'The Small Room' - Mary Sarton

I’m currently flying back from the Algarve, but I wanted to at least try to participate in the ‘Slaves of Golconda’ discussion about Mary Sarton’s ‘The Small Room’. It’s only the second SoG book that I’ve finished this year and I want to make an effort.

‘The Small Room’ details a year at Appleton, a rigorously academic, exclusively female college in Midwest America. Lucy is a new English professor, who has recently broken her engagement and decided to take up a position at Appleton, although she’s not sure teaching calls to her as it does others.

Lucy is unfortunate enough to uncover a plagiarism scandal at Appleton not long after she arrives. A promising student called Jane, has stolen parts of an obscure essay and submitted it as an original essay to the college magazine. Jane is the intellectual prodigy of a celebrated medieval studies lecturer Caryl Cope. Caryl is admired by many of the Appleton professors, as she appears so intellectually principled and is determined to pull academic excellence from as many students as possible. She is well known to be a forceful person and by the time Lucy discovers Jane’s plagiarism she has already demonstrated her power to intervene in another talented student’s disciplinary case. Finally, Caryl’s long term lover is Olive, the commanding, wealthy benefactor of Appleton, who has promised to leave Appleton her money when she dies, which makes the negotiations around Jane’s case extremely sensitive.

When I read the blurb it sounded to me as if there would be a typical dust up between the two professors, with the young, new professor one on the side of RIGHT and the other entrenched, possibly aggressive professor determined to keep her reputation from being damaged. I’m not quite sure how I got that from ‘she had discovered a dishonest act committed by a brilliant student who is a protégée of a powerful faculty member’ but that’s what it brought to mind. Happily the novel is more complex than my tired imagination allowed for; the character’s positions are not so delineated and the reader’s are not guided into simplistic sympathies.

Caryl betrays weaknesses that make the reader dislike her and flaws that make her easier to empathise with. Caryl makes the mistake of pushing Jane too much intellectually, when she is fragile and desperate for approval and watching Jane break down is enough to make any reader rear away from Caryl’s cause. She’s often shown as a blunt character, who is aggressive and extremely focused on the intellect and in many a novel that uncompromising intellect attached to her gender would make her a natural villain. However, Lucy’s views of her are well balanced and even after Jane’s breakdown, Lucy is careful not to fly off the handle and call ill treatment. She disagrees with Caryl and at times seems almost fearful of her, but she also finds common cause with Caryl and comes to consider her a friend. I think seeing Lucy align herself with Caryl’s initial way of dealing with Jane’s transgression (hushing it up, while telling the other professors) makes it easier to view Caryl’s actions with sympathy.

As much as the scandal over Jane’s actions provide the main focus for the novel’s plot and Caryl Cope is at the centre of this scandal, it’s Lucy who the reader is really encouraged to focus on. One of the main strands of the novel is Lucy’s year of development, as she learns how to motivate her students, thinks about whether a teacher’s life is for her and straddles the line between being involved in students academic development and being unwillingly drawn into their personal lives. I really enjoyed this part of the novel, because it’s a conflicted story of a woman trying to figure out why she’s lived as she has so far and how to work as a teacher entrusted with educating other women. Lucy’s thoughts about her broken engagement and her potential future as an unmarried teacher are so candid. While I might not like that Lucy only got her doctoral degree because the location of her college was close to where John worked, it’s appealing to hear a character talk about such an anti-feminist idea honestly and with a certain nervousness at her weakness for it, without launching her thoughts as a generalising, defensive attack on feminist thought. And although I’d never make a teacher, it was so interesting to see Lucy work her way through how she might teach and best work with her students.

‘The Small Room’ is a novel I don’t feel equipped to really dig into. I think the meaning and consequences of Lucy’s story of professional development would be best analysed by someone teaching, or in the process of being taught, which is why I’m excited to see what the teachers and students in SoG made of the novel. The lessons she learns from her first year as a teacher seem to apply specifically to teaching methods and Appleton doesn’t seem to stand as a microcosm for the wider world. Instead the ideas about how to connect effectively and productively feel particular to relationships between students and teachers. ‘The Small Room’ feels like a contained novel, focused on campus life, unconcerned with linking campus relations to the wider emotional world. That’s not an approach I’m familiar with seeing in novels, but it’s a direct focus that I now think I’d like to see more.

Still, I suspect that I’m missing the connection between Appleton and the wider world, because ‘The Small Room’ is a novel that is preoccupied by psychology. Psychology seems to be a relatively new school of examination to the characters in the novel and Appleton’s administrations struggle with Olive about appointing a campus psychologist. If I knew more about early psychological teachings, I’d probably make more of a connection between different psychological theory applied to the wider population and the way Lucy and other characters react to their students.

Psychological theory being pretty unknown to me I could only make basic guesses about how Mary Sarton wants her readers to react to her characters, but was unable to really grasp why she seemed to be indicating approval for Lucy’s relationships with her students and disapproval for Caryl cope’s relationship with Jane. I understood that the way Caryl relates to Jane was not the correct, as Jane has a breakdown and the way Lucy relates to her student Tabitha was correct, as Tabitha’s work progresses beyond anyone’s expectations. What I didn’t really understand was what about Lucy’s approach does the author want her readers to believe helped Tabitha to advance? To me it seemed to be Lucy’s emotional distance and her abilities as ‘an ear’ who listens openly. But Caryl’s emotional distance seems to be just what Lucy believes caused Jane to have a breakdown. I was unsure, but still interested.

I’m not trying to imply that the specific focus of ‘The Small Room’ makes it a novel that lacks something, because it doesn’t seem to want to link the emotions of the campus community to universal human relations. Neither do I want to imply that I couldn’t pin down meanings because the book was unclear. It is always important to be reminded that you don’t know even close to everything about everything. The areas ‘The Small Room’ takes as its subject just aren’t areas I have a lot of experience in. It was challenging to read so far outside my knowledge and I felt stretched by the novel, felt like I was learning, even if I haven’t really worked out what the novel is saying on a deeper level. One of my favourite parts is when Lucy attends a lecture held by another professor, not the great Caryl Cope, but Hallie a fellow literature professor:

'And slowly, what had been a painful, stumbling series of unrelated questions and answers became something like a fugue. Hallie was gently imposing a line, bringing them back to certain themes played over and over - thought, language, character, the making of a poet. And as she led the class back to these major chords, again and again, weaving in and out, asking the probing question, responding to the sensitive answer, what had in the first few moments been a professor "drawing out" a student had become a true dialogue.'

And now I look forward to reading how teachers and students related to this novel, which has made a firm impression on me by leaving lots for me to consider and explore.

Sunning Myself

After what we started calling ‘disaster week’ in Croatia we were so unrelaxed that I and another friend booked an impulse, budget holiday away. As soon as we’d put down the money I began feeling guilty. Could I really justify a second holiday this year? This second holiday was engineered so we could sit in the sun, use the pool and maybe move ourselves to a few attractions. Maybe move ourselves. Should I really be spending that much on lazing in a country I wouldn’t be going rambling all around? Wouldn’t Wales have been just as nice?

The time has rolled around for me to get off (we leave early Sunday morning) and all the guilt has rolled away. I could not be more ready for a week of books, sun loungers, beer and over indulging in food. I’m so glad I didn’t listen to myself. I’m off to the Algarve for six days and now it’s just on with the mad dash to make sure I’ve got enough summery clothes left over etc.

