I ate this book up, both because it provides a fascinating look into the lives of popular women writers in the 18th century, and for the comm4.5 stars
I ate this book up, both because it provides a fascinating look into the lives of popular women writers in the 18th century, and for the commentary on their books. For years I have been looking for a critical book about what becomes a classic and what doesn’t: tracing the careers of books through the centuries, seeing where their reputations are boosted or where they are dropped from the canon, loudly or quietly. So I was especially excited about this part, and although the portions on rare book dealing and collecting interested me less, it was still a peek into a world I knew nothing about.
In general the nine authors profiled had fascinating lives, and I’m now interested in giving many of their works a shot as well. I do suspect Romney of being a very generous reader, quite understandably since she came to these works with both low expectations and the desire to be pleased; she only disliked one writer (whom Austen probably did too), and otherwise thinks they were unfairly dropped from the canon. Of course, what is great is ultimately subjective, and if Jane Austen thought these writers were great—the amount of evidence varies, but most of them she clearly did think were great—that’s a strong recommendation.
It’s interesting that Romney points to male writers from the period, such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne, having fared far better than the women. I wonder how much of that is specific to academia, as this does not seem to be borne out on Goodreads (at least when compared to the more popular of the women, such as Burney and Radcliffe). Also, all 18th century British writers—even Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe blows the others out of the water in number of ratings—get mediocre averages. Does this support the conventional wisdom that 18th century novels just don’t hold up well today, while Austen was a genius pioneering the modern novel? But how to separate the authors’ relative merits from their cultural standing, when nobody comes to Austen blind? The question of how the canon should be defined is perhaps a riddle with no answer. But a major takeaway from this book is that it is not an automatic process, but one highly dependent on the tastes of influential readers. And once a book is dropped from the canon, however specious the reasons, it’s hard to bring back—pre-internet, almost impossible, because going out of print meant few people could read it even if they wanted to!
At any rate, some notes on the authors discussed:
Jane Austen: During her time, she was considered more “among the best in her genre” than “grand master.” Her reputation grew after her death, however, with some key interventions mostly by influential men: in 1870, when interest was beginning to wane, her nephew published an important memoir of her; he and her brother both skillfully portrayed her as the perfect Victorian angel. Other male professors and critics also championed her books, then leading to many adaptations, all of which has kept her work in the canon and the public eye.
Frances Burney: Was both wildly popular and renowned in her time, and one of the authors Austen most looked up to. She seems to have fallen out of the canon in part because her work was deemed too similar to Austen’s by male taste-makers with limited interest in young women’s lives, and who were happy with just one token woman on the list. Romney makes good points about not pitting female authors against each other in this sort of zero-sum game; she ranks Burney’s Evelina below Pride and Prejudice but above some of Austen’s other work, and notes that while her writing was less subtle than Austen’s, she was more willing to confront unsavory aspects of life.
Romney also theorizes that infantilizing Burney by calling her “Fanny” (when she did not use her nickname professionally) didn’t help, and that growing interest in her as a diarist didn’t either, though the latter confuses me, as it still raises her profile. Personally, I suspect the sheer length of Burney’s books (her shortest are about on par with Austen’s longest) is a factor, along with their epistolary format.
Ann Radcliffe: Popularizer of gothics, also both wildly popular and critically acclaimed in her own day. Her work seems to have suffered for a couple of reasons: first because it had a slew of lower-quality imitators, and while her contemporaries held her clearly above them, later on they got lumped together, while the gothic genre (popular with women) lost prestige. Radcliffe’s personal low profile didn’t help: around the time Austen’s nephew wrote his memoir, Christina Rossetti set out to write a biography of Radcliffe, but couldn’t find material.
Romney also loved The Mysteries of Udolpho and defends it hard, in ways I didn’t entirely buy. The connection of the 18th century heroine’s constant fainting with her lacking the option to say “no” is an interesting one. But a protagonist regularly losing consciousness in dramatic moments remains a pulpy trope, and I do think genre work ages more quickly in general (hence, the pacing being difficult for modern readers). But Romney’s point about Radcliffe having far more influence on later genre writers than she’s given credit for is still an important one.
