EU Book Blogger Conference - Discussions

There will be no scheduled posts while I'm away, as I'm sure you'll all have plenty to read without me. I know my Bloglines account will be overflowing when I get back and my book stacks are teetering dangerously. When I return from Croatia we can have a good old catch up. Since I'm taking the digital camera instead of the film camera (something I've only done once before, in Kenya and the camera came back in an attrocious state, but full of pictures) I might even have some pretty pictures to post here when I get back.

Just before I go I want to leave a couple of notes here for you to check out. A while ago Nymeth and a couple of other bloggers started discussing the possibility of having an EU book blogger conference, held (probably) in the UK. Now there's a form for anyone interested in the idea to fill in to help the organisers (one of which is me)work out where and when to hold the conference. If you might be interested in attending please fill out the form :) I hope lots of people want to come.

Round Two of NerdsHeartYA is over. You can catch up on all the decisions from the Round Two and watch as the four decisions from Round Three roll in at the http://nerdsheartya.wordpress.com blog.

And that's it for now everyone. Hope you have especially lovely weeks and see you all soon.

A Study in Stupidity

I’m jetting off to Croatia on Monday for a week of drinking, island hopping and marvelling at beautiful ruins with two friends. Before I go I feel like there’s something vitally important and bookish related that we must discuss – the new three part ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series, currently running on the BBC. Yes, it is really important!

Specifically I’d like to ramble on angrily about this article, quoting the star of the show Bendict Cumberbatch and the creator Stephen Moffat saying that the new Sherlock Holmes is not meant to be gay. Thank fuck Freeman is staying out of this at the moment, or I might curl up in a corner and cry (oh those wonderful interviews he gives, where he seems to be puzzled and quite angry about the stupid questions he’s being asked – sigh of love).

The biggest problem with this article is that while it states that Moffat wanted to ‘play on the confusion of Holmes and Watson's relationship and never intended to confirm either character's sexuality’* Cumberbatch's quotes are, well, confirming Holmes and Watsons’ sexuality as straight. He characterises their relationship as a bromance – oh the ambiguity is fine, he says, but remember it’s a bromance not a love affair. Umm, well that is not ambiguous at all Mr Cumberbatch. I think his real point is that a bit of ambiguity for hilarious misunderstanding related titillation is fine with him, as long as everyone remembers the reality of the pairs straightness (awful, just awful, just please stop). Moffat saying ‘I don't think there is anything that suggests Sherlock is gay’ is again saying that Holmes character is straight. Good job not confirming their sexuality there Mr Moffat – just...good job! Slow hand clap to infinity.

I expect that we will see the tired ‘but the text does not state Holmes is gay, so he’s not’ analysis dragged out. This will be used to shut up anyone who thought that putting Holmes into a modern setting (hello gigantic textual revision the first) might mean his sexuality could also be revised. Or it will be aimed at those who thought that at the very least a modern adaptation, written by modern men, would provide the opportunity to hint much more strongly than ever before at the real possibility that the previous lack of classification of Holmes sexuality allows for the option that Holmes is gay and have the people who created the series agree that Holmes’ sexuality is at the very least genuinely ambiguous and not contradict themselves right away.

Here’s the problem with interrogating classics using only what is present in the text; not very long ago, writers could not write openly gay characters. Some wrote characters whose sexuality could be seen as ambiguous, but heavily suggested they were gay (Oscar Wilde), some wrote books with gay characters and left them to be published after they died (E M Forster), some wrote characters whose gayness must now be divined through tiny hints, or one key scene (a plethora of people who make me so happy and so sad at the same time). Some sadly, but inevitably made characters, which seem clearly gay to many modern readers, nonsexual beings to avoid the whole problem of navigating negative attitudes towards gay people. This means that mention of their sexuality is missing from the text, so in some cases a character’s lack of reference to physical attraction doesn’t necessarily mean they lack sexual interest altogether, it means their sexuality was necessarily repressed or discarded because of the intolerance of the society they were written into **. So when someone says ‘but the text doesn’t say...’ it’s not always a valid criticism of someone else’s theory about a text, especially when the text loudly neglects to mention a Victorian male’s interest in women. The gaps and silences in texts are why we have revisionist fiction attached to some of the most revered classics ever produced, because in some ways the text of the original is not enough.

This new Shelock Holmes adaptation, set in a modern society where being gay is supposed to be accepted was the opportunity for a much more open insinuation that Holmes is gay. Yes, married to his work, incapable of having a relationship, but still attracted to men as much as Holmes ever spares time to be attracted to anyone. Robert Downey Jnr did a fine job of getting audiences to think about this in the first half of Guy Ritchie’s recent film, but a strong interpretation of his character's gay sexuality was ultimately foiled by the inclusion of Irene Adler. And now the idea that Holmes, placed in a modern, tolerant world, might be free to come out of the silence and speculation his textual lack of sexuality created around him has been taken off the table by those involved in creating his new incarnation. I mean I will still be imagining this Holmes as gay with wanton abandon, but really the writer and the star have tried to shut down that line of examination.

Let me tell you how I came to this series. I too was wondering what I would watch now that Dr Who is over and the delightful Amy Pond and Rory (yes and the new Dr he is quite lovely, even if he can never be Tenant, or Eccles) are off our screens. The Sherlock Holmes trailers started showing up, but as it was set in present day I was convinced it would be a terrible heresy. But you probably know how it is with things that look like heresy, they exert a pull: ‘You Must Watch Me and See How Awful I Am’. I am always convinced I’m very traditional when it comes to Holmes adaptations, but actually when I start watching any half decent concept I am fine AS LONG AS HOLMES IS RIGHT – no compromise allowed on that.

Anyway to cut out more waffle I was charmed by the first episode, largely because it is essentially ‘If David Tenant as Dr Who pretended to be Sherlock Holmes for a bit’ (come on can’t you just see Tenant saying ‘Serial killers, I love serial killers’ in that provocatively contradictory, yet lovely, way of his – whatever Bendict Cumberbatch, you know you totally want to be the next Dr/ a stunningly evil Who villian). Also the pairing of Freeman and Cumberbatch has that special chemistry Holmes and Watson need to ensure that Watson follows Holmes through every ridiculous and exciting situation, with very little trepidation. In fact all the characters work pretty well, in that loveably cosy, yet slightly dangerous way, that makes Dr Who so much like eating sugar covered thunderclouds.

But part of my hot and heavy love for this new adaptation came from the fact that there is so much blatant ‘Aren’t you guys gay?’ assumption, discussion and questioning (something Stephen Moffat says was a preoccupation of his when creating this adaptation). There is not just suggestive, flirtatious eye contact between the leads and innuendo from supporting characters, people openly talk about thinking they’re a gay couple because this is 2010, we can haz straightforward conversation about people being gay now. Now yes, the way this is treated is still a bit problematic, because it’s no one’s right to ask Sherlock if he is gay, or to make assumptions about his sexuality because he fits a stereotypical Fry/Wilde shape of gayness in other people eyes. But still – ordinary people talking about him and Watson being a gay couple, acceptingly and without making it a crazy big issue = WIN. It made me giggle from happiness. And in the article Moffat says presenting the view that society is more accepting of the possibility of a gay couple was an aim of his. Hurray.

And now all that positive acceptance stuff is kind of tainted, because it seems Moffat is fine with people saying ‘Oh, are they a couple?’ as long as his audience very clearly hears his message that ‘They’re not y’know’. So it’s cool that society is so accepting now, that people are fine with thinking that a pair of blokes might be together and if they were together everyone would be fine with that, but any suggestion that Moffat’s versions of Watson and Holmes might actually be gay, or bisexual was not something that he wanted to explore. That’s too far a revision for him. And allowing ambiguity to stand, without kicking down the ambiguity as soon as anyone suggests the characters might be gay, because the audience is responding to the ambiguity and carrying it to a different conclusion from Moffat and Cumberbatch, is too much to ask apparently.

