A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

My mixed feelings about Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies continued right through to the end. On the one hand, yeah, it’s nice to have a book focusing on single women that is actually positive about increased levels of female singleness rather than having vapors about the fact that Women Aren’t Getting Married, The End Times Are Nigh.

On the other hand, I felt the book was sometimes boosterish at the expense of being truthful, like in the chapter where Traister celebrates college hook-up culture - even as she admits that her own research assistant (a college student herself, and therefore presumably closer to that culture) objected to her rosy portrayal and suggested that many young women participate in hook-up culture not because they want no-strings-attached sex that won’t distract them from their career goals (Traister’s interpretation) but because they feel that’s the only way to get guys to pay attention to them.

If you can’t convince your own research assistant, then maybe your interpretation needs a little more work, you know?

I also finished Mud City, the third book in the Breadwinner quartet, which focuses on Parvana’s friend Shauzia rather than Parvana. On the one hand, I quite liked getting a different viewpoint on things with Shauzia, who is more independent and impatient than Parvana; but on the other hand, I super want to know what happens next for Parvana, now that she’s been reunited with her family, so it’s a little frustrating being sidetracked! But fortunately the fourth book is about Parvana again, so I’ll get a chance to catch up with her soon.

And I finished Miss Timmins’ School for Girls, which was unsatisfying in the way that literary fiction with strong mystery elements often are. Is it a matter of honor among litfic authors not to offer satisfying solutions to their mysteries? Not that mystery writers always manage it, but at least when they fail you feel that they haven’t set out to frustrate you on purpose.

There’s also a totally unnecessary last-minute maiming. Why do I even try reading grown-up books for grown ups?

What I’m Reading Now

Adeline Dutton Whitney’s A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life, a novel for girls published just after the end of the Civil War (really just after: in 1866). This would have been so useful for my project about American girls’ literature between 1890 and 1915 - as background, you understand; how can you understand how girls’ literature has changed if you don’t know what came before?

Although honestly I think what we might learn from A. D. Whitney is that the difference between the two periods is that the heroines’ unladylike yet lovably boisterous best friends become heroines in their own right in later years, probably because of the belated influence of Jo March. Although Gypsy Breynton (a heroine of a popular girls’ series that preceded Little Women by three or four years) was also a bit of hoyden, so really maybe all I've learn is that my periodization is bunk.

I’ve also begun Paula McLain’s Love and Ruin, her second piece of Hemingway RPF (the first of course being The Paris Wife), which is just as well written as the first and seems like it might be less depressing, although of course it’s early days and Martha Gellhorn has only just arrived in Spain to write about the Spanish Civil War. So there’s plenty of time for things to get sad.

What I Plan to Read Next

My Name is Parvana, the final book in the Breadwinner quartet. I know the animated movie is unlikely to have any sequels, but it would be super cool if they did make a complete trilogy (I liked Mud City but as it focuses on Parvana’s friend Shauzia rather than Parvana, it could be left out for reasons of artistic unity) for all of Parvana’s life.

Oh! And E. Lockhart’s Genuine Fraud. You know, I have some issues with Lockhart’s writing (the way she writes female friendships bugs me), but I realized today that aside from this most recent offering, I have read all of her books.

Well, except for How to Be Bad, which Lockhart co-authored with Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle… neither of whom I’ve read. So maybe this book would be a good way to sample their work?

Deborah Ellis’s The Breadwinner has been on my radar for ages and seeing the movie finally gave me a push to actually read it. And I’m glad I did! Like the movie, it’s good - and it’s different enough from the movie to make it worthwhile to read it, as well.

In particular, the book doesn’t have the story-within-a-story that Parvana tells her family in the movie. I loved that aspect in the movie and I missed it - but at the same time, its absence gives Ellis time to develop a subplot featuring an old friend of Parvana’s mother’s, who moves in with the family after Parvana’s father is arrested and gets Parvana’s mother involved in writing a clandestine magazine about the plight of Afghan women.

This is also an excellent subplot. And it’s interesting to see how much switching out one subplot changes the story: the movie is more tightly focused on Parvana’s inner experience, while the book (even though it’s entirely in Parvana’s POV, just like the movie) gives a fuller picture of the political situation in Afghanistan and of attempts (however small) to fight against it.

Both book and movie end on somewhat indeterminate notes. In the book, this is clear sequel bait - it doesn’t end so much as cut off - whereas in the movie, it’s something of an act of mercy; the story is stopping at this open-ended but somewhat hopeful point, because that might well be the happiest moment at which to end it. Things may not get better from here.

The book version of The Breadwinner has three sequels. I think I am going to have to read them.