrets going back to Victorian and Edwardian times; a family mystery and a literary mystery; an appearance by Frances Hodgson Burnett; old tales of Cornish smugglers and cursed ships; and there's even the inclusion of some of Eliza Makepeace’s (the mysterious Authoress) fairy tales in the book. In addition to all this, the book itself is absolutely beautiful: look at this picture Chelle took of the inside cover.

Sounds awesome, right? Sigh, I thought so too. I wanted to love The Forgotten Garden. In fact, I was completely convinced that I would. But I hadn’t been this let down by a book in a long, long while. My main problem was Kate Morton’s writing style, which I passionately disliked. It’s the kind of writing that has me rolling my eyes and making sarcastic remarks to my cats as I read. Not everyone will feel as I do, of course, and because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, I’ll do my best to spare you the sarcasm. But here are some excerpts so you can see what the writing is like for yourselves:
The move back to Australia hadn’t helped, but that was retrospect talking. Nell knew better than to allow exhibits of hindsight in the court of self-blame.
(Um...)
He was a scribble of a man. Frail and fine and stooped from a knot in the centre of his knobbled back. Beige slacks with grease spots clung to the marble of his knees, twig-like ankles rose stoically from oversized shoes, and tufts of white floss sprouted from various fertile spots on an otherwise smooth scalp. He looked like a character from a children’s story. A fairy story.
(Stoically? Fertile?!)
A brass bell tinkled in the doorjamb and the old man turned to look at her. Thick spectacle lenses caught the light, shone like two round mirrors, and impossibly large ears balanced on the sides of his head, white hair colonizing them from within.
(Colonizing?! Okay, okay—I promised.)
She could hear her heart, a sparrow no longer but a raven with large, powerful wings, beating within her chest.
This kind of writing really doesn’t work for me. Another problem was that this book reminded me a lot of Possession—connected storylines set in the present and in the past, a mystery surrounding a writer of fairy tales, the fairy tales themselves included in the book, some letters and journal entries and academic bits…I’m not saying The Forgotten Garden is a rip-off, as it’s definitely different enough to be its own thing. But it’s also similar enough that I was frequently reminded of Possession, of how much this pales in comparison, and of how I’d rather be re-reading it instead.

This is a story with many characters living in different time periods, and it’s told in the third person. And then, like I said, there are letters, journals, bits of books, etc. Which leads me to another problem: all these voices sounded exactly alike. The writing style was always the same, no matter if we were reading a letter, an excerpt from an academic text, a fairy tale, or a piece of the story proper. So I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe those voices from the past. I even—gasp!—disliked the fairy tales. They felt like mere allegories, lifeless and hollow.

On top of everything, I had a lot of trouble connecting with the characters. Most of the time they just irritated me. There’s a romance involving Cassandra, the modern day character, and scenes that are meant to be touching had me rolling my eyes. And as for her grandmother, Nell—this probably sounds horribly unsympathetic of me, but I just couldn’t understand why being told she was adopted ruined her life. Don’t worry, this is not a spoiler; it happens in the first ten pages of the book or so. She is 21 when her father tells her the truth, and from then on she completely withdraws from the family who raised and loved her for seventeen years, all because they’re not her “real” family. I know that adopted kids sometimes have trouble adjusting to the truth, especially if it was hidden from them for so long. But to be so bitter about it for the rest of her life (and she lived a long life) just seemed so melodramatic to me.

The whole book was a huge dramafest, and I’ll be the first to admit that dramafests can be kind of awesome—especially if old Victorian skeletons in the closet are involved. And sometimes it was awesome. But most of the time it was just too much. Also, the solution to mystery is obvious to readers because we are watching events unfold in the present and in the past. So the false clues Cassandra follows are, to us, obviously false, except she can’t possibly know. And okay, it’s not really her fault—but, to me at least, watching characters take forever to figure out what the reader knows all along is just annoying.

Having said that, I did read all 659 pages of it, and it didn’t even take me long. Considering how much I disliked the writing, that’s saying a lot. To be honest, towards the end I must have been getting used to it, because it didn’t bother me as much anymore. But the little voice in my head saying I should be re-reading Possession instead just wouldn’t shut up.

