osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2013-08-12 05:19 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2013-08-12 05:19 pm
35. Flygirl (and Beauty and The Ramsay Scallop)
I actually wrote these reviews before I headed off into the wilderness, and it’s interesting looking back on them. I tend to write my book reviews soon after I’ve finished reading, which has obvious advantages, but also means that I don’t usually know how the book is going to sit with me: there are books that grow on me over time, like Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, and books that I enjoyed immensely but remember poorly, like Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series.
I liked all these books when I first read them, but the only one that stayed in my mind rather than drifting away is Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl. And the one book that I read before the trip that really stuck with me, Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, I didn’t even write a review for - because I didn’t realize it would. I suppose I ought to rectify that...
I must confess, one of my main thoughts while reading Robin McKinley’s Beauty was “I hope Disney paid McKinley some royalties for this,” because there are some definite similarities here. (No Gaston, though, for which I think we can all be grateful.) Belle’s love of books, for instance, and that fantastic library - with books that haven’t been written yet!
I was pleased that Beauty’s sisters were not wicked. Not so glad that Beauty, despite her certainty that she’s plain, inevitably becomes beautiful by the end of the book. I am so tired of this ending. Is a happy ending is impossible, then, if the heroine doesn’t magically become gorgeous?
(One of the things I really like about Jane Eyre, as a side note, is that Jane never becomes beautiful or even pretty. Rochester likes the look of her, but then Rochester is no oil painting himself; and strangers inevitably thinks she looks dull or even plain.)
I meant to read Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter too, but the library didn’t have it - how can the library not have it? It’s not as if anything by McKinley could count as obscure. I’ve heard that libraries have taken to winnowing their stock more thoroughly than they used to do, and doubtless they have reasons...but I don’t really think I approve.
Case in point: I had a hell of a time finding Frances Temple’s The Ramsay Scallop, even though it’s less than twenty years old. It’s set in medieval times, on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which was a huge medieval pilgrimage site (and IIRC is still a huge pilgrimage site today), and while I will not give it excessive marks for literary quality - the narrative is rather choppy, and I think some of the character arcs are rushed - The Ramsay Scallop has a delicious joie de vivre.
It has its grim moments: their feet hurt, they run out of food, it hasn’t rained in so long that the people at the next village don’t want to give them any water. But at the same time...they’re on pilgrimage! Seeing new things, meeting strangers they never would have met, telling stories they’ve never heard - I love stories within a story - it’s hard, but it’s all very exciting and interesting and fun.
There’s a great scene where Temple pairs up the tales of Griselda the good wife and The Loathly Lady. (It is possible that Sir Gawain gets all the most interesting Arthurian tales. Discuss.) Should a good woman assent to her husband’s whims, no matter how cruel? Or should she be able to make her own choices? It makes the point nicely, I think, that historical people did not all agree: that in any time there was a certain breadth of opinion.
And there is a whole chapter based on Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou! Which I read earlier this summer, because it is a classic of academic history - it caused a bit of a sensation when it was first published, enough that histories of the discipline of history always mention it, because he used Inquisition records, not to learn anything about the Inquisition or heresy or government, but just to glean information about how ordinary people lived.
Montaillou’s methodology has been so completely accepted that it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about if you read it today: everyone does this kind of thing now. However, it’s still a very readable and interesting book, which for a history book nearly forty years old is quite a feat. And meeting Pierre Maury again in Temple's book felt like meeting an old friend.
And finally, Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl, which is about a light-skinned black girl who passes for white to join the WASPs during World War II, and is an awful lot of fun. I suspect fans of Code Name Verity would like this too (flying girls! what more can you want out of life), and it’s rather less harrowing, too.
I do think it goes off a bit at the end; I suspect Smith didn’t know quite how to end it, given that Ida Mae’s return to civilian life as a woman (and especially as a black woman; Ida Mae flirts with the idea of continuing to pass after the war is over, but that’s not really satisfying either) would almost inevitably seem cramped after the excitement of test-flying B-52s. So it ends on an uncertain note, which is not quite satisfying but is probably as good as it gets.
