New Century Reading

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower

 

 

I guess this is a little bit of a carry-over from the Shelf Discovery Project this summer. I remember reading this book over and over as a kid. I didn't have my own copy, but checked it out many, many times from my school library.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower are two Japanese dolls that have been abandoned for a while, until Nona and Belinda's Great Aunt Lucy mails them all the way from the U.S. to where the cousins live in Britain. Nona is a recent arrival at Belinda's house; she was born in India, but after her mother died, she was sent to live with Belinda's family. Nona is horribly homesick and scared of everything in England. But when the dolls arrive, they give her a purpose and something to focus on: she must have a Japanese dollhouse for them to live in, a very proper one with a garden and sliding screens and mats and tiny teacups (with green tea, because that's what they drink in Japan).

Along the way, her quest for the dollhouse draws in her older cousins, who help her research, build, and outfit the house, as well as a schoolmate whose mother provides bits of fine fabrics for the house, and even a gruff, geezer-y bookseller who takes a shine to Nona when she tells him she would never touch a book without washing her hands first.

You can probably figure out where this is all going: Nona comes out of her shell, makes friends, becomes happier to be in England. But in a nice, and likely very realistic, twist, cousin Belinda becomes very jealous of the attention Nona gets and finally strikes back.

This is just such a sweet book. I can see why I loved it as a kid: how exotic, a girl born in India who moved to England and researched a Japanese dollhouse! I'm not sure why I never asked my dad to build me a dollhouse like that, given that there are pretty explicit instructions in the back of the book. I'd also forgotten about the Star Festival, held on the "evening of the seventh day of the seventh month", which happens to be my birthday--shoot, wish I'd read this earlier this summer!

Best of all is the story of the dolls themselves, who long for someone to understand them and love them. It brought to mind this, from the wonderful Toy Story 2:

 

OK, excuse me while I go off and sniffle for a while. Anyone read any of Godden's adult books? I've only read her children's books and loved them.

Broken Harbo(u)r

Before I get into my thoughts about the book itself, let me just rant for a moment about American publishers who feel the need to drop the "u" from "harbour" in a book written by an Irish author, because apparently they think American readers are too stupid to understand that other countries may have different spellings. Tana French wrote it as Harbour. LEAVE IT AS HARBOUR. Yes, I'm shouting. I hate being treated like I need dumbing-down. Don't even get me started on the American versions of the Harry Potter books.

All righty. So I've been complaining lately about books by first-time authors that I don't feel have had the time to properly develop their talents. I have the opposite problem with Tana French. I loved loved loved In the Woods. I didn't think The Likeness was quite as good, but darn close. Faithful Place was a bit of a disappointment, but I still felt that French is such a strong writer that even a weaker book by her is better than a lot of other books out there.

That brings me to book 4. I logged onto Goodreads to rate this and found myself in a rating quandary. Well, more than one--Goodreads' lack of half-stars is frustrating when you don't think a book quite deserves a 4 but is better than a 3. But the main quandary was this: do I rate this book as just any old book, in which case it's a 4, or do I rate it against Tana French's previous books, in which case I'm looking at maybe a 2.5 (if Goodreads gave that option)?

I liked Broken Harbour better than Faithful Place, and if this was a new-to-me author, I'd be happier. But it's by an author who's done better work. The wonderful thing about In the Woods and The Likeness was the close marriage of "psychological" to "thriller". That's here too, but the marriage is dysfunctional. The psychological backdrop the mystery is set against feels forced, as if French now has herself in the position that she must include that backstory to all her books. The sad thing is that the main story, that of long-time detective Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy heading up a murder investigation while training in newbie detective Richie Curran, was perfectly fine without the distracting sidetrips into Scorcher's past and his mentally unstable sister Dina. Every time she showed up, I groaned with impatience--back to the mystery, please! And that's not a reaction I had with French's first two books.

Also, this book is waaaaaaay too long. That said, I blew through its 450 pages in 3 days, so I guess there was enough momentum to keep me going. But really, this would be a much tighter book with about 75-100 pages edited out.

Overall, I thought it was better than Faithful Place. But here's an author whose first two books were amazing, and I don't know if it's the pressure to keep producing that's making her falter a bit, or if the editors now take a "hands off" approach with her since she's a proven quantity.

But still, in a couple of years when I see that Tana French has a new book coming out, I'll hightail it over to my library's website and put my name on the list.

 

The Age of Miracles

Last week I blogged about being happy that a book I read lived up to the hype. Today I'm sad to report that this one did not.

