osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2011-11-15 03:42 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2011-11-15 03:42 pm
Entry tags:
Francine Rivers
Last post I raved for a while about books about Evangelical Christian culture. Those books are excellent and I love them, but they're really just a road map. If you want to get down and dirty with Evangelical books, then you have to read Francine Rivers' A Voice in the Wind and An Echo in the Darkness.
Or, okay, you don't, but I'm going to tell you all about them because I just have to SHARE. They're shlocky, they're historically risible - Rivers never misses a chance to throw in evangelical buzzwords, never mind how un-Roman blathering about alternative lifestyles sounds - they're very Moral Majority; but they're nonetheless strangely page-turning.
Partly, let it be said, because they are often so alarming. Let us take as an example the story of Julia, who kicks off her arc of sin when her parents marry her off to an old fellow, who is kindly but insufficiently studly for her tastes. The narrative disapproves of her disapproval.
Julia, bored, goes off gallivanting and indirectly causes her new husband's death (but don't worry! Julia's slave Hadassah converted him before he died!). Thus set free, Julia's parents decide to let her choose her next husband, and she picks an abusive creeper.
I don't think Rivers is arguing that arranged marriages are way better than love matches, but it's hard to tell.
Julia eventually dispatches the abusive creeper, aborts the fruit of their union, and falls for Atreus the gladiator, but then decides not to marry him because he, like her late husband, has creepy alpha tendencies. The narrative totally disapproves of this, too, although I think "You're just like the last abusive creeper I dated" is a perfectly good reason to dump someone.
(Also, seriously? A highborn Roman girl marrying a gladiator? Have a fling with, fine. But even thinking about marrying? Seriously?)
But Julia doesn't dump Atreus. She continues making adulterous gladiator love with him, but marries a gay man so she can keep control of her money. Then she falls in with the evil maiden Calibah (yes, Rivers just compared bisexuality unfavorably to slaughtering people for fun and profit), wherefrom Julia contracts the STD of which she eventually perishes.
So that may seem like a bummer ending, but don't worry! Hadassah and Marcus totally baptize her in the pool in her atrium just before she dies!
Marcus is Julia's brother and Hadassah's love interest, except Hadassah totally should have ended up with Alexander instead. It's sort of a Twilight situation, except that Marcus is Hadassah's angsty Roman master rather than a vampire and Alexander is the doctor instead of a werewolf.
Alexander nurses Hadassah back to health after Julia puckishly sends Hadassah to the arena to be ripped apart by lions. Unlike Marcus, he values her opinion. Unlike Marcus, he never almost rapes her. But apparently Alexander is insufficiently masterful to be a proper love interest. Phooey.
So, yes. Basically these books are irredeemable potboilers with banal prose and warped values. But still…but still…despite all their problems, the unlikely plot contrivances and the hammering of a message I find highly disagreeable, still, there's something here.
The characters may be exasperating, they may be twisted to suit the messages, but I care about them. I want Julia to find an author who doesn't want to make an example of her and Hadassah to realize that Alexander is by far superior to Marcus. They breathe.
Or, okay, you don't, but I'm going to tell you all about them because I just have to SHARE. They're shlocky, they're historically risible - Rivers never misses a chance to throw in evangelical buzzwords, never mind how un-Roman blathering about alternative lifestyles sounds - they're very Moral Majority; but they're nonetheless strangely page-turning.
Partly, let it be said, because they are often so alarming. Let us take as an example the story of Julia, who kicks off her arc of sin when her parents marry her off to an old fellow, who is kindly but insufficiently studly for her tastes. The narrative disapproves of her disapproval.
Julia, bored, goes off gallivanting and indirectly causes her new husband's death (but don't worry! Julia's slave Hadassah converted him before he died!). Thus set free, Julia's parents decide to let her choose her next husband, and she picks an abusive creeper.
I don't think Rivers is arguing that arranged marriages are way better than love matches, but it's hard to tell.
Julia eventually dispatches the abusive creeper, aborts the fruit of their union, and falls for Atreus the gladiator, but then decides not to marry him because he, like her late husband, has creepy alpha tendencies. The narrative totally disapproves of this, too, although I think "You're just like the last abusive creeper I dated" is a perfectly good reason to dump someone.
(Also, seriously? A highborn Roman girl marrying a gladiator? Have a fling with, fine. But even thinking about marrying? Seriously?)
But Julia doesn't dump Atreus. She continues making adulterous gladiator love with him, but marries a gay man so she can keep control of her money. Then she falls in with the evil maiden Calibah (yes, Rivers just compared bisexuality unfavorably to slaughtering people for fun and profit), wherefrom Julia contracts the STD of which she eventually perishes.
So that may seem like a bummer ending, but don't worry! Hadassah and Marcus totally baptize her in the pool in her atrium just before she dies!
Marcus is Julia's brother and Hadassah's love interest, except Hadassah totally should have ended up with Alexander instead. It's sort of a Twilight situation, except that Marcus is Hadassah's angsty Roman master rather than a vampire and Alexander is the doctor instead of a werewolf.
Alexander nurses Hadassah back to health after Julia puckishly sends Hadassah to the arena to be ripped apart by lions. Unlike Marcus, he values her opinion. Unlike Marcus, he never almost rapes her. But apparently Alexander is insufficiently masterful to be a proper love interest. Phooey.
So, yes. Basically these books are irredeemable potboilers with banal prose and warped values. But still…but still…despite all their problems, the unlikely plot contrivances and the hammering of a message I find highly disagreeable, still, there's something here.
The characters may be exasperating, they may be twisted to suit the messages, but I care about them. I want Julia to find an author who doesn't want to make an example of her and Hadassah to realize that Alexander is by far superior to Marcus. They breathe.
no subject
What...
Where did you even find this?
How did you read two of them?
no subject
So I had to read the second. But the second wrapped up Hadassah's storyline, so I steadfastly refused to read the third, which was about Julia's boring gladiator boyfriend.
no subject
I must hear this story.
no subject
I was on it because in my sophomore year, one of my friends convinced me that I had to do some extracurricular activity, any extracurricular activity, and meet some people outside of my friend group and develop social skills. (And also I figured that if I didn't have any extracurricular activities I would never get into college.)
And the school newspaper didn't accept sophomores. So I did Robotics instead. (Not that I had much to do with the actual robot. But I was on the team.)
no subject
I was just on the Speech team. Yours sounds a bit more interesting, honestly. Did it also involve waking up at 4:30 on Saturdays?
no subject
And Robotics definitely could involve waking up at 4:30 and staying until midnight, but it didn't for me personally because I was a totally lackluster team member. I chose to be on the outreach team, which only came to meetings three times a week and never stayed late.
In retrospect, joining Robotics might have worked better to socialize me if I had put more effort in it.
no subject
Even in that hyper-Christian milieu, we knew they were trashy as hell, but--yes--weirdly page turning. Even at the time I recognized how reprehensible the majority of the moral points were, but they were compulsively readable.
Did you ever read the third one, in which the gladiator and a Christian woman hared off for the barbarian north?
We also read the House of Winslow series (which went on, and on, and on) but it never reached the same crack-y levels. No lions, for one thing.
no subject
And no lions? All books are improved by lions. They're like zombies that way.
no subject
no subject
Although I bet the others don't have as much awesome lion action as this book.
no subject
I laughed out loud at after Julia puckishly sends Hadassah to the arena to be ripped apart by lions. Oh Julia! What a card!
no subject