Bibliography
Jun. 30th, 2014 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyAegypt - John Crowley
G read this on the Kindle and it sounded like good fun. It's another example of a book which isn't quite in the sci-fi/fantasy genre... at least, until it gets to the end when you get astral travel and communicating with angels, but there we go. There's a wobbliness between whether what's being reported is 'real' or the perception of the characters alone, and that's part of the fun. The conceit is that the world might actually work like John Dee thought it did, a thing to be explored by a failed academic in 1970s-ish America. It's quite good fun and the representation of how a certain sort of academic used to get by is pretty sharp. I quite want to read the rest now, which will mean getting hold of them somehow...
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing - Eimear McBride
This is the winner of the Bailey's prize, and good heavens, it is a tough read. It's written in a very experimental prose style, free-floating and Joycean and stream of consciousness, which you start thinking in after a while (and that's bloody annoying). The narrator is a girl whose brother had a brain tumour which eventually creeps back up into him, and whose first sexual encounter is with her uncle (by marriage, not a parent's sister, not that that's much help). She's a completely broken individual who thinks she's so strong and competent... and ARGH. She basically ends up self-harming through her sexual behaviour to cope with her brother's health and her mother's over-religiosity and it's raw and horrid and violent and vicious, particularly towards the end. I needed a stiff drink after finishing it.
Death and the Maiden - Gladys Mitchell
Another Mrs. Bradley mystery, this time focused on a woman who calls Mrs. Bradley in to see if one of her relatives is quite sane after he insists on following up a supposed sighting of a water nymph. It's Very Silly - full of the psychological stuff and characterisation that makes Mitchell rather more chunky to read than Christie. There are some bits that are difficult. The plot gets complicated, of course, by the murder of two boys which may or may not be connected, combined with some other shenanigans of various flavours - it all comes out in the wash, although the villain gets away with it (but then, that's another reason Mrs. Bradley is quite interesting), except maybe not. Anyway. She's a good read, is Mitchell.
Darkwitch Rising - Sara Douglass
The third in the Troy Game saga, where even the Minotaur begins to become changed because of his time in the Game, and the Game itself takes on its own form with its own peculiarities, and Brutus continues to be Bloody Dim. I have to say that even though I'm technically reading this for completeness, I'm rather enjoying Douglass' style and the high fantasy content mixed with historical fantasy that's on show here. It's Very Silly, of course, but at the same time pleasingly written, and the characters are developing in interesting ways. That said, you can still clearly see where Douglass decided this was a quartet, not a trilogy, but that's the way of the beast as far as I can tell.
The Ides of April - Lindsey Davis
The new Falco, or, Albia, Falco's daughter, off solving crime in Domitian's Rome, a very different world to that of her father. Davis has resisted making Falco too much of a character, although he and Helena stroll on and off in quite a casual way. That's actually a bit of a shame - one of the strongest things about the Falco series was his relationship with his family, and Davis hampers her writing a bit by holding back from showing us that relationship from Albia's perspective. I'll be interested to see whether she lets herself be less cautious as the series goes on. As far as the plot of this one goes - it's built on a snippet of historical fact and thus is really quite meaty, but I'm afraid I guessed who-dunnit irritatingly early and spent most of the rest of the book swearing as other people didn't. Davis is normally a bit better than that, so again, I'm hoping that she'll write herself into the world as she goes. A reasonable start, and I'm looking forward to the second one.
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Another one on the Bailey's shortlist, and I loved it. It's a fascinating meditation on race in America, the US and Nigeria, particularly how the perspective of the returning migrant shapes their reaction to their home culture. It rang an awful lot of bells with me, not least because of the commentary on the American socio-cultural position on race, and the way in which non-American POC are position differently to American POC and the various ways in which this is and isn't recognised within cultural discourse of various flavours. The characters are believable and very sympathetic - this may, of course, be partly me responding to these representations of academic cultures (not that the US academic culture comes out smelling of roses by any means), but there's something about the exploration of ideas and the uncomfortableness and the voice of someone speaking about an experience I saw but had no ability to articulate when I was in the US that is... extremely powerful. This should have won, frankly. (I reserve the right to change my mind after I've read the rest, but they'll have to be jolly good.)
Homecomings - C.P. Snow
The next in the Strangers and Brothers series, this explores the death of Lewis Eliot's first wife and his acquisition of a second (via adultery and divorce, no less). It's a novel focusing on his emotional inner life and the damage that looking after Sheila, his first very depressed wife, did to him - a marked contrast to other novels in the series, particularly The Masters, where that part of his life is completely blocked out and the emotional turmoil is generated purely by academic politics. I think, as I continue to read through these books, the more I am struck by the incredible compartmentalisation on show, the way in which emotional life is shuffled into 'this part' and 'that part'. Recombining the various threads to bring together the complete human's emotional life is more or less impossible - but that is, certainly how I think I live my life, everything feeding into everything else. The focus on one specific area or other certainly brings out the depth of each aspect of Lewis' life, but it does raise some questions about his general emotional health if this is how he views his life (as opposed to Snow's choice to narrate in this particular stylistic way, which raises a whole other set of questions).