I liked all these books when I first read them, but the only one that stayed in my mind rather than drifting away is Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl. And the one book that I read before the trip that really stuck with me, Rumer Godden’s An Episode of Sparrows, I didn’t even write a review for - because I didn’t realize it would. I suppose I ought to rectify that...
I must confess, one of my main thoughts while reading Robin McKinley’s Beauty was “I hope Disney paid McKinley some royalties for this,” because there are some definite similarities here. (No Gaston, though, for which I think we can all be grateful.) Belle’s love of books, for instance, and that fantastic library - with books that haven’t been written yet!
I was pleased that Beauty’s sisters were not wicked. Not so glad that Beauty, despite her certainty that she’s plain, inevitably becomes beautiful by the end of the book. I am so tired of this ending. Is a happy ending is impossible, then, if the heroine doesn’t magically become gorgeous?
(One of the things I really like about Jane Eyre, as a side note, is that Jane never becomes beautiful or even pretty. Rochester likes the look of her, but then Rochester is no oil painting himself; and strangers inevitably thinks she looks dull or even plain.)
I meant to read Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter too, but the library didn’t have it - how can the library not have it? It’s not as if anything by McKinley could count as obscure. I’ve heard that libraries have taken to winnowing their stock more thoroughly than they used to do, and doubtless they have reasons...but I don’t really think I approve.
Case in point: I had a hell of a time finding Frances Temple’s The Ramsay Scallop, even though it’s less than twenty years old. It’s set in medieval times, on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, which was a huge medieval pilgrimage site (and IIRC is still a huge pilgrimage site today), and while I will not give it excessive marks for literary quality - the narrative is rather choppy, and I think some of the character arcs are rushed - The Ramsay Scallop has a delicious joie de vivre.
It has its grim moments: their feet hurt, they run out of food, it hasn’t rained in so long that the people at the next village don’t want to give them any water. But at the same time...they’re on pilgrimage! Seeing new things, meeting strangers they never would have met, telling stories they’ve never heard - I love stories within a story - it’s hard, but it’s all very exciting and interesting and fun.
There’s a great scene where Temple pairs up the tales of Griselda the good wife and The Loathly Lady. (It is possible that Sir Gawain gets all the most interesting Arthurian tales. Discuss.) Should a good woman assent to her husband’s whims, no matter how cruel? Or should she be able to make her own choices? It makes the point nicely, I think, that historical people did not all agree: that in any time there was a certain breadth of opinion.
And there is a whole chapter based on Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou! Which I read earlier this summer, because it is a classic of academic history - it caused a bit of a sensation when it was first published, enough that histories of the discipline of history always mention it, because he used Inquisition records, not to learn anything about the Inquisition or heresy or government, but just to glean information about how ordinary people lived.
Montaillou’s methodology has been so completely accepted that it’s hard to see what all the fuss is about if you read it today: everyone does this kind of thing now. However, it’s still a very readable and interesting book, which for a history book nearly forty years old is quite a feat. And meeting Pierre Maury again in Temple's book felt like meeting an old friend.
And finally, Sherri L. Smith’s Flygirl, which is about a light-skinned black girl who passes for white to join the WASPs during World War II, and is an awful lot of fun. I suspect fans of Code Name Verity would like this too (flying girls! what more can you want out of life), and it’s rather less harrowing, too.
I do think it goes off a bit at the end; I suspect Smith didn’t know quite how to end it, given that Ida Mae’s return to civilian life as a woman (and especially as a black woman; Ida Mae flirts with the idea of continuing to pass after the war is over, but that’s not really satisfying either) would almost inevitably seem cramped after the excitement of test-flying B-52s. So it ends on an uncertain note, which is not quite satisfying but is probably as good as it gets.