And probably there are a bunch of problems I’ve missed here, but probably you were getting my generally unhappy tone after the sarky bit about the handclapping. Please see bookshop’s wonderfully angry, link full paragraph, which culminates with the article I linked to (and was the inspiration for this post). How to combat this article of fail? I guess imagine Watson and Holmes together even harder.

Anyone else watching this? I'd love to hear your thoughts about the article, or the series in general (or general Holmesian love, or dislike - I'll go for anything that involves this detectoring pair).

* Never mind that I absolutely don’t believe Moffat isn’t intent on confirming at least Watson’s sexuality as straight in this series – what’s up with the failed flirting with Holmes brothers female secretary if his sexuality is meant to be ambiguous? Again, good job on the ambiguity front there. But I could go on and on about the choices in portraying Watson’s sexuality in the most recent adaptations.

* * We can take Holmes as a truly asexual person, whose consuming passion is his work – some people do. It’s an option suggested by the text. Right, I’ll move on now I’ve acknowledged that alternate theory ;) Seriously I don't have a problem with people believing in alternate Holmes theories to my own, but I do have a problem with seeing the way I view Holmes dismissed entirely. Why can't it exist in tandem with other people's ideas about him? It can and it should be allowed to.

Devil's Kiss - Sarwat Chadda

At the beginning of ‘Devil’s Kiss’ Billi SanGreal is about to face her final Ordeal; a test to prove that she is worthy of joining the Knights Templar. The dwindling group of London based knights are tasked with defending the world against the unholy demons that stalk humanity, so Billi needs to be tough. She’s been preparing for this test since she was very young. Still, she never expected to be asked to kill a child. There’s no way she’s ready for that.

I know, I KNOW! How is that for dramatic tension in the opening chapter? I am an emotionally, bloodthirsty fantasy reader so when I saw that bit of the blurb, my chain of thought went like this: extreme innocence vs the sword - potential for huge guilt, despite making the right choice – Buffy angst – damn it where is my credit card? There was never a thought for the poor child about to get the chop.

There are quite a few things in ‘Devil’s Kiss’ that could be considered plot twists, including revealing why Billi’s Ordeal involves killing a child. While I think the twists are fairly obvious when you’re reading the book, I do think not knowing how the story progresses makes it more fun to read, so I’ll try to avoid talking about plot specifics. Instead I’m going to focus on the wonderful, conflicted warrior heroine that is Bilquis SanGreal (to give her full Muslim name - Billi’s mum was from Pakistan and Billi is a mixed race heroine). I’m afraid this post may gush a little as warrior women are one of my favourite character groups.

Like a lot of teen protagonists engaged in an ongoing battle with evil, Billi SanGreal’s daily life is not exactly all fun and frolics. She has no friends and everyone thinks her father is abusing her, because she is always covered in bruises from Templar training. Billi’s father is the revered Master of the Knights Templar. He has dedicated his life to God’s service and sworn to protect humanity. He is also a total bastard. Rumour has it, the devil is afraid of Arthur SanGreal. Everyone at Billi’s school thinks he killed Billi’s mother, although Billi knows she was killed by ghulls (vampires). Arthur has never shown any tenderness towards Billi and although she trains to become a Templar in the hope that he will be proud of her he never gives her any positive recognition. It’s not surprising that Billi often hates her dad and longs for a normal life away from the Templars.

There was a point during ‘Devil’s Kiss’ where I despaired of Sarwat Chadda’s handling of Billi. It seemed like she was going to be one of those heroines who is highly trained and physically strong, who never gets a chance to fight. She kept getting into vulnerable situations because she listened to her emotions during battles, when victory would have come from just slashing and killing. There’s a reasonably major plot point that boils down to Billi accidentally helping an evil person because she wants a normal teenage romance. Cue me sighing and rolling my eyes, because I want my kickass heroines to kill people, not have their authors stop them from making with the stabby stabby! I also thought Chadda was showing that girls could not be effective defenders against evil because of their emotions make them susceptible to being tricked, or losing fights. All the people fighting without letting their emotions decrease their effectiveness were male and Billi was the only one openly wrestling with emotional problems. This seemed like a suspiciously gender biased approach to the fight against evil.

Then I had an epiphany –what initially seems like Billi’s weakness, is actually a rock solid form of emotional strength, as impressive as her physical abilities.

No, no hear me out. I know it sounds apologist and maybe you don’t trust my taste in heroines after my defence of Bella , but I think I might be on to something. Billi grows up with a father who is harsh and discourages emotion. Arthur tries to dissuade her from making any positive emotional connections and trust me the extent of his strategy for keeping Billi from forming these kind of attachments will blow your mind. When her best friend Kay reappears in her life, after avoiding contact with her for a year he feels something for her, but essentially rejects her and refuses to take their relationship any further because basically (let’s say it all together) THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL MUST BE UNCOMPLICATED BY PESKY EMOTIONS. She grows up isolated from her peers, surrounded by the idea that any attempt to connect will end in rejection and is taught throughout ‘Devil’s Kiss’ that feelings brings danger, yet she still feels. She’s still capable of feeling natural human compassion when she is asked to kill a child. She still attempts to find some way to care about her father, despite his lack of affection. She tries to form romantic connections, not because she’s desperate, or incomplete without a boyfriend, but because she wants to be a human being with feelings. She’s bloody well going to defy the orders of the Templar master to function like a normal person. Feeling is her own form of hard-headed rebellion and that makes me love her oh so much.

Now trying to remain a fully feeling person does place Billi in some tough situations, because evil takes advantage of emotional feeling. Her openness makes her vulnerable to being tricked, or disarmed in battle. There are quite a few scenes where Billi does something that hurts her fight against evil, which she could have avoided by being harder emotionally. These parts of the book can seem a bit silly to readers who are detached from the text and can see evil coming a mile off, but they correspond with the logic of the character Chadda has created.

While Billi is in touch with her feelings she’s still capable of making hard choices which require her to go against every emotional tie she’s made. Sarwat Chadda sets her some very hard, but necessary decisions in ‘Devil’s Kiss’ and it is heartbreaking to watch Billi realise what she has to sacrifice to combat evil. When Billi takes action it is always a choice that she wrestles with, even though readers can see what she should choose for the good of the world. This act of choosing between feeling and duty sustains narrative tension and shows that Chadda’s decision to keep Billi emotionally susceptible is important for creating conflict, which adds to the reader’s enjoyment. Having a heroine who is always looking for another option, who is always wondering if the hardest choice has to be the best choice just because it’s hard and who can cry after she makes the hard choices that do have to be made because it was fucking hard for her to choose the world over herself and those she loves, is much more interesting than having a robotic killer for a heroine. Obviously I also wanted Billi to have some uncomplicated fight scenes where her their training comes to the fore and she wins, because she’s a great fighter. Billi gets that, which made me happy.

I just had a few problems with the book. The dialogue is sometimes uninspired and predictable. Although the general plot furthering dialogue is fine, when a powerful sentence is required to knock readers in the head the book often provides a clichéd line that’s been overused by other writers. It’s often much more fun to hear the third person narrator describe Billi’s thoughts, than to hear people vocalise things. The simplicity of the dialogue makes the explanations of religious stories simple to understand and provides strong moments of genuinely emotional speech. However, sometimes the conventional lines of dialogue can be a bit of a distraction.

When Ari tweeted about the book (thank you Ari for getting me to pick this up) she mentioned some pacing problems and things do tend to happen a little abruptly. Although, this has a positive side, as it means readers don’t have to spend too many chapters suspending disbelief when the characters don’t catch on quite as quickly as readers do. I would say that the internal pacing of individual episodes feels fine, the problems are more with the pacing and connection of some of these episodes to make up the overall plot arc. The fight scenes progress at a good speed and feel sequentially coherent. Conversations don’t feel like they go on for too long, or are too short. It’s just that sometimes people appear, or secrets are revealed in a rather hasty way that makes it feel like Chadda is forcing the plot along unnaturally. For me this was a point that only bothered me when it was happening, but it’s something to be aware of.