The most urgent question (aside from how many times can I ring a swim suit out) is which books should I take away with me. I’ve decided I want four novels and two novellas. I want a balance of fun novels and more challenging ‘thinky’ fiction, because I get restless if I’m in a foreign country without access to a bit of a mix. I’m sure I'm taking:

Novels

‘In for a Penny’ – Rose Lerner: Sarky humour in Regency England. This is a romance recommended by Booksmugglers, Smart Bitches and Gossamer Obsessions which begins with the line ‘No more mistresses’.

‘A la Carte’ – Tanita S Davis: This book just sounds like such an original piece of YA. I’ve never heard of a book about a teenager determined to get her own vegetarian cooking show before. How could I not love this?

Novellas

‘The Birthday Boys’ – Beryl Bainbridge: Is anyone else fascinated by explorers? This novella tells the story of Scott’s doomed trip to the Antarctic and back, recreating the voices of various members of the team.

‘A Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’ – Friedrich Christian Delius: This thriller written as one continuous sentence is my second review book from Peirene.

Now decisions get difficult. I want to take a historical novel and our house is full of them, but should I take:

‘Sacred Hearts’ – Sarah Dunant/ ‘The Agency’ – YS Lee/ ‘The Taste of Sorrow’ – Jude Morgan/ ‘Owl Killers’ – Karen Maitland/ ‘The Gunmaker’s Gift’ – Matthew Plampin ?

And I want a piece of really intense ‘thinky’ fiction (that term is so helpful obviously), but I want to avoid taking hardbacks (rules out quite a bit including AS Byatt’s ‘The Children’s Book’ which would probably have been perfect) and looking pretentious on a sun lounger (kicking out classics like ‘Howard’s End’). Should I take:

‘My Name is Red’ – Orhan Pamuk/ ‘Possession’ – AS Byatt/ ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ – Paul Scott/ ‘Carpentaria’ – Alexis Wright/ ‘The Bingo Palace’ – Louise Erdich ?

I’ll be checking the comments until I go and any suggestions would be welcome.

I’ve finished the Slaves of Golconda read this month ('The Small Room' by Mary Sarton) and want to say something about, so I’ve scheduled a post about it for the 31st when I’ll be flying back all sun rested, like a happy cat. Otherwise it’ll be blog silence here until 1st November, when I’ll return with my ‘Sporting Women’ theme month. Have a lovely time next week and I’ll see you all soon.

Is It Just Fantasy? No There's Sci-fi Too

I need to leave my book club. It’s not one of those lovely clubs where you read books together, it’s the kind that sends you catalogues full of cheap hardbacks that you can buy. I’ve been so good and haven’t bought a thing since the beginning of the year, but this month they sent out the Christmas gift magazine, which is full of tempting sets, including the sf and fantasy book bundles (yes bundleS I feel I was very restrained to just get one).

Ten hard backs became mine for just £25. This seems like a great bargain when you consider that I really wanted seven of these books, quite fancied the other three and even in paperback seven books would cost around £35 - £40. Here’s what I got (if you’re bored of ‘books wot I got’ lists please let me know and I’ll cut them out next year):

'Fire' - Kristin Cashore

'The Adamantine Palace' - Stephen Deas

'Best Served Cold' - Joe Abercrombie

'Last Argument of Kings' - Joe Abercrombie

'Nights of Villjamur' - Mark Charan Newton

'The Edge of the World' - Kevin J. Anderson

'Red Seas Under Red Skies' - Scott Lynch

'Reaper's Gale' - Steven Erikson

'Heritage of the Xandim' - Maggie Furey

'Shout for the Dead' - James Barclay

They are preeeeety.

This seems like a good moment to mention that Naill over at Torque Control is collecting peoples top ten lists of sci-fi novels written by women (worldwide, in the last ten years) in response to realisations that US and UK sci-fi may not contain many female writers (thanks to The Booksmugglers for sharing the links).

I don’t read that much sci-fi right now. My interests have spread all over the fictional map this year, but I do and always will love sci-fi and fantasy so I guess I should just say this concerns me, but I haven’t really done anything to further the cause of female sci-fi writers.

Of course the wonderful thing about a reading life is that there’s always next year. I joined The Women of Sci-fi and The Women of Fantasy reading groups recently (I’m not going to call them challenges, lest my challenge averseness makes me fall of the wagon). All the reading will take place in 2011, with readers aiming to read a specific book by a female author each month (but you don’t have to read all the books). I defy you not to be seduced by the bootiful covers put up in the sign up posts. I feel like making this a super huge sf/fantasy post so here’s what I’ll be aiming to read next year:

January: Dust – Elizabeth Bear (sf)
February: The Dispossessed – Ursula Le Guin (sf)
March: Prospero Lost – L Jagi Lamplighter (fantasy)
April: Four and Twenty Blackbirds – Cherie Priest (fantasy)
June: Liliths Brood – Octavia Butler (sf)
July: All the Windwracked Stars – Elizabeth Bear (fantasy)
October: Farthing – Jo Walton (sf) and Tooth and Claw – Jo Walton (fantasy) (I know a double commitment month, what am I thinking?)
November: Gaslight Dogs – Karin Lowachee (fantasy)

Let me know if you sign up for either of next year’s groups. I’d love to see sci-fi and fantasy posts appearing all year.

'Dark Goddess' - Sarwat Chadda

Being a fangirl often feels a little bit like you’ve missed the signs pointing out ‘Polite Boundaries’ and crossed over into ‘Creepy Town’. You talk about the object of your fangirlishness all the time. Every topic you think of seems to relate to it. You seek out other people who talk about your new obsession. You start 'following’ sources (probably down scary, dark alleys) so you can find out more. Then you write another post about that series, band, film - whatever it is you’re crushing so hard on and feel like your interest might be getting a little bit too much, but you ignore it because you just have too much to say about this piece of entertaining media.

Yes, it’s time for me to review Sarwat Chadda’s young adult novel, ‘Dark Goddess’ all of three months after I reviewed his first novel 'Devil’s Kiss’. This is the second novel following Billi Sangreal the only female squire belonging to The Knights Templar. I hope I don’t go overboard, but I promise my love comes from a non-creepy place.

The book opens strong and bloody, pumping up the shock and battle factor in the early pages. Billi becomes involved in a fight with a clan of werewolves called the Polenitsy who have broken a vow to the Templars and started hunting humans again. The opening of this sequel is less concerned presenting violent emotional conflict, as in ‘Devil’s Kiss’ opening pages. Instead this equally violent opening (not to seem out for blood all over again, but I’m fine with violence when it’s in a paranormal battle) focuses on thrusting readers into an exciting, hard fought battle and uses the extreme tension of Billi’s described fight for survival to encourage readers to bond with this heroine by willing her to win:

'The shape turned its long lupine head and out of the darkness predatory grren eyes glowed. Its snarl was deep and low, so elemental that the air quivered. Big Red stepped closer, dragging its long, still-bloody claws along the plaster, digging deep grooves along both walls. There was no way past it. Behind Billi was a window and a four-metre drop. She was trapped.'

