When he was two months old, I took the baby to story time at 57th Street Books. This was part of my initiative to do all sorts of activities that would make him well balanced and educated and sociable from a super early age. I was going to take advantage of the cultural enrichment of the city, and we were going to go to T-ball and boy scouts and piano lessons and museums and the beach and farmer's markets and volunteering and parades. Lately this drive to get up and do stuff has turned into a desperate need to kill time for a few hours and absolutely having to get out of the house every day.
The week I picked to start going happened to be Halloween. A bunch of the kids were in costume, including the penguin sitting next to us that kept trying to sit in my lap. All the kids were older than my baby, (because I guess people generally don't bring their two-month-olds to story time) and I was starting to get the feeling that this was a mistake and I was once again doing everything wrong. I mean, he didn't even have a Halloween costume because I had big plans to make him a bee outfit and then never got around to putting it together.
But, oh well, we'd try it. What was the worst that would happen?
So story time started with going around the circle and handing each kid a cupcake. (Except my kid. He wouldn't know what to do with it.) Then they went around the circle and handed each kid a napkin, but by then it was far too late. Then they handed every adult a can of Sanpellegrino. Then they gave each adult a discreet paper bag with Halloween candy that they could later decide to give their kids or not. They did give me a bag of Halloween candy, and I decided to not give it to my kid.
So far so good, aside from the frosting covered penguin next to me.
The baby was fascinated by all the kids with their glitter princess costumes and their shouting and their ability to walk.
Story time got started with a brand new book about an elephant and a pig. The kids perked up, bouncing from their butts to their knees to get closer, whispering about "Gereld." The adults gave me the impression that the release of this book was an event to be celebrated in the Hyde Park Community because Mo Willems was a friend of theirs. Maybe he usually came to story time, but just not this week for reasons everyone but me already knew.
This was when I got the inkling that we were in trouble for reasons beyond my social anxiety, because the woman running story time was a fantastic, emotive reader. This would not be a problem for someone who's not two months old and doesn't have freak outs during hammed up readings of "The Monster at the End of this Book."
We were already walking a fine line with just a story about a pig sharing slop. Any second, the pig was going to be too distressed the elephant didn't like his slop or the elephant would be too belligerent about how slop is gross and the baby would respond to these raised emotion by bursting into tears. Already a little line was forming between his eyebrows.
Ready to snatch him up and comfort him, I gripped my hands into fists and prayed he'd be distracted by the penguin. I prayed the stories would stay relitively tame.
The minute I prayed this, the story time leader announced that it was Halloween and she was going to read scary stories.
The second book was "Leo: A Ghost Story" about a ghost boy who a girl mistakes for an imaginary friend and they had a great time together. No incident. Okay. We were going to get through this.
Then a kid in the front sat forward. "Read the one about the witch!"
Oh God.
In her best witchy voice, the woman running story time started to read. The baby's eyes widened. Then they scrunched. His little fists shook. A high, piercing wail burst out of his tiny body.
We left as quickly as we could, which was not quickly at all given that the penguin had hold of my pants and I had to gather my coat and the diaper bag and the baby and my half finished Sanpellegrino.
"Okay," I told the baby as we walked home, him looking much better now that he had trees to look at. "That was an adventure. We get points for trying, and we'll try again in a few months."
Over time, it's turned from a depressing story about how I don't understand age appropriateness because I'm a terrible mother to a funny story about how the baby's scared of witches. All the Halloween candy I ate as soon as we got home probably helped with that.
He's seven months now and he not only doesn't scream when he hears a dramatic story, but thinks it's kind of funny. Added to this, he took a really short nap, which threw off my plans for what we'd do that day. So why not try story time again? No one will remember our retreat.
There were no cupcakes and no glitter princesses, but there was singing and a discussion about colors. The baby flirted with the woman behind us and tried to crawl to get the kid's backpack next to us. I'm starting to relax when the story time leader pulls out
"Leo: A Ghost Story."
Ha. Oh man.
Then she looked me right in the eyes, and with sudden dread I knew she remembered us.
"I won't use a scary voice," she said.
"We're those people forever," I thought. "Okay," I said.
March 20, 2016
March 17, 2016
A Darker Shade of Magic Review
This week's novel is A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab. This one was recommended by my mom, who gets a gold star.