I mentioned above that I think the plot reveals are sometimes quite obvious, but I’m not sure Chadda meant them to be super secret twists of astonishment. He powers through many of the supposedly secretive sections and foreshadows like crazy, then when he does keep back a really big surprise it is so stunningly different from anything else that has been revealed. In fact it’s almost like the other, more obvious reveals are intended to distract you from what you should be looking at. That would be cleeeeeeverrrrr if Chadda meant to do that. Authorial intent is such a slippery beast though.

Let me finish by saying that there’s so much more I could write about ‘Devil’s Kiss’. It makes a smashing addition to the warrior girl, paranormal sub-genre, with kick ass battles, creeptastic demons and major emotional conflict. The sequel ‘Dark Goddess’ is already in my book pile, because I have no spending restraint.

As a bonus I think I’ll be hosting a rare author interview with Sarwat Chadda here at Bookgazing, because I have ravenous questions to assail him with. He is very nice and politely ignored my typing mistake when I asked if he would like to talk here.

Other Reviews

Reading in Color
Tina's Book Reviews
Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog
Wondorous Reads
Carrie's YA Bookshelf
My Favoruite Books
Brown Paper
The Happy Nappy Bookseller
Alpha Reader

The Happy Island - Dawn Powell

The delightfully spiteful battles of Dawn Powell’s The Happy Island’ were just what I needed to throw me out of my funk. Sometimes there’s nothing nicer than seeing characters quarrel, cry and backbite so much that you feel positively saintly in comparison. Bless Dawn Powell for calmly skewering the 1930s set of New York’s professional party goers and curses that she isn’t here to do the same for the WAG set.

‘The Happy Island’ begins with a young playwright, Jefferson Abbot, arriving in New York, summoned from his small farm on Silver City to fix the third act of his play. Jefferson meets a rather oily musician called Van Deusen on the bus ride to New York. To say Jefferson is less than receptive to Van Deusen’s attempts at friendship is putting it in much politer terms than Jeff would ever use. Later in the book Van Deusen is established as a chancer who has returned to New York to sponge off friends and use his contacts to re-establish himself as a successful pianist, but in this first exchange Van Deusen reveals himself as a name dropper, ‘a dangerous man-about-town’ who is a little too eager to make an acquaintance. The kind of man who offers his help, but ends up being helped by someone else’s twenty pound note, or spare room:

‘ “You could do me a favour by mentioning that you saw me. Put him in the mood so I can look him up. You might say I’m planning to give a concert here. Mention my name – Van Deusen. Perhaps I can do you a favour sometime. Do you know anyone else?” '

From Jeff’s first brusque refusal to engage with such a charming, yet false character it seems that Dawn Powell is establishing him as the stalwart hero who champions authenticity, accidentally living in a city that values deception, for its prettiness. He is shown hiding from parties, trying to work on his play. He rejects the help of his host Dol, a sponsor of talent and a well know party giver, who thinks Jeff should learn the ropes of how to work New York’s fashionable, creative scene. In a letter he writes after fleeing Dol’s house he says ‘Looking around, I seem to think those ropes are for hanging the people that know them. They’d hang me...’, showing that Jeff is a man who rejects social conventions in favour of an unencumbered method of creation. When his play is savaged by the critics and public, Jeff sees the panning as proof that the people watching his play aren’t interested in authenticity and that this validates his play, as he hates the falseness of the people around him. As proud and deluded as that attitude might sound, I would guess that few readers will question it, as by that time the hilariously shallow lives of the New York set have been fully exposed.

For Dawn Powell doesn’t skimp on the satire, cheerfully revealing the ridiculously conventional lives of the New York ‘batchelor’ set who live to be unconventional. ‘The Happy Island’ is extremely episodic, at least I hope I’m using that word right – each chapter is like a sketch of an event and could be separated out as a brief short story because each chapter has a miniature conclusion. This allows Dawn Powell to include lots of different characters from the social circle that Jeff despises and by including so many layers of vacuous, sharp tongued people she gives the reader the overwhelming impression that Jeff is right and all the New York set are people who should be laughed at. And I did grin, even as I was JUDGING them, because there are lots of funny episodes in ‘The Happy Island’. Take this one where a woman called Jeanne has left her husband for her lover, who is mortified she’s come to stay, but can’t refuse her because she is his bosses wife and that would be terribly insulting. What does a wife do once she reaches her lovers flat, why call her husband of course:

‘ “Harvey, dear,” Jean choked into the phone. “I just wanted to tell you this is one of the biggest, finest things you’ve ever done. Steve wants to thank you, too. Here, Steve.”

Steve reluctantly faced the mouthpiece thrust at him.

“Thanks,” he said briefly.

“We’re terribly happy, Harvey,” said Jean. “We went to the Voodoo dancers after Prudence and to Hamburger Mary’s and now we’re here all alone. Steve wants to tell you how happy he is.”

“Awfully happy, old man,” Steve barked into the phone.

“You sound so tired and miserable, Harvey dear. Take couple of luminal, why don’t you if you can’t sleep…You did?...I hope they work. I’ll call back in a little while to see if they did.” '

The group’s calculated artifice is epitomised by Prudence Bly, the closest thing to a heroine in ‘The Happy Island’. Prudence is a nightclub singer of great popularity, who grew up in Silver City at the same time as Jeff. Prudence ran away to New York’s and joined the society of performers at a young age. Now well established in New York she has cast off her background and any chance at a real personality. She almost fears expressing anything real and operates in an artificial way, cutting her associates down with easy wit, disguised as flattery. While readers will find Prudence funny as she throws out her slyly harsh chatter, this new Prudence is not the girl Jeff wants. Even though at the beginning of the novel he wants to reconnect with her, in the first few pages of the book, he refuses to engage with her after finding her changed.

At first Jeff’s reaction to Prudence seems like Dawn Powell doling out the moral message of her satire. She clearly finds the way most of her New York characters lead their lives rather silly, although she often treats them with as much affection as scorn. Jeff’s negative reaction to Prudence and her New York life seems intended to point out the right path for a life to take, but it’s not as simple as that. Jeff can also be cruel, in fact he requires himself to be truthfully unkind to preserve his genuine personality, which he thinks is integral to making art. At one point he tells Prudence ‘If there was a choice between you and my work you’d be the one to go.’ which may be truthful, may be a necessary sentiment for an artist to preserve their core and work well, but it seems unnecessarily hard to tell someone that. He also never considers that his version of meaningful truth (outside of his playwriting) is just one version of truth that really only applies to him. He never thinks about the way that other people must manage the world to keep his dream of authenticity alive.

There is a poignant, monologue of thoughts near the end of the book that shows how Jeff’s demands for authenticity from Prudence inhibit her and force her into a domestic role that is no more truthful than her role in New York. Jeff and Prudence have eventually worked it all out (the back cover will tell you that so I’m not spoiling) and Prudence moves back to Silver City with him, but Prudence must make compromises to follow the love she feels. Among other things Prudence thinks:

‘I’ll tell about the kind of simplicity he loved: a big house with no maids to interfere with his flow of thought, so all the simplicity had to be worked out by the little woman or else there was complicity instead. How he stayed in his study all day while she swept and tried her damnedest to fasten up curtains and to cook and count things for the laundry and have a vegetable garden like the simple peasants did and mend stoves and socks and pick berries and fry chicken because all those things show how honest you are, whereas trying to fix up your cracked fingernails or brush your hair is a sure sign of something phony.’

This monologue reveals that Jeff and the men he associates with, create a gendered version of integrity. To prove herself honest, a woman must embrace the confines of their systems just as she previously embraced the conventions of the society they find phony.

