Me vs. Book Club

As part of our "folks with funny names series," I present you with the heroine of Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel, Flight Behavior: Dellarobia Turnbow.  That's about all the mockery I have for the book, but I have to say that almost every time her name was mentioned, I was startled again by how weird it is.  It's meant to make you see how it would be hard to take her seriously, and I can't argue with that.

My book club considered this a 2-to-3 star book.  They thought it was slow and heavy-handed in its Message about Global Warming.  I can't argue too much with their specific points, but my feelings about the book were very different; I really enjoyed it, as I almost always enjoy Kingsolver's books.

First, I love the way she writes about rural people.  They are frequently poor, uneducated, stubborn, and hard, and their worlds contain all of the ugliness that poverty and ignorance can result in.  But they are not unintelligent, not evil, not some foreign, less-than "others."  The characters--Cub, Hester, Dellarobia, Bear, even their neighbors and friends--are individuals with their own histories and motivations, and their virtues are not just the "noble savage" virtues that a lot of "positive" images of rural people display.  I feel like she acknowledges their humanity without sugarcoating the difficulty and even brutality that can be a factor of living in rural poverty. 

The story in this book is about a flock of migrating monarch butterflies that end up in the wrong place for the winter.  Instead of a comfortable mountain in Mexico, they're in Tennessee, which is too cold for them.  They're discovered by Dellarobia, a somewhat dissatisfied farm wife, and become a scientific, local, and national phenomenon.  The monarchs' visit to the Turnbow forest stirs up a lot of issues--Dellarobia's crush on the scientist who comes to study them, her growing intellectual life and how that conflicts with the path she's been on, the small town vs. wider world thing, money troubles and logging rights, etc.  But over all of this, driven home and home and home again, is climate change.

The winter is wet and rainy and strange.  The butterflies are off course, when we don't even know how they ever kept their course.  The world is going to hell in an ecological handbasket, and the red states won't listen!  This is hammered home explicitly by angry rants, patient explanations, heated arguments.  Climate change is real and urgent and bad, and Kingsolver is letting you know that in no uncertain terms.  Repeatedly.  And this--justifiably, I think--detracted from the enjoyment most of my book club found here.

For me, though, I felt like climate change was the setting on which the personal story played out.  I didn't feel preached to, maybe because I've read enough other Kingsolver books (The Bean Trees, Pigs in Heaven, Animal Dreams, The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle--wow, that's kind of a lot) to feel comfortable with her sermon-like way of telling a story.  I feel like she writes like she's lecturing even when she's not, and I like that--her certainty, her firmness, her earnest conviction.  Honestly, the hardest part for me is that she does love nature and lavish descriptions thereof; sometimes she can get going on natural description and leave me in the dust.

I do think that part of my reaction here was around the setting and the people.  The town I grew up in was nothing like the town here, but I grew up on a farm that my parents ran with my grandparents, and my grandparents were rigid people in many ways.  Dellarobia's relationship with and perceptions of Hester and Bear were very familiar to me, and reading especially about Dellarobia and Hester was quite poignant for me.

I really liked the book.  It was long, and took a long time to read, but I enjoyed every minute.  I guess this one is for Kingsolver fans--and I guess I'm a big one.

So Much Reading

You know how sometimes a blogger will disappear for a while, and then they'll come back and say "sorry, guys, but there was SO much going on in my personal life that was rough/awesome/in defiance of the laws of physics, but now I'm back and I'm not going to talk about that" and then never tells you what was going on?

Well, you're lucky, because guys, there was SO much going on in my reading life that was rough and awesome and in defiance of the laws of good taste, but I am SO going to subject you to all of it.  The only problem I have is that there are so many thoughts they are having trouble coming together to form coherent posts. 