Kell can travel between worlds. There are four of these worlds, stacked one on top of another like pages in a book: boring and magicless Grey London, opulent Red London, power hungry White London, and destroyed by its own evilness Black London. When an artifact from Black London pops up and starts possessing people and luring them towards overwhelming, evil magic, Kell has to carry it across dimensions to destroy it. He's pursued by minions of White London and aided by a thief from Grey London who fancies herself a pirate.
I liked this book. I liked the characters and I felt for them and understood where they were coming from. The action had a clear direction and chugged right along. And the world building was new and shiny and neat.
The thing I liked most about the world building was how each London had its own feel, its own atmosphere. I like how the different levels of magic affected each culture in a systemic, pervasive way. I liked how each culture treated magic differently and had different philosophies about its use. Black London let it overwhelm them, White London wrestled it into submission, and Red London treated it like an equal. I also liked how there wasn't an obvious right answer for how to best use magic and Kell kept wondering if maybe he should show more dominance over it or if he should let it take control of him.
I also liked that the plot tied everything up. Characters introduced earlier in the story came back and had purpose. Chaos strewn through Grey London was addressed and resolved (even if a bit anticlimactically). Little bits and pieces, that never felt as though they were just there to be used later, all come together in interesting ways. For example: Lila, the thief, wears a disguise when she steals things. Rhy, the prince, is having a masquerade birthday party because he's a flamboyant party animal. And those come together and it's neat.
At the same time that all the plot threads are tied up, there's still lingering tension in the characters' relationships because of the fallout of the book's events. There will be repercussions and the emotional effects are not over. I appreciate that. I don't see it as a set up for the next book, but I do hope that relationships and tone will have changed in the next story.
Side note: it's weird how much Kell sucks at using his magic in battle. Every time a fight started I thought, "Oh yeah! Epic magic battle! Kell's so great, he's going to kick all the ass!" and then "This time he's going to kick all the ass and get some payback and show improvement," and then "Okay. He's gotta win this one and it'll be all the more climactic for all his failures." "..." It's not something you see very often.
***
Next week's book is The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher.
Holy cow! I'm glad I finished early, because in an earlier draft of this post I'd said I would next read something (without naming names) that has since gone on my Abandoned List because it was awful.
Kell can travel between worlds. There are four of these worlds, stacked one on top of another like pages in a book: boring and magicless Grey London, opulent Red London, power hungry White London, and destroyed by its own evilness Black London. When an artifact from Black London pops up and starts possessing people and luring them towards overwhelming, evil magic, Kell has to carry it across dimensions to destroy it. He's pursued by minions of White London and aided by a thief from Grey London who fancies herself a pirate.
I liked this book. I liked the characters and I felt for them and understood where they were coming from. The action had a clear direction and chugged right along. And the world building was new and shiny and neat.
The thing I liked most about the world building was how each London had its own feel, its own atmosphere. I like how the different levels of magic affected each culture in a systemic, pervasive way. I liked how each culture treated magic differently and had different philosophies about its use. Black London let it overwhelm them, White London wrestled it into submission, and Red London treated it like an equal. I also liked how there wasn't an obvious right answer for how to best use magic and Kell kept wondering if maybe he should show more dominance over it or if he should let it take control of him.
I also liked that the plot tied everything up. Characters introduced earlier in the story came back and had purpose. Chaos strewn through Grey London was addressed and resolved (even if a bit anticlimactically). Little bits and pieces, that never felt as though they were just there to be used later, all come together in interesting ways. For example: Lila, the thief, wears a disguise when she steals things. Rhy, the prince, is having a masquerade birthday party because he's a flamboyant party animal. And those come together and it's neat.
At the same time that all the plot threads are tied up, there's still lingering tension in the characters' relationships because of the fallout of the book's events. There will be repercussions and the emotional effects are not over. I appreciate that. I don't see it as a set up for the next book, but I do hope that relationships and tone will have changed in the next story.
Side note: it's weird how much Kell sucks at using his magic in battle. Every time a fight started I thought, "Oh yeah! Epic magic battle! Kell's so great, he's going to kick all the ass!" and then "This time he's going to kick all the ass and get some payback and show improvement," and then "Okay. He's gotta win this one and it'll be all the more climactic for all his failures." "..." It's not something you see very often.
***
Next week's book is The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher.
