all the fun of the fair...
I have been horribly productive over the last couple of days, finishing up bits of meta, stuff owed to people, books that needed reading - the works, really.
1. Book Review :
Love
by Toni Morrison
page count: 202 pages
I've loved all of Toni Morrison's books, and they've all made me cry. Love is no exception, but I didn't find it as compelling as her earlier work.
The book revolves around the many women who all bear love for Bill Cosey, and how it slowly rots them from within. I'm not sure if this was what Morrison intended, but it was certainly the feeling that I got from the text: the love they bear him is sweet and oncomplicated as childhood candy, and it rots them from the inside out, posioning them against each other. The horrible thing is that I just couldn't see why they loved him so. We only see Bill Cosey through remembered conversations and remembered events, and the characters look back on him fondly - but the events they recount are anything but good. They're not rememembering them the way they should, I thought angrily, mid-way through the book, and things didn't get easier. The more I learned about Bill Cosey, the more I despised him. Here was a man who was such an obsessive skirt-chaser that he humiliated his wife and his eneite family, and didn't care who knew it. Moreover, no one seemed to mind. Well, I minded. I was upset on their behalf. I was upset for May and Christine (his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter) when Bill brought his new young bride home, and I understood why they were so angry with her. I understood why the young bride was so sweet and innocent, even as I thought, "well, she sounds awfully young..."
No wonder. Bill's 'bride' was eleven years old.
This is where things really start to unravel for me. This isn't an issue for people. They are scandalised that she married him - as if her parents didn't sell her to him! - rather than the other way around. Vida looks down on Heed (the bride) almost as much as she worships the memory of Bill. Junior despises both Heed and Christine, and I was not the least bit surprised to find that she, too, was related to Bill Cosey. He seemed father and grandfather to most of the characters in the book.
By the end of the novel, I was spitting with rage at all of the injustices these women had endured, and how blind they were to their own victimisation - and their complicity in each other's downfall. Morrison has never flinched away from painting grossly unsympathetic female characters and then making you ache for them anyway, but in this instance the level of pathos was just too much for me. I wanted nothing more than to beat them about the head and shout some sense into them. It could be that my own personal background, that my own generation, stops me from properly understanding the attitude the women have towards their circumstances. It could be. But I didn't understand Junior's character any more than Heed's, to be honest, and Junior's a contemporary. In fact, the only person I really felt like I understood - who was not so much under Bill Cosey's spell that she couldn't see from it - was L (neither Louise nor Eleanor, and she's not saying the rest). L was fantastic. She came across as this sweet old lady, but her comments parenthesise the book, and it works really well.
I also enjoyed the final conversation between Heed and Christine, done without quotation marks or any other signs indicating who was speaking. By the end, they had melted together, as little girls do.
Overall, this was raw and poignant and emotional, but I had trouble connecting to many of the characters. I never saw the appeal of Bill Cosey; more importantly, I couldn't see what the women saw in him, either. A fabulous book - because it's Morrison and she writes so richly you could just eat her language - but not one of her best.
2. Meta: I completed my Dora Mae essay for idol_reflection. You can read it here.
3. Fic:
Various things I owe people. Yes, I am still working on the rest...
A) For queenspanky
The Authority, Midnighter/Apollo: kitchen kink
100fandoms prompt #60 'bottle'.
A Domestic
B) For bluerosefairy
Supernatural, Dean: childhood
100fandoms prompt #89 'heart'
Dean never had monsters under his bed as a baby. Well, okay, that's a lie: he had monsters, but they never bothered him. His dad always made sure to chase them out, and to lock the closet door. It was a big, elaborate ritual just before bedtime and it worked because routine is what babies need. Dean knows this. He figured it out ages ago, even before his mother had explained to him that he wasn't allowed to keep Sam awake past his bedtime. Disappointingly, almost all time turned out to be Sammy's bedtime. Babies sure slept a lot.