Charlotte Lennox: This woman had a bold and wild life: arriving alone in England as a teenager and immediately getting aristocratic patronage as a poet was just the beginning. It’s less clear why her work fell out of fashion: perhaps because daring to critique Shakespeare lost her a lot of fans, or maybe because she tried her hand at many things rather than having a clear “brand.” But I’m interested in trying The Female Quixote.
Hannah More: Mostly a moralist and philanthropist. While she wrote a highly moralizing novel that was popular at the time, Jane Austen probably didn’t like it and Romney didn’t either, mostly using this chapter to draw an interesting comparison between the mores of 18th century evangelicals and those of the Mormon community Romney herself grew up in. More did manage to get set up for life by suing a guy for wasting her best years in an engagement and then failing to marry her, which sounds like a good deal to me.
Charlotte Turner Smith: This chapter is mostly focused on the author’s life, which is well-deserved: she had to write her way to independence from a terrible marriage. From the sound of it her novels were geared more at money-making than literary quality (and making them as long as possible meant more money). In a literary sense she was a bigger deal as a poet, but her work was later forgotten.
Elizabeth Inchbald: Primarily a playwright, who wrote the play performed in Mansfield Park. Romney found her humor to hold up very well, her tendency to hammer home the morals less so.
Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi: The only nonfiction writer on the list. Her life is an interesting one, and her friendship with Samuel Johnson plus male contemporaries’ obsession with how terrible it was for her to marry a lower-class, Italian man after her first husband’s death seems to overshadow all other facts about her in many accounts. All this tended to preclude serious consideration of her work.
Maria Edgeworth: This section disappointed me a bit compared to the others, since Edgeworth is a big deal and one of the authors I knew of. She seems to have fallen out of the canon after getting pigeonholed as an “Irish” writer, thus being less “universal” (which is of course ridiculous and really a matter of privilege: Austen, after all, is extremely English).
At any rate, the book was a fascinating read and I do plan to check out several of the writers on this list. I am not sure I will like them as much as Romney did, but as she points out, sometimes it’s important to judge for yourself rather than allowing the critic of 100 years ago to make it for you. And this is especially true with female writers, whose work has often been dismissed—in many of these cases, even after being renowned for decades, or even a century. But I loved reading about these writers and their work, appreciate Romney’s highlighting of them, and would love to read more books like this!...more
In a word: disappointing. This book has a great beginning, but becomes a bit of a telenovela in the middle, with over-the-top character decisions and In a word: disappointing. This book has a great beginning, but becomes a bit of a telenovela in the middle, with over-the-top character decisions and a proliferation of threads that never really tie back together in the whimper of an ending.
Like many others, I enjoyed Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies back in the day, and this book looked entertainingly unique, as well as perhaps a cheeky good-bye to writing from the author: both Alvarez and her protagonist, Alma, are successful Dominican-American writers in their 70s, retiring from teaching and (at least in Alma’s case) trying to decide what comes next. Alma decides to move back to the Dominican Republic and build a cemetery for all her unfinished manuscripts. For its upkeep, she hires Filomena, a local woman who’s lived a hard life. Filomena soon begins to hear voices in the cemetery, mostly of the two people whose stories Alma tried hardest to tell: Alma’s father Manuel, a former dissident who kept secrets from the family, and Bienvenida Trujillo, the second of three wives of the infamous dictator. (I should note this book is only questionably metafiction, as the spirits in the cemetery seem to be those of the actual people Alma’s characters were based on, rather than the characters themselves.) Another thread follows Filomena’s estranged (and terrible) sister Perla, and the soap operatic drama involving Perla, her terrible husband and his terrible mistress.
For me the best part of the book was definitely the opening, tracing the decades-long friendship between Alma and another successful, but increasingly paranoid, minority writer whom Alma believes was driven mad by her own untold story. But the first half of the book in general is fun, with strong writing and a lot of drama; I was curious about these people and how it would all play out. I also enjoyed the amount of Spanish in the book, though it’s enough to be a stumbling block for those who don’t speak Spanish.
