Sometimes, I just start more books
Two up this time, and none of the previously mentioned ones finished. I decided I wasn't in the right mood for more Cherryh, and both the other 1941 ones are in the wrong rooms (they're rooms I use, but I haven't felt like reading in them).
First in a series - I've been looking out for the others, but although they were all over the place when I was in the UK they're not so here. A world where blacks (the Crosses of the title) are dominant over whites (the Noughts), and the obviously doomed romance between a Cross girl and a Nought boy. And it is largely obvious what's going to happen in this (particularly Callum's sister's suicide, where she practically writes on the kitchen table "I am going out to walk under a bus" and the family all sit there going, "take your coat, don't be long"), but it's done well. The racial politics are somewhere between civil rights US (segregated schools) and present day UK (terrorist bombings) - one of the places it didn't feel like was South Africa, or at least the version of it I have via various literary filters (most recently Doris Lessing). The violence feels like a more recent development and there's less about possession of territory and colonialism.
Sometimes her world doesn't quite ring true - the fact that the two of them can grow up together as friends is necessary for the story, but I'm not sure children stay that oblivious to social realities for that long. Where it works is in the more subtle interactions - in Sephy's attempts to integrate Callum into her group of school friends without, initially, realising that she's only thinking about her own version of events in this, and not about what Callum might think or feel.
Marianne Robinson, Gilead. An elderly preacher who married late in life writes to his young son, in the last few weeks of his own life. Very little happens in this book and yet - for these characters - everything does.
It's a book told entirely in one voice, but "one mind" is probably the better term, because you are, as a reader, watching John Ames think his way through things, and his thoughts are always considered and always generous. And it made me think: about the parable of the prodigal son, actually, more than anything else, but there's much more there. I'm not religious, but this is what I think religion should be for; working through the things of life, rather than rushing to judge on them.
First in a series - I've been looking out for the others, but although they were all over the place when I was in the UK they're not so here. A world where blacks (the Crosses of the title) are dominant over whites (the Noughts), and the obviously doomed romance between a Cross girl and a Nought boy. And it is largely obvious what's going to happen in this (particularly Callum's sister's suicide, where she practically writes on the kitchen table "I am going out to walk under a bus" and the family all sit there going, "take your coat, don't be long"), but it's done well. The racial politics are somewhere between civil rights US (segregated schools) and present day UK (terrorist bombings) - one of the places it didn't feel like was South Africa, or at least the version of it I have via various literary filters (most recently Doris Lessing). The violence feels like a more recent development and there's less about possession of territory and colonialism.
Sometimes her world doesn't quite ring true - the fact that the two of them can grow up together as friends is necessary for the story, but I'm not sure children stay that oblivious to social realities for that long. Where it works is in the more subtle interactions - in Sephy's attempts to integrate Callum into her group of school friends without, initially, realising that she's only thinking about her own version of events in this, and not about what Callum might think or feel.
Marianne Robinson, Gilead. An elderly preacher who married late in life writes to his young son, in the last few weeks of his own life. Very little happens in this book and yet - for these characters - everything does.
It's a book told entirely in one voice, but "one mind" is probably the better term, because you are, as a reader, watching John Ames think his way through things, and his thoughts are always considered and always generous. And it made me think: about the parable of the prodigal son, actually, more than anything else, but there's much more there. I'm not religious, but this is what I think religion should be for; working through the things of life, rather than rushing to judge on them.