Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, in preparation for reading The Testaments. This is actually a reread: I read the book in high school as a possible book for my term paper, which I ended up writing about A Tale of Two Cities because I figured that would be easier.

I was almost certainly right about this, not least because I super loved The Handmaid’s Tale and it’s often harder to write about things that you love. It wasn’t quite the same bolt from the blue this time (but then, how could it be, being a reread?) but I still loved it. It’s a look at a character living in an oppressive society and trying to eke out a little happiness despite the odds stacked against her, and that’s something that I really love in books and in fact often miss in dystopian novels: so many of them involve people directly rebelling against oppression, not just trying to live their lives.

I also read Jen Wang’s Stargazing, in which Christine befriends Moon, who she thinks is way cooler than she is - so much cooler that she’s afraid Moon will inevitably abandon her for other friends. This is a dynamic that I had with a friend growing up and I thought Stargazing absolutely nailed it, to the point that it swept away my usual dislike for a certain plot twist: Moon turns out to have a brain tumor and usually I HATE books with surprise!serious!illness. But it also helps that the tumor turns out to be less serious than you might expect from, well, a tumor: at no point does Moon seem to be at serious risk of death. She has surgery and the tumor’s removed and presumably there’s some recovery time, but basically it’s taken care of.

According to the afterword, this element of the book is actually based on Wang’s own childhood - she had a brain tumor that was removed when she was six.

And finally I finished Elizabeth Goudge’s The Dean’s Watch, which I really liked. I’ve heard that Goudge’s adult fiction is preachy, and certainly this book was written with a heavier hand than her books for children, but ultimately I felt that this book managed to deal with heavy themes without crossing over into preachiness.

I’ve often found it puzzling, given that I’m not religious myself, that I’m drawn to books by religious authors with religious themes - like Goudge, or C. S. Lewis, or Rumer Godden - but I think ultimately what draws me to them is this willingness to grapple with heavy themes, to look directly at the inevitability of death or the problem of evil and say “Well, wanna make something of it?”, which I rarely find in secular books. Which is not to say that secular authors don’t deal with weighty themes - see above The Handmaid’s Tale - but often it’s a different set of themes. The religious authors give the kaleidoscope another twist.

What I’m Reading Now

Things are heating up in William Dean Howells’ A Modern Instance: Bartley has just published a story that he stole from a friend, which may prove the tipping point for Marcia to realize that her husband is not a good man who makes mistakes, but an unprincipled man who mostly manages to convince people he’s good because he’s got a charming way with words. Will she divorce him and marry his old college friend Ben Halleck, who clearly has an enormous crush on her?

“What could be worse than marriage without love?” Ben Halleck demands of a friend, with whom he has been discussed the Bartley/Marcia problem without directly mentioning that he’s in love with Marcia.

“Love without marriage,” the friend replies.

This exchange may be the key to all nineteenth-century Anglo-American novels.

What I Plan to Read Next

Perhaps Jen Wang’s The Prince and the Dressmaker?

Oh! Oh! And the 2020 Newbery winners should be announced shortly!!!

Comments

[asakiyume]

The religious authors give the kaleidoscope another twist --I love this image so much.

Stargazing sounds interesting! Do you ever wish you could read a thing without having to read it--like, know it, I guess? That's sort of how I feel, I think, based on what you've written. It's not a book that I'd pick up to read on my own, but what you say about it makes me interested, because yeah, I'd like to see that dynamic handled! (Interestingly, I have had that sense in relationships more in adulthood then in childhood--in childhood, even when I was lonely with few friends, I only ever thought of potential friends as oooh, so interesting! so fun! without reference to what **I** was bringing to the potential friendship. Alas, in adulthood, I *have* asked that question and felt insecure about it.)

My only experience IRL with the brain tumor thing was a sad one with a little boy I babysat for :(

[osprey_archer]

I have had that feeling with a lot of books, although especially with big thick ones where reading the book would be a Commitment. Like, yes, I want to read it, but do I want to spend the next three months reading it? That's a lot of time on one book! At least Stargazing is comparatively slender.