I love the premise: one day, the world wakes up to the scientific announcement that the earth, for unknown reasons, has started spinning more slowly. Days and nights become longer. No one knows why, or how to fix it. The book is narrated by 11-year-old Julia, who watches her life change in so many ways, some expected, some not: there are still bullies at her middle school, there is still a boy she wishes would talk to her, there are tensions between her parents that don't seem to have anything to do with the spinning of the earth; there's the confusion over how to organize a day when the length of the day changes constantly, and there's the division in the community when the government orders everyone to retain a 24-hour clock but some choose to live by "real time".

All great stuff. I loved seeing the dystopia start at the beginning. In other dystopia that I've read, society has completely changed by the time the book opens. It was refreshing to see a different approach.

But I felt the book could have gone a lot deeper. Many of the characters are one-dimensional. At times, the background story of the earth's slowing feels forced into the text to remind the reader that there's a big change going on while Julia wonders why Seth didn't talk to her at the bus stop. There was frequent use of not-at-all subtle foreshadowing that became tedious. The ending just sort of--ended. It needed more, for reasons I can't go into without giving spoilers.

I'm going to go out on a cranky frumpy middle-aged limb here and posit a theory. Over the past year or so, I've read several books that had gotten a fair amount of hype and acclaim that disappointed me (and other readers I've talked to). The disappointment is of the "the writer can write, but this book shouldn't have been the final draft" kind. Interestingly, all the ones that come to mind for me were first books written by attractive young women. It's as if the publisher said, hey, she's good looking, we can market her. In every case, I would definitely consider reading the next book they write in the hopes that their writing has matured. Whatever happened to the idea that the book itself was the thing to be marketed, with the emphasis on making sure it was at its absolute best before it was published? And speaking of a marketing dream--how about an attractive author with a fully developed, beautifully polished book?

Yeah, I know. I'm old and living in the past.

The Poetry Project

This month's topic for the Poetry Project is classic poetry. I immediately thought of the Bronte sisters, who, besides producing those very enduring novels, also wrote copious amounts of poetry. Much of the poetry written by Emily and Anne was for their elaborately constructed fictional world of Gondal. But there were poems that were stand-alone pieces as well.

I could have chosen what is perhaps Emily's most famous poem, No Coward Soul is Mine, but instead I decided to give you a poem each by Emily and Anne that represents them (as well as we can know them, after all).

The Night Wind

In summer's mellow midnight
 A cloudless moon shone through
 Our open parlour window
 And rosetrees wet with dew -

 I sat in silent musing -
 The soft wind waved my hair;
 It told me Heaven was glorious
 And sleeping Earth was fair -

 I needed not its breathing
 To bring such thoughts to me,
 But still it whispered lowly
 'How dark the woods will be! -

 'The thick leaves in my murmur
 Are rustling like a dream,
 And all their myriad voices
 Instinct with spirit seem.'

 I said 'Go, gentle singer
 Thy wooing voice is kind
 But do not think its music
 Has power to reach my mind -

 'Play with the scented flower,
 The young tree's supple bough -
 And leave my human feelings
 In their own course to flow.'

 The Wanderer would not leave me;
 Its kiss grew warmer still -
 'O come', it sighed so sweetly,
 'I'll win thee 'gainst thy will."

 'Have we not been from childhood friends?
 Have I not loved thee long?
 As long as though hast loved the night
 Whose silence wakes my song.

 'And when thy heart is resting
 Beneath the churchyard stone
 I shall have time for mourning
 And thou for being alone.'

I feel like this poem, dated Sept. 11, 1840, is a harbinger of Wuthering Heights, which Emily Bronte began writing in late 1845. It's got that same eerie darkness, of voices whispering at windows, and the final closing stanza seems directly related to the last line of Wuthering Heights: "I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

And now a poem from perhaps the least-read Bronte sister.

A dreadful darkness closes in
On my bewildered mind;
O let me suffer and not sin,
Be tortured yet resigned.

Through all this world of whelming mist
Still let me look to Thee,
And give me courage to resist
The Tempter till he flee.

Weary I am -- O give me strength
And leave me not to faint;
Say Thou wilt comfort me at length
And pity my complaint.

I've begged to serve Thee heart and soul,
To sacrifice to Thee
No niggard portion, but the whole
Of my identity.

I hoped amid the brave and strong
My portioned task might lie,
To toil amid the labouring throng
With purpose pure and high.

But Thou hast fixed another part,
And Thou hast fixed it well;
I said so with my breaking heart
When first the anguish fell.

For Thou hast taken my delight
And hope of life away,
And bid me watch the painful night
And wait the weary day.

The hope and the delight were Thine;
I bless Thee for their loan;
I gave Thee while I deemed them mine
Too little thanks, I own.

