A few books

[osprey_archer]

I read Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto a few years ago and thought it well-written, but mannered. The prose is superb, but the characters are too distant and the emotions too muted to capture the intensity of a hostage situation.

So I didn’t go out of my way to find any more of her books. But at the library I drifted in the path of one: Truth & Beauty: A Friendship, a memoir about Patchett’s friendship with the poet and memoirist Lucy Grealy.

It’s excellent. The prose is as supple as in Bel Canto, but infused with the emotion Bel Canto lacked. I wish I could post an excerpt to hook you, but whenever I try I get sucked back into the book and come up for air ten pages later. It would be impossible to capture the book's charm in an excerpt, anyway: its excellence is not in any one line, but on the way the sentences flow together and the rise and fall of the paragraphs.

***

Attempted to read Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road, sunk into a quagmire of despair within twenty pages, and slogged a third of the way through before deciding that really, I've already read my tortuous book for the month and Wuthering Heights caused MORE THAN ENOUGH suffering.

I don't understand it. People whose opinions in books I trust, whose tastes align with mine, rave at great length about Marchetta's work. But whenever I read her I feel like I'm dying by inches.

***

I'm also reading Franny Billingsley's Chime, a novel set in the village of Swampsea in Edwardian England, featuring a heroine named Briony and her possible-probable-maybe-love-interest Eldric.

(Eldric? Eldric? What kind of name is Eldric?)

Eldric aside, it's a reasonably entertaining yarn so far. Billingsley clearly isn't big on subtlety, so in the sixty pages I've read Briony has informed us at least ten times HOW MUCH SHE HATES HERSELF - and normally I dislike intensely heroines who hate themselves; but Briony has (or at least thinks she has) better reasons than most.

And somehow, despite the repetition, the story hasn't gotten bogged down in introspective misery yet. And I want to see what happens next.

Comments

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

If you like Ann Patchett's writing, try The Magician's Assistant. It was a beautiful book, my favorite of hers.

I agree with you on Bel Canto, and almost didn't read MA, but I'm so glad I did.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I may give it a look. Always in the market for new books to try!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(Whoops, I, on the other hand, didn't care for The Magician's Assistant. In fact, I was going to use it as an example of why I probably wouldn't try another Ann Patchett--also thinking of what you said about Bel Canto. On the other hand, maybe I was being too harsh.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Did you dislike The Magician's Assistant for the same reasons that I wasn't so fond of Bel Canto, or different?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Part of it was what you describe in terms of distance from the characters. That might have been me, but I found it hard to warm up to the main character. But I think the thing that turned me off was the depiction of either Nebraska or Oklahoma (I forget which one it was) as an arid desert, intellectually and emotionally, where no one had finer feelings and everyone was contented just to shop at Walmart. I felt as if in order to highlight the main characters and their drama, the author had to deride the context or paint it in a charicaturish fashion.

... But I really think maybe I am too harsh on it...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Interested in your take so far on Chime. I haven't read it yet. As I say, people I respect have really liked it. But I was a bit put off by what you describe: the main character's situation.

But you're still reading. And others like it. I think I'll have to give it a try at some point.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think it helps that she doesn't so much hate herself as feel very strongly that she OUGHT to hate herself. Which sounds like it would be even more depressing, actually, but it means that she keeps having pleasant moments despite the fact that she feels she owes it to the world to be miserable.

Also, she has lots of fun with language. It's hard not to enjoy that.