Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston

Mules and Men is a collection of black folklore collected by Zora Neale Hurston in Florida and Louisiana in the late 1920’s and early 30’s. The book is divided into two sections – for the first one, Hurston returned to her native Eatonville and collected the stories told by the local community. To write the second part, she moved to New Orleans for four months and was initiated by several Hoodoo (or Voodoo) doctors.

One of the things that makes Mules and Men so interesting is the fact that Zora Neale Hurston, though a trained academic, doesn’t try to present herself as a detached anthropological observer. I suppose the technical term for what she is is an observant-participant, but I’ll focus on the effect this has on readers, which is to give us what feels like a real glimpse of storytelling as an intimate activity; as something that's part of the inner life of a community. It’s important to note that Eatonville was Hurston’s own hometown, and that many of the people who told her these stories were people she knew growing up. With Hurston’s guidance, readers feel like they’re on the inside.

Let me tell you how part one is structured: more than a collection of folktales, it’s a narration of Zora Neale Hurston's visit to Eatonville, in which she inserts the folk stories as they come up in conversation. This is of course a reconstruction of what actually must have happened, but it feels natural and real – clearly she wrote this book with a novelist’s sensibility. She was criticised for lack of academic rigour, but her approach makes it much better as a creative work and as a piece of storytelling, if not as a reference book. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr says in the afterword, “…even Hurston’s academic collections center on the quality of imagination that makes these lives whole and splendid.”

As for the folk stories themselves, they’re written in dialect (as is much of the dialogue, but not Hurston’s narration). Probably because I read Their Eyes Were Watching God first, the use of Ebonics gave me no trouble at all, and I thought it added a lot to the feel of the book – the language often makes the folk tales sound so much richer. The tales are sometimes of European origin but with added local flavour; other times they're animal stories of the Brer Rabbit kind and other varieties; and they're also often stories dating back to slavery about a folk hero of sorts, John, who repeatedly outsmarts Old Massa, the white slave-owner.

There are also quite a few “just so” stories – stories that explain the way the world is in some form or other. Some of these surprised me, because they’re not really stories that ask questions or suggest alternatives, but rather stories that explain the world in a way that legitimatises oppressive social structures such as slavery, segregation, and racial inequality. Still, it’s easy to see how they’d have originated, and they feel very human for that very reason. Stories are how we make sense of the world, after all, and when people are faced with situations that feel too big for them to change, justifying them brings a sort of comfort. It’s a form of power to come up with a story to explain why one is less fortunate, even if the story justifies why this should be so. So even though many of these stories adhere to racist stereotypes, I often found them moving, and also surprisingly funny at times.

But not all of the tales are about explaining away the way the world is: many seize power in more obvious way, like the many stories in which a seemingly powerless character (often the aforementioned John) outsmarts and defeats a stronger one. Again, it’d be tempting to approach them sociologically and say that this makes sense considering the conditions of segregation and economic disparity in which they were created. But then again, this is such a common theme in the stories we tell, through the ages and across cultures, from the earliest myths to modern day novels, TV shows, or films. So I’m more inclined to say that the reoccurrence of this theme is just a sign of our common humanity.

I found the second section of the book even more interesting than the first, but that probably has to do with my fascination with New Orleans. Even more so than part one, this is not a detached account – Hurston does retell hearsay stories about Marie Laveau and other more contemporary Voodoo doctors, but mostly she describes rituals and experiences she herself participated in. As I mentioned above, she’s initiated as a Voodoo doctor and becomes an apprentice to several of the most well-known local experts.

I don't believe in the supernatural, but I can suspend my disbelief very easily when reading about other people's experiences. And I do consider them valid, even if personally I'd interpret them in a different light. All this to say that it's not incongruous for me to read stories about magic that are presented as non-fiction. And let me tell you, these were wonderful to read. It’s to Zora Neale Hurston’s credit as a storyteller that even a complete sceptic such as myself thought that there was some creepy, creepy stuff here. I think that when it comes to a religion such as Voodoo, I’d rather read the account of a believer than that of an outside observer anyway. Regardless of how I interpret these stories, I think it takes someone like Hurston, who was willing to fully immerse herself in the culture and to experience the rituals as a believer experiences them, to report what this faith feels like to people.

A warning, though: many of the ceremonies Hurston describes involve animal sacrifice, including one of the horrible-things-being-done-to-cats variety. If there's one thing in the world I'm squeamish about, this is it, so reading these sections was very uncomfortable for me. I don't blame Hurston for including them - she's describing what she saw and experienced, after all - but I hope against hope that I’ll be able to erase certain things from my mind.

I read Mules and Men as part of the Harlem Renaissance Classic Circuits Tour, so let me end this by thanking Rebecca and all her helpers for giving me an excuse to get to this wonderful book at last.

Also reviewed at:
Becky’s Book Reviews

Read More......

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter “Z” constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter “Z” should be utterly excised—fully extirpated—absolutely heaveho’d from our communal vocabulary!”

And so it begins. Nollop, a tiny island-nation off the coast of the United States, holds its founder, Nevin Nollop, in the highest regard. His greatest achievement is having come up with the pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”. And what, you may be wondering, is a pangram? It’s a sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet. Repetitions are allowed, but the fewer there are, the more impressive it’ll be. In the centre of Nollop stands a statue of its founder with the pangram he created written in tiles right beneath it. As the excerpt I shared tells you, when the tiles begin to fall, the island’s High Council interprets it as a message from the venerable Nevin – surely he must want the fallen letters banned from the islander's vocabularies.

In addition to being a dystopia, Ella Minnow Pea is an epistolary novel. The story is told in letters between Ella and several of her friends and family. Because Nollop is a totalitarian state, the mail is controlled. What this means is that as the fallen letters are banned, Ella and her correspondents are no longer allowed to use them, and so they disappear from the novel itself. The fact that we get to watch the characters come up alternative ways to express themselves, with ways to overcome the increasingly tight limits that are put on their means of communication and self-expression, is one of the main reasons why Ella Minnow Pea such a wonderful read.

However, if this book were merely an exercise in linguistic acrobatics, it might be satisfying for language nerds such as myself, but not much else. But fortunately, there’s much, much more to love here. The themes Ella Minnow Pea deals with – censorship, freedom, totalitarianism – are not exactly new, but they’re presented in such an original way that it feels new. Besides, the truth is that we’ll probably never run out of things to say about totalitarianism or censorship—not while they continue to affect people’s lives.

The way in which the High Council of Nollop tries to use language to control its citizens reminded me a little of Orwell’s 1984 and its newspeak. Of course, in many ways it’s completely different, because the aim of newspeak was to make certain thoughts unthinkable by stripping the language bare. The High Council can control communication, but not people’s private thoughts. In their heads, the characters surely continue to use the forbidden letters freely. Still, this tight control of communication is enough to fill Ella Minnow Pea with a pervasive sense of claustrophobia; one that greatly increases as the story advances and more and more letters are banned. Ella’s final letters are filled with a despair that is all the more raw because it cannot be articulated – and this makes them quite frightening to read.

There are some truly horrifying moments in Ella Minnow Pea, such as this:

They shut the library down today. By day’s end workmen had it totally boarded up. I spent much of the afternoon helping Rachalle box up items to transfer to the supply cabinets of Mother’s school. Her second graders wore such heart-tugging looks of confusion when the principal confiscated all the textbooks. Mother spent much of the school day in halt and stammer lest she speak the proscribed letter and find herself brought up on charges. It makes teaching so difficult, she tells me—having to spell out each word in her head before speaking it, to prevent accidental usage, while attempting to deliver a lesson without benefit of any textbook whatsoever!

But there are moments of humour too, especially early in the book, when the High Council’s actions seemed more like a passing eccentricity than a real problem:

Dear Sister Gwennneetttttte
Robbed of two letters, I now chooooose to overuuuse the twenty-four which remaaaaaain.
I hope you and Amos are well. I haven’t been feeeeeeling myself lately. Tassie worrrrrrrrries about me. She shouldn’t. I will bounce back as I always do do do do do do do do do.
Love,
Your sister Mittieeeeeeeeeeeee

As I was reading Ella Minnow Pea, I kept thinking that it’s pretty much impossible to translate. I’m sure the same concept could be used to basically create a similar novel in another language, but it would take a writer just as inventive as Mark Dunn. And plus the final result couldn't, by definition, be the same book. Can you think of any other novels that you find untranslatable? What are they, and why?

