books
Phantastes and Lilith by George MacDonald. These are actually two books but I read them in the same physical book and they are very similar. Victorian fantasy, very heavily religious. Very Victorian feeling. I'm not sure I'd have read them if I wasn't planning to try and do a PhD about goodness in Victorian fiction. Phantastes is about a guy on a medieval-style quest into Fairyland who liberates a lady from white marble who runs away from him. He tries to find her while being given moral advice from various people and acquiring a shadow which represents his worst self which he has to shake off. Lilith also involves running around a fantasy land, this time dealing with Little Ones and leopards and the Cat Woman and Lilith and Adam and Eve, but it's a little stranger and darker and is much more complicated and allegorical, and the land is basically Death. I preferred Phantastes; it's treacly but pretty, kind of like a Victorian scrap-book. I liked the scene with the married skeletons and the scene between Mara and Lilith, but the Lilith-related misogyny was just too much to swallow and the Little Ones are so very Victorian and sentimental. Generally, these were interesting because they're kind of like a missing fantasy link for me. They reminded me of Charlotte Bronte's juvenilia and all sorts of other things that have slipped my mind right now, and make it clear how many streams melted into the fantasy genre. C. S. Lewis really pinched a lot from these, particularly the ways of blending fantasy into the real world. The Raven in Lilith, who's really Adam, reminded me of Aslan. This wasn't a good thing because I never liked Aslan; putting such tremendous authority onto actual characters in the story who tell the other characters what to do and are always right just rubs me up the wrong way. What I did like about these is that the characters don't get what they want. You think they'll get the girl if they learn to be good, but MacDonald makes them walk the walk and be good just because they should.
Dare Me by Megan Abbott. Belongs to the genre where something actually bad happens amidst the drama of fraught, intense teenage girl relationships, almost gothic-y. Addy and her best friend Beth already have a complicated relationship full of unspoken power negotiations when the situation is complicated by a new coach for the cheer squad. As well as becoming a figure of fascination for the girls, apart from Beth, who resents her, she changes their perception of cheerleading. They begin to actually care about it, to an obsessive degree and see it as a way they can genuinely achieve something, and want to work hard to excel in it. And then there's a death. The language is what really made this for me; it runs on clichés, really, but it's very polished and memorable. I liked that Beth turns out to actually be the most vulnerable in her and Addy's friendship. I'm not sure I felt I knew who Beth was as well as I was meant to, but I liked the way she and Addy showed that knowing and loving isn't the same as liking.
Pure by Andrew Miller. Eighteenth century France, not long before the revolution. Jean-Baptiste, a naïve, bland young engineer, is employed to get rid of an ancient stinking cemetery. It's obviously terribly symbolic, but I actually feel like that wasn't exploited quite enough. I liked the writing, and while I know nothing about France it didn't have that awkward historical fiction feel of kid gloves or modern people in fancy dress. So I did quite like it, but ultimately I wasn't satisfied. At the beginning the writing is quite tranquilising, and the main character is deliberately blank, but then the novel got more ambitious without upping its game. Jean-Baptiste was supposed to have come of age, without the characterisation really getting deeper, and emotive things happen without it ever feeling that much like a book in which emotive things happen. It just felt a little odd, as if something was muffled somewhere. And there were threads that didn't go anywhere. What was with the violent landlady's daughter and the lol violet-eyed miner with a finger missing?
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. Written in the fifties. A girl goes to be a governess to a French family, but realises their lonely ward may not be safe and meets a dangerously dashing Frenchman. Stewart's books are basically like someone else, someone better, writing Victoria Holt. This was probably the most gripping one I've read by her, but I was annoyed by preferring the stout Englishman William Blake, who was introduced without even properly creating a love triangle, to the more typical romance lead. The villain in a wheelchair was pretty cringy but I quite liked the resolution. You can tell Stewart knows she's good at scenery and she treats herself to a fair bit of it, but I didn't mind it too much and I'm not keen on scenery. I found it all very escapist and pleasant.
The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories by M. R. James. I read a lot of ghost stories when I was little, but there aren't so many for adults that aren't horror, and this is the first time I got round to James. The stories are very manly: men are haunted by men and are often assisted in getting rid of them by men. They mostly or entirely revolve around ghost being tyrannical over the present where a particular object is concerned; everything must be left just as it was. The ghosts are generally not sympathetic at all. James doesn't enter into the whole mental torment bit much, but it's very clear that this is the real menace presented by the ghosts. Not really what I wanted, but it was still interesting enough to see what the stories were actually like.