randomness, and some thoughts on Dorothy Dunnett
One of these days, I'll get someone to record Arizona Highways or In the Company of Ghosts as podfic. Not this time, though. Nobody's offering to record anything longer than 10,000 words. ::sigh::
*
Speaking of hellaciously-long audiobooks, I'm listening to Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings on my iPod.
One would think that given the many many times I have read that novel (I used to read the whole series yearly), it would be boring in audio form.
But it's not: it's marvelous. The pace of the reading makes me listen to the words, clauses, and sentences, without scanning over them as I pluck the meat out. And the prose is so splendid: tricky and complicated, sly and deceptive. It's unexpectedly funny, with turns of phrase that make me snicker even on public transit.
The two major things I've noticed on this reread are (1) the plotting; and (2) the women.
The plot is just amazing. On the surface, it's straightforward: how does Lymond regain his good name, when he's been portrayed as a murderous traitor for the last six years? But there are so very many threads to the plot: Lymond's search for the man who framed him; the movements of the English army as they try to capture Queen Mary to marry her to King Edward; the scheming and double-dealing of the Douglases and Lennoxes; the antagonism between Lords Wharton and Grey, despite their mutual desire to hang Lymond; the work Sybilla and Christian are doing to mitigate the damage; Will Scott's naivete, treachery, and repentence; Agnes Herries' romance; Gideon Somerville's apolitical integrity; and of course Richard's obsession with his brother's capture. Dunnett takes them all and weaves them together in an impossible tangle, until they all come together in that blistering and heart-breaking confrontation at Flaw Valleys. I cannot imagine ever being able to pull all that off, and it kills me that this was her first novel.
The women tend to get short shrift in non-romantic historical novels, especially those written more than a generation ago. After all, women in the 16th century had limited social or political power, right? And yet this novel is full of women exercising their power, or learning to do so: Sybilla and the Queen Mother; Margaret Lennox and Christian Stewart; Mariotta Culter and Agnes Herries. Not to mention Kate Somerville, possibly the most domestic of them all, and yet the most insightful and sympathetic. Molly the madam is a bit of a cliche, and the prostitutes at the Ostrich are merely place-holders, but they are women surviving by their wits in a difficult world, and the only slut-shaming in the entire novel is of Margaret Lennox, who is shown as evil not for betraying her marriage but for seducing a sixteen-year-old boy (among other misbehaviors).
Yes, the novel is about the nobility, and yet we also get the brilliant sequence in Perth where Richard goes to the leather-worker to track back Lymond's glove. It's funny, but it also shows a life outside the ambit of the court, full of community and family and generosity.
I do wish we got more of that from Dunnett--her working-class characters are generally sympathetic (Turkey Mat, Archie Abernathy, Patey Liddle, Waugh the glover), but there aren't enough of them, and quite a lot are played for laughs (like the Lang Cleg). And characters who strive for improvement don't come off as well--I'm thinking here of Robin Stewart, Danny Hislop, and Marthe. They each start with a handicap of birth, and only one of them ever really deals with it successfully. One likes to think of Philippa as middle-class, but Gideon was a gentleman, and Flaw Valleys wasn't a farm, it was an estate with servants, lands, a gatehouse, and a fine hall. It may not have been Pemberly, but it was hardly Longbourne.
Anyway, that's some thoughts on Dunnett. Which is why I have gone and bought King Hereafter for my Kindle. It's about time I reread that.
Things to do today: laundry. Email electrician. Dishes. Plan for Spain. Buy mushrooms and goat cheese. Make dinner. Read True Grit. Argh: there's no time for writing in that. Ah, well.
::forces self off the futon::
If I get moving, I can listen to Richard nurse Francis in the dell north of Hexham while I putter about the house.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.
*
Speaking of hellaciously-long audiobooks, I'm listening to Dorothy Dunnett's The Game of Kings on my iPod.
One would think that given the many many times I have read that novel (I used to read the whole series yearly), it would be boring in audio form.
But it's not: it's marvelous. The pace of the reading makes me listen to the words, clauses, and sentences, without scanning over them as I pluck the meat out. And the prose is so splendid: tricky and complicated, sly and deceptive. It's unexpectedly funny, with turns of phrase that make me snicker even on public transit.
The two major things I've noticed on this reread are (1) the plotting; and (2) the women.
The plot is just amazing. On the surface, it's straightforward: how does Lymond regain his good name, when he's been portrayed as a murderous traitor for the last six years? But there are so very many threads to the plot: Lymond's search for the man who framed him; the movements of the English army as they try to capture Queen Mary to marry her to King Edward; the scheming and double-dealing of the Douglases and Lennoxes; the antagonism between Lords Wharton and Grey, despite their mutual desire to hang Lymond; the work Sybilla and Christian are doing to mitigate the damage; Will Scott's naivete, treachery, and repentence; Agnes Herries' romance; Gideon Somerville's apolitical integrity; and of course Richard's obsession with his brother's capture. Dunnett takes them all and weaves them together in an impossible tangle, until they all come together in that blistering and heart-breaking confrontation at Flaw Valleys. I cannot imagine ever being able to pull all that off, and it kills me that this was her first novel.
The women tend to get short shrift in non-romantic historical novels, especially those written more than a generation ago. After all, women in the 16th century had limited social or political power, right? And yet this novel is full of women exercising their power, or learning to do so: Sybilla and the Queen Mother; Margaret Lennox and Christian Stewart; Mariotta Culter and Agnes Herries. Not to mention Kate Somerville, possibly the most domestic of them all, and yet the most insightful and sympathetic. Molly the madam is a bit of a cliche, and the prostitutes at the Ostrich are merely place-holders, but they are women surviving by their wits in a difficult world, and the only slut-shaming in the entire novel is of Margaret Lennox, who is shown as evil not for betraying her marriage but for seducing a sixteen-year-old boy (among other misbehaviors).
Yes, the novel is about the nobility, and yet we also get the brilliant sequence in Perth where Richard goes to the leather-worker to track back Lymond's glove. It's funny, but it also shows a life outside the ambit of the court, full of community and family and generosity.
I do wish we got more of that from Dunnett--her working-class characters are generally sympathetic (Turkey Mat, Archie Abernathy, Patey Liddle, Waugh the glover), but there aren't enough of them, and quite a lot are played for laughs (like the Lang Cleg). And characters who strive for improvement don't come off as well--I'm thinking here of Robin Stewart, Danny Hislop, and Marthe. They each start with a handicap of birth, and only one of them ever really deals with it successfully. One likes to think of Philippa as middle-class, but Gideon was a gentleman, and Flaw Valleys wasn't a farm, it was an estate with servants, lands, a gatehouse, and a fine hall. It may not have been Pemberly, but it was hardly Longbourne.
Anyway, that's some thoughts on Dunnett. Which is why I have gone and bought King Hereafter for my Kindle. It's about time I reread that.
Things to do today: laundry. Email electrician. Dishes. Plan for Spain. Buy mushrooms and goat cheese. Make dinner. Read True Grit. Argh: there's no time for writing in that. Ah, well.
::forces self off the futon::
If I get moving, I can listen to Richard nurse Francis in the dell north of Hexham while I putter about the house.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments; comment here or there.