These thoughts of Prudence’s may be full of terrified authenticity, but they’re still constructed as tales she will tell when she returns to New York and they are in part an angry, rather bored show. The complicated reality of Prudence’s feeling, the part she won’t reveal to anyone comes later when she talks about ‘the frantic desperate love I knew at nights’ and ‘waking up to a village with my grave in it and feeling that this real person he was after was already in that grave, had been there for twelve years and the other half was now being killed because New York was in its lungs.’ Prudence’s New York identity may be false, but her Silver City identity is also constructed and her original escape from Silver City was an admirable attempt to be herself, not as Jeff sees it an attempt to put on airs. And in these last moments with Prudence it’s suddenly clear just how much of a heroine she might be, or might have been if only the world wasn’t so keen on lies and boxes.

The introduction to ‘The Happy Island’ mentions that this is not one of Dawn Powell’s acclaimed novels and was the last to be reissued when Gore Viddal started his campaign to bring Powell’s books back into circulation. It perhaps lacks the clarity of ‘Dance Night’, maybe because the cast of characters is a little too large. What I love about this novel is that there are so many different storylines to explore. I could have written this review focusing on any number of things: Jeanne and Prudence’s harsh friendship and their sudden cohabitation, presumably as lovers, James and Dol’s passing about of a pretty young man named Bert, the young Brent couple drawn into a mess of affairs. And each route of exploration is just as interesting as the last. Plus the book is funny in that light, stabbing way that characterises my favourite kind of classics. I pass it on as a remedy for a dark mood.

Wrapping up 'The Lacuna'

Gah so obviously I meant to post the second part of my ‘Lacuna’ thoughts a long time ago, but sometimes files get forgotten about. I focused and blasted through the last two hundred pages about two months ago and now here I am just posting my final thoughts. Kind of obvious that I wasn’t so bothered about ‘The Lacuna’ as I was about many of its fellow Orange shortlist contenders – but it won, so it was obviously more memorable for the judges. Click through for part one of my thoughts, then follow on to the next bit.

Kingsolver’s demand that we all learn about history through Harrison’s story didn’t bother me nearly as much during the last part of the book. The history lessons were still very obvious, but once Harrisson got involved in McArthur’s communist witch hunts I could see the value of using Harrison’s life to explain history. This is me joining Kingsolver in presumptive land, but probably many people could use a lesson about what Communism actually is and a reminder that the USA wasn’t always opposed to Communism. While I acknowledge that the way she shapes Harrison’s life into a vehicle for historical commentary is transparent, I was happy to see Harrisson dragged into McArthur’s Communist witch hunt, because perhaps some readers will learn from Kingsolver’s book,. She still forces her main character to be a mouthpiece, rather than a person, too often and I didn’t like that. It’s not enjoyable for a reader to read, but perhaps it serves a purpose.

I also felt differently about the tweeness that I might have mentioned finding in Harrison’s correspondence to Frida. In the last two hundred pages it began to seem like a charming sweetness, as Harrison and his stenographer Mrs Brown form a deep friendship and Harrison continues to write his diary. I know Kingsolver’s writing style didn’t change in the last part of the book, but writing that first post must have exorcised my annoyance over Harrison’s sweet and safe demeanour.

Would I prefer to see Harrison a little more sexually liberated in these pages, well, yes. He’s gay in the 1940s so there’s only so far an author can believably go, as gay men weren’t able to be out and proud. But Kingsolver seems determined to make sure that any scenes that suggest Harrison has love affairs are extremely ambiguous. The reader has to assume he and a boy named Alejandro had a sexual relationship, but it is never explicitly stated. Later Harrison and Tommy are in a relationship which readers probably assume is sexual, but again there’s a curtain drawn over anything that may happen between them and by anything I do mean anything.

I would guess that this is meant to tie in with the idea of a lacuna, a missing space, which Harrison later says people don’t get to fill in with whatever they think happened. Harrison keeps his personal life very hidden and so the reader should resist the urge to invent anything. This lack of certainty may be unsatisfying for this particular reader, but I’ll admit the lack of a definite statement about the men he sees is possibly not out of character for Harrison, so it can’t be considered an actual failing of the book. Alternatively, maybe Kingsolver is attempting to emulate the way gay relationships were alluded to in novels in the early twentieth century.

The deliberate lack of knowledge that Kingsolver has to force upon her character to provide history teaching moments still grated. When Harrison has to be deliberately naive and make statements such as ‘Don’t listen to nonsense Frida. The idea of putting American Japanese in concentration camps is fantastical. You shouldn’t worry so much.’ so that Frida can correct him (and by extension educate the reader) it is very frustrating.

Similarly my irritation with his naivety grew as statements like ‘I have an odd impairment: the world paints its prejudices boldly across banners and somehow I walk though them without seeing. It’s a particular fault of mine, a blindness.’ accumulated. I do wonder if he was ever quite as naive as readers are led believe, or if he was consciously naive and covers his true understanding of how much ugliness the world contains. Mostly I assumed that Kingsolver’s interest in tightly controlling her reader’s understanding and explaining the world to them on her terms necessitates his naivety, so readers are supposed to take his unworldly behaviour at face value.

And there’s yet more to compare between ‘Wolf Hall’ and ‘The Lacuna’. Just as ‘Wolf Hall’ is the study of a man whose story has been rewritten for him, the last two hundred or so pages of ‘The Lacuna’ is mostly focused on Harrison’s words being twisted and his life story being rewritten by the press...

And that’s all she wrote. I have no idea what came up to distract me from this post (I suspect it was work) but that’s all I have on ‘The Lacuna’. I’m wondering if literary prizes work to boost sales (‘Wolf Hall’ has certainly saw a big increase in sales, even though its sales are supposed to be a fraction of those for ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Would you be more likely to buy or borrow a book is it won a high profile prize? Do you prefer to read the lists before a decision is revealed? Or are you not fussed about prizes at all?

Praise and Blame

So I have spent some time this week doubting my intellect – fun times! On the plus side it made me really determined not to make myself sound like an ass by scoffing at other people’s intellect ever again, on the ‘I don’t know how negative this might be’ side anyone reading gets confused rambling about compartmentalisation and entertainment.

I read a really great post by cleolinda, the premier Twi critique expert, where she talks very quickly about compartmentalisation in relation to Twilight and True Blood before going on to talk about other things:

‘And I feel like I'm a little different from a lot of people in that I can compartmentalize a lot of things. A lot of people--in this case, Twilight fans--will start out liking, say, Edward, for whatever reason, and because they like him, proceed to defend and rationalize everything he does from then on. I'm the kind of person who will take each thing--and this goes for real life as well--and judge it individually. "Saving her from a speeding van, okay, yeah, that's great, that superhero shit, everyone loves that; okay, this cold-shoulder I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT stuff, he's being a dick but I see why, in terms of narrative arc, it's happening; saving her from a roving gang of attackers, that's kind of hilariously contrived, but more superhero shit, Vampire Volvo of Great Justice, rock AH GOD SNEAKING INTO HER ROOM TO WATCH HER SLEEP WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU OH MY FUCK NO." I take it as it comes, and I critique it as it comes.’

That is kind of how I feel about the Twilight series too. Also about a lot of other stuff that I enjoy bits of, but see problems in ( ‘The Windup Girl’ is probably the best current example). So there’s no way I can blanket out all those problems, because I like bits of the books, or films they come from. Nor can I deny that I like certain bits of things, because I dislike others – that would be me repressing myself. So, I compartmentalise and for the past few years I’ve pretty much believed that generally this is a more useful way for me to approach the world than the way my teenage self approached it (basically ragging everything others liked if they didn’t fit with my own ideals or aesthetic standards – you should have heard me on romance novels back then).

Now I’m not so sure. Everyone has their trigger books where they can’t split out the good from the bad, the bad just dominates their view of the book. There are books where I know I wouldn’t be able to split my conflict with the books presentation of society, from the good aspects of the book (say brilliant writing for example). Even if I could be fair I would damn the good aspects with faint praise, as in ‘Yes good writing, but terrible, awful misogyny is the more important thing here’ (I am thinking of my plans to take on Philip Roth’s books soonish). I would make a weighted judgement, based on all the elements of the book combined and come down on the side of the negative.

