Saturday, 30 March 2013 07:35 pm
Book Review Times Two
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deckardcanineYou may think this a lower priority than other details of my New Zealand trip, but I want to get it out of the way. After all, I didn't take notes on or pictures of the books I was reading.
First tome, as mentioned earlier, was The Bone People by Keri Hulme. I'm still not sure why she chose that title; none of the characters say it and bones seldom come up. The book does include some Maori culture, primarily in the form of words and phrases that called for a glossary, but those details are largely incidental to the plot. I'm glad I read that other Maori-focused book first; it was more introductory.
Indeed, TBP reminds me somewhat of the material I had to read around 11th grade. After a pretty hazy opening, it's seldom hard to follow. The main difficulty is in realizing which of the three main characters is having a given thought. Hulme uses an unorthodox, arguably poetic writing style in which she double-indents most (but not all) first-person thoughts rather than italicizing them, coins (but does not consistently implement) many compound words, and does not take all the usual cues for paragraph division. And while I wouldn't classify the story as magic realism, a handful of moments hint at a supernatural undercurrent.
The character I think of as the primary protagonist is named Kerewin Holmes, which strongly suggests an author avatar; I rather hope the parallels are limited. One-eighth-Maori Kerewin starts the story as a pretty rich yet disowned hermit living in a tower she built. (Fun fact: She considered a hobbit-hole. This was written in 1983, long before the connection between New Zealand and Middle-Earth.) Enter a mute White intruder of maybe six years who goes by Simon, writing neatly when he has the patience and doing his best to communicate other ways if at all. His unofficial adoptive father, a modern Maori named Joe, picks him up, explaining to Kerewin that Simon survived a boat crash and they know almost nothing of his origin. Despite looks inside his head, the audience never learns much more. What really matters is that past trauma has inspired Simon to do lots of unusual, especially bad things like burglary. Kerewin, perhaps relating to misfits, welcomes further interactions with both guys.
From there we have a unique triangle of hot and cold feelings. Everyone is sometimes mean to one another, yet they ultimately can't live without each other in an emotional sense. Not many works try to make you pity a severe child abuser, but the mitigating factors add up.
Despite what you may think from the above, I did enjoy reading -- up until the final act, when things understandably fall apart and all three think they have no future. The very ending looks happy, but with such contrivance that I suspect a premortem hallucination. No doubt that's been discussed in classrooms somewhere (the book won awards, after all).
While waiting in the San Francisco airport, I bought another book on a whim, expecting that the two I brought with me wouldn't sustain my interest on the 13-hour flight. What could? How about a Terry Pratchett novel, namely Snuff?
It's quite something to let this be your first Discworld installment after The Colour of Magic. If not for the frequent references to trashy city Ankh-Morpork, I'd hardly know it took place in the same world. This time the fantasy is relatively subtle, mainly taking the form of non-human races, the only one important to the story being goblins. Most of the time, it's little more than a murder mystery/police procedural with a pre-20th-century feel. I guess Pratchett had had his fill of world building and whatnot, so he kept the magical premises simple and concentrated on where they led.
Yes, the book tries to be funny on every page, this time with bodily function humor interspersed among the mature intellectual elements. At the same time, it mirrors some terrible scandals from real history. Pratchett may be the Douglas Adams of fantasy, but in light of his combination, I'd also consider the Jonathan Swift of modernity.
I do find Snuff significantly better than TCoM. Certainly tidier and more professional. I still didn't laugh much, but it gave me a warm feeling and never bored me, not least because of its hero, Commander Vimes. Like Rincewind, he considers himself a coward, but that's about where the similarity ends: Vimes is too much of a coward to let it show. He makes one awesome policeman, tho he takes little comfort in anything unrelated to his job or family, most notably his "vacation" at a rural estate where his new title of duke means a lot. Another key improvement is the enhanced presence of female characters, treated with as much respect as the males. I'm not done with the series; hopefully my next choice will really show me how it got so popular.