G read this on the Kindle and it sounded like good fun. It's another example of a book which isn't quite in the sci-fi/fantasy genre... at least, until it gets to the end when you get astral travel and communicating with angels, but there we go. There's a wobbliness between whether what's being reported is 'real' or the perception of the characters alone, and that's part of the fun. The conceit is that the world might actually work like John Dee thought it did, a thing to be explored by a failed academic in 1970s-ish America. It's quite good fun and the representation of how a certain sort of academic used to get by is pretty sharp. I quite want to read the rest now, which will mean getting hold of them somehow...
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing - Eimear McBride
This is the winner of the Bailey's prize, and good heavens, it is a tough read. It's written in a very experimental prose style, free-floating and Joycean and stream of consciousness, which you start thinking in after a while (and that's bloody annoying). The narrator is a girl whose brother had a brain tumour which eventually creeps back up into him, and whose first sexual encounter is with her uncle (by marriage, not a parent's sister, not that that's much help). She's a completely broken individual who thinks she's so strong and competent... and ARGH. She basically ends up self-harming through her sexual behaviour to cope with her brother's health and her mother's over-religiosity and it's raw and horrid and violent and vicious, particularly towards the end. I needed a stiff drink after finishing it.
Death and the Maiden - Gladys Mitchell
Another Mrs. Bradley mystery, this time focused on a woman who calls Mrs. Bradley in to see if one of her relatives is quite sane after he insists on following up a supposed sighting of a water nymph. It's Very Silly - full of the psychological stuff and characterisation that makes Mitchell rather more chunky to read than Christie. There are some bits that are difficult. The plot gets complicated, of course, by the murder of two boys which may or may not be connected, combined with some other shenanigans of various flavours - it all comes out in the wash, although the villain gets away with it (but then, that's another reason Mrs. Bradley is quite interesting), except maybe not. Anyway. She's a good read, is Mitchell.
Darkwitch Rising - Sara Douglass
The third in the Troy Game saga, where even the Minotaur begins to become changed because of his time in the Game, and the Game itself takes on its own form with its own peculiarities, and Brutus continues to be Bloody Dim. I have to say that even though I'm technically reading this for completeness, I'm rather enjoying Douglass' style and the high fantasy content mixed with historical fantasy that's on show here. It's Very Silly, of course, but at the same time pleasingly written, and the characters are developing in interesting ways. That said, you can still clearly see where Douglass decided this was a quartet, not a trilogy, but that's the way of the beast as far as I can tell.
The Ides of April - Lindsey Davis
The new Falco, or, Albia, Falco's daughter, off solving crime in Domitian's Rome, a very different world to that of her father. Davis has resisted making Falco too much of a character, although he and Helena stroll on and off in quite a casual way. That's actually a bit of a shame - one of the strongest things about the Falco series was his relationship with his family, and Davis hampers her writing a bit by holding back from showing us that relationship from Albia's perspective. I'll be interested to see whether she lets herself be less cautious as the series goes on. As far as the plot of this one goes - it's built on a snippet of historical fact and thus is really quite meaty, but I'm afraid I guessed who-dunnit irritatingly early and spent most of the rest of the book swearing as other people didn't. Davis is normally a bit better than that, so again, I'm hoping that she'll write herself into the world as she goes. A reasonable start, and I'm looking forward to the second one.
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Another one on the Bailey's shortlist, and I loved it. It's a fascinating meditation on race in America, the US and Nigeria, particularly how the perspective of the returning migrant shapes their reaction to their home culture. It rang an awful lot of bells with me, not least because of the commentary on the American socio-cultural position on race, and the way in which non-American POC are position differently to American POC and the various ways in which this is and isn't recognised within cultural discourse of various flavours. The characters are believable and very sympathetic - this may, of course, be partly me responding to these representations of academic cultures (not that the US academic culture comes out smelling of roses by any means), but there's something about the exploration of ideas and the uncomfortableness and the voice of someone speaking about an experience I saw but had no ability to articulate when I was in the US that is... extremely powerful. This should have won, frankly. (I reserve the right to change my mind after I've read the rest, but they'll have to be jolly good.)
Homecomings - C.P. Snow
The next in the Strangers and Brothers series, this explores the death of Lewis Eliot's first wife and his acquisition of a second (via adultery and divorce, no less). It's a novel focusing on his emotional inner life and the damage that looking after Sheila, his first very depressed wife, did to him - a marked contrast to other novels in the series, particularly The Masters, where that part of his life is completely blocked out and the emotional turmoil is generated purely by academic politics. I think, as I continue to read through these books, the more I am struck by the incredible compartmentalisation on show, the way in which emotional life is shuffled into 'this part' and 'that part'. Recombining the various threads to bring together the complete human's emotional life is more or less impossible - but that is, certainly how I think I live my life, everything feeding into everything else. The focus on one specific area or other certainly brings out the depth of each aspect of Lewis' life, but it does raise some questions about his general emotional health if this is how he views his life (as opposed to Snow's choice to narrate in this particular stylistic way, which raises a whole other set of questions).
