Book Review: Cat in the Mirror
Jun. 25th, 2023 08:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI expected to love Mary Stolz’s Cat in the Mirror, because I love Mary Stolz and magical time travel stories, but in fact I had mixed feelings about it. Partly this is because it’s not exactly a time travel novel, but a reincarnation novel, where Erin hits her head and slips back through time to share a body with her former incarnation Irun. Partly it’s because this timeslip doesn’t occur till halfway through the book, by which point I was invested in Erin’s modern-day problems, which never get resolved, unless “reincarnation means that in your next life you will be reunited with your parents, your nanny, and all the horrible children who torment you” is meant to be a resolution. Pretty dispiriting, though!
And also Erin returns to the modern world at the most awful moment! She’s just insulted the Pharaoh, which will maybe result in the death of her whole family - and then she’s whisked back off to the future, leaving them all to their fate! This doesn’t bother her at all, which is probably just as well as it would probably be impossible to find out what happened, but it bothered me.
On the plus side, Stolz is as always excellent at depicting character and human relationships, particularly family relationships. Erin adores her kindly, often-absent father, who showers her with affection but can’t face any frank discussion of Erin’s problems: her unpopularity at school, or her difficult relationship with her distant, elegant mother.
Erin’s mother is a society lady, who often proclaims that she has no time for women’s lib. “I want to get things by crying about them,” she says, so airily that people think she’s joking. But Erin is miserably aware that her mother means this literally - and, moreover, that her mother is deeply disappointed that Erin is incapable of performing the kind of femininity that she herself embodies.
(Mary Stolz clearly did have plenty of time for women’s lib: it’s a minor but persistent presence not only here, but in her other later books.)
And I did very much enjoy the depiction of ancient Egypt. The society feels real and vivid and vividly different from our own, and it’s fascinating to see how the familiar characters change in this changed context - and how, at the same time, they remain ineluctably themselves.
And also Erin returns to the modern world at the most awful moment! She’s just insulted the Pharaoh, which will maybe result in the death of her whole family - and then she’s whisked back off to the future, leaving them all to their fate! This doesn’t bother her at all, which is probably just as well as it would probably be impossible to find out what happened, but it bothered me.
On the plus side, Stolz is as always excellent at depicting character and human relationships, particularly family relationships. Erin adores her kindly, often-absent father, who showers her with affection but can’t face any frank discussion of Erin’s problems: her unpopularity at school, or her difficult relationship with her distant, elegant mother.
Erin’s mother is a society lady, who often proclaims that she has no time for women’s lib. “I want to get things by crying about them,” she says, so airily that people think she’s joking. But Erin is miserably aware that her mother means this literally - and, moreover, that her mother is deeply disappointed that Erin is incapable of performing the kind of femininity that she herself embodies.
(Mary Stolz clearly did have plenty of time for women’s lib: it’s a minor but persistent presence not only here, but in her other later books.)
And I did very much enjoy the depiction of ancient Egypt. The society feels real and vivid and vividly different from our own, and it’s fascinating to see how the familiar characters change in this changed context - and how, at the same time, they remain ineluctably themselves.
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Date: 2023-06-26 02:57 am (UTC)Or, rather, at the end of the book there's a final chapter in the modern-day timeline, so we know that Erin got back home, and there are a couple of little moments that gesture toward "Maybe she'll have a less strained relationship with her mother from now on" and "Now she will have a friend at school." But there's not enough space for these problems to really be explored.