The werewolves Billi has been tracking attack a farmhouse and inside Billi discovers a girl called Vasilisa, who the Polenitsy seem desperate to recover. When it emerges that Vasilisa is a Spring Child, or medium and the werewolves intend to feed her to their dark goddess Baba Yaga, the Templars take on the task of protecting Vasilisa.

Billi is still recovering emotionally from the events of her first major fight with evil, detailed in ‘Devil’s Kiss’. I mentioned in my review of that novel that Billi’s ability to remain open and caring, even when everything around her makes it clear that caring can bring pain, is one of my favourite things about Billi’s character . In this book readers meet a different Billi, one sure that the only way to live as a Templar and avoid pain is to keep from caring about others. At first Billi doesn’t want to look after Vasillisa, as she’s been hardened by her experiences. Even her dad notices that 'She's changed...'. As she gets to know Vasilisa she begins to care about the girl, but knowing how Vasilisa’s life will progress, knowing how emotionally hard her friend Kay was when he came back from his psychic training in Jerusalem and well aware of the short life span of a Templar Billi keeps herself apart from her. However, she’s incapable of cutting herself off from her emotions (hurray) and she’s soon making promises she can’t keep to her young charge in the hope of protecting her.

The friendship between the two girls adds a powerful emotional element to the book. As Billi tries to save Vasilisa it seems to be hinted, by the way that Vasilisa is present in her dreams of Kay, that by saving this young medium Billi is trying to atone for what happened to Kay. I’d also argue that she’s trying to save herself by saving Vasilisa, trying to allow the young girl to keep some of her innocent trust in the world. Although readers might try to keep their feelings in check, knowing that Chadda is a writer who will kill any of his secondary characters to heighten the power of his books, it’s hard not to get swept up in the girl’s friendship. I love that. I love that Chadda makes his readers mirror Billi’s struggle with her knowledge and her emotions. I love that he has the power to make me care and then devastate me.

Vasillisa is stolen away to Russia by members of the Polenitsy and Billi, Elaine, Gwaine and a new knight called Lance travel to find support from the larger, Russian equivalent of the Templars, the Bogatyrs. Here Billi meets Ivan, son of the last hereditary Bogatyr leader and *brief pause for a sigh of pleasure* Ivan is awesome too. He’s fashionable, wry, determined, charming in his occasionally skeevy way, angry and hurt over his father’s death, desperate to lead well and he always carries a glock. Does this not sound like the boy for Billi? Chadda has created a ‘she saves him, he save her’ couple dynamic in ‘Dark Goddess’, matching Billi with someone equally driven and yet playful, honest and interested in others with no ulterior motive.

When readers first meet Ivan, Billi is rescuing him from a vampire, later Ivan shoots a werewolf that is trying to tear her throat out, showing that Chadda is in favour of gender equality in the life saving department. When Ivan wants to find the perfect present for Billi, her gets her an expensive gun, because he understands that Billi likes weapons. The first time Ivan calls her beautiful is when she’s dressed in chain mail for battle (yes alright I awed a little bit at that) because he understands her and sees her strength as a part of her to be celebrated. And just as Ivan likes Billi the way she is, Billi comes to like all of Ivan, even his cockiness, with his ‘yes I usually date super models’ comments. They love each other as they are!

Honestly Chadda is one of the coolest writers I’ve come across in ages. ‘Dark Goddess’ includes a society of deadly female werewolves, Russian mafia types, a secret male descendant of Anastasia who wears a diamond ear stud and loves beautiful guns, descriptions of the beauty of new and old weapons, plane crashes, a show down at Chernobyl.... it just goes on. He appeals to my violent, fantasy side.

He’s also one of the most responsible, cool writers I’ve come across. He writes violence, but he makes sure he tempers the glory that can automatically attach itself to violence in fiction when it helps to save the world by including scenes where Billi expresses reluctance at killing any member of the Polinetsky tribe that isn’t actively fighting them, just because werewolves are ‘Unholy’. He also shows the consequences of human villians becoming desensitized to violence, in what I thought was a chilling scene where Billi finds victims of violence chained in a storage container. So he’s still pushing the idea that violence can be put to a righteous purpose, by making the Templars warriors out to save the world by killing the Unholy, but he offsets this with reminders that violence shouldn’t always be your first solution, not even when the enemies you’re fight are supernatural monsters.

There’s so much good stuff in this book, I’m going to have to resort to a list to find the space to fit it in:

The use of a witch and a female group of paranormal creatures as the villains. I thought I was going to have major issues with that aspect of the book, but Chadda does so much work to make sure that his novel doesn’t devolve into ‘womenz, they are evil’ clichés.

The remarks about the state of the planet, which make the way we relate to Baba Yaga and the werewolves interest in removing the human race from the planet so much more complicated. I only occasionally felt this message becoming a bit preachy.

Billi and Ivan realise that their enemies goals may not be so far removed from their own (saving the world) although they would never agree with how Baba Yaga and the werewolves go about it (trying to wipe out humanity). I thought the base message of the need to try to understand peoples motives, despite the awful way they might try to achieve things was subtle and very relevant.

Sharper plot, sharper writing and better transitions from scene to scene than ‘Devil’s Kiss’. I also thought it was interesting to see just a couple of experimental devices crop up in this book (like a three sentence chapter).

There were still a few things I thought didn’t work so well, but then I am picky and most of them are tiny issues. What really stuck out to me was the ending. Chadda writes effective endings and I was freaked out by this one, but when ‘Devil’s Kiss’ ended I felt like it was implied that the ending was possibly a cliff hanger and the strangeness of the final page might mean something in the next book. That wasn’t really the case, at least the voice Billi hears on the final page wasn’t referred to in ‘Dark Goddess’. When I finished ‘Dark Goddess’ the ending had a similar cliff hanger feel, but because the books plots are self contained, rather than connecting I expect this potential cliff hanger feeling will prove to be false too. The ending was effective and it made me sad and a little afraid, but if what happens on the final page has no significance in the next book/rest of the series should there be more than three books I’ll feel a little like the scare factor was only inserted to provoke a final artificial spike of feeling.

The only other big bother for me was Billi’s relationship with her dad. Billi learns something so shocking in the first book and I expected their relationship to be better, but still tense. Instead it seemed fairly clam and I found that a little unrealistic. I expected to still see some problems between them, especially as their relationship was so central in the first novel and there were times when I found their new, kinder relationship just too easy in relation to all their history.

So many of my favourite fangirl inspiring projects have been cut short that I’m equal parts wary and hopeful that the projected third book will get bought by a publishers, but maybe positive energy (and money) can make a third Billi book appear. Whatever happens I know I’ll be paying out money for whatever Sarwat Chadda writes next. Good luck to him!

Other Reviews

The Booksmugglers
Wonderous Reads (including a guest post by Sarwat Chadda on his trip to Russia and ancient female characters)
Rhiana Reads
Alpha Reader
Reading in Color

City of Ghosts - Bali Rai

‘City of Ghosts’. This book did not go well for me.

'City of Ghosts’ by Bali Rai opens with an assassination in 1940s England. Within five pages Rai has introduced principle characters and used a dramatic event to capture the reader’s attention. He then proceeds to direct his readers away from the action of this opening chapter to a different time and place, transporting them to the Punjab city of Amritsar in 1912, presumably to explain why the assassin Udham Singh shot Michael O’Dwyer. The flashback narrative is a device that I know some people hate, but usually I enjoy a story that uses flashbacks to increase the tension of a book (although past life narratives tend to make me impatient). I was expecting to enjoy this book because of how this device quickly interested me in Udham and what sentences like 'What a shame, thought Udham, that O'Dwyer hadn't listened to the voices of the people he'd governed all those years ago.'.