I've been deeply immersed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer this year. I watched the entire series through the course of several snow-day binges and a few weeks of a very tolerant husband letting me do my two-episodes-a-night thing.  It was almost unhealthy, how into it I got.  But guys, it's a really, really good show.  The acting is great, the balance between the personal and the adventurous is excellent, and of course the writing.  I mean, if you're not already a fan of Joss Whedon--well, I'm not sure why you're reading my blog, because I can't imagine our tastes overlap much.

When I ran out of episodes, I tried to watch Angel, but that kind of sucked.  I suspect it's mostly just that the first season sucks, but honestly, I don't like Angel very much.  Tortured doesn't do much for me.  I might try some more when I'm desperate, but for now, I've turned instead to the comics.

Now, here I'm going to go about things a bit backward.  Again, I am so intensely immersed in this experience that I can't really sort out my feelings, so I'm just going to start in the middle, somewhere I can explain what I'm thinking: Angel & Faith.

So the Buffy comics start with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, which I'm not ready to talk about yet, but will be shortly, don't you fret. (Seussed!)  Sufficient for now is that it's deeply flawed, but also full of all those characters I loved and missed so much.  And at the end of that series (mildest of spoilers) Angel is a mess and Faith is taking care of him.

Thus begins the spinoff, Angel & Faith, which is part of the Buffyverse Season 9.  It takes place at the same time as the Buffy Season 9 stories, but they don't share any characters or story elements (yet). (Caution: things get more spoily as we go on.  No direct giveaways, but if you know the characters you might end up figuring some things out.)

Okay, so all that is the backstory of my reading life that has kept me from writing this post for so long.  Anyway, here's the thing about this series.  Buffy Season 8 was kind of a mess, plotwise.  It read very much like a bunch of people passing the story around between them--major plot elements fell out of the sky (sometimes literally), Important Truths about the Nature of Magic that had been previously unknown to everyone were revealed and then messed with.  It was story whiplash.  Here, in the first book of Season 9, you're watching a gifted writer, Christos Gage, dig his way out.

He does an admirable job, really.  He takes some of the prepostrosities (a word that I just made up, thank you, and am quite proud of) that he was left with, runs with them in the only reasonable (albeit ridiculous) direction, and then has someone in-story say, "wait a minute, this is kind of nuts."  And then suddenly it's not badly written nuts, but just post-traumatic vampire nuts.  He pulls things back from the edge quite admirably, and for that I am grateful.

Now, Eliza Dushku is as convincing an actress as a three year old with a mouthful of cookies.  I have always kind of liked Faith for her badassness, but Mike can't stand her, even in the comics, because he reads her dialogue with her stiff delivery.  I personally think Faith is the only role for Dushku--like Keanu Reeves in Speed, she'd be fine if she just stayed typecast--so I'm cool with that.  And her voice, of course, is captured full of its slang and catchphrases.

The problem--the whole problem--is Angel, in the long and short term.  As I said, I've never cared for him; he jerked Buffy around (mostly motivated by wanting a spinoff, but still), he turned into Angelus at the drop of a hat, and he actively shunned happiness because he thought pain made him sharper.  Sounds like a 23 year old living in a garret and writing his memoirs to me--not someone I want to know.

Here again, you have him actively facing his own suffering and refusing to come to terms with it.  I'm not against atonement, or even the notion that he needs his powers to do the good that constitutes that atonement.  It's all the little ways that he could be less-than-miserable while doing these things that don't make sense.  It's his totally counter-Buddhist insistence on focusing on the past at the expense of the present or the future. 

And see, that's something (Buddhism again) causes EVERYONE'S suffering.  Mine too--I do that!  But I know that trying to undo the past--as opposed to make the best future possible--is pointless.  I know it intellectually, even as I struggle to live it day to day.  Lots of people do.  But in a fantasy universe, you can get away with trying to undo things that can't be undone for a lot longer, and it's hard to tell a denial-like character flaw from a virtuous determination to right a cosmic wrong.  (Sorry to be vague; I'm actively Not Spoiling.)