So when I am able to separate out the good from the bad in other books aren’t I inadvertently making a statement about what negative aspects I will tolerate (even while screaming and shouting about how awful they are) for the kind of positive pay off I want? I obviously can’t compartmentalise bits and pieces in all problematic books, so when I can manage it isn’t it very similar to other readers ignoring or justifying the problematic issues to continue enjoying what they enjoy? Is it just making myself still feel like a feminist to say I notice the sexism in Twilight, so it’s ok for me to enjoy the series as long as I’m aware of the negatives? If I notice sexism and I find it objectionable shouldn’t I reject the whole enterprise (except as something to hungrily rip apart)? And isn’t it wrong for me to say I can compartmentalise issues that don’t directly seek to offend me, but are directly confrontational to many other people?

Oh life why no manual?

And then they sang...And it was AWESOME!

I am back and I feel much better (if totally wired from caffeine and lack of sleep). Thanks so much for all your well wishes, festivalling was strangely the emotional pick up I really needed which is weird because in many ways festivals should be an emotional Molotov cocktail for me (so many people, standing so close, so little sleep, so many obnoxious people alongside the very nice ones) but the key ingredient for making me a shiny happy person under these circumstance is live bands. Pretty much going to use this post to name drop all the acts we saw at the festival:

Bands and singers we saw:

Vampire Weekend
Belle and Sebastian (festival highlight, pretty much bounced the entire time)
Florence and the Machine
Mumford and Sons
Noah and the Whale
Frightened Rabbit
Paul Heaton
Laura Marling
Spoon
Sweet Billy Pilgrim
Jonsi
The Coral
Joshua Radin
Tom Jones (the super secret surprise gig on the Sunday)
Mumford and Sons

Comedians and performance shows we saw:

Rich Hall
Ardlan O’Hanlon
The Early Edition with Marcus Brigstocke
Rufus Hound
Andi Oshi
Josie Long
Kevin Eldon
Latitude’s New Act of the Year Award (and then we saw the runner up perform the second show that you win if the judges pick you)
Funny Women Awards show
Whoever the guy is who wrote the Horrid Henry books (we peeked into the lit tent on Friday and watched him perform a fight over a purple dinosaur for small children, with hand bells – I think it was probably quite surreal if you were smoking something)

Bands and singers we saw a little of:

Sweet Baboo
Angus and Julia Stone (sad we just about arrived on the first day in time to see the last four songs of their set, but I wish we’d seen it all)
Nadine Shah
Frankie and the Heartstrings

Bands or performers we heard from a spot of grass away from an arena, probably because we were too knackered to move:

Hockey
Rodrigo and Gabriella
Midlake
Temper Trap

Things we saw just wandering in general:

Rainbow coloured sheep
An Bacchanalian art installation being painted in purple paint and some kind of sandy coloured charcoal stick
The cast of the Hair musical warming up
A steward guarding an empty sphere, even though he had no idea what it was for (apparently it was for some kind of psychedelic alien landing performance piece, but we had a lot of fun imagining that some of the organisers were messing with the stewards by making them guard random objects for fun)
A light show projected on water spray at night
A lot of fancy dress and face painting – most excitingly for me a teenage guy with a unicorn head painted on his cheek

Bands we missed because we went to the wrong stage:

Only one! A miracle in my opinion. Sadly it was ‘The Quails’ we missed, but we did get a bit of a sit down in the cool forest and heard the last few songs from Nadine Shah.

Instances of bad festival planning:

Again only one! I’m not including schedule clashes here, because those happen (everything literary that I wanted to see clashed with a band I reeeeeeeeeaalllly needed to see). We wanted to see the Swan Lake act and it was on a stage in the middle of the lake – well it turned out ballet was bizarrely popular at Latitude and people worked out they could see it from the bridge. Bridge and banks around it got clogged – could not watch the ballet, could not get across the bridge to see other things. They had two performances and it was the same each time, so we mostly ate lunch at those times.

Best festival food experiences:

I ignore that everything was ridiculously over priced and we ate a lot of biscuits and Pringles in the tent, because we all know festivals gouge you for every penny (my programme was £8!). The absolute best food was vegetarian noodles with curry sauce and crisp mini spring rolls in sweet chilli sauce. But a very good food idea came right at the end of the weekend, where we back tracked and picked up milkshakes made from blended chocolate bars after Vampire Weekend to soothe our broken throats – Mint Aero, yummmmm.

Things that made paying extra for Tangerine fields well worth it:

Proper toilets that were clean all the time and never smelled
Strong tea at a cafe two minutes from our tent on the last morning
Feeling kind of smug about just having the one bag on the way back to the car
Air mattress – sleeping on the ground, ‘nuff said
Being far enough away to finish breakfast beer on the way to the arena, but not so far away we wanted to collapse every time we had to walk back to the tent

And perhaps you are thinking ‘hmm but there were things on after the headliners, did you see nothing of them?’. The answer is no, we had pretty hardcore days but then had to collapse at the end of each one – every day we would return to the tent for a little rest after the headliners, think about going back out, eat some biscuits, drink a couple of beers, then collapse. I was so tempted to stay another hour in the arena after Belle and Sebastian to see China Melville, but sleep won out.

I did get back quarter of an hour before speedway on Monday though and went right from a train to two and a half hours of speedway (tea is the magical elixir).

So, hurray well worth it and so much cheaper than every other festival I could have gone to. I was reminded that there are times when if it wasn’t for the entertainment festivals would be my idea of Hell on Earth, but since there is really no reason to go to such a crowded field without entertainment I guess I don’t have to worry about that ever.

How was everybody else’s weekend? Did you all have lovely weather like we did (yes even the people who are experiencing winter now, because maybe it was one of those perfect crisp winter days)?

[Edited] I think I might take a blogging break, at least until after Latitude.

I will leave you with this excellent interview from Chasing Ray, where Colleen gets into all the nooks and crannies of ‘Down to the Bone’ with the author Mayra Lazarra Dole. Hopefully I'll come back with a review after my break (short version: it was a very fun book).

Back shortly.

Wrapped Up in Books

Things have been arriving! A while ago I won a contest at SavidgeReads (the second one this year) and the other day my prize was delivered:

A lovely cloth bag from Daunt Books in London, filled to the brim with novels! ‘A Fearful Symmetry’, ‘Swimming’ (with a blurb from Judy freaking Blume how could I fail to enjoy that one), ‘Mr Rosenblum’s List’ and ‘Prep’ all greeted me when I returned from London.

As a little bonus ‘The Jewel Box’ was sent by Stefanie of the ‘Bah! To Cancer Blog’. Every once in a while she runs the Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza (next one coming soon), which hands out and uplifting read to one lucky commenter. This time around it was me and all I had to do was leave a comment and make an (optional) £2 donation to Cancer Research. I enjoyed ‘the Shoe Queen’ so much and there simply isn’t enough slightly grittier, yet glamourous historical chick-lit around.

Then the lovely and it seems very blogger friendly Peirene press sent me Maria Barbal’s ‘Stone in a Landslide’. I’m looking at it now and the design is just the pretty side of minimal that I really like – good job emerging press!

And then there might have been some others that just...I don’t know how they got here…(more later).

I’m off for the weekend at the Cardiff speedway Grand Prix so I will see you all next week with another bookish picture, my review of ‘Down to the Bone’ and much excited jumping for ‘Latitude’! Talked your ears off quite enough this week though I think.

Action Points

So for anyone interested I pre-ordered ‘The Fury of the Phoenix’ to support Cindy Pon, because I spoke to a few people who should really know if boycotting would have the desired effect. Then sent Greenwillow an email explaining that my decision to buy the whitewashed book should not be taken as an indication that whitewashing works. Will they care? Realistically I think we know the answer.