Unfortunately, the different threads all peter out rather than coming together. Alma’s role fades out after inaugurating the cemetery: (view spoiler)[Filomena learns Manuel’s secrets, but Alma doesn’t, and at the end Alma fades into dementia and is taken advantage of by a young professor, who convinces her to make him her literary executor. The reader learns what happened to Filomena’s missing mother, but Filomena does not, and meanwhile all the ways Perla wronged Filomena get lost beneath Perla’s more serious crimes, while Filomena forever remains a doormat for her sister. (hide spoiler)] The existence of the voices in the cemetery doesn’t actually affect much. Bienvenida’s thread in particular seems totally disconnected from everything else, and I disagree that “naïve, innocent woman falls in love with brutal man” is a particularly intriguing story—it’s a very common trope, and Bienvenida’s version and voice were just the typical write-by-numbers. The portrayal of the justice system is wildly off-base: no, if you committed a crime in the U.S., you can’t get deported to your home country and tried there; the evidence and witnesses are all in the place where the crime happened!
So sadly, in the end all that drama came to nothing much. The fun premise never fulfills its promise, the metafictional aspects have no meaningful impact on the living characters, and the characters mostly end in a disappointing place. Maybe it’s all an illustration of why some stories don’t get told, and Alvarez just threw all the characters still haunting her into a stew to get them out of her system? In that case, she has at least averted Alma’s fate. For the rest of us, well, at least it was short....more
I don't want to discourage others from reading this, but 50-odd pages in, it was definitely not working for me. I am not a fan of books with alternatiI don't want to discourage others from reading this, but 50-odd pages in, it was definitely not working for me. I am not a fan of books with alternating past/present timelines, where the present-day character uncovers the past character's story: this tends to result in two half-baked storylines, where the present-day one is almost always disposable. As it turns out, while the two threads here aren't separated by more than a decade or so, this is that kind of book. I didn't find Nao's voice quite convincing, and Ruth's story was a very self-conscious narrative of her reading experience with Nao's journal. I didn't need Ruth as a filter through which to read about Nao (or for that matter, Nao as a filter through which to read about Jiko), and felt that the most interesting elements of the story were getting lost behind all the meta discussion about the meaning of reading....more
The book description was intriguing, but I was not prepared for how much I would love reading Fangirl. It is one of those rare stories that just made The book description was intriguing, but I was not prepared for how much I would love reading Fangirl. It is one of those rare stories that just made me smile, when I wasn’t marveling at how well the author gets it.
Cath is starting college at the University of Nebraska, but she’s not your typical freshman. She’s nerdy and awkward and comes with bucketloads of social anxiety, and she’d much rather stay in her dorm room writing fanfiction than get drunk at a frat party. She’s always depended on her twin sister for her social life, but Wren wants to have the hard-partying college experience and has refused to room with Cath, who gets stuck with an intimidating older student. Many of the elements here are common to coming-of-age stories--there’s first love and family drama--but Fangirl is also about writing, and being a fan, and it encapsulates the experience of being a social misfit in college. Or at least, one experience of it: having a lot in common with Cath, I had to reconcile myself early on to the fact that there are differences (major differences) between her freshman experience and mine--but those are details; on an emotional level I found this story to be real and true.
This is a character-driven book, so I’ll start with the characters. Cath is fantastically-realized, quirky, and fun, and there’s so much that I love about Rowell’s portrayal of her, but here’s the most important thing: it’s okay to be like Cath. Cath has a lot going for her--she’s smart, witty, loyal and caring--and growing up means growing in her own direction, learning to handle new relationships and thrive in a new environment, not changing who she is. Cath doesn’t get a makeover or become a wild child or give up fanfiction. She’s a nerd, without having to be either the genius type or a super-sexy babe. And she’s completely believable; even where I would have had the opposite reaction, her feelings and behavior always rang true to her character.