Anyway, this was a problem with his TV show (to the extent that I watched it), as well.  I'm never quite on board with his logic, and I'm never quite sure if the writer wants me to be.  Am I supposed to admire his determination, or wonder if maybe he's a little, you know, insane?  On TV, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to admire him.  In the comic, though, Faith frequently steps up to say what I'm thinking--"Maybe this isn't such a good idea."

Angel doesn't give up (of course), but neither is faith seduced into his world of Sisyphean struggle.  This makes the overarching tension one I'm really digging--the comic is looking askance at the same things I am!  My sensibilities, are being honored!  I'm all over this!

At least in volume one.  Halfway through volume two, we're pushing the other side of this balance a little; one's understanding of mythology allows one to recognize the bad guys and prevents one from siding with them, even when the good guys aren't making as much sense as you'd like them to.  It's like the X-Men problem--Magneto's politics seem way closer to justice and pragmatism than Xavier's.  When the Big Bad is making sense to me, I start to worry that the writer is going to a) try to make me change my mind, or b) duck out the back door with the logic and bring a convenient deus in from the machina to wrap everything up without addressing the real issues.

See how much I have to say here?  And this is just the SPINOFF series.  I haven't even begun to discuss Buffy, seasons 8 OR 9.  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.  Can you forgive me for taking so many weeks to post this? 

And, to begin a little overarching theme in these upcoming posts: what kind of name is Buffy, anyway?

Let's Rant

Wow, it's been a while.  Spring is a busy time, and I started a bunch of books and then put them aside to read for book club.  So it's been a while since I finished something.  Also, I have some Big Things I want to talk about--Buffy! Comics!--some vast, sweeping subjects that have been quite intimidating when I sit down to them.

So let's start out with a little rant.  Lianna, this one's for you.

I read this book about three years ago.  I'm going to give away the entire plot, so I'm not going to give the title of the book, but it's got enough searchable keywords that you'll have no problem finding it if you want to.  I can't believe, looking back, that I gave it two stars--it speaks to something that it made enough sense at the time that I gave it the benefit of the doubt. 

But last week, I suddenly thought of this book, and I started laughing.  For two days, every few hours I'd belt out a laugh at how ludicrous the whole damned thing was.  A girl is at a gas station and she sees a guy in a full-on rabbit costume kidnap a kid from the back of a car where she's waiting for her mom.  Now, it turns out that this girl just HAPPENS to have a traumatic childhood memory that is at least loosely associated with a man in a full-on rabbit costume, as well as a best friend from childhood who disappeared when she was young.  So this is a mind-blowing experience for her, and she gets involved in the investigation.

First off, let's think about how preposterous that is.  I mean, on one hand, if you're going to kidnap a kid, there's no better way to hide your appearance than a complete body costume.  On the other, in a small town, how hard can it be to track down the guy who owns or rents a rabbit costume?  And then, I'll point out that the fact that the witness is childhood-bunny-memory-girl is a complete coincidence, not some sort of gaslighting psychological torture on the poor girl.  So, this small town is pretty messed up, right?

Okay, so that's one level of ridiculous.  Now let me tell you the big reveal at the end.  Because when it's revealed as a twist, it's kind of shocking, but when you think about it as something that was lived through, you're like, WHAT?!?

So the wife of the convenience store owner had a best friend who disappeared when she was a small child.  Apparently, this messed her up royally because now, 40 years later, she felt the burning psychological need to get involved in a missing person investigation. So she had her nephew come kidnap a kid as a harmless prank.  All in good fun, right?  Why did he wear the rabbit suit?  Well, because kidnapping a kid in a rabbit suit is a good plan.

Now, he was supposed to just take her across town and hide her at a campsite for a day or so.  Then auntie could come out as the hero.  But the kid panics in the car and there's a kerfuffle that ends with her falling out of the car on the highway and DYING.  Because apparently kidnapping someone for kicks is not as frigging foolproof as you might think.  So the dude hides the body and then shows up to help with the search like nothing happened.