Holy cow! I'm glad I finished early, because in an earlier draft of this post I'd said I would next read something (without naming names) that has since gone on my Abandoned List because it was awful.
March 14, 2016
Concrete Goals and Carving out Time
The big obstacle I've faced lately with my writing has been time. I just don't have it. I've carved out time most evenings where my husband watches the baby for an hour, but with walking to the coffee place, getting my order, then walking back, this leaves me with 35 minutes of writing time. Thirty five. That's pathetically short.
It used to take me that long to get in a groove. To get warmed up. Then I'd slip into that feeling and ride it for a couple hours, coming out the other side feeling productive. Lately it feels like this series of jerky starts and stops, and from reading what I've got so far, I can tell that's how it was written: a half page of one thing, a half page of another. How I'm going to smooth it all together when I don't have time to look at more than a few pages at once is going to be a challenge, but one I'll deal with later.
For right now, I'm going to try a few things. For phase one, I've hidden my gameboy. I have a game of Animal Crossing going, and every day when the baby goes down for his morning nap I think, "You know, after last night and this morning, I deserve to play Animal Crossing. I'll play for 20 minutes and then I'll still have time to work on my edits/wash the dishes/write a blog post after that." This has the benefit that I can also listen to a podcast while I do it. However, it has the problem that my baby is magic. He can detect when I turn off Animal Crossing, and he decides that he's taken a long enough nap. This is bad not only in how I didn't get anything done (except maybe in my game, where I bought a bonzai I didn't have yet or replanted a perfect apple tree), but also in that the baby takes only a twenty minute nap and is a diminished kind of sunny until recharging at his afternoon nap.
...I honestly can't remember what I do during his afternoon nap. It's probably something boring like cleaning or eating, but it might also be that I'm abducted by aliens on a regular basis. This is a little disturbing.
So the gameboy is hidden somewhere I can't find it. (It's in my sock drawer.) If I get everything done on my to-do list, I get to play it in the evening. (There's a post-it on it that says the date of the last time I played so if I need to time travel I can.)
Phase two has to do with Camp NaNo. Camp NaNo is like National Novel Writing Month, except it's much more relaxed and it's camp themed. It's coming up in April and I'm getting a bunch of e-mails about it. I did really well during NaNo in part because this was back when the baby would nap while I was at the coffee place, and in part because I could tell my husband I had 300 more words to write and he'd give me the space I needed after the baby went to sleep. Since then my goals have gotten less concrete, an people have trouble supporting abstract goals.
The problem is that I'm editing right now and doing more rewriting than writing new stuff, so NaNo wouldn't be the best fit. However! Camp NaNo is so lax that I have no problem being a full out rebel. I'm changing all the rules. My goal for April (as opposed to writing 50,000 words) is to edit for 50 hours. That's about 1.667 hours a day or an hour and 40 minutes a day. For every hour I edit, I'll tell the Camp NaNo site that I wrote 1,000 words so that I can use all the cool metrics to keep track of my progress.
Now, there's a big jump there from 35 minutes a day to an hour and forty minutes a day, so I'm going to ramp up and find places where I have more time. I'm writing 45 minutes for the next few days, then an hour, then an hour and fifteen minutes. I might have to ramp a bit during April, but this is a good start.
It used to take me that long to get in a groove. To get warmed up. Then I'd slip into that feeling and ride it for a couple hours, coming out the other side feeling productive. Lately it feels like this series of jerky starts and stops, and from reading what I've got so far, I can tell that's how it was written: a half page of one thing, a half page of another. How I'm going to smooth it all together when I don't have time to look at more than a few pages at once is going to be a challenge, but one I'll deal with later.
For right now, I'm going to try a few things. For phase one, I've hidden my gameboy. I have a game of Animal Crossing going, and every day when the baby goes down for his morning nap I think, "You know, after last night and this morning, I deserve to play Animal Crossing. I'll play for 20 minutes and then I'll still have time to work on my edits/wash the dishes/write a blog post after that." This has the benefit that I can also listen to a podcast while I do it. However, it has the problem that my baby is magic. He can detect when I turn off Animal Crossing, and he decides that he's taken a long enough nap. This is bad not only in how I didn't get anything done (except maybe in my game, where I bought a bonzai I didn't have yet or replanted a perfect apple tree), but also in that the baby takes only a twenty minute nap and is a diminished kind of sunny until recharging at his afternoon nap.