But the other characters are great too, wholly authentic and often endearing. The book is largely driven by dialogue, and while Rowell’s prose is nothing special, the dialogue sparkles. It brings the characters to life and it’s often humorous, but it’s also so exactly the way people talk to one another, I think I’ve had some of these conversations. The romance is genuinely sweet, with characters who seem like a good fit for one another, and I loved that Cath’s hangups about physical affection don’t just disappear once she’s in a relationship; it’s something she has to work on.
Then too, the book is a celebration of the intense relationships we develop with fictional characters and worlds. Cath is a fan of Simon Snow, a stand-in for Harry Potter: and she's a big-name fan, with thousands of people following her writing. I loved the way Cath’s writing is treated: it’s taken seriously, as a major aspect of her life and a talent to be proud of--even by her writing professor, a novelist herself who sees Cath's potential but can’t stand the thought of fanfiction. (They have multiple conversations about this, as the professor becomes something of a mentor for Cath. I’m telling you, this book is nerd heaven!) My biggest criticism of the book is that it could have just referred to Harry Potter by name and been less campy; this might have caused problems with the inclusion of snippets from the “Simon Snow” books and a few lengthy chunks of Cath’s fanfiction, but these are largely extraneous to the story anyway. However, Rowell does a great job with the fanfiction excerpts, which are polished while still sounding like something an 18-year-old girl would write.
In the end, there are so many scenes and little moments in this book that struck a chord with me. I love that Cath attends a big state university--there are so few novels set in college, and most of them seem to be about people quoting poetry at one another at small liberal arts colleges; I loved reading about the kind of school I attended, with a huge campus, where people work part-time and aren’t necessarily academically-oriented. I loved Cath’s realization that she comes from a mostly rural state where her experience growing up in Omaha isn’t the norm; I had that too. And the clashing assumptions about sex between Cath and her roommate. And Cath’s arguing with her boyfriend about whether or not his chivalry is respectful. And her heightened awareness of her safety on campus at night (even though physical danger is not a part of this story): I too have dialed 911 on my cell phone just in case. I could go on, but you get the picture.
This book isn’t great literature, but it’s a fun, funny and true-to-life story of an experience I haven’t seen fictionalized before, and for that I love it. Recommended to anyone who’s been weird in college, or anyone who sees that in their future. I wish I could have read it when I was 17....more
I’m baffled, because I really liked Maalouf’s Ports of Call. But this flat and colorless book is halfway between fiction and history/biography, and maI’m baffled, because I really liked Maalouf’s Ports of Call. But this flat and colorless book is halfway between fiction and history/biography, and manages to encompass the worst of both worlds: not enough background or historical detail for nonfiction, and not nearly enough plot and character for fiction.
Despite the title, Samarkand is a book about Iranian history. (view spoiler)[Which means that on top of just having wasted my time on a fucking terrible book, I don't even get to count it for Uzbekistan! Where the hell else am I going to find a book set in Uzbekistan? (hide spoiler)] The first half centers on the life of Omar Khayyam, a famous 11th century poet. The second half is set in the early 20th century and narrated by Benjamin Lesage, an American who visits the country. The two parts have little to do with each other beyond Benjamin’s rather halfhearted interest in Khayyam’s work, apparently stemming more from boredom than anything else, and both parts are equally lifeless.
The first half reads like a halfhearted biography of Khayyam; the beginning has some decent scene-setting, but the plot doesn’t focus in on anything in particular, the characters don’t come to life, and the narrative often skips years or decades or jumps to a different point-of-view. Interesting or transformative moments in the characters' lives are explained or even skipped where they should be shown, and historical background that ought to be explained is often left unsaid. The editor bears some of the blame for this; when translating a book that assumes familiarity with 11th century Middle Eastern history into English, it would be advisable to at least include an introduction explaining the basics. But even that might be forgivable if there were any plot momentum or character development.