Anyhow, he'd helped out a friend at school who'd been having some monster problems of her own. Not the bed-kind, as it turned out, but the potty kind. Dean was much too old to be bothered by monsters - they only bothered babies, and he wasn't a baby - but maybe girls were different. So, he borrowed his dad's special Monster Catching Glove, and went into Emily's bathroom, and looked in all the nooks and crannies that a monster might have hidden in. After about ten minutes, he emerged triumphant. "No monsters in there," he told her, reassuringly. "You must be too old for them." She seemed inordinately pleased at this, and Dean puffed up with pride. Hadn't he just saved a girl in this dress? His mom certainly thought so, and told her friends about it, which puzzled Dean a little. Emily had most certainly not been wearing that dress when he'd saved her, but his mom's friends laughed when he pointed this out.
Maybe it was a girl thing.
Anyway. That night, he did a check of his own room before bedtime, crawling right underneath the bed to make sure that the bogeyman hadn't followed him from Emily's house, and that there weren't any vampires or goblins hiding in his toybox. Reassured by the continued lack of monsters, he went to bed and slept soundly.
See, the thing is, Dean is too old for monsters. They only want babies - his dad had told him that big boys don't taste nice. And Dean is not a baby anymore. Stupidly, he thought that this meant the monsters had gone away. Stupid, yes, because he'd forgotten that there was a baby in the house, sleeping just a few meters away. So Dean didn't taste nice anymore, and no monsters wanted to eat him. And wasn't it stupid to think that, just because his daddy had protected him as a baby, he'd do the same thing for Sammy? Wasn't it stupid to save Emily, and leave his own brother to the bogeyman? What kind of big brother did that?
The night the monsters came back into Dean's life, he was asleep in his room. He heard the noise - yelling, it sounded like, and crashing, like he'd heard over at a friend's house one night and tried to ignore. There are no monsters, he told himself firmly, as he slowly crept out of bed. I'm not a baby.
But Sammy was. Oh, Sammy was still a baby. And where had his daddy been while they came to eat Sammy up? Where had Dean been, the big brother, the big sleepyhead, the big baby, asleep in his room?
He hugged the baby to his chest, kissing its cheek awkwardly. "Don't worry, Sammy," he said, as firmly as he could. His chest and his throat still hurt from the smoke and from the running, and he couldn't see his daddy at all. "I'll keep you safe from the monsters. I promise."
*
1. Book Review :
Love
by Toni Morrison
page count: 202 pages
I've loved all of Toni Morrison's books, and they've all made me cry. Love is no exception, but I didn't find it as compelling as her earlier work.
The book revolves around the many women who all bear love for Bill Cosey, and how it slowly rots them from within. I'm not sure if this was what Morrison intended, but it was certainly the feeling that I got from the text: the love they bear him is sweet and oncomplicated as childhood candy, and it rots them from the inside out, posioning them against each other. The horrible thing is that I just couldn't see why they loved him so. We only see Bill Cosey through remembered conversations and remembered events, and the characters look back on him fondly - but the events they recount are anything but good. They're not rememembering them the way they should, I thought angrily, mid-way through the book, and things didn't get easier. The more I learned about Bill Cosey, the more I despised him. Here was a man who was such an obsessive skirt-chaser that he humiliated his wife and his eneite family, and didn't care who knew it. Moreover, no one seemed to mind. Well, I minded. I was upset on their behalf. I was upset for May and Christine (his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter) when Bill brought his new young bride home, and I understood why they were so angry with her. I understood why the young bride was so sweet and innocent, even as I thought, "well, she sounds awfully young..."
No wonder. Bill's 'bride' was eleven years old.
This is where things really start to unravel for me. This isn't an issue for people. They are scandalised that she married him - as if her parents didn't sell her to him! - rather than the other way around. Vida looks down on Heed (the bride) almost as much as she worships the memory of Bill. Junior despises both Heed and Christine, and I was not the least bit surprised to find that she, too, was related to Bill Cosey. He seemed father and grandfather to most of the characters in the book.
