osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-05 06:20 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-10-05 06:20 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
“Seems weird that we have this one random heterosexual in this book,” I said, eyeing Billy Prior doubtfully as I read Pat Barker’s Regeneration. Well, now I’ve read the sequel, The Eye in the Door, and it turns out Billy Prior is also as queer a nine-bob note, so balance has been restored to the universe.
Overall I feel that Billy Prior is not as compelling as Rivers or Sassoon or Wilfred Owen (who do have the incomparable advantage of being real people), and this book is therefore not quite as strong as the first - but maybe that’s an unfair thing to ask, anyway. My favorite character is Rivers: his cool, detached, analytical voice, even when he’s looking at his own emotions, not so much experiencing them as peering at them under a magnifying glass.
I loved the atmosphere of Elizabeth Brooks’ The Orphan of Salt Winds, which is set at the delicious gothic decaying house of Salt Winds, beside a treacherous marsh alongside the sea. But both of the dual timelines deflated at the end, which was a disappointment. In the World War II timeline, Mr. Deering hangs over the book like a menace, sexually harassing both Virginia’s adoptive mother Lorna and young Virginia herself. However, after he shoots their dog (!) and drives the downed German pilot they have been sheltering into the marsh to die (!!!), Lorna tells Mr. Deering to go and he just… goes! And apparently never comes back! Absolutely at odds with his prior relentless characterization.
In the modern-day timeline, Virginia has just found a curlew’s skull on her doorstep, signaling that it’s time for her to walk into the marsh to die. (This superstition is not well set up in the World War II section of the book.) However, before she can, she finds a young girl on the sea wall outside Salt Winds… who turns out to be Sophie Deering, Mr. Deering’s great-granddaughter!
“VENGEANCE,” thinks Virginia, and spends the rest of the book planning to drown Sophie in the marsh… only for Sophie’s parents to show up just in time to save her!
It’s not that I exactly wanted Virginia to drown Sophie in the marsh, but the ending would have been stronger if she at least gave it a good college try. Maybe Virginia tries to drown her and Sophie ends up talking Virginia out of drowning either of them and they walk back to Salt Winds together. Or maybe Virginia drowns them both! Either way, I wanted Virginia herself to make a choice about it. It’s so unsatisfying to have the narrative wrench it from her hands.
What I’m Reading Now
D. K. Broster clearly just decided to throw ALL her favorite hurt/comfort tropes in The Wounded Name and I am HERE for it. Since I last posted, Laurent has been taken captive, only to discover that Aymar has also been taken captive, and Aymar is TERRIBLY WOUNDED! SoLaurent volunteers to share Aymar’s cell, because only constant nursing can save Aymar from death, and no one else will take it on because Aymar stands accused of betraying his own men!!!
Yes, you heard that right. The wounds to Aymar’s body are as nothing to the wounds in his HEART. Of course Laurent is convinced to the bottom of his soul that Aymar couldn’t possibly be guilty… but Doubts are beginning to creep in.
In Dracula, the men have FINALLY realized that leaving Mina out of the loop is a TERRIBLE idea, but TOO LATE, Dracula has already begun to feed on Mina! It’s fine, though, because that means that now Mina has a psychic connection to Dracula, which will surely help them track him down and stake him?
What I Plan to Read Next
At the beginning of November I’m going on a trip to Massachusetts, and I’m contemplating what to bring along for a little You Are Here reading! A reread of The Witch of Blackbird Pond perhaps? Maybe I should take another crack at Walden?
The trip encompasses a visit to Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, which is now a museum; I plan to at long last buy myself a copy. I KNOW, it’s shocking I don’t have one. Maybe I should also read a biography of LMA, or a critical analysis of her work, or something like that? Let me know if you have any recs.
“Seems weird that we have this one random heterosexual in this book,” I said, eyeing Billy Prior doubtfully as I read Pat Barker’s Regeneration. Well, now I’ve read the sequel, The Eye in the Door, and it turns out Billy Prior is also as queer a nine-bob note, so balance has been restored to the universe.
Overall I feel that Billy Prior is not as compelling as Rivers or Sassoon or Wilfred Owen (who do have the incomparable advantage of being real people), and this book is therefore not quite as strong as the first - but maybe that’s an unfair thing to ask, anyway. My favorite character is Rivers: his cool, detached, analytical voice, even when he’s looking at his own emotions, not so much experiencing them as peering at them under a magnifying glass.