Many people loved this book, and apart from the writing I can see its appeal. If you like stories about old houses and family secrets a la The Thirteenth Tale, you might want to give this a try. And like I said, not everyone will have the problems I did with the writing. Make sure you click the links below to read some different opinions:

Violet Crush
Lesley’s Book Nook
Julie’s Jewels
Mysteries in Paradise

(Did I miss yours?)

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Jul 12, 2009

The Sunday Salon - Book Coveting: Victoriana

The Sunday Salon.com

So, just because I'm not buying any more books in the near future it doesn't mean I can't covet them, right? Today's book coveting post was brought on by the fact that last week I spotted a book called The Victorian Woman Question in Contemporary Feminist Fiction at the library. Since I seem to be obsessed with neo-Victorian novels lately, I went through the index and wrote down the titles of any books I wasn't familiar with. And then looking them up online led to yet more books, and...you know how it is. Before I knew it I had myself a reading list, and I thought I'd share it with you:

Victoriana
  • Electricity by Victoria Glendinning: set in the 1880s, at the time of rapid progress of what could be done with electricity, this is the story of Charlotte Mortimer, a young woman who escapes the confinement of her upbringing and leads an unconventional life.

  • The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett: The account of a fictional mission to discover the fate of the missing Franklin Expedition. I love stories about Arctic exploration, so I really think this one will be a winner.
  • The Observations by Jane Harris: This one is narrated by Bessy Buckley, a working class woman who recalls her time working as a maid at Castle Haivers in the 1860s. According to some reviews I've seen, what makes this novel stand out is the fact that Bessy's voice is so unique.

  • The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling: Also set in the 1860's, this is the story of a woman who takes over her husband's book binding business when he falls ill, and ends up entering the world of Victorian pornography.

  • Angelica by Arthur Phillips: This one seems difficult to summarize, so I'll just use the synopsis from Amazon - "Joseph Barton, a London biological researcher, orders his four-year-old daughter, Angelica, who's been sleeping in her parents' bedroom, to her own room. Joseph's wife, Constance, resists this separation from her child and the resumption of a marital intimacy that, given her history of miscarriage, may threaten her life. Soon Constance notices foul odors, furniture cracks and a blue spectre that appears to attack Angelica while she sleeps." I've seen it described as not-quite-a-ghost story, which makes me curious. Also, the story is told from four different points of view, each adding another layer until we get closer to the truth. If used well, this is a technique I really love.

  • The Wet Nurse's Tale by Erica Eisdorfer: I'm blaming Fyrefly and Carrie K for this one. As the title indicates, this is the story of a woman who "ends up wet-nursing after getting unexpectedly and illicitly pregnant, and her alcoholic and abusive father forces her to leave her child and take up the occupation."
Have you read any of these? If so, what did you think? And if not, is there anything else along these lines you'd recommend?

Finally, I wanted to thank everyone who helped me pick a book last week. The winner was The True Story of Hansel and Gretel with 27% of the votes, followed by To Say Nothing of the Dog with 22%. That's not that big a difference, as you can see, which is understandable - they both sound so good! I'll read the winner for the challenge, but I do want to get to the others too at some point.

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Jul 10, 2009

New Books! Many, many new books

So, about a week ago I received an unexpected monetary prize, and like any book lover I did the irresponsible thing: I used it to buy books. Okay, I wasn't completely irresponsible. I didn't spend all of it. Less than a third, in fact. But it felt so good to indulge for once. I hadn't gone on a book buying spree since I spent the gift cards I got for Christmas and my birthday over six months ago. That's enough blabbing, though. On to the goodies. Behold! My new books:

