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Jarka Ruus

May24

As I’m working my way through my enormous pile of unread books, which is not getting any smaller as I keep adding to it, not that I have some sort of addiction to buying books, I’m reading books that are in a series where I haven’t read the first one. The first of these is Jarka Ruus by Terry Brooks. It’s the first in the High Druid of Shannara trilogy which is part of the larger Shannara cycle and I’ve not read any of the others.

Still, the large amounts of exposition in the book mean that doesn’t matter too much. The plot, loosely, is that a very powerful sorceress is trapped in a shadow world of extreme evil and her teenaged nephew and his sidekicks have to rescue her. Not a complex plot, but well handled it could have been very good. As it was, I found myself unhappy with the trope that small boy rescues grown woman as a coming of age rite of passage. The sorceress, Grianne, is supposed to be the most fearsome magic user in the world and yet her part in the story seems mostly to be standing around waiting.

I didn’t find the dialogue convincing; it felt too contemporary, too familiarly colloquial. The characterisation was a bit ropey and the characters didn’t really seem to have any depth to them Overall, I didn’t enjoy this and I don’t think I’ll be picking up any more.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

May6

Back to the classics. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy is probably one of the most famous stories of english literature. The story follows the eponymous heroine as she is coming of age. She is seduced and ruined by one man, rejected by another when she discloses her shame and then further manipulated by the first until she kills him.

This was a great book, a classic that firmly deserves to be there. For a novel of it’s age, the authorial voice is muted and much more of the characters is to the fore. Characterisation is subtle and effective. The hard struggle of life of someone in Tess’ position is made clear without labouring the point.

Naturally, the pivotal event in the first third of the book largely happens off-scene and leads to the question – is it rape? It is never described as such but I can’t help feeling that that’s because rape is defined as ‘violent stranger-danger’ and what happens to Tess is more like acquaintance rape. According to Wikipedia, as the event happens off-stage it leaves the reader to decide whether she was raped or seduced. To me this sounds like ‘either she was violently raped or she willingly (enthusiastically) participated’. My reading of the story was that she was pressurised and manipulated; her class, poverty and social conditioning were used against her to wear her down – plus, she’s asleep when Alec d’Urberville starts on her. Throughout the book Tess is painfully conscious of how she is being manipulated but unable to find a way through it.

Later in the book, when Tess has been abandoned by Angel Clare, Alec d’Urberville’s behaviour becomes abusive. He targets her and holds her responsible for his actions. Her very existence is the thing that he claims compels him to act and Hardy neatly describes a consummate piece of victim-blaming.

This is a fantastic book with many levels and written with great intelligence and empathy. Highly recommended!

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

May4

I bought The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson on the strength of the marketing, the fact that I saw everyone reading it and loads of people said it was good. Normally, I ignore that sort of mass trend but something about this book made me buy it despite its popularity.

It was good, although perhaps not as good as I’d been told. In fairness, it is a thriller and is very much better than much of the genre – but I don’t think a novel should be judged only by the relative standards of its genre. The story is of a journalist hired to investigate a forty year old unsolved murder and in doing so uncovers a serial killer going quietly about his business.

The elements of writing were largely well handled; characterisation and dialogue were definitely a cut above the norm of the genre although I doubt they would stand out in broader comparisons. Plotting was also good. The sense of place was strong and all senses were brought to bear in creating the novel’s world. Sweden seems more real to me now.

Where it fell down a bit was in pacing. This is not a roller-coaster ride filled with thrills and spills. For the first half of the book, which is over 500 pages so that’s for a good 250 pages, I was waiting for it to get going. There was a lot of exposition in the first half, delivered to the reader in short but frequent info-dumps. The authorial voice interfered a little at the start as well making the info-dumps read in a slightly different tone.

Once past the mid-way hump, the pace picks up, there’s a lot more action and it builds up into an excellent ending. This is the first of a trilogy and I will happily pick up the second and third books.

The Reason of Things

Apr30

As it’s been a while since I was posting regularly, I’ve gotten a bit out of order with the books I’ve read and for several reasons it’s been a non-fiction heavy month. Other books read in April include:

The Reason of Things by A. C. Grayling. This is a collection of philosophical essays about values (mostly). It is accessible and enjoyable to read. I found it thought-provoking and interesting. Grayling is an atheist, left leaning liberal and I find most of what he says eminently sensible.

Living with a Long Term Illness by Frankie Campling and Michael Sharpe. This was a helpful book that talked about how long term illnesses are different from acute illnesses and how to cope with that. It covered physical, emotional and mental factors, how to become an expert, how to have a more effective relationship with your doctor and a few other points. I found it helpful. I’m not adjusting well to having a long term illness and this helped me shift my thinking.

Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford. I picked this up because I’m going on one of Debbie Ford’s workshops in May. It was good. It helped me move my shadow work on a step. There are lots of exercises I haven’t done yet (who does??) but I actually think I might go back and do some of them.

Living Dead in Dallas

Apr27

I was going to leave Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris, the second Sookie Stackhouse novel, until True Blood Season 2 was on but I forgot until I was actually reading it. No matter, from what I’ve read about season 2 I think True Blood is going in a different direction.

Which is good because Living Dead in Dallas starts with the death of Lafayette and it would be terrible if True Blood lost that character.

Anyway, on to the book. It was as readable as the first book and I actually thought the writing showed improvement. On the other hand, I didn’t think the voice of Sookie Stackhouse was as strong as it had been in Dead until Dark. It is still in first person POV and the supporting cast still has a cardboard cut out feel.

Sookie’s relationships with the vampires Bill and Eric are deeply problematic. The trope of male desire being dangerous and uncontrollable is front and centre. Indeed it is male desire that kills Lafayette. Sookie spends a lot of time thinking about how her appearance affects the men around her and what they like to see her in. The feminism that was evident in Dead until Dark has been dropped for this second book.

It was ok. Better than the first one in some respects, not as good in others. I’m looking forward to True Blood in the summer.

Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury and Bruce Patton is about principled negotiation. It’s about applying fairness and ethics in negotiations, gives advice about how to deal with aggressive negotiation and is full of handy examples. It’s an old book and has been quite influential, so while reading it, I had a sense of having heard it all before. There’s no harm in repetition with these things though and the Q&A section at the back was very useful in illustrating application. Highly recommended.

Brooklyn

Apr26

April’s Book Club book was Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.

It wasn’t my cup of tea. I was bored reading it and it felt like a chore. But that wasn’t because of the skill or talent on display, both of which were impressive. It was more about the subject matter. The novel is about a young Irish girl who emigrates to the US in the ’50s. It’s character driven and I like plot-heavy novels.

There were some enjoyable moments. There is a particularly visceral depiction of the effects of sea sickness which I thought stood out as a single instance of colour and physicality. For me this was the best scene in the book. Throughout the novel the heroine’s relationships are characterised by a complete inability to express emotion. It was deftly portrayed. The heroine’s mother, especially, had a habit of saying the opposite of what she thought. The isolating and distancing effect that this has was captured and I found that moving. Towards the end, the heroine is expected to give up her future to return home and pressured is applied through a brother’s letter and through the weight of expectation on the part of neighbours. Because, of course that’s what a woman should do.

Aside from that, the heroine is largely passive. What happens to her seems to happen without any agency or passion on her part and I found it difficult to identify with her. There was no sense that she wanted to be with either of the men she was given – and I’ve no doubt that’s what the author intended – and I couldn’t see how she would go along with it. I’m sure that many women of the time would have behaved and felt just that way, but I didn’t like her for it.

In terms of the technique of writing, this novel is quite deft. The characterisation is excellent and the author shows you who they are through their actions and words. I always had the sense that what I was reading was what the author intended me to read. The sense of isolation through not knowing what people were thinking or feeling was strongly conveyed through a slight dissonance of words and actions, through body language, and through knowledge gained later in a second hand way. All techniques that can be put to good use.

If you like character-driven fiction this is a well written and subtle book. Not enough dramatics and/or silliness for my tastes.

In non-fiction, I picked up Survival of the Sickest by Sharon Moalem. The theory is that some of the most lethal diseases that humans are prone to must have had an evolutionary benefit in the past or they would have been naturally de-selected. It’s a highly readable book and the theory is certainly plausible. Well worth a look.

Target

Mar31

Target by Simon Kernick is an easy read. It’s a fast-paced thriller and is fairly typical of the genre. There were a few noteworthy things about it.

Firstly, loads of people died. I know it was a thriller about a psychotic hitman, but still. It did feel like there was a bit of red-shirt syndrome going on; any new character introduced was likely to be dead shortly.

Secondly, there were only two female characters, one of which was the kidnap victim and who never gets any screentime. The other was a detective who start off with a good role, gets kidnapped and it seems like she’s waiting to be rescued. In the end, she rescues herself which I was happy to see but for a long while she was taken out of the story. Also the violence against the two female characters was depressingly sexualised.

And lastly, the author killed off the first person narrator. He’s not the only POV character and I question the use of both first and third person POVs in the novel; it’s somewhat disjointed. This was a surprise and I found it a brave move. It was thoughtprovoking but I’m not sure how I feel about it. The fact that the antagonist had killed so many characters by this point did contribute to a response of ‘oh really, another killing?’

Anyway, it was ok. Problematic in places and patchy technique, but good in the things that make a good thriller. I might pick up another of Kernick’s books next time I’m looking for brain candy floss.

