A Certain Slant of Light

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Agnes Hewes’ The Codfish Musket, third and last in her trio of boring 1930s Newbery Honor winners. I can only imagine that the committee felt that the “Rah rah MANIFEST DESTINY” message was good for the Youth, because my God these books are dull. How can books be so dull when there are so many deadly conspiracies?

But maybe it’s because Hewes is actually not great at deadly conspiracies. The best part of this book by far is the non-deadly middle, when our hero Dan Boit goes to Washington and accidentally becomes Thomas Jefferson’s secretary after he finds Jefferson’s lost notebook full of observations about when the first peas come up and the frogs start peeping.

In modern-day Newbery Honor winners, I finished Chanel Miller’s Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All, a short and charming tale in which Magnolia and her new friend Iris try to return orphaned socks from Magnolia’s parents’ laundry to their owners. In the process, they explore New York City and learn more about the denizens of their neighborhood.

I also read Susan Fletcher’s Journey of the Pale Bear, about a Norwegian boy accompanying a captured polar bear to England as a present for the king. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Fletcher wrote a related picture book, but that focuses more on the bear’s experiences, while this is more about the boy and the boy-meets-bear of it all. Who among us has not wished for a bear friend!

What I’m Reading Now

In Our Mutual Friend, Lizzie Hexam’s father has DIED. This may be a lucky escape for him, as he was about to be arrested on suspicion of murder (at the word of his wicked lying former business partner), but I’m very concerned what will become of poor Lizzie.

My suspicion that Mr. Rokesmith is in fact the dead John Harmon has only grown stronger as he has insinuated himself in the Boffin household as an unpaid secretary. What is his ultimate goal here? A more suspicious soul than Mr. Boffin might wonder who on earth would offer himself up as a secretary without pay, and consider the possibility of embezzlement, but blessed Mr. Boffin is not concerned a bit.

What I Plan to Read Next

Onward in the Newbery books! I am ten books from the end of the historical Newberies, and I intend to finish the project while Interlibrary Loan is still alive.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Susan Fletcher’s Falcon in the Glass, which is fun, but not one of her best books.

Also two Adam Gopnik books. I am probably not the ideal reader for The Table Comes First. There is only so much I can read about the philosophical underpinnings of cooking and avant garde innovation in cuisine before my eyes start to glaze over. But I think it’s also partly that Gopnik’s writing style has become more aphoristic and more obsessed with mortality since he wrote Paris to the Moon, neither of which strike me as positive developments. He can turn anything into a meditation on mortality.

But I did like Gopnik’s children’s book, The King in the Window. I was so unimpressed by The Steps across the Water that I almost didn’t read this one, but I’m glad I did, because it’s much more solid. (Still not entirely solid. Gopnik clearly subscribes to the Alice in Wonderland school of fantasy worldbuilding, which I think only really worked in Alice and The Phantom Tollbooth.)

Oliver has become the king of the window wraiths, who are locked in an age-old struggle with their mortal enemies the...well, that would be telling: one of the pleasures of the book is learning with Oliver about the window wraiths and their world. But I mention the struggle with evil, because it leads to this great exchange between Oliver and Mrs. Pearson, the elderly lady who becomes one of his trusted lieutenants (and incidentally one of my favorite characters):

“I was thinking that since they picked me, then I must have, like, this sort of instinct inside me that would let me, uh, lead and all and that I shouldn’t really think too much. You know, trust my instincts. Get beyond my conscious mind, get in touch with the universe, go beyond, like, logic, and use the force…” Oliver trailed off weakly.

Mrs. Pearson’s eyes were like blue ice. Oliver could tell she was struggling to contain her emotions. “You...find...yourself in a confrontation with absolute evil, and you...are...planning...not...to...think?”

You have no idea how many children’s book heroes I have wanted to say this to!

What I’m Reading Now

Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset. This book gives me the same feeling as Blood and Sand: if Sutcliff’s publishers would have let her get away with it, Artos and his bff Bedwyr would clearly have been boinking their way up and down the coast of Britain in between Saxon-slaying sessions.

What I Plan to Read Next

Ysabeau S. Wilce’s Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominous Butlers (One Blue), A House with Eleven Thousand Rooms, and a Red Dog. How can I go wrong with a book that has a subtitle as long as my arm?

You guys! You guys! Susan Fletcher has written a new Dragon's Milk sequel!

...it appears to be set in the modern world?

I'll let you know how that turns out.

I enjoyed the Dragon's Milk books as a kid, but by far my favorite Susan Fletcher book is Shadow Spinner - her retelling of the Scheherazade story. It's beautifully written, woven through with stories within stories (and further layers of stories). The pace is ferocious, the sense of place rich (ancient Persia! All my interest in Iran, I owe to this book), and the characters pop off the page.

I love the heroines especially. Marjan, our narrator, a dreaming, angry storyteller who hero-worships Scheherazade. Scheherazade, dazzlingly clever and kind. Dunyazad, Scheherazade's impulsive tomboy little sister. Zaynab, the crazy pigeon woman.

Yes. The crazy pigeon lady is one of the heroines. And she, too, is a storyteller; in Shadow Spinner, everyone tells stories, and a large part of the book is a meditation on the meaning of story-telling and the relation of stories and truth. Each chapter starts with a little section called "Lessons for Life and Storytelling"; a lesson for one is a lesson for the other.

As this might suggest, there's a definite didactic element to the Shadow Spinner. But it's so beautifully done that it enriches the story. It's one of very, very few books I've read that posed a moral question so effectively that, even now - ten years after I first read it! - I catch myself chewing it over.

Has anyone else read it?