The second half reads like a halfhearted history of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906. Benjamin is a cipher: an American rich kid who keeps traveling to Iran at moments of political importance and hangs out there for years despite political turmoil, for no particularly compelling reason. This half can’t be faulted for not explaining enough; I did learn some history from it, but again, there is zero plot momentum, while Benjamin neglects his own story for chapters on end, for instance, to explain how the new government selected a treasurer. (I am not making this up!) There are authors who can integrate history lessons into a novel and keep it engaging--Michener and his ilk do it well--but Maalouf is not among them. He manages to make a dramatic time period flat and tedious, and displays no storytelling ability at all; interesting bits are briefly summarized while routine interactions are developed into scenes and chapters. Meanwhile, there’s not a single interesting character in the second half of the book--even though a few of the historical figures were probably fascinating. The romance is best not even mentioned.
Russell Harris’s translation may be partially responsible for all this; it’s certainly not good, littered as it is with grammatical and spelling errors. At times it’s just plain nonsensical: “he told us with an imperceptibly triumphant tone of voice.” Um...?
Overall, this painfully boring book left me feeling that Maalouf was interested in two specific time periods in Iranian history, but wouldn’t commit to just writing nonfiction. He can write an engaging story, but I’d never have known it from reading Samarkand....more
Like its predecessor, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword is a fun, clever book that doesn’t quite deserve 4 stars.... but 3 would be selling it tLike its predecessor, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword is a fun, clever book that doesn’t quite deserve 4 stars.... but 3 would be selling it too short.
This is a 20-years-later sequel to Swordspoint; it has its own plot and protagonist and doesn’t demand that you read Swordspoint first, but it’ll make more sense if you do. Katherine, a 15-year-old from a minor noble family in the country, is summoned to the city by her uncle Alec, the Mad Duke, who’s determined to make a swordsman of her. The somewhat cheesy premise develops in an unconventional way: Katherine would prefer ballgowns and parties but begins to come around once she reads a trashy novel romanticizing swordsmen, and she acquires some skill through hard work but doesn’t become one of those eyeroll-inducing teen prodigies common in fantasy. (view spoiler)[I've seen people complain that she does, but she wins exactly two duels: one with a drunk guy and one almost by accident because her opponent didn't take her seriously. When a genuine street fight happens, she gets the hell out of the way. That doesn't say "master swordsman" to me. (hide spoiler)]
Generous amounts of intrigue and adventure make this a fun novel, and I liked it better than Swordspoint primarily because Katherine is a more engaging and likeable protagonist. She’s a bit silly, but unlike with most such protagonists, her naïveté is endearing rather than annoying. She’s lively enough to be enjoyable, and has just enough depth to be realistic. The character development overall isn’t unusually deep, and there are some missteps--in particular Artemisia, who reads more like a tired parody of a shallow rich girl than an actual person, and whose relationship with Katherine makes little sense--but the cast is colorful and certainly keeps things interesting.
The book is fluidly written, and with believable dialogue. It explains more than Swordspoint, but does so without awkward info-dumps. The switching between Katherine’s first-person point of view and a roving third-person, while a bit odd, works fairly well, and Katherine’s voice is distinct from the third-person narrator’s. The setting is also enjoyable: the society is well-developed and feels realistic, and Kushner illuminates it through subtle details rather than through ostentatious invention.
The thematics are good too: there’s a smart examination of power and privilege, which feels natural and not heavy-handed. And I enjoyed the characters’ interactions with the book-turned-play, “The Swordsman Whose Name Was Not Death.” Books about books ordinarily don’t work for me, because to best enjoy them you need to share the author’s favorites; but by using an invented story, Kushner is able to capture much of what it feels like to be swept away by a book (and later see it adapted) in a more universal way, without tying it to a real-life work. The contrast between that story--apparently a melodramatic, swashbuckling romance--and this one provides food for thought, as well as several humorous moments.
The biggest problem with The Privilege of the Sword is the plot.... namely, its lack of structure. Interesting things happen, but tension never builds to a climax, and the scene that wants to be a climax happens in the protagonist's absence--Katherine doesn’t even find out about it until afterwards. Extraneous subplots take up disproportionate space; it’s unclear what Lucius and Teresa, for instance, are even doing in the book. Katherine’s romance is on the dull side, disappointing after more interesting possibilities for her are dangled early in the book. And the end is rushed; the final twist carries enough difficulties and complications to be a book unto itself, rather than simply being passed off as a happy ending.