Ari is running a campaign to get people to write to Borders and Barnes and Noble to explain what they’ve caused by passing on ‘Silver Phoenix’. She is honestly just the best. If you’re in the US consider writing a letter and posting it on your blog. It would be really interesting to know if ‘Silver Phoenix’ sells in the chains here in the UK (no Borders here anymore, or Barnes and Noble), wondering if anyone knows where I might find that out (I guess I could just go and look, but it might just have been bought, or not be in our nearest chains).

inkstone is running an experiment to get people buying the original hardcover of ‘Silver Phoenix online, then review it. The bargain price hardback has sold out on Amazon.com . How about a little signal boosting contest here. I’m giving away one copy of the original hardback ‘Silver Phoenix’ to anyone who thinks they can commit to reviewing it by the first week in August – international giveaway folks, that’s rare. If more than one person wants it (comment by midnight GMT Monday) I’ll do a random number draw.

When whitewashing comes up I tend to react by supporting the books that promote the kind of diversity I want to see so I broke that book buying ban and I got angry about the treatment of GLBT fiction in the same week so I broke it in quite a big way. More on that later, with book pictures! But then I saw the comment on bookshop’s post that suggest ravenous book buyers may not be a book sellers ideal customer and so may not have much chance to change the industry through what they purchase. Very interesting comments and in some ways I understand what sellers are thinking, but in other ways it just goes so hard against the basic principles of marketing my brain explodes. I guess this means we have to get people who don’t read that often to make their few books really count?

That's all you'll hear about this from me for a while. Book filled posts to follow.

Cat Love and Vampire Blood

I’m seeing ‘Eclipse’ a week to day. Yes, I am excited ok? Have you seen the trailer bit where Jacob slams his fist into his shiny motorbike? For the rest of the trailer I forgot that he is a total loserboy in ‘Eclipse’ and was attracted to his ruggedness all over again – the films heal my problems with the books with hotness and not being the original source material (also by putting Muse in the soundtrack). Still I think we could all probably do with a bit of an antidote to the Eclipse-fest destined to run across our blogging world so I present:

The ‘Damn it, vampires shouldn’t sparkle’ modern canon

A round up of some recent anti-sparkle vampire tales that seem to react to the sparklepire* empire.

'Fat Vampire' – Adam Rex

'The Coldest Girl in Coldtown' – Holly Black (free short story, so good)

Blood Ninja – Nick Lake

'Life Sucks' – Gabe Soria, Jessica Abel, Matt Maden

'The Reformed Vampire Support Group' – Catherine Jinks

'Skarlet' – Thomas Emerson

Others have suggested:

'Peeps' - Scott Westerfeld

'Night Road' - A.M. Jenkins

Feel free to make suggestions for the canon. The only condition is that your suggestions must have come out after or around the time ‘Twilight’ was first published.

And a story about a Cullen related cat, because sometimes in life looking at a cat keeps you from going on a rage rampage.

* which may be cleolinda’s very own copywrighted term

Masks: Rise of Heroes - Hayden Thorne

This one did not turn out so short:

'Masks: Rise of Heroes’ – Hayden Thorne
Vintage City, a location deliberately kept looking well, vintage, finds itself with its very own super hero. A hot super hero, that Eric Williams would just love to have him. Where there are super heroes, super villains always follow. It’s not long before Vintage City’s hero Magnifiman and the villainous Devil’s Trill are knocking bits out of the city, while a mysterious sidekick flits around helping to fight crime.

While crime statistics explode, romance begins to grow between Eric and his best friend Peter. Their girl mate Althea alternates between anger and affection towards them, as she had a huge crush on Peter*. It’s not only romantic tension coming between the friends, as it seems that Eric’s friends may be keeping secrets. Can he deal with what they’re hiding?

In the first book of her ‘Masks’ series Hayden Thorne has managed to critique the default perception that superheroes are always straight. When Magnifiman first appears in Vintage City Eric is besotted with him and while he thinks that Magnifiman is probably not gay that doesn’t stop him from fantasising about the green, spandex clad man of his dreams. He even becomes jealous of Magnifiman’s sidekick, who he speculates may be Magnifiman’s romantic partner. When his interest in the superhero pair leads him to trawl role playing sites Eric finds himself noticing the overwhelming amount of straight perspectives reflected by the gamers, who exclusively pair Magnifiman and his sidekick with female romantic partners:

‘In the meantime, Bambi Bailey had been kidnapped, and Magnifiman was tearing the whole city apart to find her because, yes, they’d been engaged in a long, long, long, drawn-out romance marked by unresolved sexual tension. He was hopelessly in love with her, but he refused to acknowledge it. Now he was in danger of losing The Only Woman in the Universe for Him, and he was beside himself…

If I were only halfway decent in role-playing games, I’d have created a gay character who’d give Mary Sue a run for her-or their-money.’

Later it turns out that there is a gay superhero in Vintage City and he’s interested in Eric. That’s how Thorne rolls – may she rock on. Seriously though, she’s attempting to adjust mainstream default thinking that links superheroes with traditional, straight versions of masculinity. She’s also got lots to say about gay bashing and makes a move to talk about how gay men might benefit from the protection of a superhero boyfriend. While Eric and Peter exist in a more tolerant world, they’re not able to be openly affectionate in public and Eric’s parents worry about him getting attacked. There are perhaps too many related messages in this book and some of them are expressed through ideas that will be familiar to many readers, for example when a character compares telling someone you’re a super hero to coming out. Mostly these didactic messages feel well integrated into the novel, possibly because Eric and other characters talk about these issues as things that affect them personally:

‘It was too bad really that other gay kids didn’t enjoy the benefit of the same kind of protection from their boyfriends or girlfriends. I hoped-really hoped- that if there were other people out there who’d yet to come into their powers, some of them were queer.’

Thorne has a lot of fun satirising superhero stories, by looking at the practical issues of living in a town patrolled by superheroes. For Eric, living a regular life while good and evil battle all around him swings between being surreal and tedious. As Vintage City is quite small, everyone can expect to find themselves kidnapped a few times and by the end of the book encounters with the Devil’s Trills henchmen are becoming routinely annoying for the residents of Vintage City. When Eric says ‘I half expected everyone to be given tally sheets, in which we could list the different situations in which we’d fallen victim to the Trill’s schemes and then rescued by Magnifiman…’ he shows that even the most extra-ordinary encounters can become, or almost have to become, mundane when they happen all the time. If everyone in Vintage City went around scared out of their minds, nothing would ever get done.

While ‘Mask: Rise of Heroes’ subversion of the superhero genre is often fun and thought-provoking, the book might be a bit of a disappointment for anyone looking for a traditional, strongly plotted, action heavy story of super battles. The main point of this book isn’t the superhero adventures, or the plots of the villains. The Devil’s Trill’s plots are extremely weak, although that’s logically explained as a consequence of the Trill only just getting his powers. The superhero genesis explanation is interesting* and their powers are cool, if sometimes rather standard (flying, super strength), but their adventures are background noise to Eric’s life in Vintage City. That’s to be expected when the book is told using a first person narrator who isn’t a superhero and it’s a fresh twist, but it’s probably best to be aware that superhero exploits are sometimes shaded in generally, rather than seen in close up.

It’s the relationships between Eric and other characters, like Peter, Althea and Laura, his sister, that form the core of this book. The fact is you could ditch all the superhero razzle, give the characters a real life problem to surmount and this book would still connect deeply because of the high levels of emotional honesty that exist between the characters. Whether they’re pissed off, or in love, the characters commit to their emotions. Saying that, they’re not too stubborn to realise if their emotions aren’t the important part of the current situation and commit to apologising, or forgiveness. This leaves the reader watching the high energy of emotional life, without any ill thought out dramatics designed to increase the page count.