Other Opinions:
The Zen Leaf, Fyrefly's Book Blog, Becky's Book Reviews, Rebecca Reads, Fluttering Butterflies, Readings and Ruminations, Subliminal Intervention, Fleur Fish Reads, Sophisticated Dorkiness

(I probably missed quite a few...let me know if yours was one of them and I'll be glad to add it.)

Read More......

Un Lun Dun by China Miéville

Fourteen-year-old Zaana has been seeing strange things. First, there was that time when the clouds in the sky seemed to spell her name. Then there were all the animals that appeared to wink, subtly nod, or even curtsy when they passed her. And then there was the stranger who shook her hand at a café and says he was honoured to meet her. Zaana is scared and confused, and only her best friend Deeba seems to take her seriously. The strangest event of them all, though, is when in an abandoned cellar the two turn a wheel that simply turns off the city of London. In its place, UnLondon appears.

UnLondon, the girls’ hometown’s dark twin, is a place every bit as interesting as it is scary. From feral trash to carnivorous giraffes to ghosts roaming the streets, they never know what they’ll find at the next turn. But more than to make sense of UnLondon, Zaana just wants to find a way to go back home. Except it’s not that easy – it appears that the citizens of UnLondon are fighting a terrible foe, and everyone seems to believe that Zaana – who they address as “The Schawzy” – will be able to save them.

Un Lun Dun was quite a bit different than I was expecting, and I confess it took me about a hundred pages to get into it properly. This was because at first it seemed to be too traditional an adventure story for me. While there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with traditional adventures, it wasn’t quite what I expected from Miéville. However, after a while he does subvert readers’ expectations, and even though I saw the way this was done coming, it was enough to satisfy me.

Another reason why it took me some time to get into Un Lun Dun was the fact that it’s more of a plot-based than character-based sort of book. Again, nothing wrong with that, and I don’t mean that the characters weren’t interesting, or that the characterisation was poor. It’s just that a plot-centred story wasn’t quite what I was in the mood for when I picked it up, so if anything it was an error of timing on my part. But fortunately, Un Lun Dun really grew on me as I read on.

The most accurate way to describe this book, actually, is to say that rather than plot-based, it’s setting-based. I very much agree with what Miéville says on his essay on Tolkien: worldbuilding is an undervalued literary skill. I think it takes a lot of talent to create a place like Un Lun Dun: frightening yet exciting, odd and wildly imaginative and yet familiar in a hundred little ways. Part of what makes it so interesting is exactly the way it twists the familiar in unexpected ways, presenting it from entirely new angles. Unlondon put me in mind of some of my favourite imaginary cities: Philip Pullman’s Other Oxford, Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsests, the world of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask, and of course, the world of Neverwhere (which Miéville mentions was an inspiration in the acknowledgements). It’s not that these fantastic cities are similar, exactly; it’s just that that they’re all both instantly recognizable but completely unexpected. They seem to exist beyond the page (or the screen), and they make us long to dive in and explore them.

You know when you can feel that an author is really having fun with a book? Un Lun Dun very much gave me that impression. It’s quite a dark story in some ways, but it’s also very playful – especially when it comes to the language. In addition to UnLondon, we have mentions of Romeless and Parisin’t; we have bookanners, umbrellas and rebrellas, and binjas (yes, those are ninja garbage bins). And this just to give you a few examples. Another thing that adds to the fun are the illustrations, which Miéville drew himself. Examples:



If you’re looking for a book with a determined young heroine, for a fast-paced and unusual adventure story, for a highly original world of which you’ll want to see more, or for a story featuring a pet milk cartoon (you know you've always wanted to read one), then Un Lun Dun is definitely for you.

Bits I liked:

“My dad hates umbrellas”, said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing: ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked cubs at eye-level.’”

‘The thing is,’ Deeba said, eyeing Mr Speaker, ‘you could only make words do what you wanted if it was just you deciding what they mean. But it isn’t. It’s everyone else too. Which means you might want to give them orders, but you aren’t in total control. No one is.’

‘… Where’s the skill in being a hero if you were always destined to do it?’ said Hemi. He hesitated and said, ‘You impress me a lot more.’

Other Opinions:
Everyday Reads (Thank you again for the book! ♥)
Just Add Books
Works by Annie
Dwelling in Possibility

(Yours?)

Read More......

Reading Comics by Douglas Wolk

(Warning: this post turned out to be a bit soap-box-ish. Sorry!)

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean is a book-length piece of comics criticism – somewhat similar to Scott McLoud’s Understanding Comics, but with the crucial difference that it’s written from a reader’s rather than a creator’s perspective. (Also, unlike McLoud’s work, this is not itself a comic.) Needless to say, I gobbled it up. The book is divided into two parts: the first, “Theory and History”, takes a close look at what the comics medium is, how it works, and how it came to be what it is. The second, “Reviews and Commentary”, is exactly what it sounds like. I preferred part one, for many reasons, but I’ll get to that in good time.

My reaction to Reading Comics varied from joy and delight to complete exasperation, sometimes on the same page. A paragraph was often all it took for me to go from wanting to effusively shake the author’s hand to wanting to wring his neck (metaphorically, speaking, of course). But you know, I suspect that’s more or less the reaction Douglas Wolk was going for. He’s a self-professed fan of exciting criticism and passionate debate, and that’s certainly what we have here.

The thing about Mr. Wolk is, he’s quite abrasive – intentionally and unapologetically so. And it’s easy to laugh along with him when he's making fun of things I do find ridiculous, such as people who refuse to say the word “comics” and instead refer to the medium by absurd little names like “graphic books” or “illustrated novels” (not the same thing at all). Come on, it’s not a dirty word. Try saying it: c-o-m-i-c-s. (It is a bit of an awkward name, but then again, “movies”? Because they move?) It’s also easy to laugh when his target are reviewers that go, “Book x is actually good, so therefore it's nothing like a comic at all. I know this even though I've only read one comic in my life - but smart, sophisticated people surely know that all comics are rubbish, so x is naturally the exception to the rule.” (“X” very often being either Persepolis or Maus).

Wolk doesn't actually waste much time on the issue of comics’ respectability, though, because he thinks that mainstream antagonism is mostly a thing of the past. Which I tend to agree with – the little of it that's left will surely be gone in a few years. It amuses me to establish parallels between this and the rise of the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but that’s probably a topic for a whole other post.

Anyway, as I was saying: it’s easy to laugh sometimes, but not so easy when the target is, say, Craig Thompson and Blankets, which, as you may remember, I absolutely loved. As amateur reviewers, this is something we book bloggers have discussed ad nauseum: the danger of snark is that while some of your readers will feel you’re laughing with them, others will inevitably feel it’s them you’re laughing at. But there’s another reason why Reading Comics sometimes frustrated me: the book relies on certain assumptions about the role of professional criticism that I don’t quite share. Wolks says:

I also think it’s my responsibility as a critic to be harsh and demanding and to subject unambitious or botched work to public scorn, because I want more good comics: more cartoonists who challenge themselves to do better, and more readers who insist on the same. Here’s a bit from one of my favourite critical manifestos, Rebecca West’s 1914 essay, “The Duty of Harsh Criticism”: “Just as it was the duty of students of Kelvin the mathematician to correct his errors in arithmetic, so it is the duty of critics to rebuke these hastiness of great writers, lest the blurred impressions weaken the surrounding mental fabric and their rough transmission frustrate the mission of genius on earth.”

Um. In my humble, uninformed opinion, that might not quite be how the relationship between criticism and art production works. This passage also assumes that there’s some sort of universal standard of “unambitious” and “botched”, and that works that fail to reach a minimum level of quality as measured by this universal scale deserve public scorn—and also, of course, that the role of the critic is to “educate” the masses so they can tell the good and the bad apart. Only who determines what’s what? This is difficult to explain, especially without coming across as taking an anti-intellectual stance and refusing to acknowledge the existence of experts of any sort, which is certainly not what I mean. So, again, best to leave this subject for another time.

The reason why I read Reading Comics in a day and a half (and I’m a slow reader of non-fiction), though, and the reason why I’m very glad I picked it up despite my occasional exasperation and philosophical disagreements, is that when Douglas Wolk is brilliant, he’s truly brilliant. His writing is passionate, intelligent, direct, and simple, even when dealing with complex ideas. He has the ability to dispel some of the most common misconceptions about comics in the most succinct and straightforward possible way – something I’ve been trying to do (and failing) for literary years. I particularly loved how he explained that comics are a) not a genre (I’m going to get this tattooed on my forehead someday) and b) not “novels with pictures”. They’re a medium that functions in an entirely unique way; one doesn’t aspire to being anything else. Allow me to share a few passages, even though this post is already quite long:

There’s a problem with the way many people talk about comics: it’s very hard to talk about them as comics. One numbingly common mistake in the way culture critics address them is to invoke “the comic book genre”. As cartoonists and their long time admirers are getting a little tired of explaining, comics are not a genre; they’re a medium. Westerns, Regency romances, film noir: those are genres—kinds of stories with specific categories of subjects and conventions for their content and presentation. (Stories about superheroes are a genre, too.) Prose fiction, sculpture, video: those, like comics, are media—forms of expression that have few or no rules regarding their content other than the very board ones imposed on them by their form.