Shall I with joy Thy blessings share
And not endure their loss?
Or hope the martyr's crown to wear
And cast away the cross?

These weary hours will not be lost,
These days of passive misery,
These nights of darkness anguish tost
If I can fix my heart on Thee.

Weak and weary though I lie,
Crushed with sorrow, worn with pain,
Still I may lift to Heaven mine eyes
And strive and labour not in vain,

That inward strife against the sins
That ever wait on suffering;
To watch and strike where first begins
Each ill that would corruption bring,

That secret labour to sustain
With humble patience every blow,
To gather fortitude from pain
And hope and holiness from woe.

Thus let me serve Thee from my heart
Whatever be my written fate,
Whether thus early to depart
Or yet awhile to wait.

If Thou shouldst bring me back to life
More humbled I should be;
More wise, more strengthened for the strife,
More apt to lean on Thee.

Should Death be standing at the gate
Thus should I keep my vow;
But, Lord, whate'er my future fate
So let me serve Thee now.

Anne wrote this poem in January 1849, when she had been diagnosed with consumption with little hope of recovery. However, in February she rallied somewhat and traveled to the seaside town of Scarborough in the hopes that it would save her. But in May, she died and was buried in Scarborough. This poem, written when she thought death was imminent, is incredibly moving, as she tries to rally her religious faith while humbly asking for more time to live.

Bloggiesta

I've seen Bloggiesta come up in previous years and always thought I should join in, but there's always been some reason why I couldn't. This year it's being held the last weekend of September, which is the same weekend as the big annual event of my employer, the Sajai Foundation, but I think my blog is so sadly out of date that I will try to squeeze it in.

I'm not sure what all I might do, but I absolutely will update my blogroll, which doesn't reflect many of the book blogs that I follow and enjoy. That's priority number one. I may try to freshen the look of the blog itself, even though I'm woefully lacking in those kinds of skills. If I get really ambitious, I might start planning ahead for the Bleak house read-along.

The Orphan Master's Son

There was so much hype about this book when it was first published. I added it to my library queue and forgot about it. (In a somewhat related note, don't you wish library queues were like Netflix, and you could only have so many things out at once before getting anything else? Then I wouldn't end up with the problem I have this month of too many books with long waitlists that can't be renewed showing up at once. Yes, there are ways to put requests on hold, but that means I have to, you know, remember to actually do that.)

I wondered if all the hype would prove fatal, but no. People--I love this book. I could hardly put it down.

The Orphan Master's Son is the story of Pak Jun Do, a North Korean whose mother, a singer, was "stolen" to Pyongyang, so he grows up with his father, who runs a work camp for orphans. Jun Do himself rises through the ranks to eventually become a professional kidnapper. As he matures and becomes involved in increasingly violent and political snares, he also comes closer to the "national actress", Sun Moon, who is loved by none other than Dear Leader Kim Jung Il, but who is married to Commander Ga, a man who dances a very dangerous dance around the Dear Leader. But there's also a young interrogator who is trying new methods of gleaning information from prisoners, in direct competition to the old-school pubyok, which relies heavily on horrific torture techniques to extract information.

So: there's violence. There's political intrigue. There's romance. Most of all, there's North Korea, a world I know little about other than the tidbits that show up periodically in the news. But if author Adam Johnson's written world is correct, this is a frightening place where so much as a glance in the wrong direction can have deadly consequences. It's a place where allegiance to the Dear Leader is demanded and constantly tested. Yet it is also a place where there can be moments of beauty and love--even if they're fleeting and dangerous.

Johnson is tremendously skillful at bringing this world to life without ever losing sight of the fact that what we really want to know about is the people. Jun Do, Sun Moon, Commander Ga, the interrogator, even Kim Jung Il--all are fully fleshed out and struggling to balance their very human needs against the backdrop of oppression and torture.

And the writing is wonderful, often heartbreaking. The interrogator lives with his blind parents, who have grown so fearful of their offspring that they only talk in platitudes about the Dear Leader. The interrogator suspects they're faking the blindness to keep themselves distant from him, and he begs them to tell him the truth. His mother responds: "Our eyes do not work. That is the answer to your question. But then as now, we do not need sight to see what you have become."

I guess I got a two-fer with this book: not only did I love it, but it actually more than fulfilled the hype.

Diving Belles

Diving Belles by Lucy Wood is being compared to Angela Carter, and I'm not getting the connection. This is a collection of stories with magical elements--two kids explore the graveyard where bones of giants make a macabre playground; an elderly woman is given the chance to dive down under the sea to see if she can find her long-missing husband, lured away by merpeople; mysterous hounds roam the moors.