Despite all those wonderful aspects of the book I can’t avoid mentioning that the book suffers from some awkward writing. Thorne uses multiple adjectives to describe thing constantly, for example ‘a dreary, sooty, acid rain-drenched metropolis’ and always attaches descriptive words to objects, like ‘the murky figures of running officers’. This over use of adjectives slows the pace, making the book feel as if it is dragging (I know I am probably the queen of the double adjective, but this is a blog, not a published book) and rendering her narrator overly wry. She also tends to describe Eric’s everyday life in too much detail. While knowing some of Eric’s quirks, like the fact that he puts blue food colouring in his milk, are part of what makes him a unique character, there’s such a thing as too much realistic detail. His examination of his normal actions are sometimes quite humorous, but there are so many of them that he comes to sound too self-conscious and again they slow the text down. It does seem like Thorne deliberately writes in this way to make Eric’s voice precocious, sarcastic, self-aware and self-involved. She succeeds in creating a character who is simultaneously loveable for his originality and the kind of person you want to flick in the head for referring to himself as ‘One’ and dropping high culture references. However, her judgement is off on how often to include all the elements that make him sound precocious and often the book tips into unbearably pompous writing. It doesn’t help that there are a number of typing errors in this book, which make it look a little unprofessional.

I suspect these books are superhero shaped chocolate; fast books, that I’ll love to indulge in if I’m feeling a bit down. Hayden Thorne can write a steamy kissing scene, after all and isn’t that just what a girl needs when she’s feeling blue 9oh yes, ideally there should be beer too)?

* Just by the by, but Peter is half Asian and Althea is black – look it is easy diversity all round

* I would very much like to discuss this with someone – there are Eugenics involved, which are creepy

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Reservation Blues - Sherman Alexie

Being in the middle of a British summer that’s actually sunny is making me lazy about reviewing. I’ve been running around so much lately (all in the pursuit of fun) that I don’t feel too bad about not reviewing, but I’ve now got three books waiting to be talked about and that’s as much of a backlog as my completist mind can stand. So minish reviews it is, probably with liberal quotes for illustration instead of properly thought out analysis – starting with 'Reservation Blues’ by Sherman Alexie.

A black man called Robert Johnson turns up on the Spokane reservation, carrying a guitar that he claims comes from the devil (Other reviews tell me that Robert Johnson was a real, blues great, who often said he sold his soul to the devil for a better musical ability). After he ‘accidentally’ leaves it with a young Native American called Thomas Builds the Fire, Thomas forms a band called ‘Coyote Springs’ with Vincent and Junior, two small time bullies off his reservation and two sisters called Chess and Checkers, from the Flathead reservation. The band plays local gigs with great success and are invited to play outside the reservation, which is when everything starts going wrong.

When I heard about this book I thought it sounded like a typical coming of age story, linking music to gaining understanding and I expected it to be written in plain prose. In fact, Sherman Alexie stirred magical realism into his first novel, which I think makes the writing in ‘Reservation Blues’ an appealing cross between an easy going, conversational style and a deeply layered effect created by the inclusion of dream and magical passages, that can also be read as symbols:

‘Finally the horses stopped screaming their song, and Big Mom listened to the silence that followed. The she went back to her work, her buckskin and beads, to CNN. The horses’ silence lasted for minutes, maybe centuries, and made her curious. She understood that silence created its own music but never knew the horses to remain that quiet. After a while, she stood and started the walk down her mountain to the clearing where the horses gathered. Of course, she wanted to ask about the silence that followed their new song.’

Life on a reservation might be unfamiliar to many readers (it was to me) but Alexie doesn’t dawdle around explaining how life typical life works on a reservation. Instead he urges readers to sink into his characters sedentary lives and carefully inserts remembered stories, or present tense episodes to illustrate typical life on the Spokane reservation. By using third person narrative Alexie avoids making his seem characters deliver unnatural sounding lectures when he does hand readers lessons on Native American life in this way. He’s also very clever about using stories and moments of magical realism to give a glimpse into Native American history, without filling in all the gaps for his readers. ‘Reservation Blues’ is meant to be a starting point to get readers interested in traditional Indian stories, conditions on reservations and tribal history, not an exhaustive guide. It’s a novel, not a piece of non-fiction. Alexie obviously feels comfortable leaving gaps in his readers knowledge, sure that they’ll be intrigued enough to read other books that will provide more information.

While ‘Reservation Blues’ is a novel concerned with telling important stories, it’s also a comedy. It made me chuckle with its mix of sarcasm, physical comedy and a kind of bemused bafflement at the way the world works. Like the best funny books ‘Reservation Blues’ also uses humour to underline just what seems to be going wrong in the world the story is set in, for example Vincent’s cv is hilariously bad:

‘Jobs I had before.

Leed Gitar Player Coyote Springs
Viceprezidant Senior Class Wellpinit High School.
Mowd lawns and shuveled snow…’

but it also points out just how little education he has and how different his career trajectory is from someone who doesn’t live on a reservation. Alexie also peppers his humour with simple moments of pain, or evil. The contrast between the humour and moments of muted grief makes these kind of moments extremely powerful, as it emphasises how easy it is to slip from a sarcastic, cynical, but mostly content state into misery. The ability to use contrast is a talent I prize highly in a writer, especially when like Alexie in this book, they’re not afraid to mix a happy ending with a sad one without erasing the real pain of the sad ending.

Parts of this book hurt and there’s a line of Vincent’s towards the end that I can’t quote for fear of spoilers, but if you’ve read it maybe you’ll know which one I mean. Although Sherman Alexie’s doesn’t write like Terry Pratchett, or Tom Holt, he joins them in my author hall of fame as a comedic writer who can make me laugh, then flick a switch and make me feel afraid, or angry. I suppose that means I’ve found another author with a big back catalogue to fill up my TBR list.

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The Devil's Music - Jane Rusbridge

If I say that ‘The Devil’s Music’ starts with a glossary of knots, it might sound like a tough old read. I meant to make it my third book during the 48 hour read-a-thon, but when I saw pictures of knots accompanied by explanations of how to form them I put it down thinking it would be full of complex terminology and literary, but dense prose that needed to be decoded.

Imagine my surprise then when I returned to it and found that its prose is the straight forward stuff of a typical contemporary novel. The words Jane Rusbridge chooses are beautiful and in places her prose is full of a deep, soothing rhythm:

‘The sea has sculpted the shingle banks into curves and scoops. I will collect smooth black pebbles. They warm in my hands and lend a weight to my pockets as I clamber over the rough wooden breakwaters. The breeze invigorates. Perhaps, after all, this will be alright.’

but her language is also plain and easy prose chosen for its solidity and story telling capability. Rusbridge does not use any obvious special literary techniques to distinguish her language, but below the surface reoccurring symbols flit. This combination of deceptively simple prose and hidden symbols is a perfect fit for the rather too self-contained main character she presents.
Readers first meet Andrew as a drifting young man, who has decided to return to his childhood home after his father has died. While Rusbridge makes his narrative clear and plain, she takes her novel into more complex territory by using more than one narrative voice. After using a first person narrative to establish twenty something Andrew’s dislike for his father and his troubled relationship with his younger sister Susie, Rusbridge gives the reader a new first person perspective narrated by Andrew as a young child, Andy.

Andy lives with a loving mother, his abusive father and his two younger sisters Susie and Elaine. Andy is obsessed with Harry Houdini and loves working with knots, as his Grampy used to be a rope maker. His various Houdini style antics worry his parents and get him in serious trouble with his impatient father. At the family’s holiday let, called ‘The Siding’ something happens to Andy that affects his life forever. This event changes him into the drifting young man readers meet as he returns to ‘The Siding’ to make it ready for prospective buyers.

Rusbridge alternates between these two perspectives regularly, switching from older Andrew in the present to younger Andy in the past. She also switches from first person to third person narrative, by including a third perspective. The third person narrative, is set in the past and follows Andy’s mother’s life in parallel to young Andy’s experiences. I assumed that the use of the third person indicated that this narrative was the story Andrew had constructed about his mother. Andy’s mother, is regularly beaten by Andy’s father and worn down by a world that wants her to give up Elaine, who is disabled. When she meets a young painter with a disabled brother a friendship slowly turns into a love affair.