Narratives that switch between decades and storylines need to be tightly structured in order to produce tension and encourage interest. Authors using this device need to switch time lines at significant points, to generate excited anticipation. They also need to remember to constantly link the story set in the past to the story set in the present in some way, otherwise the present narrative (which is probably shorter and less developed to ensure a sense of mystery remains until late in the book) begins to feel irrelevant to the reader. In the Amritsar chapters Udham Singh is a background presence who the reader is never allowed to significantly connect with. Trying to work out how his story relates to the Amritsar chapters becomes unpleasantly frustrating and it’s easy to forget that he is even an important character as he’s referred to so infrequently in the 1919 strand of the book.

In the Amritsar chapters (the main bulk of the book) we meet a host of main characters who each get their own plot line. Gurdial is an orphan in love with Sohni, the daughter of a rich, unpleasant cloth merchant. Her father and stepmother are in an unhappy marriage and have done some awful things to others. Mohni is a servant who knows all about their secrets and has made a promise to Sohni’s dead mother to protect her from them. Jeevan is Gurdial’s friend, who gets involved with Indians opposed to the British occupation. Bissen Singh was an Indian soldier who fought for the British during WWI and is now waiting in Amritsar for a letter from his lover, who is an English nurse.

Most of these characters get a section of the book that is dedicated to their story, where readers can follow their stories and motivations, but many of these characters feel as if they are only allowed to develop so far. Readers learn details about the characters that allow the plot to move forward in the way the author has decided it will go, instead of being fully developed people. Readers are told about Sohni’s love for Gurdial and her sadness over her mother’s death, which both relate to the book’s plot, but really learn nothing else about her. Javeen is a little better developed as readers learn that he is a bit of a clown, which has nothing to do with how the plot moves forward. Then they find out that he is looking for somewhere to belong and readers hear a terrible story about his mother, which provides motivation for his actions, which will help to further the plot of the novel. These character’s stories could be wonderful if expanded, or if they were separated into their own novellas. Rai would have time to fill in extra emotional details about his characters. He would also be able to express the ideas, such as resentment over British rule, that he tries to associate with different characters in fuller, more cohesive ways.

Unfortunately when these characters are put into a novel where there are other exciting storylines that need to progress there simply isn’t space, or time for all the characters to be developed into full human beings. The plots of each character’s individual story are enjoyable and original (especially Sohni and her parents stories) but I often felt removed from the characters because I didn’t know enough about them.

In my opinion, Bissen Singh is the most fully developed character, as later in the book his back story is explained and it is a story that has little impact on later events in Amritsar. However, I did think that my own interest in stories set in WWI and my basic knowledge about Indian soldiers who fought for the British in WWI made this storyline feel more developed than other readers might find it. Bissen’s story often seems caught between making a larger point about Indian soldiers relationship with the British and trying to avoid making any kind of definite political point. If Rai had taken either of those directions I would have been happy, but a state of uncomfortable, thinness is created which leaves Bissen’s narrative feeling unsatisfactory as an explanatory narrative and slightly self conscious about being ‘just’ a story. Still, I really enjoyed reading about Bissen’s time in France, his romance and the small parts of the book about Bissen’s life in Amritsar easing his pain with opium, while he waits for a letter.

The novel switches between three different time periods (Bissen’s backstory is told in long flashback section, where the story goes back to 1912). Gurdial’s story contains what starts out sounding like a folktale aspect, as Sohni’s father asks him to return with the most precious thing in India by Vakshika if he wants to marry his daughter and Gurdial has to puzzle out the riddle, with some supernatural help. There’s a supernatural element that follows several of the characters and takes the book almost into the territory of magical realism. There’s a fifth perspective offered on events, as readers watch British army officers react to revolts in Amritsar. I’ll never be one to tell you a novel is too complex because it has a big cast, or follows multiple time lines, or wants to investigate a multitude of complex ideas, but in ‘The City of Ghosts’ a fatal combination of too much and not enough occurs. The mix of timelines and different literary tropes (magical realism, romance, political thriller) sound original, but the book feels cluttered. Collected together all the different stories compete and distract, continually asking the reader to readjust to a different kind of story. In this one case, in this one novel I feel like the constant readjustment of perspective, is too much to ask of readers (or me at least), especially when Rai leaves so many characters undeveloped and so many political aspects unexplained. The changes between the way I was expected to read the book were just too abrupt for me, as it changed from a piece of magical realism, to a realistic narrative set in WWI, to a typical novel of India seen form a British military perspective. Again if all these types writing has been separate novels I think I would have enjoyed them more, but all together I just found all the switching about needless.

Like I said above many aspects of the political situation in the Punjab in 1912 are sketched in quickly and left mostly unexplained. Rai seems to have assumed his readers will have previous knowledge about the political situation in early twentieth century India and that seems a rather unusual assumption to make, especially considering that this is young adult novel. I don’t think India under the Raj is a subject that gets a lot of attention in secondary school education, which is not to say teenagers aren’t able to find things out independently, but I think the majority of teenagers and adults could do with a bit more background to what helped to create the tense atmosphere in Amritsar. Coming out of this book I still didn’t have a clear idea of what the Rowlatt Act was, though it was mentioned many times and I got the vague idea it had something to do with increasing taxes. There were other subjects that I felt were touched on briefly, too briefly for someone starting with almost no knowledge of Indian history. The reader is bombarded with ideas, historical context and characters, but complex ideas and contextual items are inserted fleetingly, almost like Rai is name dropping ideas like racial dilution, non violent protest and the Rowlatt Act without providing any substance to contextualise the idea.

When I’m not enjoying a novel all sorts of little peculiarities begin to annoy me. Suddenly, I was noticing the over abundance of varied dialogue tags like 'Ram joked', 'Jeevan whispered' and thinking about what Raych would make of them. I started longing for nuanced villains as there didn’t seem to be any. I got annoyed that the novel expresses such clear ideas about which characters readers should be sympathetic towards and on what terms these characters can be defined as sympathetic. I wanted clarity on quite a few ambiguous details (who is the Chinaman, is he the devil?) and was unable to make sense of the significance of the reoccurring smell of rotting onions and sour milk.

It really is like a Yeti rolling down a snowy hill once I begin to get annoyed, all the little flaws accumulate and distract me from taking pleasure in the book. ‘City of Ghosts’ is written in robust prose and full of adventure, romance and interesting characters, it was just too crowded and felt like it wasn’t expanded as much as it should have been to provide the most interesting, informative story about the life and violence that took place in Amritsar in 1912.

