Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 4th, 2020 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Years ago someone recommended Lucy Sussex’s The Scarlet Rider to me as a read-alike to A. S. Byatt’s Possession, a juxtaposition almost guaranteed to make The Scarlet Rider disappointing. Like Possession, it’s a book about a modern-day (when the book was written, nearly twenty-five years ago) person investigating a 19th century literary mystery; unlike Possession (rather startling, that Possession is the one entitled… possession), The Scarlet Rider involves the heroine being possessed by the author of the novel she is researching, which means that helpful dreams and other spirit leadings take place of a lot of the sweet, sweet archive action I was craving. We still get a little archival work! Just not as much as I hoped.
There’s also a plot twist, about two-thirds of the way through the book, where Mel’s aunt tells her as a deathbed confession that Mel’s mother (who died when Mel was a wee babe) was in fact one of the Stolen Generation, which means that Mel has Aboriginal Australian heritage. Given that the nature of plot twists is to happen late in a book and be surprising, maybe it’s not fair to grump that this plot twist should have happened sooner and been better foreshadowed... but it did feel kind of like the author suddenly realized that she’d written a two-thirds of a novel steeped in Australian history without more than vaguely acknowledging that the Aboriginal Australians existed, and went “Oh no! How do I fix this without actually revising anything?”
I also read Toni Morrison’s Sula, which may be the ur-book for the plotline “book about TRAGIC BREAKUP of female best friendship which is remedied ONLY AFTER DEATH (or occasionally right before death)”? I make this assertion utterly without evidence, it’s simply the earliest example that I’ve read and famous enough as a piece of literary fiction that I could totally see other authors cribbing from its structure like that.
Because it’s Morrison, she writes it beautifully, but man, I just don’t get why this seems to be the literary fiction ur-plot for books about female friendship. But I guess really that makes sense; I feel like there’s a certain kind of literary fiction that works by basically being genre fiction but taking out the bit that creates the catharsis in genre. A romance where the lovers break up, a mystery that is never solved, a fantasy novel where the heroes can’t overcome the evil that oppresses them, etc.
I say this without judgment - clearly some people find that very lack of catharsis cathartic in itself! Indeed, there are novels like this that I myself enjoy! - but it’s frustrating in the context of female best friends books because there really is no genre equivalent, unless The Babysitters Club is a genre (or more generally children’s friendship books). And I LOVE children’s friendship books! But sometimes! I would like to read about adult friendships doing something other than crashing and burning, too!
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, which is off to a rousingly whumpy start. Our hero, six-year-old Matt, a clone in a world where clones are viewed as lower than animals, is being housed like a hamster in a room with a deep floor of sawdust. He keeps bits of his food in hopes of attracting bugs to serve as entertainment/playmates, as he is otherwise totally isolated without even any toys.
And I go ever onward in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona. We’ve FINALLY reconnected with Alan Breck Stewart… right after Davie Balfour went out to see Catriona’s, whose father is involved in a plot to trap Alan Breck Stewart, which Davie KNOWS about, and yet he went to see her anyway, because he is eighteen years old and in love and oh my God, Stevenson, talk about idiot plotting. But at least we’ve finally gotten away from the lawyers??
What I Plan to Read Next
I should be getting Megan Whalen Turner’s Return of the Thief any day now. ANY DAY NOW.
Years ago someone recommended Lucy Sussex’s The Scarlet Rider to me as a read-alike to A. S. Byatt’s Possession, a juxtaposition almost guaranteed to make The Scarlet Rider disappointing. Like Possession, it’s a book about a modern-day (when the book was written, nearly twenty-five years ago) person investigating a 19th century literary mystery; unlike Possession (rather startling, that Possession is the one entitled… possession), The Scarlet Rider involves the heroine being possessed by the author of the novel she is researching, which means that helpful dreams and other spirit leadings take place of a lot of the sweet, sweet archive action I was craving. We still get a little archival work! Just not as much as I hoped.