EXACTLY. For the record, I’m not trying to dissociate comics from genre literature because I think there’s something wrong with it—quite the contrary; I read it all the time. But the reason why I care so much about this is because I think that thinking of comics as a genre does them a huge disservice. People tend to see genres as a bit samey, which I don’t think is really true. Nevertheless, they obviously do have things in common, and they do use some of the same conventions—that’s what makes them genres. So if someone tells me, “I don’t usually like adventure novels”, I’m not inclined to argue with them. To think of comics as a genre, though, is to think that content-wise they’re all at least somewhat similar to one another, which is simply not true at all.

An example: a while ago I saw a review of a comic in which the person said they didn’t like it very much because the characters were a bit black and white. This is fair enough—but then someone commented suggesting that this was probably just a characteristic of the ‘genre’, and therefore the reviewer really shouldn’t have expected more in terms of characterisation. The ‘genre’ this commenter had in mind was probably superhero comics – and even then, something could be said about the assumption that they all have cardboard characters. The funny thing, though, is that the comic in question was not about superheroes at all – it was a piece of realistic fiction. But when we mistake the medium for a genre, we tend to unconsciously slip into these thought patterns. It’s amazing how many people still seem to assume that all comics are like those early twentieth-century black and white good-versus-evil superhero stories.

(Of course, there’s nothing wrong with not being a fan of the medium, just like there’s nothing wrong with, say, disliking music. What frustrates me is that people often justify their dislike with reasons that are simply not true. And also that some cross the line that separates dislike from disdain. People never quite seem to sound superior and proud when they announce they don’t like music, do they? But ooops: I’m slipping into the kind of demand for acknowledgement that Douglas Wolk so dislikes about comics culture. )

More:

The genre/medium confusion is an error of ignorance, while the if-it’s-deep-it’s-not-really-comics gambit is just a case of snobbery (in the sense of wanting to make a distinction between one’s own taste and the rabble’s taste). But the most thoroughly ingrained error in the language used to discuss comics is treating them as if they were particularly weird, or failed, examples of another medium altogether. Good comics are sometimes described as being “cinematic” (if they have some kind of broad visual scope or imitate a familiar kind of movie) or “novelistic” (if they have keenly observed details, or simply take a long time to read). Those can be descriptive words when they’re applied to comics. It’s almost an insult, though, to treat them as compliments. Using them as praise implies that comics as a form aspire (more or less unsuccessfully) to being movies or novels.

The comparisons to literature and film really amaze me. Saying comics are the same medium as books just because both have pages and you sit down to read them (or saying they’re like movies because they have images) is kind of like saying that theatre and film are the same medium because you sit down to watch them. Or that radio plays and music are the same because you listen to them both. They have similarities, of course, but they're not the same thing at all.

I wish the first part of the book had been longer, because there’s so much that can be said about how comics work. This is a topic that truly fascinates me. Part two, which takes a little over half the book, offers detailed commentary on the works of several comics creators, such as Alan Moore (of course), Craig Thompson (Mr. Wolk is not a fan), Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez (Mr Wolk is a fan), Dave Sim, Will Eisner, Hope Larson, Alison Bedchel, Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, and so on. It’s not that this second part wasn’t interesting, but unsurprisingly, I enjoyed the chapters about authors I’ve read a lot more than the chapters about ones I haven’t. And as I’m still quite the comics newbie myself, this only amounted to about half of them.

Despite my earlier complains, I’d definitely recommend Reading Comics to anyone interested in the medium, or in lively literary criticism in general. There’s a lot to be learned here. There’s also a lot I loved and haven’t even addressed at all, because this post is already ridiculously long as it is. For example, I quite liked the way Wolk dealt with the issue of gender in comics. But most of all, I loved how the book encouraged readers to discuss comics without diminishing them by treating them as an art form that tries to be something it’s not.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I'll add your link here.)

Read More......

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

If the plot of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is hard to summarise, that’s because there isn’t much of one at all. But fortunately, it doesn’t actually need a plot to be a hilarious and completely delightful read. The narrator, J, his friends Harris and George, and his dog Montmorency decide to go on a boating holiday on the Thames. What follows is a series of descriptions of comical events, not only ones from the holiday itself, but also from situations J happens to remember as he’s telling his story.

What Three Men in a Boat is is a sequence of anecdotes, many of which could begin with the sentence, “Remember that one time when we—”. But unlike what tends to happen when people begin a story with that sentence, you actually want to listen. If this sounds like the description of one of very chaotic book, that’s because it is, structure-wise. But that’s like saying Monty Python is chaotic—maybe so, but that's part of its charm.

It’s not often that I find a book every bit as funny as advertised. Maybe I lack a sense of humour, or maybe it’s just that expecting something to be funny can ruin the experience for me. But happily, Three Men in a Boat was an exception. J and his friends gave me flashbacks of the wizards of Unseen University—the type of humour is not entirely unlike Terry Pratchett's (who, if I’m not mistaken, has cited Jerome as an influence), and that’s definitely the kind of humour that works for me.

Also, an extra reason to love this book: it has chapter summaries! Hilarious ones! Maybe they don’t work quite as well out of context, but here are a few examples anyway:

The Food Question – Objections to Paraffin Oil as an Atmosphere – Advantages of Cheese as a Travelling Companion – A Married Woman Deserts her Home – Further Provisions for Getting Upset – I Pack – Cussedness of Toothbrushes – George and Harris Pack – Awful Behaviour of Montmorency – We Retire to Rest

Blackmailing – The Proper Course to Pursue – Selfish Boorishness of River-side Landowner – ‘Notice’ Boards – Unchristianlike Feelings of Harris – How Harris Sings a Comic Song – A High-Class Party—Shameful Conduct of Two Abandoned Young Men – Some Useless Information – George Buys a Banjo

I know I’m not saying much beyond “It’s funny! It’s as funny as they say!”, but that’s because I don’t actually have all that much more to say. Sometimes humour is enough, thought, isn’t it? I’ve never really adhered to the school of thought that considers humorous books less valuable or worthy than sad, reflective ones. I don’t even think the two are mutually exclusive. In this case, I’m sure there are lots of interesting sociological aspects about England in 1899 that one could comment on, but I confess I mostly missed them because I was too busy laughing.

Three Men in a Boat was actually initially meant as a real travel guide to the Thames and surrounding towns and villages, so there are some contemplative passages about nature and history and whatnot. They aren’t meant to be funny, but it’s like the humour of the rest of then book rubs off on them. Either that or they seem absurd because they’re so out of place. Anyway, I don’t want to sound overly critical, because even those were a lot of fun to read.

A few of my favourite passages (if this is so long, it's because nothing I can say could possibly persuade you as well as a sample of the real thing):

To go back to the carved-oak question, they must have had very fair notions of the artistic and the beautiful, our great-great-grandfathers. Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The "old blue" that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried.
Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow- pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?

(This first one isn’t one of the funniest bits, but it made me smile because it’s so true. Hello from 2010, O Victorian artefacts.)

That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea.
It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out.

George said it was absurd to have only four potatoes in an Irish stew, so we washed half-a-dozen or so more, and put them in without peeling. We also put in a cabbage and about half a peck of peas. George stirred it all up, and then he said that there seemed to be a lot of room to spare, so we overhauled both the hampers, and picked out all the odds and ends and the remnants, and added them to the stew. There were half a pork pie and a bit of cold boiled bacon left, and we put them in. Then George found half a tin of potted salmon, and he emptied that into the pot.
He said that was the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things. I fished out a couple of eggs that had got cracked, and put those in. George said they would thicken the gravy.
I forget the other ingredients, but I know nothing was wasted; and I remember that, towards the end, Montmorency, who had evinced great interest in the proceedings throughout, strolled away with an earnest and thoughtful air, reappearing, a few minutes afterwards, with a dead water- rat in his mouth, which he evidently wished to present as his contribution to the dinner; whether in a sarcastic spirit, or with a genuine desire to assist, I cannot say.
We had a discussion as to whether the rat should go in or not. Harris said that he thought it would be all right, mixed up with the other things, and that every little helped; but George stood up for precedent. He said he had never heard of water-rats in Irish stew, and he would rather be on the safe side, and not try experiments.
Harris said:
"If you never try a new thing, how can you tell what it's like? It's men such as you that hamper the world's progress. Think of the man who first tried German sausage!"