In the meantime, in a startling demonstration of Ebert's Law of Economy of Characters, he spends a couple hundred pages being a love interest for the girl who was traumatized by a guy in a rabbit suit years ago.  If only there was a layer of meaning about how she's being haunted by the rabbit suit.  If only it made any sense at all!

If only.

Anyway, I got a laugh out of that book, many years later.  But I somehow can't bear to put the title, and I really think it's because I'm afraid the author will Google herself and find this and be really hurt.  That's a pretty thin protection I'm leaving, isn't it?  Eh, well.  It's not a very good book.

Those Magic Words (and Some Musings)

IN TRANSIT.  As in the library system is sending the books I want in my direction.  Calloo-callay! 

I'm sorry about the dearth of posts.  I have about four half-written, but spring has impinged on my time, and I'm busy being a social butterfly.  But I'm planning to write a rant later tonight--watch for it!

Also, I just spotted this in an old post at Jenny's Books, which I think is very useful.  I don't know why I didn't recognize it--I've read that post twice--but somehow today it struck me.

"I like books in which principles and values are challenged by a changing reality in interesting ways and the holders of those values have to figure out what to do about it. This is a pretty broad scope of things....It’s also why I do not enjoy books about how stifling the status quo is and the search for meaning within a routine world. Boring! Boring! Boring! Have some new situation for your characters to confront and then we can talk."

I'm aggressively not reading her recent review of Days of Blood and Starlight, because I'm only halfway through Daughter of Smoke and Bone.  And oh, I so love it!

My Soapbox

Many thanks to Sarah for this link:

30 Things to Tell a Book Snob

I had a great conversation with someone in the writing world recently about how literary writers talk about the demise of the reader, but a) it doesn't exactly exist, and b) to the extent that it does, that's because so many literary writers consider their audience to be other writers.  The reader is a different person than a writer, and when the writer forgets that--when s/he writes for him/herself and his/her MFA classmates--then yes, their audience does get smaller.  Go figure.

But this article goes way beyond my usual lit fic bashing and genre defense.  It's not just about types of writing--it's full of good tidbits.  And I don't know who Martin Amis is, but I hate him already!

(Brenda, don't let the Beatles and Shakespeare references defeat the point.  They are actually very good entertainers!)
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Editing, because this is TOO good not to share, and thanks again to Sarah.  The Wikipedia entry on Martin Amis begins:

Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the excesses of late-capitalist Western society with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what the New York Times called "the new unpleasantness".^[4] Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father, Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a "terrible compulsive vividness in his style...that constant demonstrating of his command of English," and that the "Amis-ness of Amis will be recognisable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop.

Right!?  I'm going to start a magazine called The New Unpleasantness.

Structural Integrity

Another book from Netgalley--One Step Too Far, by Tina Seskis.  If this book was a house, you would be sitting in your well-appointed living room enjoying a glass of white wine and listening to Mozart when you feel something weird and shaky happen, and you realize that the whole house has shifted a foot to the left.  You call the contractor and he's like, seriously, dude, you have to move out--the foundation is a COMPLETE MESS.

Because this book has some lovely writing and some incredibly cool scenes about how you leave your life and everything you've ever known behind, but there are some serious structural flaws that get worse and worse over the course of the book till it falls completely apart in the epilogue.  At the beginning, I was intrigued.  Emily Coleman is on a train, speeding away from her husband and her house and her life and everything she's ever known to start a new life, because of something horrible and unnamed.  The story proceeds in the presence as she finds herself in a new city with no plan, no friends, just a relatively small stash of money, while flashbacks in parallel tell about Emily's childhood, her marriage, her family, until the two stories converge at the end.

I suspected pretty early that I had guessed what the big reveal would be; I ended up being wrong.  That's good. But I think it wasn't actually as impressive as it needed to me--the tone was, I think, a bit of an issue here.  Or maybe tone isn't the right word, but intensity?  People's emotional reactions and the narrator's sense of intensity did not always match the objective circumstances as I perceived them.  In some places, there's clear "I just have a lot going on!" going on, and you can see it as being appropriately inappropriate, but in others, it just reads wrong.