...I honestly can't remember what I do during his afternoon nap. It's probably something boring like cleaning or eating, but it might also be that I'm abducted by aliens on a regular basis. This is a little disturbing.
So the gameboy is hidden somewhere I can't find it. (It's in my sock drawer.) If I get everything done on my to-do list, I get to play it in the evening. (There's a post-it on it that says the date of the last time I played so if I need to time travel I can.)
Phase two has to do with Camp NaNo. Camp NaNo is like National Novel Writing Month, except it's much more relaxed and it's camp themed. It's coming up in April and I'm getting a bunch of e-mails about it. I did really well during NaNo in part because this was back when the baby would nap while I was at the coffee place, and in part because I could tell my husband I had 300 more words to write and he'd give me the space I needed after the baby went to sleep. Since then my goals have gotten less concrete, an people have trouble supporting abstract goals.
"I didn't get as much done as I was hoping."Compared to
"How much did you want to get done?"
"I don't know. Just more."
"Welp...Sorry about that. Want to watch Agent Carter to feel better?"
"I wanted to write 345 more words today."Concrete goals!
"Oh, how long will that take?"
"Like twenty minutes."
"Well, you should do that. Then we can watch Agent Carter when you're done."
The problem is that I'm editing right now and doing more rewriting than writing new stuff, so NaNo wouldn't be the best fit. However! Camp NaNo is so lax that I have no problem being a full out rebel. I'm changing all the rules. My goal for April (as opposed to writing 50,000 words) is to edit for 50 hours. That's about 1.667 hours a day or an hour and 40 minutes a day. For every hour I edit, I'll tell the Camp NaNo site that I wrote 1,000 words so that I can use all the cool metrics to keep track of my progress.
Now, there's a big jump there from 35 minutes a day to an hour and forty minutes a day, so I'm going to ramp up and find places where I have more time. I'm writing 45 minutes for the next few days, then an hour, then an hour and fifteen minutes. I might have to ramp a bit during April, but this is a good start.
March 10, 2016
Deathless Review
The novel this week is Deathless by Catherynne Valente, a retelling of the Russian folktale of Koschei the Deathless set against the background of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath.
Marya Morevna is a girl in Leningrad, who doesn't fit in because she's experienced magic and seen the world naked. She is spirited away by Koschei the Deathless, Tsar of Life, who celebrates life by surrounding himself with both excessive pleasure and pain. He takes Marya away from communism and showers her in luxury but takes her will from her. There's a never ending war against the Tsar of Death that is always going poorly, because Death always wins and when Koschei's soldiers are killed, they join the ranks of the other side. Mayra enjoys the luxury and attention at first, but is worn down by the endless war, so when Ivan, a human who's destined to come tempt her back to Leningrad, shows up, she goes with him back to the human world to try to see what she could have been if she had never known magic. This takes her right into the siege of Leningrad.
There's a lot to talk about here, so there are things that I'm not going to talk about in detail even though they could have their own lengthy discussions. First, there's the unhealthy relationships Marya has with both Koschei and Ivan. They're both toxic with uneven power dynamics and emotional manipulation. I don't believe anyone in this story loves each other, but rather they love the idea of each other. Although the characters romanticize these relationships, the narrative makes it clear that this is pretty messed up. This is so rare to find, and I appreciate it.
Secondly, there's the issue of cultural appropriation (which has been rearing its ugly head at me with alarming frequency over the last few weeks.) Valente isn't Russian (her husband and his family are, but she isn't), so she's tapping into these iconic characters of a culture that's not her own and morphing them quite a bit. I didn't know she wasn't Russian until I was finished, and I'm not familiar with these folktales, so I really enjoyed it. The reviews I've read since finishing, however were split, even amongst Russian readers. Some people laud her as capturing the Russian spirit, while other people are horribly offended. I can't speak to any of this since I don't know enough about it and no one needs my opinion about it, but if you're looking at reading this book, be aware that this issue is there.
What I really want to talk about is the language, because this book is absolutely beautiful. (I cried during the siege of Leningrad, and although almost anything sets me off lately, it's been a while since the waterworks were caused by a book.) I talked last week about what structures of language make a story's tone identifiable as a fairy tale, and I want to dive into that today because this whole book is written in that style.