Reviewed at:
Becky’s Book Reviews
Wordlily
She Reads Books
Shelf Love
Farm Lane Books
Beth Fish Reads

(Did I miss yours?)

Read More......

The Sunday Salon - Classics

Hello Sunday Saloners. The other day I was looking at my list of books read so far in 2010, and I noticed that I've been reading a lot more classics than I normally do. The reason for this is a simply one: I've been reading a lot more e-books, and most of the e-books that are freely available are classics. I know many people don't like the idea of reading a whole book on the computer, and I used to be the same. But both my previous and my current job require me to stare at a computer screen for hours, and weirdly enough, this seems to have desensitised me.

Also, after my tendonitis last year, I've been a lot more careful about actually pausing for fifteen minutes every two hours or so. And I decided that instead of just staring into space for those fifteen minutes, I'd try to read on the screen, which is something that I can do while keeping my wrist still. It's amazing how those pauses here and there add up to so much more reading.

But anyway, back to reading classics: if you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll have noticed that many of my reading choices are what are widely considered unintelligent or unsophisticated books: I unapologetically read “rubbish”. And it’s not that I've avoided what tends to be universally considered “Proper Literature” because I have a grudge against it or anything of the sort. I have felt in the past that my other reading choices affected how seriously people took me if I tried to join conversations about Sophisticated Literature, but this is the internet - it's nothing if not democratic. Still, for many years I was more or less indifferent to classics. I didn’t grow up reading them, and, not being from an English-speaking country, I didn’t even read that many at school. It’s not really a matter of not knowing what I was missing, because while I believe that books are often unfairly forgotten, I've also always believed that they’re probably not remembered for no good reason at all. But I wasn’t in much of a rush to catch up.

I still don’t think that any one group or category of books is inherently superior to another, and I will continue to read my “rubbish” happily. There have been countless debates in the blogosphere about this, though, so I’ll refrain from going there again. What I want to say is: I now do want to catch up. And one of the reason is that over the past few years (and blogging is very much to blame here), it finally dawned on me that many of those books I’d been passingly familiar with all my life are actually a lot of fun to read.

There’s something else, and again, this isn’t a new idea, but rather an argument I often see used in favour of classics. But there’s a difference between intellectually understanding something and really understanding how it applies to my reading. What I’m talking about is cultural relevance. For better or worse (and inevitably at the exclusion of other things, but so it goes), classics have become a fundamental part of western culture. This means that references to them abound, in all sorts of contexts. And also that other books will often allude to, comment on, or respond to them. I love the idea of literature as a conversation, and being able to tell who’s saying what to whom just makes things so much more fun.

I'm getting carried away. What I meant to ask you today is to pick my next classics for me. I have quite a few e-books downloaded, and because several are calling my name, I can’t make up my mind. They are:


I’ll read them all eventually, but which one do you think I’d like best? Or is there anything else you think I ought to read right now? The only thing I ask is that it be available online.

One last thing: I think everyone knows of it by now, but if you’ve missed Rebecca’s amazing Classics Circuit, be sure to check it out. I’ve only participated in two of the tours so far, but I love reading what everyone else has to say about the classics they read. I have the Circuit to thank for adding books I hadn't considered reading before to my wishlist.

And last but not least, did you know that Meghan and Heidenkind are hosting a Classics Month in March? Be sure to visit them for more information.

Read More......

Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson

Spanning a period of over sixty years (1870-1936), Alas Poor Lady is the story of the Scrimgeours, a typically large Victorian family: Captain Scrimgeour and his wife, Charlotte, have nine children, only the last of which is the long-desired male heir. Alas Poor Lady focuses on four of their daughters – Mary, Agatha, Queenie, and particularly Grace, the youngest. They’re the ones who fail to accomplish the task they were trained for ever since they were small children: to secure a husband who would support them. At a time when upper-class women were expected to depend on men, and when for a lady to earn her own living meant social disgrace, the fate that waits them is a very precarious one.

Alas Poor Lady is a novel full of quiet anger. The tragedy of these women’s lives is not only a matter of personal void or a lack of fulfilment, but mainly a socioeconomic descent that happens through no fault of their own. They’re helpless, yes, but only because they’re made helpless. Some of them wanted things other than marriage and children, but what opportunities were there? We watch them try to find alternatives, and we watch their every effort be curtailed for the sake of social appearances. The novel’s anger, then, is not so much directed at anyone in particular as it is at a social structure that only took men into account.

I worry I’m making Alas, Poor Lady sound like a social treatise, when it is in fact a very engrossing and effective piece of storytelling. It is a social novel, though it was written in 1937, which is to say, after the fact. Possibly Rachel Ferguson felt that the elderly ladies whose only hope lay in charities for distressed gentlefolk deserved to have their story told – and she tells it in a sensitive, perceptive, and very humane manner. Because we follow Grace and her sisters for such a long period, because we get to know them so intimately, watching their growing isolation and impoverishment as they age hurts all the more. The depth of the characterisation, then, is one of this novel’s greatest strengths. There’s also the fact that even though the story unfolds predictably and with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy, I couldn’t keep myself from eagerly turning the pages. The book is a long one, as I said, but I read it in a single day.

Alas, Poor Lady also explores something that I don’t think I’ve read about very often at all: the psychological effects of a socioeconomic downfall. It’s perhaps easy to be unsympathetic towards the pain of those who were rich and are now poor, especially when we compare it with the pain caused by a lifetime of poverty and precarious living conditions. But this is a comparison that I don’t want to make right now – because social inequality aside, this psychological adjustment does exist, and I think it’s worth examining.

The Scrimgeours sisters are not necessarily snobs, and their pain at suddenly being caught in poverty should not be dismissed as pride. It’s just that they grew up in a world in which these things Did Not Happen – because they didn’t fit into people’s mental picture, and because when they did happen, they were never talked about. So more than just poverty, their new circumstances require a readjustment of all their beliefs about the world. Ironically, not long before her death and her daughters’ subsequent downfall, Mrs Scrimgeour refuses to contribute to a charity for distressed gentlefolk, on the grounds that “respectable people” will always have friends and family to count on.

But sadly, friends and family often go as soon as one’s money and social prestige are gone. The married Scrimgeours sisters do help their single sisters at first, but as the years pass they begin to resent them, even thought it could easily have been them in their position. Whether or not they realise this remains unclear. And Grace, Mary and Queenie (Agatha follows a different path, but I won’t spoil it for you) know they’re burdens on their families—which is yet another source of pain.

Another thing I loved about Alas, Poor Lady was how sophisticated its understanding of gender was. The complexity and perceptiveness with which it portrays gender socialisation is up there with that of my very favourite books (like, say Tender Morsels, The Fox Woman or Tipping the Velvet). This probably shouldn’t have surprised me, but it somehow did, a little bit. 1937 was quite a long time ago, but then again, Virginia Woolf, Mary Wollstonecraft, and countless others were writing long before that. But let me give you a concrete example of what I mean: Grace and Charles Scrimgeour, the two youngest children, are close during their nursery years. Charles is initially a quiet, sensitive, and physically weak child (he has to wear iron braces on his legs until age seven), and he’s drawn to his slightly older sister. He enjoys imaginative and quiet activities, such as playing dolls with her, and such is his naivety about the Ways of the World that, when caught, he freely admits this to his father. Charles has all the “girliness” beaten out of him, of course, and is taught, in short, not to see women as equals, potential companions, or human beings. What follows is an inevitable estrangement between him and his sister, and watching it happen broke my heart.

Rachel Ferguson does not shy away from mentioning other social issues that were direct consequences of Victorian patriarchy: the fate of a maid who gets pregnant, for example, is put side by side with the fate of the boy who impregnates her (“these things were almost always the girl’s fault”, Mrs Scrimgeour thinks); Georgie, the first Scrimgeour girl to get married, resents her mother for the rest of her life for never having given her the slightest hint of what to expect from her wedding night. And so on. She certainly does not hesitate to debunk the romanticised, naïve, and misinformed notions people sometimes seem to have about the past as a time when families stuck together through thick and thin and social problems were mainly absent.

