Books 24 to 27
Book 24:"Murther & Walking Spirits" by Robertson Davies
As McWearie used to say, one's family is made up of supporting players in one's personal drama. One never supposes that they starred in some possibly gaudy and certainly deeply felt show of their own.
Having been murdered by his wife's lover in the first sentence of the book, Connor 'Gil' Gilmartin becomes a ghost, the walking spirit of the title. In life he was an editor at a Toronto newspaper, and he is murdered by the paper's theatre reviewer, and in death he finds himself sitting next to his murderer at a film festival, but he isn't watching the same films as the rest of the audience. Instead, he sees the stories of some of his ancestors, in Europe and North America, complete with voice-overs, montages and split screen effects, just like a real movie.
Gil sees how his ancestors' experiences, including religion (he comes from a long line of Methodists), bankruptcies, unhappy marriages and manipulative parents have shaped his paternal relatives and himself, but there isn't a strong plot to tie the stories together, and after a strong start in 18th century New York, they seem to become less and less interesting. The ending feels somewhat flat, with no explanation about why Gil has been shown these particular ancestors' stories, or big revelation about what will happen to him next. Not one of my favourites by this author.
Book 25: "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
It made him sorrowful, but Ender did not weep. He was done with that. When they had turned Valentine into a stranger, when they had used her as a tool to work on Ender, from that day forward they could never hurt him deep enough to make him cry again. Ender was certain of that.
And with that anger, he decided he was strong enough to defeat them- the teachers, his enemies.
I found the story of Ender's training really quite sad, how he was deliberately isolated from his fellow students and made to believe that no adult would ever come to his aid. But it's not easy to believe that they would have left the safety of earth to a bunch of pre-pubescent children, however intelligent and well trained they were. it seems inconceivable that they had not been able to find suitable adult soldiers to defeat the Buggers. So although the story works on an emotional level, I kept being pulled up by how ridiculous and far-fetched it was.
Book 26: "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies
Canada isn't nearly as bad as Ernest says, just about thirty years behind the time artistically and what he says about being bourgeois and uncultured and narrow and pious could just as well be said about Nottingham or any of a dozen places we know and keep away from.
While "Murther and Walking Spirits" tells tales of a Canadian Methodist family, the second book in the unfinished Toronto Trilogy concerns a very different form of protestantism, as it concerns the clergy and congregation of Saint Aidan's, an extremely High Church Anglican parish in Toronto. The story is told by Jonathan Hullah, the Cunning Man, best friend of Brocky Gilmartin, lover of Brocky's wife and and godfather of his son Gil (the protagonist of "Murther and Walking Spirits"). Jonathan is a doctor who becomes involved with the church when he sets up his practice in the grounds of a house next to the church and finds that another of his old schoolfriends is a curate there. His landladies are a lesbian couple, both artists, and part of the story is told through letters from one of them to an old friend in England, whom I gradually realised was Barbara Hepworth the sculptor. In fact Chip's lively letters and the descriptions of her humorous illustrations were the best part of the book. I preferred "The Cunning Man" to "Murther & Walking Spirits" because it had more of a plot, a couple of mysteries to keep me interested, and some interesting characters.
Book 27: "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card
"Will you have the meeting?"
"I'll call it. In the Bishop's chambers."
Ender winced.
"The Bishop won't meet anywhere else," she said, "and no decision to rebel will mean a thing if he doesn't agree to it." Bosquinha laid her hand on his chest. "He may not even let you into the Cathedral. You are the infidel."
"But you'll try."
"I'll try because of what you did tonight. Only a wise man could see my people so clearly in so short a time. Only a ruthless one would say it all out loud. Your virtue and your flaw-- we need them both."
The events of "Ender's Game" are three thousand years in the past, but Ender and Valentine Wiggin have spent so much time travelling between planets at near light speed, that they are still in their thirties. Ender became a Speaker for the Dead, someone who speaks the truth of a person's life at their memorial service, not whitewashing their life, but getting to the heart of who they were and why they acted as they did.He started by speaking the life of the Bug... Queen, whose race he destroyed and of his bother Peter, and many other people since Ender have chosen to become Speakers for the Dead. So when an inhabitant of the planet Lusitania, the home of the only other intellgent alien species ever discovered, request the services of a Speaker for the Dead to speak the life of a man killed by the Piggies, they do not realise that the first Speaker for the Dead, the author of the "The Hive Queen and the Hegemon", is coming.
I found it hard to get into this book because to start with I did not like the main characters, but I gradually warmed to most of them. I have always liked stories where anthropologists, linguists or archaeologists are studying alien species, whether living or long-dead, to try and figure out what makes them tick. It gradually became clear that the policy of trying to avoid cultural contamination of the Piggies, by neither asking or answering questions, has caused nothing but misunderstanding and heartache on both sides, and that we can never hope to share the galaxy with alien species unless we open ourselves fully, and really come to understand each other's culture and customs. So the moral of this story is not exactly subtle, but it was enjoyable all the same.