There are quite a few things that crop up in this story. First, let's talk about repetition. So many times in Deathless, things will happen three times, changing only a little bit between happenings. Marya watches a bird fall out of a tree, turn into a man, and then knock on the door to marry one of her sisters. A second and third bird then come to marry her other two sisters and the passage is repeated almost verbatim each time. Through very subtle differences (the type of bird, what the guy is wearing, how her sisters kiss him, and what kind of hat he buys her) we see the passage of time as Russia changes and the idea of what a proper husband looks like changes. It also makes it feel like a story that could be remembered and repeated, something that could stick around through an oral tradition. Even though the passage is a couple pages long with plenty of description each time a bird shows up, by the third go around you know the beats. It's like the counting songs I sing to my baby.
It gives the story a sense of inevitability. The next round is going to happen almost exactly as it did last time. Or as Ivan says late in the book after he's told Marya two thirds of a story, "Of course you know what I will say next, Marousha. You know this is a story, and you know how stories transpire." Which is a common thing in fairy tales. You pretty much know what will happen. The secrets aren't well kept. Since this whole book was a prolonged fairy tale, we get a lot of that. Long before they happen, we know Koschei will come for her and then Ivan will come for her, we know she'll go with them, and we know she'll be in Leningrad for the siege. In fact, you know all the historical beats this will hit if you paid attention in World History in tenth grade.
This sense of inevitability makes it so that cause and effect are treated differently than they are in other narratives. Marya is destined to go with Ivan, and even though she doesn't really want to, she does anyway, because she knows she's going to. This weird kind of internal logic comes out in most fairy tales. Hansel and Gretel find a house made of candy so (of course) they decide to eat it. The shepherd's daughter tells the lindworm that she'll take off a layer of her clothes if he takes off a layer of his skin so (of course) he takes off a layer of his skin. The other half of this is that magic happens and no one bats an eye. Hansel and Gretel find a house that is (of course) made of candy. The king tells the shepherd's daughter that she'll marry his lindworm son, and she's like, "of course your son's a lindworm." Fairy tales abide by their own internal logic that doesn't match so well with reality.
So, weirdly, despite the wonky cause and effect, the flat characters, the deus ex machinae, and the dropped plot points that pervade fairy tales, these stories convey a sense of "this happened and it happened like this and don't question it because it's not worth it." It's counterintuitive. If I was going to convince someone that something happened, I'd want everything to make sense and feel real. But true stories don't always make sense, so this ends up working.
Going back to the backstory fairy tales of last week, it makes sense that they worked so well because they said, "This is what happened," and because they brought us to a conclusion we already knew: how the characters reacted in the present.
***
Next week: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
Marya Morevna is a girl in Leningrad, who doesn't fit in because she's experienced magic and seen the world naked. She is spirited away by Koschei the Deathless, Tsar of Life, who celebrates life by surrounding himself with both excessive pleasure and pain. He takes Marya away from communism and showers her in luxury but takes her will from her. There's a never ending war against the Tsar of Death that is always going poorly, because Death always wins and when Koschei's soldiers are killed, they join the ranks of the other side. Mayra enjoys the luxury and attention at first, but is worn down by the endless war, so when Ivan, a human who's destined to come tempt her back to Leningrad, shows up, she goes with him back to the human world to try to see what she could have been if she had never known magic. This takes her right into the siege of Leningrad.
There's a lot to talk about here, so there are things that I'm not going to talk about in detail even though they could have their own lengthy discussions. First, there's the unhealthy relationships Marya has with both Koschei and Ivan. They're both toxic with uneven power dynamics and emotional manipulation. I don't believe anyone in this story loves each other, but rather they love the idea of each other. Although the characters romanticize these relationships, the narrative makes it clear that this is pretty messed up. This is so rare to find, and I appreciate it.
Secondly, there's the issue of cultural appropriation (which has been rearing its ugly head at me with alarming frequency over the last few weeks.) Valente isn't Russian (her husband and his family are, but she isn't), so she's tapping into these iconic characters of a culture that's not her own and morphing them quite a bit. I didn't know she wasn't Russian until I was finished, and I'm not familiar with these folktales, so I really enjoyed it. The reviews I've read since finishing, however were split, even amongst Russian readers. Some people laud her as capturing the Russian spirit, while other people are horribly offended. I can't speak to any of this since I don't know enough about it and no one needs my opinion about it, but if you're looking at reading this book, be aware that this issue is there.