Alas, Poor Lady is undoubtedly a sad book, but it’s written in a way that doesn’t invite us to pity the characters; rather, it challenges us to face the social circumstances that trapped them – a not at all useless exercise even in today’s world, despite the many positive changes when it comes to women and work.

A few months ago I read Ferguson’s The Brontës Went to Woolsworth, which I very much enjoyed. But Alas, Poor Lady I more than enjoyed: I loved it wholeheartedly. It’s in another league altogether, and I have little doubt it will make my end of the year list of favourites. What a remarkable writer Ferguson was, and what a pity that most of her work is now out of print. I’m very grateful that these two books at least were rescued from obscurity.

Memorable bits:

Mary and Arabella had hurried home exploding with laughter. In common with nearly all other young women of the time, they were, without suspecting it, completely different people among themselves from what they were in the society of men. In those rare, sisterly minutes, they were, in short, human beings.

The fear of tomorrow and all the tomorrows filled her. The time there was! Yet men filled it to the brim, in work which brought them money or fame and in social engagements which never failed, or there was the club; even little Charlie was having a future built for him already that would put him beyond the reach of ennui. Whereas a woman’s life was one of eternal waiting: to be taken out, called on, danced with or proposed to. How had it originated, this division of opportunity?

‘It’s lack of imagination, I suppose, that makes men so unlike women.’
It might be that, but it was an eternal something else upon which one couldn’t put one’s finger: the inevitability with which the woman was reduced, even in fiction, to tears or meekness, the way in which it was the man who dictated terms, delivered ultimata. ‘Don’t make me scenes or you will lose me’ (when the cause of her tears, his version of the ‘scene’, was his own callousness). ‘You will not see that man anymore’ (and she gladly recognised a jealously which, if exhibited by herself, would call down a sermon upon her head). Men, of course, expected not only to have things their own way, but all ways at once, as Nana said. And they got it.

Grace recognised it as not the least of their sickness that about their common trouble there was a conspiracy of silence. One suspected that these girlhood friends had had no chance of marriage but the healing of discussion was denied them; that, and the stupendous relief which would have been the pooling of a flaming resentment and the open expression of a frightened, mounting grief. Appearances must be kept up, even among confidants, in private. Sometimes their whaleboned resistance very nearly broke down. But never quite. Pauses in the conversation would be filled by the quick, furtive glance in which revelation and confession hung in the balance. Then the danger passed. Relieved, unshriven, profoundly regretful, they talked of other things.
They contrived to meet and live with a smile, martyrs sustained by no principle, dying by inches for no cause at all.

Other opinions:
The B Files

(Did I miss yours?)

Read More......

Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay

Saffy’s Angel is the first of Hilary McKay’s books about the Casson family, a family of eccentric, creative, and mostly lovable people. The parents, Eve and Bill, are both artists, and they named each of their children from the colour chart that hangs in their living room: Cadmium, Indigo, Saffron, and Rose. It’s Saffron’s realisation that her name is not on the colour chart after all that leads to a discovery about her past, and later on to a quest to find the stone garden angel her grandfather wanted her to have.

The main reason why I loved Saffy’s Angel so much is because it’s such a kind book. This isn’t to say that everyone is nice, that the characters are permanently content, or that only good things ever happen—not at all. The kindness is there because this is a book about a (mostly) really nice family, who truly care about one another and whose interactions constantly made me smile. There’s also a degree of warmth and humour in the storytelling itself that really add to this general feeling of kindness. Saffy’s Angel is such a happiness-inducing book. Just thinking about it makes me happy again.

I’m saying the family are “mostly” kind, by the way, because I didn’t really like Bill, the children’s father. It’s perfectly clear that the narrator doesn’t really means us to, as the passages concerning him are written with delicious irony. The result is very funny, but it’s also a commentary on gender roles and on the unfairness of the kind of social pressure and expectations that allow a man to get away with— indeed, to justify as only right and proper—what would be unthinkable for a woman.

As a reader, I feel that I’m on a permanent quest for more imaginary friends, by which I meant that I’m always on the lookout for the kind of characters I hate to part from; the kind whose company I enjoy so much that I always want to spend more time with them. Saffy’s Angel is one such book, and the good news is that, although it works perfectly as a standalone, there are five other books about these characters. I couldn’t be happier.

One of my favourite scenes was the one in which Saffy makes friends with Sarah, a girl her age she had never spoken to before even though they’d been living in the same street all their lives. This is because Sarah is in a wheelchair, and the Casson family were too busy politely trying not to see the wheelchair to see Sarah herself at all. We’re told that once, when she was little, Saffy pointed at Sarah, but she was immediately told by her parents never to do that again, preferably not to look at Sarah’s at all—a kind of chastisement obviously based on the assumption that she was staring and pointing at the wheelchair. She couldn’t possibly be looking at Sarah stood and seeing a person her age that she would perhaps like to be friend with.

But then Saffy bumps into Sarah and is forced to see her at last, after which the two do make friends—and Sarah turns out to be every bit as lively and interesting as the Cassons themselves. The scene I've just described and the gender thing are examples of another thing I loved about Saffy’s Angel: it’s subtly subversive, and there’s more to it than meets the eye. With kindness, with irony, and without ever hitting readers over the head with them, Hilary McKay asks the kind of questions the world at large should be asking more often.

Saffy’s Angel is funny, wise and warm. It also has excellent dialogue, and it’s filled with characters I want to see more of. What else could I ask for?

Reviewed at:
Jenny’s books
Shelf Love
Book Nut
Library Queue
Necromancy Never Pays

(Did I miss yours?)

Read More......

Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Dandicat

Breath, Eyes, Memory opens when twelve-year-old Sophie finds out that she soon has to leave her native Haiti and the aunt who has raised her since she was a baby to go live in New York with a mother she barely remembers. After some time with her mother, Sophie uncovers a secret that has been kept for years, after which she has to find a way to come to terms with the consequences this silence has had on her own life, as well as on the lives of those she loves.

Breath, Eyes, Memory is divided into several parts, with years-long gaps between each. At first, the time jumps distanced me a little bit from the story, but in the end, I felt that the structure worked very well. It allowed the story to say what it was meant to say more clearly than a more traditional narrative would. More than a story about a young girl adapting to a new country, this is a story about the lingering effects of certain events. Of course, in many ways it also is an immigrant story: Sophie’s upbringing in New York distances her enough from her homeland and family that she can see them from a new angle. But this doesn’t mean she stands apart from them, of course.

I’m being a little bit vague, I know, and the reason why is that Breath, Eyes, Memory really surprised me. I didn’t really know much about the plot, and it turned out to deal with themes I feel quite strongly about. This is possibly a spoiler, so feel free to skip ahead. But spoiler-y or not I wanted to tell you that the book deals with sexual abuse—not so you’ll avoid it, but because I know this is a delicate topic for many people, and that countless readers have good reasons to want to know beforehand if they’re going to pick up a book about it.

I don’t want to say how exactly it plays into the story (not that it’s exactly hard to guess after the first few chapters), but I needed to tell you this so I can talk about the book more openly. Sophie’s culture (as many other cultures) is one in which sexual “purity” defines of a woman’s worth. It’s also one (again, as many many others) in which female virginity is highly valued. So a woman who has been abused, even if not blamed in the traditional why-were-you-out-late-why-did-you-wear-that-short-dress sort of way, is still considered “damaged goods”, and is still made to feel that she has brought shame on herself and her family. Sadly (but understandably), these beliefs are so ingrained that even women who have had their lives ruined by this mindset will perpetuate it when their turns comes to raise the following generation.

Breath, Eyes, Memory is a nuanced and forgiving book, in the sense that it doesn’t present Sophie and the women in her family as enemies, as victims or villains, but as women trying to navigate the same system of oppression. But it’s also an immensely sad and upsetting book. More than anything, it shows the consequences of silence, of shame, of not being allowed to talk about what desperately needs to be talked about. What remains unspoken poisons these women’s relationships with themselves, with their bodies, and with one another.

My heart broke for Sophie, for her mother, for her aunt, for her grandmother before them. All of them were made to feel, overtly or in more subtle ways, that their sexuality was dirty; that they weren’t allowed to inhabit their own bodies. They were punished for being sexual beings, and yet expected to be sexual beings at the same time. This is a story that repeats itself time and again, all over the world, to this day and beyond.

One final note: I mooched Breath, Eyes, Memory a few months ago because I loved Dandicat’s introduction to Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. I decided to read it now because recent events made me want to deepen my understanding of Haiti. The more you know, after all, the more you care. It’s not that the news of the tragedy weren’t enough to make me care, but when I read about a place, I feel that I have developed a personal connection with it—it’s almost like having been there myself, or having a friend who comes from that place. You can click the link below to donate to relief efforts in Haiti.


