The Little Country, The Curious Incident ..., Last Resort
Per discussion on last post, I'm going to try to post a few more reviews a little more often, including reviews of things I actually liked. Thus:
I am pretty sure that any review of The Little Country is obliged to describe it as charming. Possibly even precious. And yet it's a good book anyway. Also as mentioned in my last post, it's recommended by Allen, so it's not surprising that it's about a couple of people in a quaint English village who find a magical faerie book which leads to unlocking the mysteries of the universe with music as played on such classic English instruments as the pipe, the fiddle, and the accordion*. This magical faerie book is a piece of fiction that's (in the world of the novel) the sequel to two other books about the Wee Folk -- I assume we're supposed to picture The Borrowers or The Littles or something, only more old english. Anyway, the main story wherein bad guys try to get their hands on the faerie book is interleaved with the story the faerie book is telling. This works pretty well as a device; we get a certain amount of tension jumping back and forth at critical moments, and having a fiction-within-a-fiction lets de Lint put in all the faerie magic he is obviously dying to include without breaking the "real world" setting (although there's magic out there too, just subtler).
It's interesting to me that the book-within-a-book is a sequel to two well-loved books, because that is basically how The Little Country feels too. There are some bad guys, one of whom is particularly nasty, trying to get the book, but we know they're going to be foiled in the end. There is a sundered couple reunited, and they have a brief argument but the book's heart isn't really in it -- the author shrugs his shoulders and says "fine, we all know they're getting together so let's get to it" and then moves on to something else. The bad guys have one of these secret magic organizations that rules the world which come standard off the shelf -- it's pretty clear that the authors who write this kind of thing don't have any idea how business or technology works, so they just assume that no one else does either, and hence it's easy for an enterprising magician to make himself super-rich, control the stock market, and so on, without anyone noticing. The good guy leads are also pretty much what you'd expect -- you got the hot-headed lady fiddler, the not-much-good-at-fancy-speakin' sailor boyfriend, the adorably crotchety grandpa and so on. As is often the case in these situations, de Lint is more creative with the side characters. The Female Lead's Best Friend character is pretty interesting and there are some hints of a complex personal life with another character before they're ruthlessly squashed, and there's a Bad Rich Girl who has more depth than you'd think.
I don't actually have any real complaints, here, and I was totally fond of them all, I'm just saying. Charming. Yeah. Maybe a touch too long at the end, but I can understand the author not wanting to let characters go, and you may feel the same way.
*If Allen is reading this, he's probably mentally launching into an outraged defense of the accordion as an authentic old-time instrument suitable for many wonderful folk songs including-- and this is just like the people in the book.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was recommended by ghira, and is in close competition with the previous for Book Most Characteristic Of The Person Recommending It. This book was pretty well known so I assume everyone knows it's about an autistic kid, nominally investigating the question of who killed his neighbor's dog. In reality, of course, it's an amazing journey into the mind of an autistic boy and beyond that to view the relationships of his parents, his teachers, his neighbors, and so on, and how his interaction with them changes their lives as well as -- anyway, you get the deal. The portrayal of the guy is undeniably interesting. The particular behaviors will probably all be stuff you've heard of before, especially if you've spent much time around borderline high-functioning autistics (ie, anywhere on the internet), but I thought the combination and ramifications of his various quirks was interesting. Like, it's a nice touch to have the chapters numbered with prime numbers, or to include an appendix with a proof of a problem he discusses earlier.
If I were Adam I guess I would use this as a springboard to write an article about the concept of normalcy in society. Like I said earlier, lots of behaviors the guy exhibits are things that I recognize in myself or people I know, and frankly if you gave him an internet connection and just talked to him over email I bet he'd be indistinguishable from people I interact with on a daily basis. One of the fantasies the guy talks about is everyone else in the world dying, so he doesn't have to interact with anyone any more, not because he dislikes them but because people are complicated collections of rules he doesn't understand, and it freaks him out that there is all this interaction going on he can't comprehend. Of course, the interesting thing is this is exactly how other people feel about him; his parents are always running into problems when they violate one of his myriad private rules and he responds in a way they can't predict. To some extent this applies to their interactions with each other, too -- autistics aren't the only ones with mysterious private rules that you break at your peril.
I played Jim Aikin's Last Resort. Then I reviewed it in the usual place.