Other Reviews

Reading in Color

Challenge Completed - GLBT

I completed The Challenge That Dare Not Speak It’s Name quite a while ago, but I keep forgetting to make a post about it. I’m being terrible at keeping track of my challenges this year but I think this is the second one I’ve completed (the first being Carl’s Once Upon a Time challenge). Amanda made me want to reach the top level on this challenge, by calling it The Rainbow Level – the only way she could have made it more attractive would have been to call it the Unicorn level and that would not have made a whole lot of sense. I read 13 (my lucky number) books featuring GLBT issues, or by GLBT authors for the challenge:

‘The Happy Island’ – Dawn Powell
‘Masks, Rise of Heroes’ – Hayden Thorne
‘Down to the Bone’ – Mayra Lazra Dole
‘Rules for Hearts’ – Sara Ryan
‘False Colors’ – Alex Beecroft
‘The Lacuna’ – Barbara Kingsolver
‘Cycler’ – Lauren McLaughlin
‘Out of the Pocket’ – Bill Konigsberg (related sidenote: the Stonewall newsletter tells me Gareth Thomas is the first openly gay rugby player still playing professionally in the UK (came out publically in 2009) and Bill Konigsberg has written articles about how he hopes gay sportsmen will begin to come out in the US while they're still playing professionally)
‘Boy Meets Boy’ – David Leviathan
‘The Little Stranger’ – Sarah Waters
‘The God Box’ – Alex Sanchez
‘The Mariposa Club’ – Rigoberto Gonzalez
'The Vast Fields of Ordinary' - Nick Burd

I think I read two more books that would have fitted the challenge, but didn't link them up in the reviews bit ('Leviathan' and 'Walk to the End of the World'). So hard to decide on favourites, but I think 'Out of the Pocket' is pretty stand out, I defy anyone to finish 'Boy Meets Boy' without a smile on thier face and 'The Little Stranger' makes me want all of Sarah Waters previous books.


It’s not an especially diverse list – only two books with lesbian main characters, one book with a transgender main character, three books with latino main characters and two books with bisexual secondary characters out of the eleven books that feature GLBT characters (as Sarah Water’s enters the list because she’s a GLBT author, not because The Little Stranger contains GLBT characters). A lot of male main characters on this list. I’m gathering recommendations for books with transsexual characters and books written by transsexual authors for next year’s reading, but I’d love more. In fact I'd love any recommendations for great GLBTQ novels in general. I’m also really interested in finding more books with characters who are a different race from me and are part of the GLBTQ community. Zetta Elliott wrote a post about how few books there are with gay main characters for African American teenagers, so any recommendations you can think of would be great.

Some exciting news for next year is that I’ll be a panelist for the Independent Literary Awards, the GLBTQ category so I should be exposed to five new, great books with GLBTQ characters in 2011. I'm hoping people nominate a really interesting load of submissions, pop over an nominate if you can think of a book that fits the category.

I have a few other books waiting to be read that would fit with the challenge and Rainbow level is for 13+ books, but if I don’t write this post now I’ll forget to do it. So this is where my official challenge reading ends for the year, but at home I have:

'At Swim, Two Boys' - Jamie ONeill: Everyone keep telling me I have to read this book and then see the play. Maybe this would make a good Christmas break chunkster.

'The Bermudez Triangle' – Maureen Johnson: One more author whose blog I love, but whose books I haven’t read. What happens when your two best female friends become a couple and you feel squeezed out?

‘London Triptych’ - Jonathan Kemp: Green Carnation prize book that I talked about here. I really wanted to read ‘Man’s World’ by Rupert Smith off the prize list too, but it is proving frustratingly hard to get hold of.

‘Hero’ – Perry Moore: I put this in a storage box and now keep forgetting to read it. I really want to read it, why aren’t I reading it now? Gay superhero!

‘Notes from an Exhibition’ – Patrick Gale: An author who I think was a litlove suggestion. I love books about artists and don’t think I read enough of them.

‘Gentleman Jigger’ - Richard Bruce Nugent : The classic I should have read for the Harlem Renaissance Classics Circuit, but did not get to. A young man from a wealthy black family moves to Greenwich village.

85A - Kyle Thomas Smith: Sent to me from the author for review (thanks again). It's set in 1989 and it looks like the main character is a teenage, gay, punk hoping to escape to London.

Thanks so much to Amanda for hosting this challenge and to all the people who guest posted on the challenge blog.

'Down to the Bone' - Mayra Lazra Doyle

Young adult novels where the main character gets outed always make me cringe, because coming out seems such a huge decision to lose control over. In ‘Down to the Bone’ Laura gets outed in spectacularly awful way. A nun reads a letter from Laura’s girlfriend to her entire Catholic class. The backlash against tortillierras (the derogatory Spanish slang for lesbians) starts right away, as Laura is thrown out of school and then thrown out of her mother’s house when she refuses to name her girlfriend. Laura quickly finds out how hard the Cuban-American community can be on lesbians.

Luckily she has her best friend Soli (the only black Latina at their Catholic school) and Soli’s mother Viva to take care of her while she tries to work out what to do. Over the next year Laura makes some spectacular new friends, messes up, sorts herself out and begins to accept herself as a lesbian.

I’m obviously not going to get any further with this review, as I finished the book ages ago and things got in the way of me completing the review. Will you forgive me if I offer up a resources post instead and let other reviews talk about why you might want to read ‘Down to the Bone’?


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The Growing Tower

I am reading too many things at once! I know lots of bloggers are multiple bookers, but I try to read only one book at a time, since the time in my teenage years where I just wasn’t finishing any books. Right now I have bookmarks in four books, which is leaving me feeling a little unbalanced – I’m an obsessive completist ok, I have an issue. I could really use the 24 hour readathon to make some progress, but I’ll be at a wedding on Saturday so I’ll just have to see what progress can be made on Sunday:

The Plot Against America – Philip Roth: I am reading this along with Bonjour Cass, as we seek to conquer Mt Remember That Guy Before Franzen (it’s not a very well named mountain is it). There is quite a bit of stamp collecting in this book, mixed in with the bits I am interested in. I heard Stephen Fry (on the Rob Brydon show – how nice that they are celebrity friends) say he is really interested in everything, except celebrities from reality tv shows. I am interested in some very odd things, but it turns out stamp collecting is not one of them. Even farm management is more interesting – which leads me to...

Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy: I need to put this book in a more visible place. It’s sitting on top of a stack on the landing, but I seem to have stopped associating this pile with interesting things to read. I am really enjoying it, but I find it easy to forget just how pleasant it is to spend time with it once I’ve put it down. Instead I keep remembering it’s by the formidable Tolstoy who had a large beard that makes him look like Dumbledore’s evil twin. The next time I go back to it I’ll be reading Part Six, way past the farm management theory (which was kind of fascinating) and still hating Mr Karenina (booo).

Dark Echo – F G Cotham: My third book for the RIP V challenge and a TBR challenge book. This book is sometimes truly gruesome and so I can’t read it after dark, or while eating my lunch just in case. That means there is just one hour of my day when I can read this book. Curse you, fear of murderous ghosts. I feel like the author read a lot of Stephen King (detailed character relationships that keep you from realising just how the horror is building up, until BAM) and then brought his own background into the mix to produce something that is cool, if sometimes slightly annoying. There is not just a cursed boat, there is also a very creepy barn and what looks like some pretty complex background plotting that I’m hoping will tie up nicely, instead of making me confused. This many priests and failed priests do not congregate in a horror novel by coincidence.

City of Ghosts – Bali Rai: There is a supernatural element to this young adult historical novel set in India. I am almost sure of it, now that I’ve read 50 pages. This is my lunch time book now that Dark Echo has revealed its horrible boat related injuries. Right now it’s a story about love, secrets, dreams and flawed parents.