Only on a return flight did I begin the other book in my bag, David Weber's On Basilisk Station. So far it's been slow -- I keep neglecting my personal minimum of ten pages per day -- but it holds promise.
First tome, as mentioned earlier, was The Bone People by Keri Hulme. I'm still not sure why she chose that title; none of the characters say it and bones seldom come up. The book does include some Maori culture, primarily in the form of words and phrases that called for a glossary, but those details are largely incidental to the plot. I'm glad I read that other Maori-focused book first; it was more introductory.
Indeed, TBP reminds me somewhat of the material I had to read around 11th grade. After a pretty hazy opening, it's seldom hard to follow. The main difficulty is in realizing which of the three main characters is having a given thought. Hulme uses an unorthodox, arguably poetic writing style in which she double-indents most (but not all) first-person thoughts rather than italicizing them, coins (but does not consistently implement) many compound words, and does not take all the usual cues for paragraph division. And while I wouldn't classify the story as magic realism, a handful of moments hint at a supernatural undercurrent.
The character I think of as the primary protagonist is named Kerewin Holmes, which strongly suggests an author avatar; I rather hope the parallels are limited. One-eighth-Maori Kerewin starts the story as a pretty rich yet disowned hermit living in a tower she built. (Fun fact: She considered a hobbit-hole. This was written in 1983, long before the connection between New Zealand and Middle-Earth.) Enter a mute White intruder of maybe six years who goes by Simon, writing neatly when he has the patience and doing his best to communicate other ways if at all. His unofficial adoptive father, a modern Maori named Joe, picks him up, explaining to Kerewin that Simon survived a boat crash and they know almost nothing of his origin. Despite looks inside his head, the audience never learns much more. What really matters is that past trauma has inspired Simon to do lots of unusual, especially bad things like burglary. Kerewin, perhaps relating to misfits, welcomes further interactions with both guys.
From there we have a unique triangle of hot and cold feelings. Everyone is sometimes mean to one another, yet they ultimately can't live without each other in an emotional sense. Not many works try to make you pity a severe child abuser, but the mitigating factors add up.
Despite what you may think from the above, I did enjoy reading -- up until the final act, when things understandably fall apart and all three think they have no future. The very ending looks happy, but with such contrivance that I suspect a premortem hallucination. No doubt that's been discussed in classrooms somewhere (the book won awards, after all).
While waiting in the San Francisco airport, I bought another book on a whim, expecting that the two I brought with me wouldn't sustain my interest on the 13-hour flight. What could? How about a Terry Pratchett novel, namely Snuff?
It's quite something to let this be your first Discworld installment after The Colour of Magic. If not for the frequent references to trashy city Ankh-Morpork, I'd hardly know it took place in the same world. This time the fantasy is relatively subtle, mainly taking the form of non-human races, the only one important to the story being goblins. Most of the time, it's little more than a murder mystery/police procedural with a pre-20th-century feel. I guess Pratchett had had his fill of world building and whatnot, so he kept the magical premises simple and concentrated on where they led.
Yes, the book tries to be funny on every page, this time with bodily function humor interspersed among the mature intellectual elements. At the same time, it mirrors some terrible scandals from real history. Pratchett may be the Douglas Adams of fantasy, but in light of his combination, I'd also consider the Jonathan Swift of modernity.
I do find Snuff significantly better than TCoM. Certainly tidier and more professional. I still didn't laugh much, but it gave me a warm feeling and never bored me, not least because of its hero, Commander Vimes. Like Rincewind, he considers himself a coward, but that's about where the similarity ends: Vimes is too much of a coward to let it show. He makes one awesome policeman, tho he takes little comfort in anything unrelated to his job or family, most notably his "vacation" at a rural estate where his new title of duke means a lot. Another key improvement is the enhanced presence of female characters, treated with as much respect as the males. I'm not done with the series; hopefully my next choice will really show me how it got so popular.
Only on a return flight did I begin the other book in my bag, David Weber's On Basilisk Station. So far it's been slow -- I keep neglecting my personal minimum of ten pages per day -- but it holds promise.