ETA: The question of "what am I bringing to this friendship?" reminds me of a scene in Fruits Basket, which I've just been watching: Tohru tells one of her friends "You have a plum on your back" - it's hard for us to see what's special about us because it's on our backs, like the plum on an onigiri. If someone is receptive to overtures of friendship, they must think there's a plum on you somewhere, right?

[asakiyume]

Yes, and also, I think maybe instead of an exchange metaphor, it's more like a catching-fire metaphor (where friendship overtures light a spark) or a planting metaphor.

[osprey_archer]

Yes! People definitely grow through their friendships. Perhaps especially in childhood (my friend that I referenced in the post is the one who introduced me to anime, so the Fruits Basket reference really brings this full circle...), but in adulthood too.

[thisbluespirit]

and certainly this book was written with a heavier hand than her books for children, but ultimately I felt that this book managed to deal with heavy themes without crossing over into preachiness.

*nods* It's very religious indeed, which is one reason it's really not something I rec generally, but I feel that it veers more towards a sort of religion/death as realism/transforming more than straight-up preachiness as such. (Probably The Bird in the Tree and that are more directly preachy, although I actually liked them too.) Plus death, as you say. I'm glad you did like it in the end. Your mentions of it vanished and I assumed the worst, which I thought fair enough. If you did enjoy it, both of the Yuletide pieces for it this year were lovely.

[osprey_archer]

I had a whole bunch of holds come in at the library, and I felt that I ought to prioritize reading the ones where there was someone in line waiting for me to turn it in, so The Dean's Watch got shunted to the side for a bit. But never fear! I returned to it in the end.

[thisbluespirit]

Hurrah!

Also, dammit, that was meant to be magical realism, not just realism. I don't know where the key word went. /o\

[troisoiseaux]

so many of them involve people directly rebelling against oppression, not just trying to live their lives.

This was the biggest difference between The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments, for me. The Testaments felt a lot more like a Typical(TM) dystopian novel; it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a Thing.

[osprey_archer]

Good to know! Probably it's better to go in forewarned.

[cleodoxa]

I've suspected before that authors with a religious lens, and also possibly simply authors from several generations ago, are more likely to deal with how you live when you don't have what you want in life. When you've had a terrible disappointment and you're just not going to get a particular kind of fulfilment that really mattered to you, and neither are you going to find something else that makes you just as happy, how do you find a sense of purpose in life? It can be helpful to read about situations where it's admitted that the disappointment or lack is a big, permanent deal -- and you still have to find a way of relating to the world where you're both giving and receiving something from it.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think this is true. This isn't a major theme in The Dean's Watch - or, perhaps I should say, I don't think it's the main theme? Because as I think about it, there are at least two characters for whom this is an important theme in their stories, so clearly it is a major theme - but it's not the big connecting theme of the book that ties all these disparate characters together.

One of the characters basically accepts it and gets on with life, while another essentially becomes sour toward everything, and I think perhaps that dichotomy is part of the reason why this isn't a big theme in modern fiction. Stoic resignation is out of fashion, and bitter sour spitefulness isn't a very attractive character trait (because this character is only one part of a big ensemble, I found her chapters interesting, but a whole book from her perspective could be VERY tiring)... and also the whole situation is just sad. And I think the religious perspective often makes it easier for writers to write about sadness, because they can hold out hope that there's a meaning beyond this life, in a way that a secular writer can't.

[ancientreader]

I read the Narnia books as a child, and loved them; I remembered that love, though not the narrative, as I grew up, and when as an adult I learned that the story was a Christian allegory I felt terribly betrayed. I can see your point about religious writers grappling with questions of good and evil etc., but my problem with them is that their response seems to boil down to "God," which is useless for someone who doesn't believe.

I have read a couple of secular philosophers ( e.g. Todd May)and memoirists (e.g. Diana Athill) and found them more or less helpful in considering questions of how to live and how to die. There was a true-crime writer, Jack Olsen, who in a couple of his books got very close to the bone (sorry, I can't think of a better way to put it) w/r/t what evil is and whether it exists in the first place. But now I want to think of nonreligious fiction that does this work in the way you're thinking of and ... nope.