There’s also a plot twist, about two-thirds of the way through the book, where Mel’s aunt tells her as a deathbed confession that Mel’s mother (who died when Mel was a wee babe) was in fact one of the Stolen Generation, which means that Mel has Aboriginal Australian heritage. Given that the nature of plot twists is to happen late in a book and be surprising, maybe it’s not fair to grump that this plot twist should have happened sooner and been better foreshadowed... but it did feel kind of like the author suddenly realized that she’d written a two-thirds of a novel steeped in Australian history without more than vaguely acknowledging that the Aboriginal Australians existed, and went “Oh no! How do I fix this without actually revising anything?”
I also read Toni Morrison’s Sula, which may be the ur-book for the plotline “book about TRAGIC BREAKUP of female best friendship which is remedied ONLY AFTER DEATH (or occasionally right before death)”? I make this assertion utterly without evidence, it’s simply the earliest example that I’ve read and famous enough as a piece of literary fiction that I could totally see other authors cribbing from its structure like that.
Because it’s Morrison, she writes it beautifully, but man, I just don’t get why this seems to be the literary fiction ur-plot for books about female friendship. But I guess really that makes sense; I feel like there’s a certain kind of literary fiction that works by basically being genre fiction but taking out the bit that creates the catharsis in genre. A romance where the lovers break up, a mystery that is never solved, a fantasy novel where the heroes can’t overcome the evil that oppresses them, etc.
I say this without judgment - clearly some people find that very lack of catharsis cathartic in itself! Indeed, there are novels like this that I myself enjoy! - but it’s frustrating in the context of female best friends books because there really is no genre equivalent, unless The Babysitters Club is a genre (or more generally children’s friendship books). And I LOVE children’s friendship books! But sometimes! I would like to read about adult friendships doing something other than crashing and burning, too!
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion, which is off to a rousingly whumpy start. Our hero, six-year-old Matt, a clone in a world where clones are viewed as lower than animals, is being housed like a hamster in a room with a deep floor of sawdust. He keeps bits of his food in hopes of attracting bugs to serve as entertainment/playmates, as he is otherwise totally isolated without even any toys.
And I go ever onward in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona. We’ve FINALLY reconnected with Alan Breck Stewart… right after Davie Balfour went out to see Catriona’s, whose father is involved in a plot to trap Alan Breck Stewart, which Davie KNOWS about, and yet he went to see her anyway, because he is eighteen years old and in love and oh my God, Stevenson, talk about idiot plotting. But at least we’ve finally gotten away from the lawyers??
What I Plan to Read Next
I should be getting Megan Whalen Turner’s Return of the Thief any day now. ANY DAY NOW.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 02:08 pm (UTC)That is very bewildering about the lack of non-crashing-and-burning adult friendships in fiction. I suspect it relates to a general cultural assumption that the most valid, interesting narrative struggles are character v. character, when in fact I really love character + character struggling against some other thing. I can think of SO MANy adult-friendship plots that wouldn't involve the friendship crashing. (Not to say there couldn't be tensions and stresses, but the relationship would remain solid).
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 02:21 pm (UTC)I think there are adult books about friendships that don't crash and burn - but generally in genre fiction. My favorite mystery series are the ones where the character has a strong network of friendships who help with the mystery solving, for instance. Or fantasy novels will often have a fellowship going on.
However, in both these cases, the friendships are sort of the B plot - the main plot is the mystery or the fantasy macguffin or whatever. I guess what I'm complaining about is a lack of adult books where the friendship *is* the main plot, because almost always when it is, the plot seems to center around the friendship crashing and burning.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-04 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 06:43 pm (UTC)You could even have one of those romance novel epilogues where there's a timeskip and we see the protagonists doing couple-y things months or years in the future, only here it would be like, getting together for their regular d&d game, making each others' favorite baked goods, bonding with each others' pets...
no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-05 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-07 10:14 am (UTC)Sometimes it's just nice to have friends!!!
Your AS Byatt mention reminds me of Margaret Drabble's The Radiant Way. I mean, Byatt and Drabble are Not Bosom Friends/Siblings, but I remember reading The Radiant Way (and its sequels) and thinking how nice it was to read about grown women, all with their own careers, who had been friends for a long time.
no subject
Date: 2020-11-07 03:56 pm (UTC)