Book log archives - March 2009

Archives - March 2009

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Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme, My Life in France: Oh, this was as delightful as I'd expected. It begins when Julia Child and her husband Paul moved to Paris in 1948, when Paul was posted to the American Embassy there. Julia fell immediately in love with French food and started taking classes at the Cordon Bleu...and thus, a legend was born. She talks about the long genesis of her most famous cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, born of a collaboration with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, and how she got started on television. The whole book is just full of Julia-isms ("Hooray!" "Yum!") and joie de vivre and of her love of France, of food, and most of all, of Paul, who comes through just as fascinatingly as Julia herself.
Barbara Vine, Gallowglass: After leaving the hospital where he was treated for acute depression, Joe Herbert was just a drifter, until the mysterious Sandor saved his life and he became Sandor's devoted servant (or "gallowglass", the old Irish term). Paul Garnet is also a type of servant, bodyguard and driver for rich Nina Apsoland. Their paths collide when Sandor reveals his plans to Joe...plans that involve Nina and could threaten her life. I always admire Vine's excellent suspense and tension, and the climax was well done. However, I didn't much care about any of the characters, so I wouldn't call this a Vine that worked all that well for me overall.
Stephenie Meyer, Twilight: I don't need to give you a plot summary, right? Right. I can sort of see the appeal (I guess), but I didn't like it. I think it's probably pointless to go into why in detail, because I'm so late to this party that either you've already read it and know whether you like it or not, or you have no intention of reading it. In any case, I will just mentally stamp it with a big, red "NOT FOR ME" and leave it at that.
Laurence Yep, Dragon of the Lost Sea: On a quest to recover the magical gem that contains her lost ocean home, the dragon princess Shimmer encounters a boy, Thorn. When he saves Shimmer's life in a fight, she rather reluctantly decides that he may accompany her as they pursue her enemy Civet. Though Shimmer doesn't originally feel that Thorn is her equal, because he's so much less powerful than she, she finds that they may have more in common than she thinks and that they can work together to achieve her quest.

The characterization is excellent. The relationship between Shimmer and Thorn is particularly nicely done; overtly, one is powerful and one is comparatively weak, but they develop an equal, helping relationship. It's mostly from Shimmer's viewpoint, since she's the one whose quest it is and who has to change more in order to perceive Thorn as an equal, but there are some passages from Thorn's point of view which show how he sees himself as taking care of her, rather than the reverse. The villain, Civet, is also more three-dimensional than she at first appears, which made the final confrontation more complex.

I really liked the setting. I've always had a weakness for fiction based on fairy tales and mythology, and this hit me in that spot, especially since it's a mythology that I've not read much of. I should read more Chinese mythology and folklore, really; I'd would be interested to see exactly what Yep did use of the tale he started with, about the Old Mother of the Waters, since he says his story grew and changed a lot from there.

This is the first in a series of four (I think), and I'm already tracking down the other ones to read them.
Sherri L. Smith, Sparrow: When Kendall was five, she walked away from a car crash that killed her parents and younger brother. Since then, she's lived with her G'ma, and lately she's been struggling to balance school with taking care of G'ma, who's increasingly frail after a stroke. When G'ma dies, Kendall is left on her own and sets out to find the only family she knows of, her aunt Janet, who lives in New Orleans and hasn't seen Kendall since her family's funeral. Sparrow has a nice setup, but the ending is a little too pat and rushed. I liked it in a quiet way, but I preferred Flygirl, which is more complex in plot and especially in characterization. I'm trying to decide now whether to go back and read Lucy the Giant or wait for her next book.
Maeve Binchy, Heart and Soul: This time around, an Irish heart clinic is the central setting around which Binchy weaves her characters' lives. This is a method she often uses and I often like (as in Evening Class, which I just reread), but here, I found it insufficiently cohesive. Too many of the stories weren't enough connected to the clinic, and I ended up being much more interested in certain characters (like Clara, the head of the clinic) and wanting more of their stories. As usual, I got this from the library; I don't think it will be one I buy in paperback.
Marjorie M. Liu, Shadow Touch: Elena is a healer, able to reach into people's bodies to fix them. Artur is a telepath who can read people's lives and histories from the objects they touch (is there a word for this particular talent that I missed?); he works for detective firm Dirk and Steele, which specializes in psychic crime fighting. When a shadowy organization kidnaps Elena and Artur, they accidentally form a deep psychic bond and must work together to escape and defeat their enemies.

