Readings: A Slight Trick of the Mind, and FOTJ: Abyss
Been meaning to post a review of this for a while but have recently read A Slight Trick of the Mind, by Mitch Cullen. It takes on the premise of Sherlock Holmes and who he was, both in the Doyle canon and as a literary figure, through an exploration of the life of a much older Holmes eking out his retirement in the wake of WWII on a rural farm in Sussex.
The novel itself is one of those that an individual reader will either love or hate; the pace is slow and the atmosphere is opulent. There's also a good deal of symbolism layered into the themes of growing old and the interaction of memory and story, which plays an important role into the unravelling of the plot. Is it pretentious? A little. But it's also highly readable, if you don't mind the pace.
It's not the kind of book I would normally be drawn to, but I've long been fascinated with that early detective fiction era. Especially Holmes, because for all that the Doyle stories themselves helped define a genre, when reading them you tend to find that they're not plausible or particularly nuanced, they're fanciful and formulaic and the characters repetitive -- and yet they, and Holmes, do have something that continues to seize the imagination, something that's not quite definable. They do stand at that turning point in the social reality of crime, but there's something about Holmes and his place in Western popular culture that speaks to a more intrinsic function.
Cullin explores that in A Slight Trick of the Mind, and he does it well. He touches on Holmes's arrogance and his detachment, his friendship with Watson (whom Holmes staunchly defends against portrayals as an 'oafish, blundering fool' in the third chapter, winning my undying gratitude -- *grumbles about Laurie R. King*), his delineation of the rational from the everyday and his struggle to apply logic to things that have no solution or meaning. It's a book about Holmes, but it's also about how those things apply in a universal sense, and how Holmes as a literary figure embodies those qualities. It's thoughtful and slow and profound, but if you like linear plots and literal, nonindulgent narratives, it's probably not for you.
I can't quite figure out why the publishers felt the need to put 'A Novel' on the cover and spine of my paperback copy of the book, though. It always annoys me. Is it for that extra edge of gravitas, or is there a strange inability in the ranks of the reading public to distinguish between the fiction and nonfiction areas of libraries and bookshops that I don't know about?
Have also got my hands on Abyss. I haven't actually read Omen yet, so have only skimmed the Luke and Ben bits. A few quick things:
1. I have a seriously bad feeling about the unknown, evilly lecherous blonde lady in the mists who wants some desperate lovin' from Luke, all hunger and insistence, whom Luke feels is familiar as she calls him into her Cave of Lust 'like a lover in need of a visit'. I just... I hope we're not going down the Callista route, because I kind of think Callista deserves better than to end up like this.
2. The chat with ghost-Anakin: I admit I'm torn. I can't hate it entirely, because Luke's guilt and joy at seeing him were touching, and Ben's awkward "Well, I don't know you, but I'll make nice" was fine. But Luke then proceeding to fangirl all over Anakin as The Best Jedi Ever, Whose Like We Shall Not See Again? Oh please no. He was a kid, and he had flaws, and airbrushing them to make him SuperJedi isn't honouring his memory.
3. Similar, with ghost-Mara: Okay, this was less awful that I was worried it would be. In fact, it had a few points that were really well done. I do have strong objections to "I went after Jacen as a killer" and "He wasn't a Sith Lord when I went after him". First, so what?, and second, does it matter whether he'd given himself a Sith name yet, when he was torturing people to death and ordering executions? This retcon thing with Mara's death continues to perplex. She acted unwisely, yes, but you're not going to convince me that what she did was wrong, prothors.
4. Similar, with ghost-Jacen: I... really don't know with this one. I quite like that he was still grey and conflicted, I like that Ben didn't know how to react to him, I like that Jacen was still playing games. It felt lacking, though. And damnation? That's a really odd thing to leave hanging there.
So, less of the Denning!fail than I expected. I'm sure he'll manage to screw around with Leia and Jaina, though, and remind me many times that HAN IS NOT OLD, OKAY? when I actually read the book properly. I did note that Luke's odd tendency, prevalent in Denning books, to run Han down for no apparent reason whatsoever. (Perhaps I can fanwank that he's paranoid about Han being close to Ben, given how badly he overrode Han's relationship with Anakin and Jacen when they were teenagers? Hence his tendency to emphasise to Ben that WE ARE JEDI AND SO MUCH BETTER THAN HAN THAT WE SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO HIS SO-CALLED WISDOM BECAUSE PLAINLY HE KNOWS NOTHING, LOL. Hmm.)