I loved the atmosphere of Elizabeth Brooks’ The Orphan of Salt Winds, which is set at the delicious gothic decaying house of Salt Winds, beside a treacherous marsh alongside the sea. But both of the dual timelines deflated at the end, which was a disappointment. In the World War II timeline, Mr. Deering hangs over the book like a menace, sexually harassing both Virginia’s adoptive mother Lorna and young Virginia herself. However, after he shoots their dog (!) and drives the downed German pilot they have been sheltering into the marsh to die (!!!), Lorna tells Mr. Deering to go and he just… goes! And apparently never comes back! Absolutely at odds with his prior relentless characterization.
In the modern-day timeline, Virginia has just found a curlew’s skull on her doorstep, signaling that it’s time for her to walk into the marsh to die. (This superstition is not well set up in the World War II section of the book.) However, before she can, she finds a young girl on the sea wall outside Salt Winds… who turns out to be Sophie Deering, Mr. Deering’s great-granddaughter!
“VENGEANCE,” thinks Virginia, and spends the rest of the book planning to drown Sophie in the marsh… only for Sophie’s parents to show up just in time to save her!
It’s not that I exactly wanted Virginia to drown Sophie in the marsh, but the ending would have been stronger if she at least gave it a good college try. Maybe Virginia tries to drown her and Sophie ends up talking Virginia out of drowning either of them and they walk back to Salt Winds together. Or maybe Virginia drowns them both! Either way, I wanted Virginia herself to make a choice about it. It’s so unsatisfying to have the narrative wrench it from her hands.
What I’m Reading Now
D. K. Broster clearly just decided to throw ALL her favorite hurt/comfort tropes in The Wounded Name and I am HERE for it. Since I last posted, Laurent has been taken captive, only to discover that Aymar has also been taken captive, and Aymar is TERRIBLY WOUNDED! SoLaurent volunteers to share Aymar’s cell, because only constant nursing can save Aymar from death, and no one else will take it on because Aymar stands accused of betraying his own men!!!
Yes, you heard that right. The wounds to Aymar’s body are as nothing to the wounds in his HEART. Of course Laurent is convinced to the bottom of his soul that Aymar couldn’t possibly be guilty… but Doubts are beginning to creep in.
In Dracula, the men have FINALLY realized that leaving Mina out of the loop is a TERRIBLE idea, but TOO LATE, Dracula has already begun to feed on Mina! It’s fine, though, because that means that now Mina has a psychic connection to Dracula, which will surely help them track him down and stake him?
What I Plan to Read Next
At the beginning of November I’m going on a trip to Massachusetts, and I’m contemplating what to bring along for a little You Are Here reading! A reread of The Witch of Blackbird Pond perhaps? Maybe I should take another crack at Walden?
The trip encompasses a visit to Orchard House, where Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, which is now a museum; I plan to at long last buy myself a copy. I KNOW, it’s shocking I don’t have one. Maybe I should also read a biography of LMA, or a critical analysis of her work, or something like that? Let me know if you have any recs.
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I thought that I'd only missed The Astonishing Stereoscope, but I looked it up and apparently there are three others that I haven't read, either! The Swing in the Summerhouse, The Mysterious Circus, and The Dragon Tree. The final two are more recent; I'm sure I could get my hands on them. Actually, if I hit up a bookstore in Concord I might be able to find them all...
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Broster just put everything and the kitchen sink in The Wounded Name! I have to admire her for it: it's exactly like one of those fanfics where the author just throws her heart at it and everything else has to be shoved sideways to make room for the hundred pages of Tender Nursing In Prison with ANGST.
I do absolutely adore Mina for going from OMG Dracula is IN MY HEAD to realising that she's in HIS head and this is a source of information. Also why aren't there more hypnosis scenes in stories nowadays? Babylon Berlin had lots of hypnosis too, it's great and there should be more of it.
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Perhaps it is time to bring hypnosis scenes back! I feel like hypnosis had a crest of popularity in the late 19th & early 20th centuries (also characters with clairvoyant powers in otherwise realistic novels? Like Emily in L. M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon), but then they fell out of fashion. Surely they've lain dormant long enough that it's time for them to have another moment in the sun.
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I'm trying to think if I know of any other slashy hurt/comfort books from the 1930s and 40s, but it's hard to know if they weren't being published or if I just haven't managed to find them yet. Rosemary Sutcliff has similar vibes, but she didn't start publishing till the 1950s, and also she wrote mostly children's books, which is a very different publishing universe.
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In other news have you heard about this modern-day Little Women mystery/thriller kdrama modern AU??? I saw an ad for it on TV last night while watching another kdrama and I don't know what's going on but I'm FASCINATED.
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I had NOT heard of the Little Women mystery/thriller! That is definitely a swerve from the original, but probably one that both LMA and Jo would have approved.
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I was just thinking about The Eye in the Door! It's not my favorite of the trilogy, but there is some stuff in it I like.
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I like all three books, but there are ways in which The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road are closer to one another than to Regeneration, which is kind of sui generis and amazing.