So this is really a 3.5-star book, but I’m rounding up because it is so fun and smart. Also, I love it when authors create secondary worlds without including magical elements, and as this type of fantasy is still all too rare, I’m inclined to be generous....more
This is an entertaining and very brief novella, which nevertheless manages to be disappointing in its characterization and its cramped worldview.
The This is an entertaining and very brief novella, which nevertheless manages to be disappointing in its characterization and its cramped worldview.
The unnamed narrator and his best friend, Luo, are Chinese city boys sent to a remote mountain for "re-education" in the early 1970s. While there, they pursue a local seamstress and a suitcase full of banned Western (mostly French) classics. The plot is mostly entertaining: what reader can resist a protagonist's quest to read books, complete with weird hijinks and adventures? I'm not into French literature, but this book did convince me to look into some of Balzac's work.
However, the plot doesn't always come together or make much sense. We're to understand that the boys have been sent to this mountain to do manual labor, and at the beginning of the book their work dominates their lives, but it quickly falls by the wayside as the plot requires, and they're able to take off work all day every day to visit the "Little Seamstress" without anyone apparently noticing or caring. At one point the narrator tells us that he and Luo were "physically and especially mentally" marked for life by their short stint in the mines.... but doesn't say how, and never mentions it again. And the end suffers from bizarre, unmotivated point-of-view shifts.
The characterization is a mixed bag, and perhaps suffers from the fact that the novel is semi-autobiographical. The narrator and Luo are decently well-drawn for such a short book. On the other hand, despite her prominence in the story, the nameless "Little Seamstress" never comes together as a real person, appearing only as an object of male desire. And everyone else who lives on the mountain--the "peasants"--are just peasants, whose role in the book is to be ignorant and primitive and awed by boys' storytelling abilities and by their "advanced technology," like violins and clocks.
Similarly, the historical aspect feels one-sided and simplified. From this book, you might think Mao's forcing a bunch of privileged city kids to go live in the country and do manual labor with ignorant peasants (horror of horrors!) was the worst atrocity in recent Chinese history. Sijie doesn't attempt to put either the protagonist's personal experience or re-education generally in any kind of context, and as far as I can tell the only thing he learned from his own experience is that he hates Communism. Not an unpopular position when writing for a Western audience, but I would've liked to see some greater understanding, some generosity of spirit, some nuance that just wasn't there.
On the positive side, the sense of place is very strong: I could just see this mountain, and if there's a movie version I'd watch it in a heartbeat; the visuals would be stunning. And the translation (from French) is seamless, such that I likely wouldn't have realized it was a translation had the cover not informed me.
All-in-all, a bit annoying, but there's a decent enough story and it's a short, very fast read. Still, not something I'm likely to recommend to others....more
I almost never give 1 star to books I've actually finished, because they're bound to have some redeeming quality that will at least bring the ratGah!!
I almost never give 1 star to books I've actually finished, because they're bound to have some redeeming quality that will at least bring the rating up to 2. But the best I can say about this one is that it's not offensive--in fact, I share many of the author's opinions--and that the prose was at least competent enough for me to continue reading, but that isn't very redeeming when it so utterly failed to entertain that I threw it against a wall. (I really did!)
The (alleged!) premise of this book is that it's a retelling of the fairy tale/ballad of the same name, set in the early 1970's in a small Minnesota liberal arts college. I say "alleged" because the fantasy element is only occasionally hinted at until the last 50 pages or so out of 456. The rest is "Daily Life of an English Major." (On reflection I've decided to not even put it on my "fantasy" shelf; it hasn't earned that.) In fact, over 300 pages describe the protagonist's freshman year, even though the events of the ballad don't happen until she's a senior. And, seriously, nothing happens.