The novel itself is one of those that an individual reader will either love or hate; the pace is slow and the atmosphere is opulent. There's also a good deal of symbolism layered into the themes of growing old and the interaction of memory and story, which plays an important role into the unravelling of the plot. Is it pretentious? A little. But it's also highly readable, if you don't mind the pace.
It's not the kind of book I would normally be drawn to, but I've long been fascinated with that early detective fiction era. Especially Holmes, because for all that the Doyle stories themselves helped define a genre, when reading them you tend to find that they're not plausible or particularly nuanced, they're fanciful and formulaic and the characters repetitive -- and yet they, and Holmes, do have something that continues to seize the imagination, something that's not quite definable. They do stand at that turning point in the social reality of crime, but there's something about Holmes and his place in Western popular culture that speaks to a more intrinsic function.
Cullin explores that in A Slight Trick of the Mind, and he does it well. He touches on Holmes's arrogance and his detachment, his friendship with Watson (whom Holmes staunchly defends against portrayals as an 'oafish, blundering fool' in the third chapter, winning my undying gratitude -- *grumbles about Laurie R. King*), his delineation of the rational from the everyday and his struggle to apply logic to things that have no solution or meaning. It's a book about Holmes, but it's also about how those things apply in a universal sense, and how Holmes as a literary figure embodies those qualities. It's thoughtful and slow and profound, but if you like linear plots and literal, nonindulgent narratives, it's probably not for you.
I can't quite figure out why the publishers felt the need to put 'A Novel' on the cover and spine of my paperback copy of the book, though. It always annoys me. Is it for that extra edge of gravitas, or is there a strange inability in the ranks of the reading public to distinguish between the fiction and nonfiction areas of libraries and bookshops that I don't know about?
Have also got my hands on Abyss. I haven't actually read Omen yet, so have only skimmed the Luke and Ben bits. A few quick things:
1. I have a seriously bad feeling about the unknown, evilly lecherous blonde lady in the mists who wants some desperate lovin' from Luke, all hunger and insistence, whom Luke feels is familiar as she calls him into her Cave of Lust 'like a lover in need of a visit'. I just... I hope we're not going down the Callista route, because I kind of think Callista deserves better than to end up like this.
2. The chat with ghost-Anakin: I admit I'm torn. I can't hate it entirely, because Luke's guilt and joy at seeing him were touching, and Ben's awkward "Well, I don't know you, but I'll make nice" was fine. But Luke then proceeding to fangirl all over Anakin as The Best Jedi Ever, Whose Like We Shall Not See Again? Oh please no. He was a kid, and he had flaws, and airbrushing them to make him SuperJedi isn't honouring his memory.
3. Similar, with ghost-Mara: Okay, this was less awful that I was worried it would be. In fact, it had a few points that were really well done. I do have strong objections to "I went after Jacen as a killer" and "He wasn't a Sith Lord when I went after him". First, so what?, and second, does it matter whether he'd given himself a Sith name yet, when he was torturing people to death and ordering executions? This retcon thing with Mara's death continues to perplex. She acted unwisely, yes, but you're not going to convince me that what she did was wrong, prothors.
4. Similar, with ghost-Jacen: I... really don't know with this one. I quite like that he was still grey and conflicted, I like that Ben didn't know how to react to him, I like that Jacen was still playing games. It felt lacking, though. And damnation? That's a really odd thing to leave hanging there.
So, less of the Denning!fail than I expected. I'm sure he'll manage to screw around with Leia and Jaina, though, and remind me many times that HAN IS NOT OLD, OKAY? when I actually read the book properly. I did note that Luke's odd tendency, prevalent in Denning books, to run Han down for no apparent reason whatsoever. (Perhaps I can fanwank that he's paranoid about Han being close to Ben, given how badly he overrode Han's relationship with Anakin and Jacen when they were teenagers? Hence his tendency to emphasise to Ben that WE ARE JEDI AND SO MUCH BETTER THAN HAN THAT WE SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO HIS SO-CALLED WISDOM BECAUSE PLAINLY HE KNOWS NOTHING, LOL. Hmm.)