Paranormal romance is a new-to-me genre, and I wasn't sure I'd like it, but you know, I did! The psychic bond thing could have been silly, but the way it was formed was well done, and the consequences of it (like knowing your lover can smell your morning breath). There was a little handwaving around Artur not being able to touch anyone except magically Elena, but I was okay with it. The prose is fine, and the dialogue is quite good and often entertainingly snappy. The hints of an overarching storyline for the series which develop at the end will definitely have me looking for the other books (and going back to read Tiger Eye).
Tobias S. Buckell, Ragamuffin: Nashara is on the run. She wants to get back to New Anegada, if she can, and she needs to escape from the Hongguo who are on her trail. She carries inside her a powerful weapon which could save her, but perhaps at a huge cost, both to her and to the balance of order of the galaxy. Complicating her escape and her decision about the use of her weapon is her discovery that the ruling aliens of the Benevolent Satrapy are planning to wipe out all humans.

Although I really appreciated the kick-ass female protagonist and the other female characters (after noting the relative lack of women in Crystal Rain), I actually liked Ragamuffin a little less. The book just seemed a little incoherent and choppy to me, on a prose level and on an overall narrative level. It jumps back and forth among different characters and even in time a little, and the confusion this created meant I wasn't as pulled along with the story as I was in Crystal Rain. I did like the focus on the larger universe, beyond the New Anegada setting, and getting to learn more about that larger world, but I'd have preferred having that focus through fewer different characters and settings. (And this might well be my issue, not the book's, as I've always preferred less jumping around in POV.)

I do look forward to reading Sly Mongoose, though, and seeing what's coming next for Buckell's fascinating universe; I just wish his prose style worked better for me.
Deborah J. Ross, ed., Lace and Blade 2: I bought mostly this for the stories by Sherwood Smith, Madeleine E. Robins, and Tanith Lee, three favorite writers of mine, and unsurprisingly, those three stories were my favorites. I especially loved Smith's "Miss Austen's Castle Tour", in which Jane Austen meets Dracula, which I don't think many other writers could pull off to my satisfaction.

A surprise standout was "Rent Girl", by Traci N. Castleberry (whom I've never heard of before), which is the story of cross-dressing Orossy, who feels more comfortable dressed as a girl but is trying to deny this in order to please his lover, Feisal, and Feisal's powerful father. It's a fascinating and sympathetic inquiry into gender roles, and I'll be looking for more by Castleberry.

I generally liked the rest of the stories, with the one exception of the lead-off story, Rosemary Hawley Jarman's "More in Sorrow", which I thought was thinly characterized and very overwritten. Overall, I'd say that like the first anthology in this series, Lace and Blade 2 is a good, solid anthology and a good read if you like your fantasy with more than a touch of romance.
Sharyn November, ed., Firebirds Soaring: This was an amazing anthology. I really liked the previous ones in the series, but I think this is the best of them. As you know, Bob, I usually skip (or am tempted to skip) freely in anthologies; Firebirds Soaring I read with rapt attention from beginning to end. It's tough to narrow down what I liked most from such a great selection, but I'll give it a shot:

- Louise Marley, "Egg Magic": unusual, subtle magic; excellent family relationships and farm setting
- Jo Walton, "Three Twilight Tales": beautifully interwoven fairy tales
- Sherwood Smith, "Court Ship": yay, generation after Crown Duel!
- Elizabeth E. Wein, "Something Worth Doing": wonderful historical fiction about a woman who masquerades as her brother in order to fly in World War II Britain; loved the flying details
- Nina Kiriki Hoffman, "The Ghosts of Strangers": the centerpiece of the book, really a novella in length; a very different setting from her usual modern-day, with ghosts and excellent dragons, realistically ferocious yet able to have relationships with humans

