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heliopausa) wrote2016-05-18 10:39 pm
heliopausa) wrote2016-05-18 10:39 pm
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Lots of reading
I've been travelling, and had lots of rather disrupted time to read, on planes and trains and (as usual) when staying in other people's houses and idling haphazardly through their bookshelves. (Why not W&P? Because it was too weighty to lug along as carry-on baggage.) So here are some reviews...
First up, Hild by Nicola Griffiths, which is a fictional life of Hilda of Whitby. This is one of those books I bought with high hopes in Sydney, after reading (where? the recommendations seem to have all vanished like the snows) breathlessly ardent praise for it on the internet. It was a total turkey. Overblown, overwritten, stuffed to the brim with extraneous matter to show that the writer had "researched". (This was nothing startling - things like how to weave, and what sort of medicine was used for eye diseases in seventh-century Britain.) The language use was clunky - the author works really hard to give a sense of the time and place by using words from the time, even where the self-same words are still available in modern English - so that "even", meaning "evening" is spelt "aefan", and "kirtle" is spelt "cyrtell" (quoted from memory; I no longer have the book by me).
But weirdly, having done that she will every now and then for no apparent reason throw in language, as spoken by her characters, which postdates her period by centuries, - "cataclysmic" struck me at one point, but there were whole phrases which clang as bizarrely modern. At one point she even has the cheerful, oafish freemen break into a well-known soldiers' song from WW1. ("Do your ears hang low?" - "It isn't really about ears", says one little girl to another, knowingly. The book's overloaded with knowingness, as with much else.)
And there's other things I found very clunky, but I won't bang on about it. I know other people have liked it - and someone or other was quoted on the cover as saying that it's "not just the best historical novel I have read, but the best novel, period" - and the friend I passed it on to has reported that she's quite enjoying it, without thinking it's as terrific as all that. So it has appeal, though not for me, and I'll pretty much leave it at that.
One thing, though: I think I mentioned a while back that I approach RealPersonHistoricalFiction with caution - and this book is a prime example of why. The author sells out her much-praised research (and sells the unwary or trusting reader short, IMO) by inventing an entire major plot-pivotal social institution - institution in the sense that marriage or the guild system are institutions - without noting in her author's note that it's complete fantasy - to be fair, she does say coyly that "this [book] is fiction", but I think that it's... ummm... dodging the issue.
Then I picked up something claiming to be a funny novel, witty, enchanting. (I was feeling I needed funny.) This was Cat Out of Hell, by Lynn Truss, and I suppose it was called funny because one of the main characters is a talking cat.
Yes, okay, a talking cat, yes, and a suave, sophisticated blatantly Tobermory-style cat, but involved in horrors and mystery and dealings with the Devil, which I can see had the potential for some dark comedy, but the jokes just weren't good enough. And for me, the murders took it right out of comedy, anyway, dark or not - especially one long, cruel death by starvation and suffocation - not on-screen, thank goodness - of a woman trapped in a cellar, while her oblivious and loving brother searches for her above ground, hearing her scratchings to get out, but not knowing it was her. Awful. There was one joke, somewhere towards the end of the book, which I recognised as mildly funny, and the writing was competent, but that's all. Saki did it better.
Then, to get the taste of that out of my brain, I bought the latest compilation by Helen Garner - Everywhere I look - essays, rambles, a review or two. Nothing wrong with it; nothing much memorable in it. But at least she is alive to what truth is, what tragedy is - it was the bland putting aside of these concepts, by reviewers as much as writers, which stunned and depressed me in the first two books.
And last of all Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh, which I'd never read; this one was also pressed on me as being funny. I didn't exactly find it that, but it was very worth reading, in umpteen ways - for starters, it's the best writing of the four, easily. :)
It's fascinating as an artefact both of the times - the brink of WW2 - and of the author, with his own racism and glinting-eyed cynicism well to the fore. It's a truly galloping satire - starting rather lumpishly, perhaps, but getting wonderfully zestful as it runs - of European rivalries, and colonialism, and of course of the whole journalistic enterprise - oh, very biting indeed. Or, when not biting, blunt:
"News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it." Pow!
So. That's four books I've read in the past while (or mostly read, I gave up on Hild at about page 250). (I saw some movies, too, but in unideal circs - on the planes.)