I hope anyone taking part in readathon has a fab time. If you’ve got time for a question before you get preparing I’d love to know what areas of interest that aren’t very mainstream fail to encourage your surprised fascination (stamp collecting for me, maybe railways for you?).

National Poetry Day 2010

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK and I finally got my act together to do a post on something related to current literary events on the day the events are taking place. Hurray for me! This year’s theme is ‘Home’ (did you know National Poetry Day had a theme each year?) so I thought I’d put up a post about 5 of my favourite poems by home grown authors, complete with poetic excerpts. Don’t expect to find many lesser known gems here, I often like the big names when it comes to the Brits, but maybe that means some of you will recognise poems you like here too:

'The Glory of Women' – Siegfried Sassoon

‘You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,’

‘Dreamers’ is probably Sassoon’s best known work and it is also in my poetry notebook, but I wanted to showcase this short poem which shows a rather different side to the sad, brilliant war poet lots of us learn about it school. Sassoon was angry at women’s response to the war and having led men to die, he was sure he had a right to generalise. He disguised his real disgust for British women by ending this poem as if it is addressed to the ‘German mother’ to make it more palatable for his British audience. Problematic, but for me the fourth line I’ve quoted here is simple, poetic style put to a forceful use and it really does make my stomach drop every time I hear it. I've probably said this before but if you like Sassoon's poetry, you have got to try 'Regeneration' by Pat Barker.

'He Tells Her' – Wendy Cope

‘He tells her that the Earth is flat—
He knows the facts, and that is that.
In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.
But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.’

I snuck in a whole poem there, it's only short. I love Wendy Cope. She’s puts forward truths I can recognise in a funny way and balances rhyme and comedy without being twee. This is a real ‘up yours, mate’ type of poem, perfect for reading when your partner has royally pissed you off. It should be followed by 'The Sitter', a poem by Cope about a Nude paiting that makes the subject look 'Depressed and disagreeable and fat'. It's final, vengeful lines 'Admired, well-bred, artistic Mrs Bell/ I hope you're looking hideous in Hell.' are great to spit out when you've met a really unpleasant pretty person ;)

'Centaur' – Srikanth Reddy

‘who knew there would be so much
blood in a horse not the horse
not the horseman ashing
on the mudflap as he counts
three or four reds in the sunset
thinking maybe gradations
could empty one’s head of a horse’

I’m not sure how well known Srikanth Reddy is, but he’s fab. He's a modern poet who published his first and so far, only collection ‘Facts for Visitors’ about six year ago. He writes poems that critics say relate to ancient India, but with my limited knowledge of that area of history I find myself relating them to imagery from ancient Rome. What makes this poem for me is the use of line breaks that create almost a jerky rhythm and draw the reader on, as well as the beauty Reddy injects into a poem which is about the violent death of an animal.

'Dockery and Son' – Philip Larkin

‘ 'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.’

I love, love, love so many poems by Larkin that I could have chosen five favourites just by him. The other four would have been ‘This Be the Verse’, ‘Talking in Bed’, ‘Water’ and ‘Mr Bleaney’. What is it about Larkin that makes his poetry so special to me? There’s an undeniable attraction created by his combination of biting cynicism and downright fondness for everything about his society and England. I wonder if it’s possible to live in the West Midlands without feeling a conflicting sense of deep loyalty, weary disbelief, hatred and pride when something goes right - I can't seem to manage to fix on just one way of looking at our area, or our country. Is it possible to live in England without feeling a similar squeeze of confusion when someone mentions ‘national pride’? Larkin's the poet to remind you that this kind of confusion is only healthy when it comes to a country like England.

In this poem I particularly like the way he weaves a full story, using such a poems short form. His sudden use of mundane details that throw the reader off track, for example the ‘awful pie’ that he mentions eating later, contrasts so sharply with his deep thoughts on having children and being confined by our assumptions that they jolt you and make you concentrate on how depth and everyday life coexist. And there are those stanza end line breaks, which make the reader pay attention and help connect the stanzas at the same time.

'Twelve Things I Don't Want to Hear' - Connie Bensley

'Assemble this is eight straightforward steps.
Start with a fish stock, made the day before.
The driver has arrived but, sadly, drunk.
We'll need some disinfectant for the floor.'

This is the only poem I know by Connie Bensley, but it's a corker. I think it really demonstrates how technical comedic writing is. You have to use so much structure and be so sure of how to use rhyme and punctuation to make someone laugh. Poets who write funny poems are not taking the easy way out.

My favourite line of this first stanza is the third one, which sounds just like an employee of some hotel who isn't personally affected by the driver turning up drunk reporting the news in their best 'keep calm' voice. I imagine it's the driver of a fancy car for a wedding and the person who needs the car first perks up, then hears sadly and finally plummets as they register the word 'drunk. This poem sounds like a normally patient woman counting off all the problems she's faced in a particularly trying month with a mixture of resignation and irritation.

Don't forget if you're in the UK, you can watch 'The Song of Lunch' tomorrow, which is a drammatisation of a poem by Christopher Reid and will star Emma Thompson (imagine me having a massive girlcrush swoon right here, she is just amazing) and Alan Rickman (I hope these two are friends in real life).

'The Tapestry of Love' - Rosy Thornton

Like her previous novel 'Crossed Wires’, which I reviewed last year, Rosy Thornton’s newest novel, ‘The Tapestry of Love’ includes some of the standard conventions of the romance genre. There’s a love interest, a romantic misunderstanding and a happy ending. Like ‘Crossed Wires’ it’s also a novel that is interested in showing romance growing in the lives of real characters in the middle of lives preoccupied with other important aspects of live. The heroine of ‘The Tapestry of Love’ is a middle aged English woman called Catherine Parkeston, who has moved from England to a cottage in the remote Cevennes mountains to set up a soft furnishings business. She leaves behind a friendly ex-husband, two grown children and a mother with advanced Alzheimers. She begins to settle into the small community of neighbours who also live outside the nearest town and to make a close friend in Patrick Castagnol, a dashing local landowner. Patrick looks a likely romantic interest for Catherine, but when her corporate, career driven sister Bryony comes to visit she begins her own romance with Patrick. When Bryony decides to take a sabbatical from her job Catherine doesn’t object to her sister pursuing a romance with her friend.

I keep wanting to describe ‘The Tapestry of Love’ as the perfect book for a very rainy day. It’s very relaxing and entertaining to read. It’s also smarter and more observant of the details of human interactions than that line might suggest. Rosy Thornton uses such a subtle, natural touch when she writes her characters and the world they live in, that the result feels emotionally real, but never crosses into the kind of claustrophobic, happy or sad intensity that I so enjoy, but must take in small amounts to avoid over dosing. Thornton isn’t really aiming to expose her characters if that makes sense. She seeks to depict all of Catherine’s different interests and thoughts to create a character that isn’t always simple to categorise, but is open for readers to investigate. She describes the details of Catherine’s surroundings in a similar way, so that readers are aware of the contradictions and layers of the Cevennes mountain landscape but never really feel as if they can firmly know everything about the mountains. There’s always the sense that there is more to explore about the characters and the landscape, without any frustrating obscuring fuzziness being put in the way to make character or landscape deliberately mysterious.