What I really want to talk about is the language, because this book is absolutely beautiful. (I cried during the siege of Leningrad, and although almost anything sets me off lately, it's been a while since the waterworks were caused by a book.) I talked last week about what structures of language make a story's tone identifiable as a fairy tale, and I want to dive into that today because this whole book is written in that style.
There are quite a few things that crop up in this story. First, let's talk about repetition. So many times in Deathless, things will happen three times, changing only a little bit between happenings. Marya watches a bird fall out of a tree, turn into a man, and then knock on the door to marry one of her sisters. A second and third bird then come to marry her other two sisters and the passage is repeated almost verbatim each time. Through very subtle differences (the type of bird, what the guy is wearing, how her sisters kiss him, and what kind of hat he buys her) we see the passage of time as Russia changes and the idea of what a proper husband looks like changes. It also makes it feel like a story that could be remembered and repeated, something that could stick around through an oral tradition. Even though the passage is a couple pages long with plenty of description each time a bird shows up, by the third go around you know the beats. It's like the counting songs I sing to my baby.
It gives the story a sense of inevitability. The next round is going to happen almost exactly as it did last time. Or as Ivan says late in the book after he's told Marya two thirds of a story, "Of course you know what I will say next, Marousha. You know this is a story, and you know how stories transpire." Which is a common thing in fairy tales. You pretty much know what will happen. The secrets aren't well kept. Since this whole book was a prolonged fairy tale, we get a lot of that. Long before they happen, we know Koschei will come for her and then Ivan will come for her, we know she'll go with them, and we know she'll be in Leningrad for the siege. In fact, you know all the historical beats this will hit if you paid attention in World History in tenth grade.
This sense of inevitability makes it so that cause and effect are treated differently than they are in other narratives. Marya is destined to go with Ivan, and even though she doesn't really want to, she does anyway, because she knows she's going to. This weird kind of internal logic comes out in most fairy tales. Hansel and Gretel find a house made of candy so (of course) they decide to eat it. The shepherd's daughter tells the lindworm that she'll take off a layer of her clothes if he takes off a layer of his skin so (of course) he takes off a layer of his skin. The other half of this is that magic happens and no one bats an eye. Hansel and Gretel find a house that is (of course) made of candy. The king tells the shepherd's daughter that she'll marry his lindworm son, and she's like, "of course your son's a lindworm." Fairy tales abide by their own internal logic that doesn't match so well with reality.
So, weirdly, despite the wonky cause and effect, the flat characters, the deus ex machinae, and the dropped plot points that pervade fairy tales, these stories convey a sense of "this happened and it happened like this and don't question it because it's not worth it." It's counterintuitive. If I was going to convince someone that something happened, I'd want everything to make sense and feel real. But true stories don't always make sense, so this ends up working.
Going back to the backstory fairy tales of last week, it makes sense that they worked so well because they said, "This is what happened," and because they brought us to a conclusion we already knew: how the characters reacted in the present.
***
Next week: A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
March 3, 2016
The Darkest Part of the Forest Review
This week's book is The Darkest Part of the Forest, a young adult fantasy by Holly Black. I enjoyed the writing, and I think one day I'll pick it apart on a technical level to see how it ticks.
In this book, a community of fairies gets up to enough mischief in the small town of Fairfield that tourists come for the chance to see sprites and possibly receive boons (and occasionally get murdered). The fairies know to leave the locals alone, and the locals know to show respect. But when the horned boy, who's spent the last several generations asleep in a coffin in the woods while teenagers party around him, wakes up and the monster at the center of the forest threatens the town, the locals have to fight back. Secrets come out and it turns out nearly everyone in town has dealt with the fairies both to their benefit and misfortune.
You may remember that I'm often uncomfortable with books about fairies because they so often tie into a larger lore with which I'm not familiar. I spend a lot of time puzzling through if I'm supposed to have prior knowledge going into a story or if this thing I don't know is a mystery of the book I'm reading and will be explained in due time, or if this thing I don't know about is just a little easter egg for people who are familiar with the lore and I can just ignore it and read on. I didn't feel that with this one. A large part of that was the fairies were introduced the same way as everything else. In places they're treated almost like part of the setting, showing how the modern world and the fairy world interact. In other places specific fairies and specific types of fairies are introduced the same way characters in town are introduced.