Truly, though, every single story was worth reading and rereading.
Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora's Dare: Flora Fyrdraaca still wants to become a ranger, like her hero Nini Mo, but to do that, she has to master magick by learning the magickal language of Gramatica. Finding a teacher is a lot more difficult and dangerous than Flora thought it would be, though, and soon she is embroiled in a fight to save her city, her family, her friends, and herself. But maybe her self isn't the person she thought she was.... As I'd heard, this was even better than the first one. The world and its history, the characters and their relationships, everything is deeper and wider and richer and more fascinating. Next book want, please!
Jo Walton, Lifelode: Applekirk is a small rural community, where time is strange; months may pass elsewhere while years pass in Applekirk. Here, people go about their business, in the farms and in the manor house, leading their lives as they're bid to by each one's own lifelode, that part of their self which tells them what their talent and work should be in life. Taveth is the quiet heart of the manor house, keeping it in order as she keeps its extended family in order, according to her lifelode. She also has a strange talent: she sees multiple times at once, and multiple selves of the people she interacts, their past, present, and future selves. When two new people come to Applekirk, they disrupt the quiet orderliness of its routine and its people's lives.

I was struck with delight about fifteen pages into Lifelode when I suddenly realized that Walton was using Rumer Godden's trick of narrating as though everything is happening at once, moving backward and forward in time. I found that fascinating in Godden's China Court and Take Three Tenses, and I've never encountered it anywhere else. Taveth describes it this way: "Time, she knows, is an illusion. Things seem to happen one after another, but when you look back they all happened at once and seemed at the time to be part of one story was part of another...."

In her introduction, Sharyn November calls Lifelode a domestic fantasy, which I think is an apt description. I found it very much a celebration of love and family and home, although it also involves politics on a small scale and religion on a much larger scale. I think it may well develop into my favorite of Walton's books (which is saying something, given how much I love the Small Change series and Tooth and Claw). Lifelode is available only in a limited edition from NESFA Press. Go snap up a copy quickly, because it's a wonderful book and deserves a wide readership.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: I read Frederick Douglass' autobiography way back in college; besides that (which I don't remember well and should reread), this is the first slave narrative I've read. What especially struck me about Jacobs' retelling of her experience was her emphasis on slavery's impact on black women and how that differed from (and in many ways was harder than) men's experience: she herself was seen as a sexual object by more than one white man and had essentially to choose to give up her chastity in order to protect herself from a worse fate. It's beautifully written: restrained and formal, yet emotional, often cuttingly sarcastic in Jacobs' comments on her owners and their habits and hypocrisies, full of anger against the institution itself and against those who perpetuated it.

I'm especially glad I read it before reading Octavia Butler's Kindred, because Butler is similarly concerned with the particular effects of slavery on women; having Jacobs' experience in the back of my mind as I read Kindred made Butler's novel even more powerful for me.
Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness: Living in Provence during World War II, Barbary Deniston has grown accustomed to running wild with the maquis. After her French collaborator stepfather drowns, Barbary's indolent, beautiful mother Helen sends her to England to live with her father and his second wife. Barbary has a hard time growing accustomed to the formality of her new life, but among the ruins of bombed London, she finds a new wilderness. Macaulay is less witty here than in The Towers of Trebizond (the only other book of hers I've read yet), but she manages to create sympathy for all her contrasting characters, from wild Barbary and her lazy mother to her upright father. It's a book of contrasts, really, not just between characters but between civilized and uncivilized, wild and tame, sometimes all in the same place.
Catherine Carswell, The Camomile: Ellen Carstairs has returned to her home in Glasgow, with her maiden aunt and her brother, after spending several years studying music in Germany. Although she intends a career as a music teacher, she is drawn to the literary life instead, much against the conventional views of her friends and family. It's written in the form of letters and an extended diary kept for Ellen's best friend, and though it did take me a while to get used to Ellen's vivacious, dramatic voice, I ended up liking her a lot and rooting for her to defy society and do what she wanted. The Camomile is a vivid picture of a woman who needs a room of her own: in Ellen's words, "a quiet, clean, pleasant room in which she can work, dream her dreams, write out her thoughts, and keep her few treasures in peace."


Last updated 28 May 2009. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.