But Carter's stories, at least the ones I've read, have a much darker edge to them, almost hallucinatory at times, and much more gripping. Wood is a talented writer, and she's dead-on in approaching her magical stories by grounding them in as much realistic detail as possible, and beautiful detail at that. But too many of the stories seem to be vignettes rather than fully fleshed out tales. I found myself wanting more actual plot, rather than just evocative descriptions of setting. Occasionally I was frustrated by a story that seemed about to take off, only to end where I thought it was finally beginning.

Not all the stories are like that. The best one in the book is Notes from the House Spirits, told in the plural first person by long-time tenant spirits of a house who collectively remember the house's history and inhabitants. Wood skillfully shows the reader who the human inhabitants are and what their lives are like, even though the narrators themselves don't understand the human condition. The story doesn't necessarily have a lot of plot, but it does have movement, and it's also touching.

This is Wood's first published book, and while I felt it was hit-and-miss, the quality of the writing is such that I'd keep an eye out for her next book. In the meantime, the reminder about Angela Carter inspired me to do something I've been meaning to do for a long time: order her collected stories. Halloween is coming soon, after all.

Bleak House 2012-2013

It's coming! It's coming! The Bleak House read-along!

I feel like Charles Dickens is a good winter read, so this will start in the fall and run to spring 2013. Yes, that's a long time. Here's the theory: Dickens originally published this book in 20 installments. I'm going to follow that schedule. Dickens was a big proponent of the cliffhanger, so it makes sense to follow his lead. I thought about doubling up on it, like I did with Our Mutual Friend earlier this year, but that can make for a lot of reading. Following the original schedule exactly makes for a fairly easy read-along, with most weeks only having 3-4 chapters.In addition, I'll take a break for the last two weeks of December, so people can take a breather if they need to. (Might be a good time to revisit A Christmas Carol.) The read-along will be done before the end of March.

So here's what I propose: read and blog/comment on the following chapters on the following dates. Who's with me??

Blog date:            Chapters:

10/29                    1-4
11/5                      5-7
11/12                    8-10
11/19                    11-13
11/26                    14-16
12/3                      17-19
12/10                    20-22
12/17                    23-25
1/7                        26-29
1/14                      30-32
1/21                      33-35
1/28                      36-38
2/4                        39-42
2/11                      43-46
2/18                      47-49
2/25                      50-53
3/4                        54-56
3/11                      57-59
3/18                      60-67

Note: you don't have to have a blog to participate. Just leave a comment on the posts on this blog to join in the discussion. If you do have a blog and write about Bleak House there, I'll collect the links and post them with my posts.

 

The Dog Stars

More dystopia. In the near future, much of the population has been wiped out by some horrendous flu-like epidemic. Some of the survivors face a secondary infection in the blood. Those who aren't sick are trying to survive any way they can, and that means either making uneasy alliances, or killing any interlopers.

This is the world that Hig lives in after losing his wife and their unborn child. He's a pilot living on an abandoned airport; his uneasy alliance is with Bangley who, like Fiona in Burn Notice, would rather just shoot anyone who comes near than try to determine if another alliance can be made. Hig is all too aware that he needs to be of use to Bangley, or Bangley may just decide he's better off alone.

Hig has lived in this new world for nine years when one day something happens (I'll skip the spoilers) and he decides to take his plane out past the point of no return (not enough fuel to come back) in search of a signal he once picked up three years earlier. It's a brave, possibly suicidal step, given that he has no idea how the rest of the country is coping with the new reality.

I wanted to like this book. Hig is fleshed out very well, the situation is brought to life through his eyes. Bangley is intense and all too believable.

But I had issues with the way the book is written:

I asked him if he ever thought there was anything more than this, than just surviving, day to day. Recon, fixing the plane, growing the five vegetables, trapping a rabbit. Like what are we waiting for?

His chair, crick crick, stopped. He got very still like a hunter that smelled an animal on the wind. Close. Like he woke up.

Say again.

More than this. Day to day.

He worked his jaw, his mineral eyes graying the fading light. Like maybe I'd tipped over the edge.

Gotta go he said. Stood up. Hooked a finger in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, fished out the bottle cap, screwed it on. Carried his Coke off the porch, book cracking the broken step.

No quotation marks, tons of sentence fragments, very disjointed, every paragraph set apart with white space. In the end, it detracted from the story rather than adding to it. At times it did read very poetically and vividly, but that was offset by other scenes, such as when he comes across a woman bathing nude in a stream and all he can think about is her nice butt. The poetry gets lost at that moment.

I had some issues with some of the plot points too, which, again, I'm not giving spoilers. Still: the parts that were well written were really well written, and I'd be inclined to check out his next book (this is his first novel, although he's written several nonfiction books).