I'm not sure if this is actually a Writing Error or more of my pet peeve, but if you aren't Virginia Woolf, don't change third person limited viewpoint characters in the middle of a paragraph.  If we know what Bill is thinking (he's so surprised he can't think of anything to say), don't tell me what Jane thinks of his reaction (she's surprised by his silence).  This is either a super-basic error or an attempt at super-advanced writing; if we can't tell, it didn't work out.

Also, if you're telling the current story in the first person present tense and then flashing back to the character's past in the third person, it's okay to interpose some chapters from the point of view of her family, sure.  You get a better picture of her life this way.  It is not okay to do very, very occasional flashbacks into the history of a secondary character.  This will imply that this character's past will tie together with your main character's past in some way, rather than just that you made up a really cool back story for the roommate and couldn't bear to cut it out of the book.

I feel so whiny, I'm going to stop.  The problem is that I liked the beginning so much, I'm kind of heartbroken that the end turned out to be not just a letdown but an actual mess.  (Also, what's up with Caroline?  How random is pretty much everything about her?)

God, I suck at ARCs.  I feel like I should apologize to Tina Seskis, who clearly had some great ideas and some great chunks of book but was trying to write something much more ambitious and ended up trimming it in a lot of awkward places.  Watching Emily turn herself into Cat--Emily, who is like me into Cat who is someone I'm kind of afraid of (and for)--is a really wonderful story.  It's the coming back to Emily that is messy.

What's Love Got to Do with It?

I think I capitalized that right; I really hate the headline capitalization rules, since I find they frequently look wrong when they're right and vice versa.

I am not a frequent reader of romances, but I'm not in any way opposed to them.  As with any section of the bookstore, there's a lot of chaff in with the wheat, and I don't have the kind of context or network I need to find the good stuff easily.  Interesting characters, a compelling story, clever dialog--I have some favorite romances.  So when I see an interesting recommendation or a good premise outlined in a Netgalley blurb, I'll jump on it.

The Spinster's Secret, by Emily Larkin, had the latter going for it.  Mattie is a spinster living in her uncle's dreary house.  To earn money and her freedom, she writes salacious novels under the pen name Cherie.  When her uncle commissions her late cousin's friend to find out who's been writing the dirty books and run them out of town, Mattie is torn between her career and her heart.

Sort of.  I mean, that's not a very good description I'm giving there--she's not very torn at all.  No one is here--there's really nothing keeping the hero and heroine apart.  Which is fine, I think--the big strength of this book is that it's a very nice, pleasant story of two people meeting and becoming friends.  I like them both very much, and they're pitted against the cartoonishly miserly and uptight uncle, which makes them positively heroic.

Isn't that cover awful, by the way?  Okay, so a big point of the story is that they're neither of them very attractive people.  She's six feet tall and muscular--normal-pretty, but mocked for her proportions.  They spend a lot of time talking about her deep bosom and wide hips--and also how shapeless and ugly her clothes are (not that the descriptions are any more pleasing when she's out of them).  He's a huge man who has been terribly scarred in battle--scarred face, limp, lost part of a hand and an ear.  Does the cover above reflect this?  Aside from his being pale in an unhealthy way, I don't think those people fit the description.

So I really liked the first half of this book, in a meandering, story of a relationship kind of way.  Then you get to the love scenes, and ugh.  It's just dry.  I mean, I don't get worked up by romance sex at the best of times, but at least I like to get the impression that the characters are.  These people are dutiful and plodding to the end.  They enjoy having sex with each other--and that description right there is about as exciting as it gets.  The sex scenes in the book-within-the-book are almost better, and they're cleaned up.

I would have given this book four stars at the halfway point, but it comes in at three in the end.  I don't require hot-and-bothered, but warm-and-energetic, at least, please.