But don't just take my word for it. Here's a representative sample:
"She put the books she was holding neatly on her lower shelf, shrugged out of her pink nylon jacket and hung it over the back of her desk chair, tucked her gray Blackstock T-shirt into her pink corduroy pants, put the jacket back on, zipped it to just below the Blackstock seal on the T-shirt so that the lion seemed to be peering over the zipper pull, and said, 'Let's go, before the line gets too long.'"
And the whole book is like that! Endless minutiae (and bizarre fashion choices), with every little thing described in detail no matter how irrelevant it is. Now, I have nothing against slow pacing; the right author can write a brilliant book consisting almost entirely of minutiae. Read The Remains of the Day if you don't believe me. But the difference between that book and this one is that here, the minutiae doesn't mean anything; there's no payoff; it doesn't advance the plot or illuminate the characters or their relationships. It's just endless daily life, the stuff that's moderately interesting to live through but gets boring when even your friends talk about it too long--and how much worse, then, when the people living it are fictional characters?
In Tam Lin, we sit through every meeting Janet has with her academic advisor to pick her classes. The merits of various professors and their teaching styles and syllabi are discussed. Every time Janet and her friends want food, we see them weigh which dining hall to eat in (the one with a view of the lake? or the one resembles a dungeon? did I mention that the architecture of generically-named buildings I could never remember is also much discussed?). And of course, there's the books. Endless discussions of literature--by which I mean, for the most part, old-school poetry and plays--seem to substitute in the author's mind for both plot and character development.
In fact, there's so little tension in this book that halfway through, Janet realizes the biggest problem in her life is that one of her roommates, while a perfectly nice girl, doesn't understand Janet's literary obsession. And that Janet therefore finds her tedious. What the....?! Did the author miss the creative writing class where they talked about how a plot requires conflict??
SPOILER
And then we get to the end, and the retelling bit plays out exactly like the ballad, and exactly as Janet was told it would. And then the (alleged!) villain responds with a disapproving stare and exits stage left. I say "alleged" because the most detailed description we ever get of her supposed acts of villainy is basically, "Well, there's a rumor she's slept with a married person sometime." How truly menacing!
/SPOILER
I could keep going.... the indistinct personalities, the mysteries and foreshadowing that are heavily built up and then come to nothing, the use of unexplained, apparently magically-induced memory loss and general indifference to keep Janet from figuring out the entire (alleged!) plot early on, the dialogue that's probably 50% literary quotes, the 12 pages describing a play blow-by-blow, which even then fail to explain it so that it makes sense!.... but in the spirit of what I think Dean was trying to do with this book, I am going to recommend some other books instead.
So: if you want to read about college women in the early 1970s, try Nunez's The Last of Her Kind. If you want cultlike groups of Classics majors at small-town liberal arts colleges, read Tartt's The Secret History. If you like the idea of pretentious college students combined with fantasy elements, try Grossman's The Magicians. Or, for less pretention and more coming-of-age, Walton's Among Others (okay, I had mixed feelings about that one, but at least it has some plot and character development to go with its science fiction references). And if you're here because you want a fairy tale retelling where the girl saves the guy from an evil sorceress, check out something by Juliet Marillier, preferably Daughter of the Forest.
But if you really do want to read a book that describes liberal-arts-college life in exhaustive detail and talks endlessly about the sorts of works only an English major could love? Then by all means, read Tam Lin. You can have my copy!...more
If you're looking for a light, uplifting fantasy read, or a plot dominated by action and danger, if you demand that your main characters be heroic, thIf you're looking for a light, uplifting fantasy read, or a plot dominated by action and danger, if you demand that your main characters be heroic, that magic be wondrous rather than technical, and that characters' social bonds be idealized examples of True Friendship, keep looking. The Magicians is a realistic novel that examines the pitfalls of escapism and why magic probably would be bad for you. It borrows from well-known fantasy novels in order to deconstruct them, but don't let the Harry Potter and Narnia comparisons fool you: this is a serious, adult book, and if you generally don't like literary sorts of novels, then you won't like this, regardless of its fantasy elements.