Andrew’s mother’s narrative feels the most emotionally open and in my opinion this emotional honesty makes her easier to relate to than Andrew. Andrew is always closed off from the reader, even though his thoughts are directly available through his two first person narratives. Strangely instead of allowing the reader to see more than they might from the outside, the effect of Andrew’s first person narrative is to close him off from the reader. When he is a child he is cushioned from awareness of the world and never speaks directly about the childhood trauma he experiences, preferring to talk about it at a remove, or stopping before verbalising the full significance of what has happened.

As an older character Andrew often lacks self-awareness, keeping the reader distanced from his deepest thoughts again even as he reports what shaped him into the man he is. In contrast the reader sees his mother’s frustrations and reasoning in detail. They are directly exposed to the violent actions of Andy’s father. Everything feels more raw, more real, but if this is Andrew telling a constructed story does that make any difference to how the reader relates to the story they’re hearing?

I suspect that the use of three narratives ties in with Andrew’s work with rope and is intended to symbolise the different strands of life that create the core of a story, but I’m not quite sure what this connection between structure and story is designed to show. In the end I think that my inability to interpret the hidden meanings of Rusbridge’s novel was what caused me to feel distanced from her characters. While the plain writing provides easy access to a detailed family story there are deeper truths to be uncovered by close reading and perhaps re-reading. I could make some sense of the different meanings associated with the repeated symbol of rope and knots, but sometimes I could not fathom why a particular kind of knot was significantly mentioned.

Other small details like the ‘devil’s music’ of the title were repeatedly mentioned, without seeming to connect to a deeper meaning. Perhaps they were too deeply hidden for me to find, or maybe a little too obscure to be interpreted. Perhaps some of the recurring references aren’t meant to be symbolic and were included for some other purpose. I couldn’t quite work it out. I think this book required more time than I had to give it and I recommend making sure you’ve got an hour to invest when you start reading it so that you can spot all the links running through the different narrative strands.

If you make sure you have long periods of time to read ‘The Devil’s Music’ perhaps you’ll see the ending coming before I did. My one major criticism of the book is the abruptness of the ending, but It’s hard to talk about without spoiling the plot so let’s just say that something is revealed and I was not expecting it. Now that I look back on it I can see subtle indications that something in the past was not as it seemed, but at the time it seemed like a very sudden revelation and I was rather annoyed.

Then the epilogue arrived and if all was not forgiven, it was at least soothed through a wonderful snapshot of a life we hadn’t yet heard about. Is it strange to say that I actually found the epilogue the most assured part of the book? It flitted between tiny details and pictures of relationships that felt well established and true, even though they’re only mentioned in a few pages. Perhaps that’s what I would have liked to see more of in the main book, more connection between characters, but since the main point of the novel is the disconnection of the characters I’m asking for something that doesn’t fit with the book. I suspect Jane Rusbridge is good at explaining what connects people with the wave of her pen and so I hope to see this talent fully displayed in future books.

Just a quick mention that the author sent me this book for free, after reading my review of ‘The Still Point’. It is always nice to hear from authors who want to give you shiny hardbacks so thanks to Jane for providing me with her book (but don’t all rush to it authors as my tbr piles are wobbling as it is). She's so nice her website let's you read the opening pages of 'The Devil's Music' for free if you like.

That Makes Six - Whitewashing Reappears

Do you remember a book I reviewed called ‘Silver Phoenix’ by Cindy Pon. You can see from the review that I had my issues with it, but that I loved the heroine Ai Ling and the relationships between the three main characters. I started off really not fussed about a sequel, but as the year’s gone by I’ve found myself looking forward to one more and more.

What really attracted me to ‘Silver Phoenix’ (besides the great reviews) was the cover. That cover pops out and smacks you in the face with its strength, its colour and its Asian heroine. While clearly the designers decided the book would only be for a girl orientated market (another issue for another day), they kept the design clear and sharp so that it speaks of the power that is central to Ai Ling’s personality. That cover was different from everything else I was seeing in the YA sphere at the time. With hindsight and a huge, fast racial perspective re-education courtesy of book blogs and authors, I can look back and say that the Asian face and clothes on the cover contribute to that wonderful, standout, different quality that drew me to the book and made me buy it in hardback.

And then today I get an email from Renay with a link to another whitewashing story and what book was getting the wash, but ‘Silver Phoenix’. ‘Silver Phoenix’ wasn’t selling enough, so the publishers decided to rejacket it (yep makes sense). They changed a everything on the new book jacket, but apparently a major factor that needed to be change to get the book into more hands was...the very Asian aesthetic of the cover. Yep, Ai Ling goes white on the new cover and whiter on the sequel’s cover. To which my response was ‘What the fuck?’.

I get all the other heinous things they’ve done to the cover. The black fits a trend for books that are selling well right now. The woman with no eyes/obscured head is a huge customer signal that publishers have decided attracts readers of chick-lit to other books (although it also conveniently removes any Asian facial features from the cover too). I may not like the design, but I get the commercial reasons they’ve decided to go down these design routes.

Changing the Asian character on the cover to a white girl, whitewashing the cover, is wrong. It’s morally wrong and readers don’t have to accept it. We’re not starting from scratch with this debate here so if you want to see why people think whitewashing covers is wrong start by checking out Chasing Ray’s comprehensive post on the past ‘Liar’ scandal and Ari’s ‘Open Letter to Bloomsbury’ that followed the problems with the ‘Magic Under Glass’ cover. It was wrong for Bloomsbury to do it, it’s still wrong now.

Cindy Pon has posted about her new cover. I don’t really want to get into how she feels too much – I am the whitest white girl you’ll ever meet and I feel like I would be seeming to correct someone who is Asian and the author of the book in question. Maybe I would be inadvertently talking down to her and filtering a racial struggle and a struggle to get published that I’ve never been directly affected by, through my own perspective. I get that the important thing for her is getting the story out there and that she hopes this cover will make the book more attractive to a new audience, thereby increasing the popularity of Asian young adult fantasy. I’m so sad that Cindy Pon obviously feels a real necessity for rejacketing her book in a whitewashed way, when she writes:

‘i can’t help but wonder how many readers took one
look at my cover, made assumptions (it’s too *this*
or obviously not enough *that*) and decided it
wasn’t for them. i won’t lie. it breaks my heart a little.’

As much as people push the supposed commercial necessity of whitewashing, I’m still not convinced whitewashing works as a a business tactic. I really believe there are wealthy untapped segments of the reading market that publishing houses could be making a killing in if they published books with black and Asian people on the covers. In his article ‘Be Precise About Diversity’* Saad Saraf states that:

‘Ethnic marketing has nothing to do with tokenism, but has everything to do with customer segmentation and understanding your audience. Minority ethnic population figures are growing towards 10 per cent.

In 2007, London Development Agency (LDA) research found that disposable income for ethnic minorities was £100bn – a clear indicator that marketing to minority ethnic groups should be a growing concern for many mainstream brand owners.’

Now he’s talking specifically about ethnic minorities buying luxury brands like BMW and adopting new technology, but I wonder why the big brands of the book industry don't investigate the potential of selling books to Asian and black market segments. And wouldn’t it be commercially advantageous to try to expand your potential market, by attempting to reshape any incorrect assumptions white buyers may have about books featuring Asian, or black faces on the covers, rather than saying ‘White readers won’t buy that’. Sure companies react to consumer demand, but they also create consumer demand.

I don’t think just having the story out there is going to be enough for some Asian readers right now, just as it wasn’t enough for black readers when Jaclyn Dolamore spoke about her ‘Magic Under Glass’ cover. And truthfully I’m happy it’s not enough for these readers, because it means they know that they have the right to expect more. It’s depressing that I’m part of a white culture that authors and publishers feel they need to pander to, in order to engage. I don’t want their special measures, they make me want to scrub hard.

Make sure to check out the post from inkstone and please pass on the news. Apart from that I guess we just keep doing what we do here in book blog world and keep being highly aware of our reading choices. Cling to the hope that what we buy, borrow and review can contribute to the reshaping of the publishing world.

*I can’t link to it as you have to be a CIM member to view the content.