With some relief, it'll be back to the Count for the next while - who for all his faults is as far beyond EWaugh as EWaugh is beyond LTruss. :)
First up, Hild by Nicola Griffiths, which is a fictional life of Hilda of Whitby. This is one of those books I bought with high hopes in Sydney, after reading (where? the recommendations seem to have all vanished like the snows) breathlessly ardent praise for it on the internet. It was a total turkey. Overblown, overwritten, stuffed to the brim with extraneous matter to show that the writer had "researched". (This was nothing startling - things like how to weave, and what sort of medicine was used for eye diseases in seventh-century Britain.) The language use was clunky - the author works really hard to give a sense of the time and place by using words from the time, even where the self-same words are still available in modern English - so that "even", meaning "evening" is spelt "aefan", and "kirtle" is spelt "cyrtell" (quoted from memory; I no longer have the book by me).
But weirdly, having done that she will every now and then for no apparent reason throw in language, as spoken by her characters, which postdates her period by centuries, - "cataclysmic" struck me at one point, but there were whole phrases which clang as bizarrely modern. At one point she even has the cheerful, oafish freemen break into a well-known soldiers' song from WW1. ("Do your ears hang low?" - "It isn't really about ears", says one little girl to another, knowingly. The book's overloaded with knowingness, as with much else.)
And there's other things I found very clunky, but I won't bang on about it. I know other people have liked it - and someone or other was quoted on the cover as saying that it's "not just the best historical novel I have read, but the best novel, period" - and the friend I passed it on to has reported that she's quite enjoying it, without thinking it's as terrific as all that. So it has appeal, though not for me, and I'll pretty much leave it at that.
One thing, though: I think I mentioned a while back that I approach RealPersonHistoricalFiction with caution - and this book is a prime example of why. The author sells out her much-praised research (and sells the unwary or trusting reader short, IMO) by inventing an entire major plot-pivotal social institution - institution in the sense that marriage or the guild system are institutions - without noting in her author's note that it's complete fantasy - to be fair, she does say coyly that "this [book] is fiction", but I think that it's... ummm... dodging the issue.
Then I picked up something claiming to be a funny novel, witty, enchanting. (I was feeling I needed funny.) This was Cat Out of Hell, by Lynn Truss, and I suppose it was called funny because one of the main characters is a talking cat.
Yes, okay, a talking cat, yes, and a suave, sophisticated blatantly Tobermory-style cat, but involved in horrors and mystery and dealings with the Devil, which I can see had the potential for some dark comedy, but the jokes just weren't good enough. And for me, the murders took it right out of comedy, anyway, dark or not - especially one long, cruel death by starvation and suffocation - not on-screen, thank goodness - of a woman trapped in a cellar, while her oblivious and loving brother searches for her above ground, hearing her scratchings to get out, but not knowing it was her. Awful. There was one joke, somewhere towards the end of the book, which I recognised as mildly funny, and the writing was competent, but that's all. Saki did it better.
Then, to get the taste of that out of my brain, I bought the latest compilation by Helen Garner - Everywhere I look - essays, rambles, a review or two. Nothing wrong with it; nothing much memorable in it. But at least she is alive to what truth is, what tragedy is - it was the bland putting aside of these concepts, by reviewers as much as writers, which stunned and depressed me in the first two books.
And last of all Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh, which I'd never read; this one was also pressed on me as being funny. I didn't exactly find it that, but it was very worth reading, in umpteen ways - for starters, it's the best writing of the four, easily. :)
It's fascinating as an artefact both of the times - the brink of WW2 - and of the author, with his own racism and glinting-eyed cynicism well to the fore. It's a truly galloping satire - starting rather lumpishly, perhaps, but getting wonderfully zestful as it runs - of European rivalries, and colonialism, and of course of the whole journalistic enterprise - oh, very biting indeed. Or, when not biting, blunt:
"News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it." Pow!
So. That's four books I've read in the past while (or mostly read, I gave up on Hild at about page 250). (I saw some movies, too, but in unideal circs - on the planes.)
With some relief, it'll be back to the Count for the next while - who for all his faults is as far beyond EWaugh as EWaugh is beyond LTruss. :)
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-J
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-J
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(I was driven by the outrage of having wasted about 10% of my year's book-buying budget on it.)