Names

[osprey_archer]

This morning, in my inbox, I have an email from someone called Mearag Amare.

I have no idea how this is pronounced. Mearag looks Gaelic, which probably means it’s “Christina” or something else totally unrelated to the spelling. I’ve been saying Amare “A-mar-ay,” kind of like the Egyptian mummy in Caroline B. Cooney’s book Mummy—Amaral-Re.

The heroine in that book had a pretty awesome name too. She was Emlyn. Actually, lots of Caroline B. Cooney heroines had good names. Anna Sophia Lockwood and Devonny Stratton in the Out of Time series, for instance.

I tended to like the lesser-known Caroline B. Cooney books better. Out of Time was really popular but had an awfully shaky grasp on the late-Victorian period, which I found exasperating. I wasn't really fond of the Face on the Milk Carton quartet either. But I loved Mummy and the Losing Christina Trilogy (for which there is fanfic. I am so incredibly geeked that there's fanfic for Losing Christina). Did anyone else read her books?

Comments

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

Well, I did, obviously. ;) Losing Christina were the only ones I ever liked that much, though -- mainly because they were so weird and not really like anything else I'd ever read. The Time Travellers and Janie ones didn't really strike me in the same way, even though people were always going on about how great they were.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Losing Christina is very different from everything else ever, really. The world works on dream logic, where everything makes perfect sense emotionally and logic flaws don't count.

I've always thought there was perhaps something wrong with me for not madly adoring the Janie and/or Time Traveller books, because other people always do. So yay! I'm not a freak!

I think the main problem with the time traveller books (aside from the historical problems) was that I couldn't really get into the romance. I felt way too bad for Strat's old girlfriend, Harriet, to be rooting for his tragically doomed love affair with Annie. Especially given that his tragically doomed love seemed to be based on the fact that she was cute and improperly dressed, while her tragically doomed love was based on the fact that she loved being in love.

Harriet was at least allowed to be a sympathetic character, at least until she died so the Tragic Romance didn't have to be overshadowed by guilt.

Perhaps I ought to write a longer review; I have a lot to say on the topic and I haven't even started on Janie and barely scratched the surface on Losing Christina.

[anactoria.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I seem to remember Strat not being a particularly likeable character, either, and I'm sure I spent a large part of the book wondering, "what do you see in this idiot?"

Dream logic... now that's a really good way of summing up Losing Christina. I've always wondered how they managed to work so well given that the villains are two-dimensional and the plot makes no sense. But since we're experiencing it through Christina's eyes, that doesn't really matter as long as her reactions to it are believable.

Perhaps I ought to write a longer review; I have a lot to say on the topic and I haven't even started on Janie and barely scratched the surface on Losing Christina.


Well, I'd read it!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I didn't think Strat was unlikeable so much as insubstantial. He was a generic Romantic Hero in the Mr. Darcy mode (handsome, dark haired, gentlemanly, even referred to by his last name) without any of the distinguishing characteristics that made Mr. Darcy interesting. So there isn't any real center for his romance with Annie; all the impetus has to be provided by the minds of the excessively romantic teenage girls reading the books.

Yeah, I think I will write a review.