Thornton wants to delve into her character’s feelings to a significant depth, but she perhaps doesn’t feel the need to peel back all their defences. Perhaps I’d call Thornton’s method of presenting her character’s emotions the happy, healthy type of typical British approach to emotion (as opposed to that horrible national stereotype of us all being uptight and unfeeling), where someone wants to understand other people, but also wants to allow them a measure of privacy and the freedom to pleasantly deceive themselves as long as their deception isn’t harmful. Her character Catherine certainly believes in this way of relating to people, as she allows both her children the space to come to her in their own time and allows her daughter Lexie to deceive herself about what a new job at a special interest magazine might offer despite wanting to offer her advice about her career. She doesn’t prod Patrick to reveal his past, or push her French neighbours into forming immediate relationships with her when she arrives. Her reward is deep friendships which develop over time and children who eventually reveal their loves and hopes to her of their own free will. Maybe I’m projecting how I can see the main character relating to other people, on to how Thornton approaches presenting her character’s emotions, but it certainly feels like there’s a connection to me – that Thornton wonders if people need to be entirely exposed and analysed to feel knowable.

Having read ‘Crossed Wires’ I consider characters Thornton’s strong point character development, while her plot development and resolutions can be rather uninventive. The happy ending in this book is achieved by a few rather convenient saves that allow Catherine to go after romance and continue to run her business. The plot’s resolution is obviously contrived, but this reader wasn’t bothered by that flaw. The characters I cared about got the emotional payoff I wanted for them. This is one of the few novels where I can really say I would have been emotionally disappointed if there hadn’t been a happy ending, instead of being sad but emotionally rewarded.

I suspect I keep thinking about reading this book while it rains because the rainy season in the novel’s Cevennes setting is such a force. The landscape around Catherine’s cottage and the descriptions of the seasons adds a rich feeling of sensory detail to the novel. And the sensory detail extends into the descriptions of the tapestries Catherine produces, the meals she eats and the animals she sees around her cottage. I could picture the tiny wild boar piglets she eventually sees and the sheep taking part in the transhumance (traditional herding of sheep to different pastures).Thornton’s remote France is a comforting place to spend hours, because of all the thick smells, tastes and weather she writes into the location, which wrap around you as you read.

‘The Tapestry of Love’ is not like a lot of books about English people moving to a foreign country, which frankly I now avoid as if their covers will scald me. There are moments when Catherine is baffled by French procedure, homesick and confused about her relations with her neighbours, but the book doesn’t swing from tragedy to comedy in an effort to convince the reader that a personal journey to set up home and business in another country is exciting. Instead it lays out the contents of Catherine’s small adventure and lets the reader decide for themselves that it is exciting to watch a gentle, thoughtful person’s life unfold before them. If you’re in the mood for some kind, but robust and sensible fiction about moving on, making new connections and starting again in a foreign country then I’d recommend investigating this novel. Thanks to Rosy Thornton for sending me a copy to review and apologies for putting it up later than I said I
would.

Other Reviews

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Iris on Books
Jenny's Books
Charlotte Otter
Vuples Libres
Dot Scribbles
Of Books and Bicycles
So Many Books
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Telecommuter Talk

Walk to the End of the World - Suzy McKee Charnas

I read ‘Walk to the End of the World’ ages ago now but I wanted to write something about it because it was a book brought to my attention by a wonderful blogger friend Villa Negativa. I think it would have been a huge shame if I’d gone through life without reading this radical novel, because it renewed my appreciation for the female authors who pioneered the spiky sub genre of feminist sci-fi and for the feminists who cut paths through the jungle for us to follow. I will just caution that this book is old school feminist dystopia, which means it shows exactly how bad things can get for women and there is quite a lot of sexual violence against women, which some people may need to be aware of.

‘Walk to the End of the World’ takes place in a dystopian future where most of the Earth’s civilisation has been destroyed. What’s left is known as The Holdfast, which is part city, part mountain civilisation, hemmed in by the unpopulated Wild. In a prologue Charnas tells us that a catastrophe called the Wasting has decimated the world, but certain manly men sheltered from the Wasting and took a few women into their shelter. In the new world women, along with other culpable groups, are held responsible for the catastrophe. While the other groups (which include all the animals) have been destroyed, women, or fems as they are known, have been kept as breeding partners and general slaves. The world survives on a crop of long kelps, or lammins and hemp, but the staple lammin crop is beginning to fail.

‘Walk to the End of the World’ contains the intricate world building, you’d expect to find in a sci-fi novel and I won’t try to outline it here, although I really enjoyed that aspect of the novel. Outside of the detailed workings of the world Suzy McKee Charnas has created, the novel has a simple plot and is essentially a quest narrative. At the same time it’s a novel focused on characterisation, one of those sci-fi stories where the plot of the novel is the characters interactions, not just the battles and chase scenes they’re engaged in. I could talk about so many different aspects of this novella, but because the part that enlarged my thinking is related to the feminist politics in this novel that’s what I’ll be concentrating on.

In this first part of her Holdfast Chronicles Suzy McKee Charnas reveals The Holdfast to be an intensely misogynistic society that any feminist reader must despise (it’s also a racist society as the quote below will show). Familiar sexist rhetoric is used to allow society to justify keeping women enslaved. Women caused the wasting with their sins, much as Eve caused the downfall of humanity, although the women in The Holdfast are said to have caused the Wasting through their political misdeeds, not moral sin:

‘It was a Black female’s refusal to sit in the back of the bus that sparked the rebellion of the Blacks; female Gooks fought against our troops in the Eastern wars; female terrorists made bombs side by side with our own rebel sons, whose mothers had brought them up to be half men; female vermin of all kinds spewed out millions of young to steal our food supplies and our living space! Females themselves brought on the Wasting of the world!’

Readers later learn that among other things society believes women’s brains are dull and women do not feel as men. Women are described as ‘unmen’, a term which will sound familiar to anyone who has come across the notion that male is the norm and a term used by the men to describe anyone who doesn’t fit society’s image of a man. The prologue alerts readers to what kind of society they are about to enter. By using a bombastic, antiquated style of language for the prologue, which outlines what the men believe and by using an omniscient narrator to introduce corrections such as :

‘The men did not notice their own shocked faces and raw voices. They had acted, they thought, responsibly, rightly – and had lost everything. They did not realise they had lost their sanity, too.’

to the male perspective McKee Charnas makes sure readers know she wants them to take the women’s side in this world.

And yet on the first page McKee Charnas presents a male character, who exudes a strong sense of personality and mystery. Captain Kelmz is described sparingly in a way which excites the reader’s curiosity:

‘…a man waited, his hands tucked into his sleeves against the night’s chill. He was a Rover Captain in full uniform under his disguise of blanks. He stood alone in the shadow of a doorway.’

Then she quickly goes on to describe the attractive, but dangerous physical appearance d Layo (Servan) who will soon become a second main character:

‘Heavy-muscled, smooth-moving, a tawny-coloured night-slinker, a prowling predator with a broad, blunt-nosed face and wide-curling mouth, d Layo padded before his mind’s eye.’

How can a reader fail to be interested in these mysterious, unclear characters? And as the novel develops readers will become deeply interested in these two characters and a third named Eykar Bek, despite knowing that they are men who belong to the misogynistic society outlined in the prologue. In my opinion, Suzy McKee Charnas’ genius is that she creates male characters who are incredibly easy to like and sympathise with so that readers emerge from ‘Walk to the End of the World’ aware of just how deep misogynistic culture goes and how easy it is to look away from the complicit misogyny that many men take part in, because these men present so many other reasons for why they should be viewed as likeable.