As McWearie used to say, one's family is made up of supporting players in one's personal drama. One never supposes that they starred in some possibly gaudy and certainly deeply felt show of their own.
Having been murdered by his wife's lover in the first sentence of the book, Connor 'Gil' Gilmartin becomes a ghost, the walking spirit of the title. In life he was an editor at a Toronto newspaper, and he is murdered by the paper's theatre reviewer, and in death he finds himself sitting next to his murderer at a film festival, but he isn't watching the same films as the rest of the audience. Instead, he sees the stories of some of his ancestors, in Europe and North America, complete with voice-overs, montages and split screen effects, just like a real movie.
Gil sees how his ancestors' experiences, including religion (he comes from a long line of Methodists), bankruptcies, unhappy marriages and manipulative parents have shaped his paternal relatives and himself, but there isn't a strong plot to tie the stories together, and after a strong start in 18th century New York, they seem to become less and less interesting. The ending feels somewhat flat, with no explanation about why Gil has been shown these particular ancestors' stories, or big revelation about what will happen to him next. Not one of my favourites by this author.
Book 25: "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card
It made him sorrowful, but Ender did not weep. He was done with that. When they had turned Valentine into a stranger, when they had used her as a tool to work on Ender, from that day forward they could never hurt him deep enough to make him cry again. Ender was certain of that.
And with that anger, he decided he was strong enough to defeat them- the teachers, his enemies.
I found the story of Ender's training really quite sad, how he was deliberately isolated from his fellow students and made to believe that no adult would ever come to his aid. But it's not easy to believe that they would have left the safety of earth to a bunch of pre-pubescent children, however intelligent and well trained they were. it seems inconceivable that they had not been able to find suitable adult soldiers to defeat the Buggers. So although the story works on an emotional level, I kept being pulled up by how ridiculous and far-fetched it was.
Book 26: "The Cunning Man" by Robertson Davies
Canada isn't nearly as bad as Ernest says, just about thirty years behind the time artistically and what he says about being bourgeois and uncultured and narrow and pious could just as well be said about Nottingham or any of a dozen places we know and keep away from.
While "Murther and Walking Spirits" tells tales of a Canadian Methodist family, the second book in the unfinished Toronto Trilogy concerns a very different form of protestantism, as it concerns the clergy and congregation of Saint Aidan's, an extremely High Church Anglican parish in Toronto. The story is told by Jonathan Hullah, the Cunning Man, best friend of Brocky Gilmartin, lover of Brocky's wife and and godfather of his son Gil (the protagonist of "Murther and Walking Spirits"). Jonathan is a doctor who becomes involved with the church when he sets up his practice in the grounds of a house next to the church and finds that another of his old schoolfriends is a curate there. His landladies are a lesbian couple, both artists, and part of the story is told through letters from one of them to an old friend in England, whom I gradually realised was Barbara Hepworth the sculptor. In fact Chip's lively letters and the descriptions of her humorous illustrations were the best part of the book. I preferred "The Cunning Man" to "Murther & Walking Spirits" because it had more of a plot, a couple of mysteries to keep me interested, and some interesting characters.
Book 27: "Speaker for the Dead" by Orson Scott Card
"Will you have the meeting?"
"I'll call it. In the Bishop's chambers."
Ender winced.
"The Bishop won't meet anywhere else," she said, "and no decision to rebel will mean a thing if he doesn't agree to it." Bosquinha laid her hand on his chest. "He may not even let you into the Cathedral. You are the infidel."
"But you'll try."
"I'll try because of what you did tonight. Only a wise man could see my people so clearly in so short a time. Only a ruthless one would say it all out loud. Your virtue and your flaw-- we need them both."
The events of "Ender's Game" are three thousand years in the past, but Ender and Valentine Wiggin have spent so much time travelling between planets at near light speed, that they are still in their thirties. Ender became a Speaker for the Dead, someone who speaks the truth of a person's life at their memorial service, not whitewashing their life, but getting to the heart of who they were and why they acted as they did.He started by speaking the life of the Bug... Queen, whose race he destroyed and of his bother Peter, and many other people since Ender have chosen to become Speakers for the Dead. So when an inhabitant of the planet Lusitania, the home of the only other intellgent alien species ever discovered, request the services of a Speaker for the Dead to speak the life of a man killed by the Piggies, they do not realise that the first Speaker for the Dead, the author of the "The Hive Queen and the Hegemon", is coming.
I found it hard to get into this book because to start with I did not like the main characters, but I gradually warmed to most of them. I have always liked stories where anthropologists, linguists or archaeologists are studying alien species, whether living or long-dead, to try and figure out what makes them tick. It gradually became clear that the policy of trying to avoid cultural contamination of the Piggies, by neither asking or answering questions, has caused nothing but misunderstanding and heartache on both sides, and that we can never hope to share the galaxy with alien species unless we open ourselves fully, and really come to understand each other's culture and customs. So the moral of this story is not exactly subtle, but it was enjoyable all the same.