So, then, the plot. While trying to apply to Princeton, whiz kid and fantasy fanboy Quentin winds up being accepted to a college for magicians. But despite learning magic (which isn't easy) and discovering booze and sex, Quentin remains dissatisfied, still looking for the meaning in his life. As it turns out, being a magician isn't such a great thing after all. One character explicitly wonders whether people with the power to alter reality can ever really grow up, and for Quentin--who graduates only to discover that he has no responsibilities and nothing to strive for--the answer is no. Finally, he and his friends discover a way into Fillory, the mystical Narnia-analogue Quentin has been obsessed with since childhood, but as the reader will have guessed, the real Fillory proves to be anything but a magic solution to his problems.
There's a lot to like in this book. The plot, though slow-paced, is always interesting, and the characters are nothing if not true-to-life. Their interactions and group dynamics are so typical for a group of young people that I started to wonder what's wrong with all those other authors who don't write about people this way. The prose style is very good and thematics are strong, providing plenty of food for thought. Grossman's take on the magical academy and the traditional Fantasyland is interesting and refreshing. Yes, he borrows heavily from other books, but that's the point; and, crucially, he strips away the idealism, asking what would really happen if, for instance, a tiny segment of the population was born with the ability to use magic.
That's not to say that the book doesn't have its flaws. Grossman doesn't seem to realize that any fantasy reader mature enough for this book will have moved beyond Harry Potter and Narnia into mature, adult works, and therefore neither "magic won't solve your interpersonal problems" nor "real battles are gory and terrifying" is new or startling. At times figurative language gets in the way of clarity, rather than enhancing it. And Quentin's girlfriend is noticeably less realistic than the other characters, transforming from a cripplingly shy geek to a somewhat nerdy babe far too rapidly.
I would recommend this book to those who are interested in literate, realistic sorts of fantasy books. It won't be much like any of the works it alludes to, but is worth your time nonetheless. ...more
Among Others is a fun, interesting book, and I sped through it in one day. Looking back though, several flaws detract from what might otherwise have bAmong Others is a fun, interesting book, and I sped through it in one day. Looking back though, several flaws detract from what might otherwise have been excellent.
Through her journal entries (which are really just regular first-person narration), this book relates the story of Mori, a Welsh teenager and lover of science fiction who is sent to an upper-class English boarding school after fleeing her abusive mother. Mori doesn't fit in with the other girls and spends the bulk of her time reading SF novels. She's a sympathetic and relatable character, particularly if you were an odd kid who read a lot; I loved the way she talked about the inter-house competitions, for instance, which everyone else took very seriously and she couldn't care less about. The book is well-written and does a great job of keeping questions in the reader's mind at all times, particularly as Mori takes her time in telling us about her past. And the discussions of class tensions in 1970's England, as well as the trouble readers had to take to find books by their favorite authors before the Internet (we're spoiled nowadays!) were interesting.
But there are several problems. Most annoying (and ironic since Mori criticizes other books for this) is that the book is just way too pat. Mori forms close bonds almost instantaneously with every other reader she meets (and there are a lot of them, as she joins a book club halfway through); the first guy to catch her eye soon becomes her boyfriend; the last couple pages are sickeningly sweet. And then there are all the unanswered questions. One plotline deals with Mori's aunts trying to force her to get her ears pierced, which she believes will stop her from doing magic--but she never discovers their true motivation. We never find out what's really behind the aunts' relationship with Mori's father, nor why their father committed suicide. Etc. We're briefly given a lot of fascinating information about Mori's extended family, but it's never followed up on, sometimes never referred to again. I'm not sure why the author dangled so many tantalizing hooks if they were irrelevant to the story at hand.
So the book is worth a read, probably especially if you've read much 1970's science fiction (I haven't, and I don't feel that this detracted from my understanding of the book, but someone who's read most of the books Mori discusses would probably enjoy those parts more). Still, it isn't quite what it could have been. If it had been longer, enough to make Mori work harder to earn her happy ending and to flesh out more of the characters and their stories, I suspect it would have been excellent. ...more
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