The three main characters Captain Kelmz, Servan and Eykar are deeply mired in misogynistic complicity, as they are men who don’t challenge the treatment of fems. They don’t just remain silent during the ill treatment of fems and receive passive benefits, such as the product of femme labour, passed on as a result of being the privileged class in a misogynistic society. They also actively increase the ill treatment of fems by beating and raping women and they often using misogynistic language to perpetuate the rhetoric that keeps fems second class ‘unmen’. The Holdfast’s misogynistic society provides sanctioned places and describes ‘productive’ reasons for sexism and rape, which makes any male member of that society who doesn’t challenge the treatment of fems, complicit in the misogynistic structure of their society. This passive complicity then turns into outright aggression towards the fems they personally encounter. Readers learn that Kelmz, has taken his turn in the breeding house, raping women with the justification of the state at his back and both d Layo and Eykar will go on to rape female characters outside of the sanctioned time in the breeding house.

The three main male characters should seem despicable, because of the society they take part in and their violence towards women. So how does the author make these characters engaging, likeable and interesting even to readers who are aware of what kind of violent oppression they perpetuate and what is her purpose in doing so? She initially puts the entire focus of her novella on to the three male characters and their interactions with other male characters. Kelmz, Servan and Eykar each get their own section of the novella where their experiences are concentrated on and reported by an omniscient narrator. Although small comments begin to accumulate after the prologue that alert readers to how the fems are viewed and treated in The Holdfast, the main characters have little direct contact with fems initially, so readers don’t see them personally treating female characters badly until a little way into the first section of the novella. The reader are engaged with the men’s hopes, struggles and relationships for several chapters of Kelmz section before much is mentioned about the condition of the fems life after the prologue is over. Quick bonds are formed between reader and the three main characters, while the reader’s relationship with the fems is kept impersonal and small.

Readers may first noticeably begin to understand that the characters exist in an unequal society when Servan and Eykar wander among work groups of fems on the shore:

‘He turned and shouted down the length of the shed, ‘Pull it in, you bitches! If you make the master touch you in passing, you’ll pay for it!’

He cracked his switch down on the table-end. The fems, working in teams across the narrow surface, pressed their lean bellies against the table’s edge.’

However, by the time readers are confronted by more visible, violent misogyny that comes directly from the three main characters when they talk face to face with fems in a work shed it’s too late for readers to retreat and view the male characters purely as oppressors – to essentially characterise misogyny as something done by villains and as a consequence dismiss it as something that doesn’t exist except in special cases. As I’ve mentioned above bonds are quickly formed between the male characters and the reader as the author situates Kelmz, then Eykar and Servan as main characters. There’s a lot to be said for the quick jolt of empathy evoked in a reader, when they meet the main character – I know I instinctually want to take the time to connect and understand a main character, even if I’m not sure I like them. Personally the fact that the male main characters exist in a world where loving homosexual relationships are the norm, made me immediately warm towards them, before I reached the point where they were directly involved in oppressing and denigrating women. Even if that isn’t a factor for other readers the sure detailing of the characters personal lives and the strange force of personality they all exude (even though only Servan could really be described as charismatic) will form a deep connection with readers. By making the male main characters fugitives from general, repressive society when they join Eykbar on his forbidden quest, McKee Charnas encourages readers to empathise with them as characters fighting for a cause. Each has his own troubled back story, Kelmz especially and as we quickly learn he has lost his lover and is being squeezed out of the job he lives for by his superiors it is easy to feel for him. The author intends this feeling to encourage the reader to enjoy the story because they enjoy getting to know the characters and to be a source of discomfort, as readers realise just how misogynistic the characters they are enjoying spending time with are.

Readers now have to navigate the three main male characters on dual terms – as oppressors and as human beings with their own enemies, hopes and troubles. Maybe this sounds like Charnas is trying to encourage her readers to say ‘even misogynistic men are human’, but to me it seems she seems that by encouraging readers to empathise with characters who then smack them in the face with violent, misogyny she enables readers to stop justifying misogynistic actions. She encourages readers to dismantle the argument that someone can’t be misogynistic because they’re nice in other ways, the two states can co-exist she says and a man’s misogyny (as well as his complicit involvement in a misogynistic society) must be acknowledged despite other characteristics that might allow him to present himself as a ‘good’ man. Some people might say you can switch that argument on its head so that a misogynistic man must be judged on his good points as well as his treatment of women, but I don’t think that’s an argument that is present in ‘Walk to the End of the World’.

Creating a personal link between the characters in this book who oppress fems and the reader serves many radical feminist functions. One, it makes readers aware that men who society judges as kind and compassionate in many ways, could still be oppressive misogynists. Two, it reminds readers that even those battered by their own troubles could oppress other groups (and this works within the conflicting structure of feminism too, although that’s not a point Charnas is directly addressing in this novella). Three it reminds readers that by impersonalising the misogynistic elements in society we can create demons instead of addressing the misogyny perpetuated by ordinary society. Four, the way the book focuses on the men and the empathy this focus produces towards misogynistic, male characters reminds readers just how much we are socially conditioned to focus on men and their troubles. Finally as the incidents of violence against women keep coming, readers can’t help reacting against the male characters as the author must have hoped. There’s a particular moment that made me want to lash out (and judging by the scribbled swear words in my copy the last owner wanted to wallop the men one sometimes). When Eykar, finally seeing clearly just how his society abuses fems, decides that he must forget the knowledge to have the strength to carry out the end of his quest and says:

‘ ‘There must be no horror, no rape, nothing outside of the ordinary, superficial relations between men and fems. Therefore I can’t permit you to be a person.’ '

Just… the words, they fail.

As I said this is a radical feminist novel, written in the 1970s so McKee Charnas isn’t all about encouraging us empathise with the male characters. There are quite a few dead male characters in this book and an emerging male society that hopes to survive on fem flesh is destroyed. Alldera, the main female character, gets her own section towards the end of the book and she spends plenty of time refuting the male society, as well as the fems who originally enabled the men to enslave women by saying ‘let’s do what they say for now.’. She offers the more direct link to the real situation for fems in The Holdfast, unfiltered by male rhetoric (although Alldera makes use of the way men view fems she twists their views with mocking sarcasm). There is also some hope in this book for better relations between men and women, shown by conversations between Eykar and Alldera towards the end of the book where he begins to see her as a human being, although these hopes are never fully realised in this novel. When I finish the sequel ‘Motherlines’ I’m sure I’ll have lots of interesting things to discuss about Alldera and her attitudes to life. Right I’m stopping here, because there are so many different angles I could examine this book from I’ll be here all day.

Maybe not all the feminist views stand up to the test of time if you look at them as views to be applied to our own society, although they make internal sense within the book and must have made sense in 1974, when the book was published. Some people might think this book too extreme, too angry and the male characters too casually violent, but I could believe in the world that drove Charnas to create the extremes of The Holdfast society. Bed down on a cold, grey day with ‘Walk to the End of the World’ and pair it with the short dystopian novel ‘The Carhullan Army’ by Sarah Hall for maximum depression and radical hints at hope.