Other opinions:
Musings of a Bookish Kitten
Joy Story
Reading with Tequila

(Did I miss yours?)

Read More......

The Good Women of China by Xinran

The Good Women of China is a collection of true stories about the lives of Chinese women in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Xinran is a Chinese journalist who hosted a radio program called “Words on the Night Breeze”. This program was directed at women, and bit by bit Xinran was able to invite her listeners to share their stories. Even though she had to work around the tight constraints of government censorship, Xinran managed to cover topics that had long been banned from the public discourse: female sexuality, contraception, sexual abuse, homosexuality, arranged marriages, and even the question of whether or not women were happy with their lives.

The Good Women of China doesn’t necessarily find answers for the many questions it raises, but the fact that it raises them at all in a society in which silence reigned makes it a remarkable book. One of the things I appreciated the most about it was the fact that it was written by an insider, an actual Chinese woman. Not only because this guarantees that she truly knows the cultural context about which she’s writing, but also because it leaves little room for condescension, cultural generalisations, or the idealisation of the state of gender equality in the West.

This is a tricky issue, and a problem that western writers dealing with the East or Middle East often have to face. Obviously I realise that I have many more opportunities than, say, women in Afghanistan, but I find that most of the time comparisons between different countries are not very useful, and can even be distracting. Xinran doesn’t invite the western reading public (I say “western reading public” because she had to move to the UK to be able to write this book, due to censorship issues) to pity the women of China and pat themselves in the back about their wonderful, wonderful lives; she merely tells these women’s stories and invites readers to consider several difficult and uncomfortable questions.

Another thing I liked was the fact that The Good Women of China was not at all sensationalist in tone. Nor did it feel exploitative, though it sometimes deals with horrifying brutality and heartbreaking tragedy. The tone was always kind, compassionate and honest. Xinran comes across as an extremely emphatic person, and also as someone who’s truly searching for answers; someone who really wants to know what women’s lives in her country are like. Her questions always felt honest, and her interest in the women to whom she gives voice genuine.

You might be wondering what the stories are actually about, so let me give you an idea: many of them deal with sexual abuse, and were quite difficult to read. “The Girl Who Kept a Fly as a Pet”, for example, was a real life Tender Morsels with no happy ending of any sort. It completely broke my heart to see a prematurely aged seventeen-year-old girl who has been regularly raped by her father since puberty ask:

Just what are women, exactly? Should men by classed in the same species as women? Why are they so different? Books and films may say it is better to be a woman, but I cannot believe it. I have never felt it to be true, and I never will.

These are also stories about arranged marriages, about the personal consequences of the Cultural Revolution in countless women's lives, about lost love, about motherhood, about the Tangsham earthquake of 1976, about disabled women, and, as I mentioned above, about lesbian women. Sadly, I have to say that the chapter entitled “The Women Who Loved Other Women” made me sad, as Xinran treads dangerously close to homophobic territory. She does try to be compassionate and non-judgemental, but the way she framed this woman’s story gave me the impression that she couldn’t help but think of her sexual orientation as pathological. She retells this woman’s life story, a story of abuse at the hands of men, as if this explained away the fact that she’s a lesbian. It’s possible that that’s not what at all what Xinran intended, but that’s how the chapter comes across regardless. I do realise that one woman’s story is not supposed to stand for every woman, but still, the fact that she searched for a pathological explanation for her sexual orientation at all saddened me.

Another problem I sometimes had with The Good Women of China was the fact that Xinran never wandered too far from essentialist notions of gender. As daring as she is, and as much as she's willing to ask previously unasked questions, they’re all still based on the assumption that men and women are very different; different for reasons other than socialisation and the fact that they have different opportunities. I know this is a prevalent assumption all over the world, and probably I shouldn’t be too hard on her for buying into it, but nevertheless it’s something that always disappoints me.

Still, The Good Women of China is a remarkably brave and honest book, and one that I think everyone interested in gender studies and in the state of women’s rights around the world should read.

A memorable bit:

From the matriarchal societies in the far distant past, the position of Chinese women has always been at the lowest level. They were classed as objects, as a part of property, shared out along with food, tools and weapons. Later on, they were permitted to enter the men’s world, but they could only exist at their feet – entirely reliant on the goodness or wickedness of a man. If you study Chinese architecture, you can see that many long years passed before a small minority of women could move from the side chambers of the family courtyard (where tools were kept and the servants slept) to chambers beside the main rooms (where the master of the house and his sons lived).

Other opinions:
Book Addiction
Fleur Fish Reads
Lotus Reads
It's All About Me
But what these unobservant birds

(Did I miss yours?)

Read More......

Uncle Silas by Sheridan Le Fanu

Uncle Silas is a 1865 sensation novel which, curiously enough, begins with a preface in which the author states that what we’re about to read is not, in fact, a mere sensation novel, for Those Are Bad. Isn’t that funny? It put me in mind of certain contemporary authors who are so eager to distance their work from the genres to which they belong, and to belittle the traditions that so clearly inspired them. But anyway, none of this has any bearing on how excellent a novel Uncle Silas is.

The heroine of this story is seventeen-year-old Maud Ruthyn, who we initially meet at Knowl, the large and isolated estate where she lives with her reclusive father. Maud leads a lonely existence, and things don’t get much better when her father hires a governess, Madame De La Rougierre, who terrorises her. I don’t want to tell you too much about the plot, because the story’s main event, the thing you’ll read about in most synopses should you look one up, is something that only happens a good one hundred and fifty pages into the book – which, in my humble opinion, qualifies it as a spoiler. Good thing that I know better than to read back cover plot summaries these days.

Anyway, the start of Uncle Silas could perhaps be described as slow, but I wasn’t bored for a second. Eerie and mysterious events take place from the very beginning, and I was immediately drawn into the story. Here’s what I can tell you about the plot: we have not one but two atmospheric manor houses; a brave if slightly naïve heroine; a seriously creepy governess who enjoys playing mind games; and a possibly mad relative (hello, Raych): the uncle Silas of the title, of whom all we know at first is that he was involved in a scandal many years ago, and is now a social outcast. Needless to say, Maud ends up meeting him, but I shan’t tell you how.

There. I know that’s a vague description, but I hope it will be enough to make you want to read Uncle Silas. I seriously can’t imagine fans of Wilkie Collins not enjoying this book. Like Collins, Le Fanu knows how to create and sustain an atmosphere of suspense. Whatever else Uncle Silas is, it’s also immensely fun to read, completely engrossing, and very Gothic and awesome.

One of the other things Uncle Silas is is a very claustrophobic novel. Like in most sensation fiction, the plot is built around social cracks, contradictions and fears: mainly the fear of impeding social chaos, should certain lines be crossed or certain structures collapse. In this case, we first and foremost have class-based fears. Class boundaries are very much at the core of Uncle Silas’ unforgivable transgression. I can tell you this, as it’s not the secret that certain characters only allude to at first: one of the reasons why Silas and his brother Austin, Maud’s father, ceased to be in good terms was because Silas married a country girl, someone not of his class.

The novel sometimes seems to suggest that this explain certain things about Maud’s cousins, Dudley and Milly, though I’m not quite sure what to make of Le Fanu’s stance on this. When Maud meets Milly, she describes her lack of proper feminine demeanour as “grotesque”. But Milly changes considerably after spending time in Maud’s company, which implies that it’s her lack of education that is responsible for her eccentricity, rather than the lack of any innate class-based quality. Dudley, on the other hand, is as unpleasant a character as they come. There’s another working-class character in the novel, Meg Hawkes, who’s treated with kindness, but as I was saying earlier, Uncle Silas is still very much centred on the idea that crossing certain class boundaries has dreadful consequences.

It’s funny how suspenseful Uncle Silas manages to be, even though everything is as it seems. I’m trying not to give away too much of the story, but to be honest I don’t think a modern reader will be very surprised at all with any of what happens. Like in Lady Audley’s Secret, the scandals aren’t really all that scandalous in our day and age. But that doesn’t make the story any less interesting, or any less fun. And it’s neat to think about how a Victorian audience would have read it differently because of certain assumptions about what “gentlemen” do or do not do.

Uncle Silas is a first person narration, which tells us right away that Maud is going to be just fine in the end. Still, as the story progresses, as its atmosphere becomes increasingly oppressive, and as Maud grows more and more isolated, I truly feared for her. Even though I approached the story with a different set of assumptions than its original audience did, I found that the suspense still worked. As for Maud, she’s not exactly an unconventional heroine like Wilkie Collins’ Marian or Rachel, but she has a voice and a mind of her own. As I was saying earlier, she’s very much concerned with ladylike decorum, but while I wouldn’t necessarily describe her as a feminist icon, she definitely feels like a real person. That was enough for the characterisation to satisfy me.