Next up for the book club: More Than Human (I think off that 20 top sf books list that was going around recently) and Stories of Your Life and Other Stories (recommended by huskyscotsman).
I am pretty sure that any review of The Little Country is obliged to describe it as charming. Possibly even precious. And yet it's a good book anyway. Also as mentioned in my last post, it's recommended by Allen, so it's not surprising that it's about a couple of people in a quaint English village who find a magical faerie book which leads to unlocking the mysteries of the universe with music as played on such classic English instruments as the pipe, the fiddle, and the accordion*. This magical faerie book is a piece of fiction that's (in the world of the novel) the sequel to two other books about the Wee Folk -- I assume we're supposed to picture The Borrowers or The Littles or something, only more old english. Anyway, the main story wherein bad guys try to get their hands on the faerie book is interleaved with the story the faerie book is telling. This works pretty well as a device; we get a certain amount of tension jumping back and forth at critical moments, and having a fiction-within-a-fiction lets de Lint put in all the faerie magic he is obviously dying to include without breaking the "real world" setting (although there's magic out there too, just subtler).
It's interesting to me that the book-within-a-book is a sequel to two well-loved books, because that is basically how The Little Country feels too. There are some bad guys, one of whom is particularly nasty, trying to get the book, but we know they're going to be foiled in the end. There is a sundered couple reunited, and they have a brief argument but the book's heart isn't really in it -- the author shrugs his shoulders and says "fine, we all know they're getting together so let's get to it" and then moves on to something else. The bad guys have one of these secret magic organizations that rules the world which come standard off the shelf -- it's pretty clear that the authors who write this kind of thing don't have any idea how business or technology works, so they just assume that no one else does either, and hence it's easy for an enterprising magician to make himself super-rich, control the stock market, and so on, without anyone noticing. The good guy leads are also pretty much what you'd expect -- you got the hot-headed lady fiddler, the not-much-good-at-fancy-speakin' sailor boyfriend, the adorably crotchety grandpa and so on. As is often the case in these situations, de Lint is more creative with the side characters. The Female Lead's Best Friend character is pretty interesting and there are some hints of a complex personal life with another character before they're ruthlessly squashed, and there's a Bad Rich Girl who has more depth than you'd think.
I don't actually have any real complaints, here, and I was totally fond of them all, I'm just saying. Charming. Yeah. Maybe a touch too long at the end, but I can understand the author not wanting to let characters go, and you may feel the same way.
*If Allen is reading this, he's probably mentally launching into an outraged defense of the accordion as an authentic old-time instrument suitable for many wonderful folk songs including-- and this is just like the people in the book.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was recommended by ghira, and is in close competition with the previous for Book Most Characteristic Of The Person Recommending It. This book was pretty well known so I assume everyone knows it's about an autistic kid, nominally investigating the question of who killed his neighbor's dog. In reality, of course, it's an amazing journey into the mind of an autistic boy and beyond that to view the relationships of his parents, his teachers, his neighbors, and so on, and how his interaction with them changes their lives as well as -- anyway, you get the deal. The portrayal of the guy is undeniably interesting. The particular behaviors will probably all be stuff you've heard of before, especially if you've spent much time around borderline high-functioning autistics (ie, anywhere on the internet), but I thought the combination and ramifications of his various quirks was interesting. Like, it's a nice touch to have the chapters numbered with prime numbers, or to include an appendix with a proof of a problem he discusses earlier.
If I were Adam I guess I would use this as a springboard to write an article about the concept of normalcy in society. Like I said earlier, lots of behaviors the guy exhibits are things that I recognize in myself or people I know, and frankly if you gave him an internet connection and just talked to him over email I bet he'd be indistinguishable from people I interact with on a daily basis. One of the fantasies the guy talks about is everyone else in the world dying, so he doesn't have to interact with anyone any more, not because he dislikes them but because people are complicated collections of rules he doesn't understand, and it freaks him out that there is all this interaction going on he can't comprehend. Of course, the interesting thing is this is exactly how other people feel about him; his parents are always running into problems when they violate one of his myriad private rules and he responds in a way they can't predict. To some extent this applies to their interactions with each other, too -- autistics aren't the only ones with mysterious private rules that you break at your peril.
I played Jim Aikin's Last Resort. Then I reviewed it in the usual place.
Next up for the book club: More Than Human (I think off that 20 top sf books list that was going around recently) and Stories of Your Life and Other Stories (recommended by huskyscotsman).