The other thing I really liked in this story was how the backstory was shown. The backstory here was all really tightly tied to the characters' motivation. It read a bit like a mystery in that I wanted to know what had happened, but I didn't feel like I was being denied information that the characters had just to carry on the suspense. I think a big part of why it worked so well was that everyone's backstory read like a fairytale. Over the last couple of days, I've been pondering a few questions about this.
***
Next week: Deathless by Catherynne Valente.
In this book, a community of fairies gets up to enough mischief in the small town of Fairfield that tourists come for the chance to see sprites and possibly receive boons (and occasionally get murdered). The fairies know to leave the locals alone, and the locals know to show respect. But when the horned boy, who's spent the last several generations asleep in a coffin in the woods while teenagers party around him, wakes up and the monster at the center of the forest threatens the town, the locals have to fight back. Secrets come out and it turns out nearly everyone in town has dealt with the fairies both to their benefit and misfortune.
You may remember that I'm often uncomfortable with books about fairies because they so often tie into a larger lore with which I'm not familiar. I spend a lot of time puzzling through if I'm supposed to have prior knowledge going into a story or if this thing I don't know is a mystery of the book I'm reading and will be explained in due time, or if this thing I don't know about is just a little easter egg for people who are familiar with the lore and I can just ignore it and read on. I didn't feel that with this one. A large part of that was the fairies were introduced the same way as everything else. In places they're treated almost like part of the setting, showing how the modern world and the fairy world interact. In other places specific fairies and specific types of fairies are introduced the same way characters in town are introduced.
Fairfield High was a small-enough school that although there were cliques (even if a few were made up of basically a single person, like how Megan Rojas was the entire Goth community), everyone had to party together if they wanted if they wanted to have enough people around to party at all...Liz was in charge of the playlist, broadcasting from her phone through the speakers of her vintage Fiat, choosing dance music so loud it made the trees shiver. Martin Silver was chatting up Lourdes and Namiya at the same time, clearly hoping for a best-friend sandwich that was never, ever, ever, going to happen. Molly was laughing in a half circle of girls. Stephen, in his paint-splattered shirt, was sitting on his truck with the headlights on, drinking Franklin's dad's moonshine from a flask, too busy nursing some private sorrow to care whether the stuff would make him go blind...Here a bunch of characters are introduced really quickly. Some of them we see again, some of them not really, but mostly this section works to set the scene at the party. Reading this, I'm not concerned with keeping track of everyone. Let's compare this to a fairy party later in the novel:
Creatures spun on the earthen floor, some with long-limbed, liquid grace, others tromping or gamboling. Small faeries flitted through the air on tattered moth wings, baring their teeth at Hazel. Short folk in heath-brown clothes, with hair that stuck up from their heads like the pistils of flowers, played at dice games and drank deeply from ornately blown glass goblets and wooden cups alike. Tall beings, shining in the gloom as though they were lit up from the inside, whirled in their dresses of leaves, in cleverly shaped corsets of bark, in exquisite silvery mail.These passages feel really similar. Again, there are quick introductions to set the stage and we don't need to worry about remembering everyone. The fairy descriptions are less specific since they don't have names, but that works to show us that Hazel isn't all that familiar with them. That's kind of comforting as a reader too. So the writing ends up with this careful balancing act between showing that the fairies are familiar to the characters who have lived in this town all their lives and yet alien enough since the characters aren't experts on fairies. It's also a balancing act showing me, the reader, that the fairies are an immersive part of the environment without making me feel left out.
The other thing I really liked in this story was how the backstory was shown. The backstory here was all really tightly tied to the characters' motivation. It read a bit like a mystery in that I wanted to know what had happened, but I didn't feel like I was being denied information that the characters had just to carry on the suspense. I think a big part of why it worked so well was that everyone's backstory read like a fairytale. Over the last couple of days, I've been pondering a few questions about this.
- Fairies are involved in all theses backstories, but it's really the language that makes it feel like a fairy tale. What about the language gives it that tone?
- Why does this tone make the backstory work in the greater structure of the story?
- (Can I make this work for me?)
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Next week: Deathless by Catherynne Valente.
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