The most interesting thing about Uncle Silas, when it comes to gender politics, is the fact that it exposes the positions of extreme vulnerability into which women were forced. The story takes place before the Married Women's Property Act, and Maud is completely dependant on her male relatives until she comes of age. The threats of being declared mad, of a forced marriage, of being robbed of everything she is to inherit, are all very much real. The fact that she’s completely in the hands of the men in her life is what makes her story so terrifying. Kudos to Sheridan Le Fanu for making Victorian readers face the position their social structure put her in. Kudos for making them sympathise.

Bits I liked:

There is not an old house in England of which the servants and young people who live in it do not cherish some traditions of the ghostly. Knowl has its shadows, noises, and marvellous records. Rachel Ruthyn, the beauty of Queen Anne's time, who died of grief for the handsome Colonel Norbrooke, who was killed in the Low Countries, walks the house by night, in crisp and sounding silks. She is not seen, only heard. The tapping of her high-heeled shoes, the sweep and rustle of her brocades, her sighs as she pauses in the galleries, near the bed-room doors; and sometimes, on stormy nights, her sobs.

We had tea in Milly's room that night. Firelight and candles are inspiring. In that red glow I always felt and feel more safe, as well as more comfortable, than in the daylight--quite irrationally, for we know the night is the appointed day of such as love the darkness better than light, and evil walks thereby. But so it is. Perhaps the very consciousness of external danger enhances the enjoyment of the well-lighted interior, just as the storm does that roars and hurtles over the roof.

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

Read More......

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

I’m afraid that until very recently, my answer to the question “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?” would have been, “Me. Me me me me me. I am.” As much as I love her non-fiction, particularly A Room of One’s Own and The Common Reader, my experience with her fiction was like reaching a mountain I just couldn’t climb, no matter how worthwhile I suspected the view from the top to be. I realise that more than anything, this says something about my confidence as a reader (or rather, my lack thereof), but I mentally filed her under “authors much too clever for me”.

However, I think I gave up too easily. All I’d tried were her short stories, which several Woolf lovers have told me are not the best place to begin. Nor, I’ve also been told, are they necessarily more accessible than her novels, despite their shorter length. Encouraged by the wonderful Woolf in Winter read-alongs, I decided to give Orlando: A Biography a try, and I’m happy to report that this time Woolf’s language didn’t feel like an insurmountable mountain at all; rather, it felt like waves, sweeping me away. It flowed beautifully; it was lavish, playful, and refreshing, and it was a whole lot of fun to read.

Orlando: A Biography is the story of a heroine/hero who is born in the sixteenth century as a man, and whom the biographer follows until 1928, when Orlando has grown only a little older, arguably wiser, and, before I forget to mention it, has turned into a woman. Orlando, then, is an androgynous protagonist, and her story is inevitably one about gender. Most of all, I loved how it implicitly rejected any essentialist theories of what makes a man a man and a woman a woman. Shortly after the transformation scene, we are told that Orlando is essentially still the same. It’s only when she decides to return to her native England, when she enters the ship that will take her home, when she wears the clothes and finds herself cast into a necessarily gendered role, that she begins to change.

I adored this passage, in which Woolf anticipates modern theories of gender performativity:

Vain trifles as they seem, clothes have, they say, more important offices than merely to keep us warm. They change our view of the world and the world's view of us. For example, when Captain Bartolus saw Orlando's skirt, he had an awning stretched for her immediately, pressed her to take another slice of beef, and invited her to go ashore with him in the long-boat. These compliments would certainly not have been paid her had her skirts, instead of flowing, been cut tight to her legs in the fashion of breeches. And when we are paid compliments, it behoves us to make some return. Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man's humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman's skirts, and his braided coat a woman's satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them; we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. So, having now worn skirts for a considerable time, a certain change was visible in Orlando, which is to be found if the reader will look above, even in her face. If we compare the picture of Orlando as a man with that of Orlando as a woman we shall see that though both are undoubtedly one and the same person, there are certain changes. The man has his hand free to seize his sword, the woman must use hers to keep the satins from slipping from her shoulders. The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.

But in addition to gender, Orlando is also about disregarding rules, be they the rules of social interactions, of fashion, or of propriety. Yet at the same time, it’s also about accepting them, and making the most of the limits that are imposed on one’s life—as we see when the nineteenth-century begins and Orlando suddenly itches for a ring on her finger. Her sudden desire for marriage is more about continuing a quietly subversive existence than about conforming. As a single woman, she would not be allowed to keep her property. Her match allows her to escape scrutiny, but also continue to have a room of her own. The criticism of the social system that corners her is implicit – as the biographer tells us, she was crushed by the “spirit of the times.” Still, Orlando secures a chance to continue to live as she wishes, and, most importantly, to write.

And speaking of writing, Orlando is also about the role of art, about history, about literary fashions, about the passing of time. There are moments of wonderful satire, such as when Greene the poet repeats the exact same speech about the unrepeatable literary glories of the past, only centuries apart, and the second time about the exact same period he denigrated as he lived through it. Orlando is ironic, daring, and very very funny. The two fantasy elements that support the plot – the sex change and Orlando’s unnaturally long life – give Woolf a chance to play with her themes in a way that would be impossible otherwise. This is a perfect example of why I love fantasy so (and no, I won’t call Orlando “magic realism”) – it opens doors.

The fact that Orlando’s subtitle is “a biography” is certainly meaningful. This novel is (humorously, of course, but significantly all the same) not presented as a novel, but as a true biography. What's interesting is that it’s as much about Orlando as it is about her biographer, the unnamed voice who guides us through her story. We feel closer to this voice than we do to Orlando herself, who we see mostly from the outside. Yet Orlando is not a stranger—we love her because the voice telling us her story loves her. I nearly always distrust biographical approaches to literature, but it’s perhaps worth noting that Orlando has been described as a long love letter from Virginia Woolf to her friend Vitta Sackville-West, on whom Orlando was based and to whom the book is dedicated.

The biographer’s voice does more than get us to love Orlando too: it also ponders, it muses, it delights us, it makes us laugh with its exquisite irony. One of my favourite moments in the book was a scene in which nothing much is supposedly happening. Orlando sits at her desk, writing, and her biographer wonders what to do with us readers for the duration of this dead period. What follows is a series of observations on life versus art, on the inner life and the imagination versus what the majority defines as a “real existence”. They’re delivered with lightness and humour, but they’re also quite serious considerations about different literary schools, for example (one can easily tell where the biographer’s sympathies—and Woolf’s—lie), as well as about philosophies of life. Who is to define what is a “real” existence, after all? Orlando, for all her adventures, finds the most satisfaction in the hours she spends at her desk or in solitary walks.

Orlando is a hugely satisfying novel (pardon, a biography) whose accessibility and luxuriance perhaps disguise the fact that it’s more layered and structurally complex than it seems at first glance. I know it’s a book I’ll be returning to in the future, and one in which I suspect I’ll find more and more each time. Meanwhile, now that I’m cured of my Woolfphobia, it’s time for Mrs Dalloway, I think.

A few more of my favourite passages:

No one missed a boy or girl if they dallied a little on the water after sunset; or raised an eyebrow if gossip had seen them sleeping soundly among the treasure sacks safe in each other's arms. Such indeed was the adventure that befel Orlando, Sukey, and the Earl of Cumberland. The day was hot; their loves had been active; they had fallen asleep among the rubies. Late that night the Earl, whose fortunes were much bound up in the Spanish ventures, came to check the booty alone with a lantern. He flashed the light on a barrel. He started back with an oath. Twined about the cask two spirits lay sleeping. Superstitious by nature, and his conscience laden with many a crime, the Earl took the couple--they were wrapped in a red cloak, and Sukey's bosom was almost as white as the eternal snows of Orlando's poetry--for a phantom sprung from the graves of drowned sailors to upbraid him. He crossed himself. He vowed repentance. The row of alms houses still standing in the Sheen Road is the visible fruit of that moment's panic. Twelve poor old women of the parish today drink tea and tonight bless his Lordship for a roof above their heads; so that illicit love in a treasure ship--but we omit the moral.

