What Fools These Wednesdays Be
What I've Finished Reading
I liked Among Others a lot more than I expected to like it in the beginning, which was the opposite of my experience with The Just City. Mor has to choose between joining her dead sister in the world of the fairies and going back to her living boyfriend and their book club, then finds that she's already made the choice. The odd pacing and messy verisimilitude justifies itself in the end.
There is one strange scene toward the beginning of the book in which Mor's dad (whom she hasn't seen since she was a baby) gets drunk and tries to get in bed with her. Mor records this in her diary, then tries to normalize it with a couple of paragraphs about how there's probably nothing wrong with incest in principle, and she would like to be touched, but it just wasn't for her. Then Daniel goes back to being a normal well-meaning but awkward dad and the incident is never mentioned again. If I had to guess, I'd say that Walton includes these scenes of sexual threat (this one, the rapes in The Just City) because they're part of life and it would be dishonest to leave them out of a story just because the story also has fairies or time-traveling Greek gods. I find this admirable in theory but I also resent it a little.
This is a book that looks like it's going to be escapist comfort reading (young outsider loves books and talks to fairies!) but refuses from the start to conform to expectations. The magic in particular is a confusing, difficult and isolating obligation, like taking care of a sick relative. It can be beautiful - as in the understated final confrontation - but so can anything, once it's written down.
I didn't feel as much love and pain with A Fox Under my Cloak as I have for the others in the Henry Williamson sequence, but I don't know if it's because it's a weaker book or just because wars are less interesting than growing up. The war stuff isn't uninteresting to begin with, but it's starting to feel a little familiar, all the coat lice and bully beef and commanding officers who aren't all they're cracked up to be - which isn't fair of me at all.
What I'm Reading Now
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene. Here I am, reading Graham Greene when I don't even have to - I don't know what's happened to me. It's short and it was in the free books bin at the used media superstore (along with a beautiful vintage edition of The Victim by Saul Bellow), and it's great so far; there's a guy on a boat who can't relate to anyone who laughs or enjoys a game of cards, and we don't know exactly why he's feeling so burnt out but this is Graham Greene we're talking about so some educated guessing is possible.
Also: it's time to read some poetry! Body Switch is a new book of poems by Terri Witek and it's pretty good. I know how to talk about poetry even less than I know how to talk about paragraphs, but I love the comment on the Portuguese title of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet: Livro do Desassossego:
an SOS hisses through the last gorgeous word (can our eyes take it in?) as if a person couldn't decide whether to ask for help or fall asleep.
I know that feeling! Maybe you do, too.
What I Plan to Read Next
Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood, maybe Portnoy's Complaint if I get to it.
I liked Among Others a lot more than I expected to like it in the beginning, which was the opposite of my experience with The Just City. Mor has to choose between joining her dead sister in the world of the fairies and going back to her living boyfriend and their book club, then finds that she's already made the choice. The odd pacing and messy verisimilitude justifies itself in the end.
There is one strange scene toward the beginning of the book in which Mor's dad (whom she hasn't seen since she was a baby) gets drunk and tries to get in bed with her. Mor records this in her diary, then tries to normalize it with a couple of paragraphs about how there's probably nothing wrong with incest in principle, and she would like to be touched, but it just wasn't for her. Then Daniel goes back to being a normal well-meaning but awkward dad and the incident is never mentioned again. If I had to guess, I'd say that Walton includes these scenes of sexual threat (this one, the rapes in The Just City) because they're part of life and it would be dishonest to leave them out of a story just because the story also has fairies or time-traveling Greek gods. I find this admirable in theory but I also resent it a little.
This is a book that looks like it's going to be escapist comfort reading (young outsider loves books and talks to fairies!) but refuses from the start to conform to expectations. The magic in particular is a confusing, difficult and isolating obligation, like taking care of a sick relative. It can be beautiful - as in the understated final confrontation - but so can anything, once it's written down.
I didn't feel as much love and pain with A Fox Under my Cloak as I have for the others in the Henry Williamson sequence, but I don't know if it's because it's a weaker book or just because wars are less interesting than growing up. The war stuff isn't uninteresting to begin with, but it's starting to feel a little familiar, all the coat lice and bully beef and commanding officers who aren't all they're cracked up to be - which isn't fair of me at all.
What I'm Reading Now
A Burnt-Out Case by Graham Greene. Here I am, reading Graham Greene when I don't even have to - I don't know what's happened to me. It's short and it was in the free books bin at the used media superstore (along with a beautiful vintage edition of The Victim by Saul Bellow), and it's great so far; there's a guy on a boat who can't relate to anyone who laughs or enjoys a game of cards, and we don't know exactly why he's feeling so burnt out but this is Graham Greene we're talking about so some educated guessing is possible.
Also: it's time to read some poetry! Body Switch is a new book of poems by Terri Witek and it's pretty good. I know how to talk about poetry even less than I know how to talk about paragraphs, but I love the comment on the Portuguese title of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet: Livro do Desassossego:
an SOS hisses through the last gorgeous word (can our eyes take it in?) as if a person couldn't decide whether to ask for help or fall asleep.
I know that feeling! Maybe you do, too.
What I Plan to Read Next
Lions and Shadows by Christopher Isherwood, maybe Portnoy's Complaint if I get to it.