Then I read Hawkwood: Diabolical Englishman by Frances Stonor Saunders which is the biography of a fourteenth century mercenary, Sir John Hawkwood. It was less biography than an exploration of a moment in time hung around the structure of one man’s life. It was fascinating.

Vile Bodies

Mar15

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh is a delight. It follows the activities of the ‘it’ crowd in the late nineteen-twenties. They are the sons and daughters of the rich and famous. It’s funny and in places it’s tragic. In contrast to The Left Hand of Darkness, the writing was quite terse and restrained, but it was equally powerful. I liked it and will definitely read more Waugh.

The Left Hand of Darkness

Mar14

I put The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin up for my book club to read. There was a point before I’d read it where I was getting worried that it would be really hard going, because two people had given up on it only a few pages in.

But I have two hours of commute and I was determined to see it through to the end. As I am quite interested in gender representations in literature and keen to avoid problematic stereotypes in my own writing, I felt that this was an important book to read. Le Guin sends a male protagonist, Genly Ai, as an ambassador to a world in which people are not defined by gender. Each person has a monthly cycle in which they are sexually active for about a quarter of the time and pairings change into male/female pairings depending on the interaction of hormones between them. Every person will be male sometimes and every person will be female sometimes. Every person will be both father and mother.

The first third of the book is hard going. There is fantastic depth to Le Guin’s worldbuilding and there’s a lot to take in. The narrator of this section, Genly Ai, is also highly unreliable, although that doesn’t become clear until later in the book. While reading it I was disturbed by the judgements Ai was making, in particular the negative qualities he clearly identified with the female. The book was written in the late sixties and reflects a very stark correlation of masculinity and positivity. I’d like to think that is less true today, but perhaps it’s just less boldly stated.

Anyway, the world that Ai is visiting is split into nations and there comes a point at which Ai goes to another nation. Here the book changes. Another character, Estraven, becomes a POV character. Through Estraven’s eyes we see things differently and realise just how unreliable Ai is as a narrator. The pace of the story picks up and in the last half is quite the adventure story.

I was awed by Le Guin’s worldbuilding. Her world is worked up from the bottom meaning that everything is different and new and we can’t make any assumptions. After having read so many fantasies lately where the worldbuilding has been quite superficial, this was both inspiring and intimidating! The writing is wonderful; I really enjoyed the lush, detailed language. The characterisation is subtle and effective. If was going to make any criticism it would be that the various voices could be more differentiated, but it’s a tiny point. The Left Hand of Darkness is amazing; go and read it now.

For non-fiction I read A History of the World in Six Glasses by Tom Standage, which looks at beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea and cola and their impact on society. It was entertaining, easy to read, and offered a unique way of looking at history. I learnt stuff I didn’t know before which is really what I’m looking for.

Priestess of the White

Mar7

Priestess of the White by Trudi Canavan is not a small book. It’s the first part of a trilogy and is a massive 650 pages. The first hundred or so of these pages made me feel that finishing it would be a chore. It didn’t turn out to be, but I can’t say it turned into a real page turner either.

Priestess of the White is an epic tale of religious war between the good White and the evil Black sorcerors from the south. Problematic. I tried very hard not to draw conclusions about who was supposed to be good and evil, but in the end I was left with the idea that the author was deliberately employing stereotypical symbolism. White equals good, kind, just, true and right. Black equals evil, trickery, cruelty, lies and wrongness. These days I’m not comfortable with these racist constructions.

Compounding this are the inevitable religious parallels. Again through the use of familiar symbolism White is associated with christianity (good) and Black with paganism (evil).

I don’t know if this was deliberate on the part of the author or whether this was a case of lazy worldbuilding. Much fantasy is based on historial societies and transfers the insitutions, economics and social dynamics wholesale. Done well (e.g. The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch) this can provide a solid base for a recognisable and believable world. I think that a lot of care needs to be taken that the fantasy world is more than a thin veneer.

Done badly, it becomes hard for the reader to immerse themselves in the fantasy world. I was wondering if it was meant to be allegory and thinking that if it was, it wasn’t clear what Canavan was trying to say.

Characterisation was okay, in some respects quite superficial but better than some stuff I’ve read recently. The same goes for the writing. It was unsophisticated but not the worst I’ve read lately. It did pick up as the story got going. By and large, Canavan avoided big chunks of exposition, which was nice. Overall, I felt that it lacked depth and in a book of this length that’s a real problem.

I think I will read the rest of the trilogy at some point because there were some ambiguities in the ending that suggest that Canavan is preparing to subvert and confound the assumptions she’s set up. I would really like to see that.

The non-fiction interlude was Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour that Changed the World by Simon Garfield. This was fascinating, full of lots of interesting things to know and less of a biography than an exploration the impact of the discovery of synthetic colour.