So they would draw round the punch-bowl which Orlando made it her business to furnish generously, and many were the fine tales they told and many the amusing observations they made, for it cannot be denied that when women get together--but hist--they are always careful to see that the doors are shut and that not a word of it gets into print. All they desire is--but hist again--is that not a man's step on the stair? All they desire, we were about to say when the gentleman took the very words out of our mouths. Women have no desires, says this gentleman, coming into Nell's parlour; only affectations. Without desires (she has served him and he is gone) their conversation cannot be of the slightest interest to anyone. 'It is well known', says Mr S. W., 'that when they lack the stimulus of the other sex, women can find nothing to say to each other. When they are alone, they do not talk, they scratch.' And since they cannot talk together and scratching cannot continue without interruption and it is well known (Mr T. R. has proved it) 'that women are incapable of any feeling of affection for their own sex and hold each other in the greatest aversion', what can we suppose that women do when they seek out each other's society? As that is not a question that can engage the attention of a sensible man, let us, who enjoy the immunity of all biographers and historians from any sex whatever, pass it over, and merely state that Orlando professed great enjoyment in the society of her own sex, and leave it to the gentlemen to prove, as they are very fond of doing.

Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore--since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now--there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one's beads, blow one's nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind. Or if a butterfly had fluttered through the window and settled on her chair, one could write about that. Or suppose she had got up and killed a wasp. Then, at once, we could out with our pens and write. For there would be blood shed, if only the blood of a wasp. Where there is blood there is life.
And if killing a wasp is the merest trifle compared with killing a man, still it is a fitter subject for novelist or biographer than this mere wool-gathering; this thinking; this sitting in a chair day in, day out, with a cigarette and a sheet of paper and a pen and an ink pot. If only subjects, we might complain (for our patience is wearing thin), had more consideration for their biographers! What is more irritating than to see one's subject, on whom one has lavished so much time and trouble, slipping out of one's grasp altogether and indulging--witness her sighs and gasps, her flushing, her palings, her eyes now bright as lamps, now haggard as dawns--what is more humiliating than to see all this dumb show of emotion and excitement gone through before our eyes when we know that what causes it--thought and imagination--are of no importance whatsoever?

And this: she’s making fun of Lawrence, who I love, but I couldn’t help but laugh:

Must it then be admitted that Orlando was one of those monsters of iniquity who do not love? She was kind to dogs, faithful to friends, generosity itself to a dozen starving poets, had a passion for poetry. But love--as the male novelists define it--and who, after all, speak with greater authority?--has nothing whatever to do with kindness, fidelity, generosity, or poetry. Love is slipping off one's petticoat and--But we all know what love is. Did Orlando do that? Truth compels us to say no, she did not. If then, the subject of one's biography will neither love nor kill, but will only think and imagine, we may conclude that he or she is no better than a corpse and so leave her.

Don’t forget to visit Frances for more thoughts on Orlando.

Read More......

Not quite back yet, but....

...please allow me to pick your brains, my bookish friends. What's the happiest, most charming or most delightful book you know?

The reason for my absence this past week was a pet-related emergency. I was cautiously hopeful when I wrote that post on Wednesday, but shortly afterwards I got the worst news. I lost one of my beloved dogs, and to make things worse, I spent the rest of the week thinking I might lose one of my cats too. My cat, Calvin, is safe and sound, fortunately, but... well, I'll spare you the details about my dog, both because they're tragic enough that I don't want to make anyone else sad, and because I can't talk about it yet without drowning the keyboard. I'll just say that this was one of the most sudden and devastating animal losses I suffered in almost twenty years as a pet owner.

...which is why I'm in need of comforting books. I've barely read a page all week, but I'm getting to that stage where I need to be distracted from what happened, and nothing does the job better than books. A friend suggested I re-read old favourites, which is a great idea, but I also figured that being in extreme need of comfort is as good a reason to break a book buying ban as they come. So if you can think of anything that would charm me or make me smile, let me know and I'll get it. If you were feeling particularly generous with your time, you could go through my tbr pile and let me know if any of the books I already own would fit the bill.

As for blogging: I've been too sad and unmotivated to return to it just yet, but as I said I'm also in need of something that will distract me, so I'll probably be back either late this week or the next. I really want to make an effort to finish Orlando and join the discussion at Nonsuch Book on Friday, which I've really been looking forward to. We'll see if I can manage. Also, I haven't opened Google Reader since last Monday, and the thought of struggling to catch up is stressful enough that I might just click the dreaded "mark all as read" button. Apologies in advance! I promise I haven't forgotten any of you, thought, and I very much appreciated all the comments, tweets and e-mails I got.

On that note, if you've written a post you really think I shouldn't miss, or saw one in someone else's blog, please feel free to leave me the link in the comments. I mean it. I don't feel up to braving Google Reader just yet, but I'd love something that would entertain me or distract me. So don't be shy about leaving me a link if you've reviewed something you think I'd love this past week.

Read More......

Blogging Break

Hey all,

Just a quick note to let you know I'm going to have to take some time off blogging due to an unexpected personal situation that will require my full attention over the next few days. No need to worry - I'm fine and in good health. I just thought I'd let you know I won't be online because I know some of you are used to seeing me blabbing over here, on Twitter, or in comments pretty much on a daily basis, and I didn't want to leave anyone wondering why I'd suddenly gone missing in action.

Read More......

The Unwritten Vol 1 by Mike Carey and Peter Goss

My thoughts upon finishing The Unwritten: Oh no – I got myself hooked on yet another series. It’s not a bad thing, not exactly, but those long Vertigo graphic novels series tend to be heavy on my wallet. But on the other hand, O! the happiness they bring me. My life would be so much poorer without Fables or The Sandman. This is only volume one, and I almost don’t want to say it lest I jinx it, but *whispers* I suspect that The Unwritten might be up there with those two.

Mike Carey and Peter Goss (of Lucifer fame) open The Unwritten with a scene from a book within the book: the final scene from the last Tommy Taylor book, an extremely popular series about a boy wizard and his two best friends. The series ends somewhat ambiguously, and its author, Wilson Taylor, mysteriously disappeared shortly after finishing the last book. Behind he left a son, Tom Taylor, who has to deal with the pressure of being seen as a “real life” Tommy Taylor by millions of fans. He takes advantage of this by going to conventions and signing books on his father’s behalf, but one day—

Well, I don’t really want to tell you more about the plot. I’ll just say that it challenges the boundaries between fiction and reality, and also that it’s so awesome that my head very nearly exploded. You’re probably thinking that the Tommy Taylor books sound suspiciously like a certain very popular series about a certain boy wizard—which yes, yes they do. But fear not, there’s no ridiculing. The story is written with true respect for Harry Potter fandom, as well as for the fact that stories matter enough to people to inspire such passion.

The literary references don’t stop at Harry Potter either: we also have Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Shakespeare, Dickens, William Blake, and cameos by Kipling, Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde. Honestly, I thought I’d died and gone to metafictional heaven. And the thing is, The Unwritten is clever and literary, but not in a too-clever-for-its-own-good sort of way. It’s also an exciting, satisfying, good old-fashioned piece of storytelling. This is because all those references aren’t there to make the writers seem clever, or to make readers who get them feel sophisticated and well-read. They’re there because they make sense in the story – because The Unwritten is a story about stories, about the way they shape how we view the world, about why they’re such a fundamental part of what makes us human.

It’s a book about why stories matter, really. As Tommy Taylor’s mysterious ally Lizzie Hexman says, Nothing matters more than the stories we tell ourselves to explain the world. And this is how Count Ambrosio (or a supposed Count Ambrosio), the villain from the Tommy Taylor books, puts it:

Just a story? Tell that to the Greeks who fought at Troy, Tommy. Tell the women burned as witches, the Rosenbergs, Sacco and Vanzetti. Tell the martyrs of all the religions and the millions who fell in all the wars since time began. Stories are the only thing worth dying for!

I’m not sure what is a good reason to die and what isn’t, but the fact is that he’s right—people have been dying for stories since the beginning of time. And living for them as well. As those of you who’ve been reading this blog for a while know, this is a literary theme I come back to again and again. I really have the feeling this series and I are going to be good friends.


Bill Willingham, who wrote this volume’s introduction, says that literature-based, animal and fairy-tale fantasy is becoming as important and defining a genre in the comics medium as superhero stories once were. (He also says he wishes he’d written this book. Just thought I’d let you know.) The examples he gives are convincing, and they also happen to be some of my all-time favourite comics series. I really think The Unwritten will end up joining that list.

(PS: The real reason why I got The Unwritten: Mike Carey has awesome taste in music.)




Other opinions:
Jenny's Books
The Literary Omnivore
Adventures With Words
Bibliofreak Blog

Read More......