My Precious
  • 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - Jenny called it "the friendliest Englandiest book ever". How can I not read it?
  • Black Juice by Margo Lanagan - it's Margo Lanagan, and plus it'll count for the Printz Project. I've already read the first short story because Eva was urging me to on Twitter, and wow - so brutal and beautiful and sad.
  • Fairest by Gail Carson Levine - I loved Ella Enchanted and I want more!
  • Just Listen by Sarah Dessen - I've been meaning to read her for ages, and this one is Renay's favourite. On a side note, I had never realized how pretty her UK covers were.
  • The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken - because I'm on a mission to read all the children's classics I missed out on growing up.
  • The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively - same reason. I found out about these two while browsing an encyclopaedia of children's literature at the library, looking for neat books to read. Yes, I am that much of a nerd, and I happen to be proud of it.
  • Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier - I loved Girl with the Pearl Earring, and plus this one is set in the Edwardian era!
  • Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons - when I mention how much I loved I Capture the Castle people tend to recommend this book to me, so here it is.
  • Myself When Young by Daphne du Maurier - du Maurier's account of her youth up until the publication of her first novel. I've been meaning to read it even since Cath reviewed it.

  • The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim - both Daphne and Claire recommended this, so I know there's no way I won't enjoy it!
  • Slow Storm by Danica Novgorodoff - a neat looking graphic novel.
  • Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experiences by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman - I find the Victorian's relationship with sexuality fascinating, so I'm really looking forward to reading this.
  • Dramacon by Svetlana Chmakova - Kailana was telling me on Twitter that I had to read this manga series, and then Chelle mentioned a one volume edition...what can I say, I am easily swayed.
Not in the picture: The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, which I'm actually a bit worried about, since I ordered it the same day as most of the others and they arrived on Monday and Tuesday; and The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley, coming all the way from New Zealand via Bookmooch. I mooched it because Ursula Le Guin's brilliant Lavinia left me in the mood for more epics from the point of view of women, and this is the Trojan War from Cassandra's perspective.

These should keep me busy for a long while. And do me a favour: if you see me buying more books in the near future, please tell me off.

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Jul 9, 2009

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson

Salamander Dream is about Hailey, a young girl who likes to play in a forest with a creek running through it near her house. During her visits to the forest, she befriends Salamander—a magical creature, or possibly an imaginary friend, who tells her wonderful stories. This book chronicles Hailey’s friendship with Salamander over the years. We watch her change, grow up, make other friends, and visit the forest less frequently. But until the day when she comes to say her final goodbye before moving away, she always does come back.

I came across this charming book completely by chance: I was on a quest to find comic books by women to read in July, and I was using this list to guide me. I clicked on the link to this one because I liked the title, and I wound up falling in love. Don’t you love randomly finding something that turns out to be great?

Hope Larson’s style is very unique. Salamander Dream has less text than most of the comics I read, but it’s perfect just like that. Some of the moments Hailey and Salamander spend together reminded me of the silent strips that Calvin & Hobbes sometimes had. Which is a good thing, as my love for Calvin & Hobbes knows no bounds. This book has a very different sort of mood—it’s more whimsical than a humorous, really—and it's possible that nobody other than me will see the connection, but what can I say.

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson

I loved the silences. I loved the art, which is summery and dreamlike. I loved how well the book captures the bittersweetness of growing up—the secret spaces of childhood, which you know you’ll have to leave behind. The story takes place entirely within those spaces. A lot is merely implied, and Hailey grows up outside the pages. But every time she returns to the forest, we see how time has passed, how she has changed.

When I say the story is bittersweet, I don’t mean it romanticizes childhood. Hailey is excited about growing up, meeting new people, seeing new places. But time passing inevitably means there are moments that will never return, and no matter how much you’re looking forward to the future, there’s some sadness in that.

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson


I actually read Salamander Dream twice: the first time it only took me half an hour, but the second time I took my time. I would recommend reading it slowly, as a lot of its charm is in the details. This was Hope Larson’s first graphic novel, and it began as a webcomic. The good news is that it can still be read in its entirety online.

Hope Larson has another two books out, and I can’t wait to get my hands on them. Her newest one, Chiggers, has an enthusiastic blurb by Gene Luen Yang. How can I resist?

Salamander Dream by Hope Larson

And now a question: as exciting as clicking links randomly and finding great books is, it's also good to have a little guidance, and I very much trust your recommendations. So please tell me about any comics/graphic novels by women that you think I should read. Thank you in advance!

(Have you posted about this book too? Leave me your link and I’ll be glad to add it here.)

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