By the end of the novel, I was spitting with rage at all of the injustices these women had endured, and how blind they were to their own victimisation - and their complicity in each other's downfall. Morrison has never flinched away from painting grossly unsympathetic female characters and then making you ache for them anyway, but in this instance the level of pathos was just too much for me. I wanted nothing more than to beat them about the head and shout some sense into them. It could be that my own personal background, that my own generation, stops me from properly understanding the attitude the women have towards their circumstances. It could be. But I didn't understand Junior's character any more than Heed's, to be honest, and Junior's a contemporary. In fact, the only person I really felt like I understood - who was not so much under Bill Cosey's spell that she couldn't see from it - was L (neither Louise nor Eleanor, and she's not saying the rest). L was fantastic. She came across as this sweet old lady, but her comments parenthesise the book, and it works really well.
I also enjoyed the final conversation between Heed and Christine, done without quotation marks or any other signs indicating who was speaking. By the end, they had melted together, as little girls do.
Overall, this was raw and poignant and emotional, but I had trouble connecting to many of the characters. I never saw the appeal of Bill Cosey; more importantly, I couldn't see what the women saw in him, either. A fabulous book - because it's Morrison and she writes so richly you could just eat her language - but not one of her best.
2. Meta: I completed my Dora Mae essay for idol_reflection. You can read it here.
3. Fic:
Various things I owe people. Yes, I am still working on the rest...
A) For queenspanky
The Authority, Midnighter/Apollo: kitchen kink
100fandoms prompt #60 'bottle'.
A Domestic
B) For bluerosefairy
Supernatural, Dean: childhood
100fandoms prompt #89 'heart'
Dean never had monsters under his bed as a baby. Well, okay, that's a lie: he had monsters, but they never bothered him. His dad always made sure to chase them out, and to lock the closet door. It was a big, elaborate ritual just before bedtime and it worked because routine is what babies need. Dean knows this. He figured it out ages ago, even before his mother had explained to him that he wasn't allowed to keep Sam awake past his bedtime. Disappointingly, almost all time turned out to be Sammy's bedtime. Babies sure slept a lot.
Anyhow, he'd helped out a friend at school who'd been having some monster problems of her own. Not the bed-kind, as it turned out, but the potty kind. Dean was much too old to be bothered by monsters - they only bothered babies, and he wasn't a baby - but maybe girls were different. So, he borrowed his dad's special Monster Catching Glove, and went into Emily's bathroom, and looked in all the nooks and crannies that a monster might have hidden in. After about ten minutes, he emerged triumphant. "No monsters in there," he told her, reassuringly. "You must be too old for them." She seemed inordinately pleased at this, and Dean puffed up with pride. Hadn't he just saved a girl in this dress? His mom certainly thought so, and told her friends about it, which puzzled Dean a little. Emily had most certainly not been wearing that dress when he'd saved her, but his mom's friends laughed when he pointed this out.
Maybe it was a girl thing.
Anyway. That night, he did a check of his own room before bedtime, crawling right underneath the bed to make sure that the bogeyman hadn't followed him from Emily's house, and that there weren't any vampires or goblins hiding in his toybox. Reassured by the continued lack of monsters, he went to bed and slept soundly.
See, the thing is, Dean is too old for monsters. They only want babies - his dad had told him that big boys don't taste nice. And Dean is not a baby anymore. Stupidly, he thought that this meant the monsters had gone away. Stupid, yes, because he'd forgotten that there was a baby in the house, sleeping just a few meters away. So Dean didn't taste nice anymore, and no monsters wanted to eat him. And wasn't it stupid to think that, just because his daddy had protected him as a baby, he'd do the same thing for Sammy? Wasn't it stupid to save Emily, and leave his own brother to the bogeyman? What kind of big brother did that?
The night the monsters came back into Dean's life, he was asleep in his room. He heard the noise - yelling, it sounded like, and crashing, like he'd heard over at a friend's house one night and tried to ignore. There are no monsters, he told himself firmly, as he slowly crept out of bed. I'm not a baby.
But Sammy was. Oh, Sammy was still a baby. And where had his daddy been while they came to eat Sammy up? Where had Dean been, the big brother, the big sleepyhead, the big baby, asleep in his room?
He hugged the baby to his chest, kissing its cheek awkwardly. "Don't worry, Sammy," he said, as firmly as he could. His chest and his throat still hurt from the smoke and from the running, and he couldn't see his daddy at all. "I'll keep you safe from the monsters. I promise."
*