(no subject)
1805 doll dress finished and beautiful, but I haven't yet moved on to the Harriet Vane blouse because I've been so darn tired lately. The only thing I've had the strength to do is sit and read books all day. Literally all day. I finished three novels in the last three days, which is hugely astonishing to me, since I'm usually a really slow reader. I've taken months to finish books before, and never, ever, finished one in a day. I think because I know if I stopped reading, I'd have to go do something constructive, and it's just easier to keep reading!
Read the first of Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, knowing full well it would be a different thing entirely from watching TV adaptations, but it still managed to be not what I expected in a different way than I expected.
For starters, the change in tone half-way through was hugely disconcerting, I've always been bothered by books that do that. It started off so light and silly and funny that I thought, 'my god, how can I possibly take this seriously?' and actually wished it were a little more serious, but then in the middle all of a sudden there's this dialogue between Wimsey and Parker, whereupon the whole book takes a turn toward the dark and rather sad, where Wimsey is all "I like it at the beginning when it's all fun and games and then when it gets serious I want to get out and feel guilty about ever having liked it" and Parker's all "Well, you are shallow if you look at it like a game, and that's okay as long as you're getting things done, but in the end you do have a responsibilty to get over yourself and get on with it because it isn't a game you shallow poser" (these aren't obviously exact quotes, but that's the gist of it) and then you as the reader feel rather shallow and guilty, because we're all like Wimsey, we all read detective stories because it is all fun and exciting, but of course it is dealing with pretty horrible themes in the end, so you feel a bit guilty and shallow when someone points out that you use these horrible things for fun, which is really an exceedingly strange thing for a woman who makes a living writing murder mysteries to say to her readers in one of her own books.
And then there was this whole thing of Wimsey being shell-shocked from the war, and he has a flashback in the middle of the book, which was kind of an unnerving thing for me, living with a mother who has post-traumatic stress disorder, and being reminded of her flashback episode when I was about fourteen, which was the ultimate in strange/scary experiences. And since I have to live with this stuff, I've always tried to avoid books or movies or anything that deals with it, because you don't want be reminded there too; fiction is to escape from that. So to encounter it here, of all places, in any small measure, is disconcerting, to say the least.
And, to top it all off, I figured out who did it even before Wimsey did, so as it went on I'd already put together how it had happened, so it was kind of creepy to read the villian's confession at the end, because if you don't know what happened, you're too absorbed in digesting the facts to be disturbed by it, but once you know how it went down and can anticipate it, hearing the villian calmly and proudly giving the blow-by-blow is actually hugely creepy.
So, several days of gloom ensued after all this. When one has to live with dark gloomy crap all the time, one wants things that are shiny and certain wherever one can get them. Clearly I can't get it here, but still, weird as it may seem, I started reading the next one, and it's pretty good so far. Maybe it'll be cathartic somehow; even if everyone is damaged by someone or something, and you carry it with you no matter how long after, maybe you can still get over it enough to have a real life again some time. If a fictional character can, hopefully life can imitate art.
Read the first of Dorothy L. Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, knowing full well it would be a different thing entirely from watching TV adaptations, but it still managed to be not what I expected in a different way than I expected.
For starters, the change in tone half-way through was hugely disconcerting, I've always been bothered by books that do that. It started off so light and silly and funny that I thought, 'my god, how can I possibly take this seriously?' and actually wished it were a little more serious, but then in the middle all of a sudden there's this dialogue between Wimsey and Parker, whereupon the whole book takes a turn toward the dark and rather sad, where Wimsey is all "I like it at the beginning when it's all fun and games and then when it gets serious I want to get out and feel guilty about ever having liked it" and Parker's all "Well, you are shallow if you look at it like a game, and that's okay as long as you're getting things done, but in the end you do have a responsibilty to get over yourself and get on with it because it isn't a game you shallow poser" (these aren't obviously exact quotes, but that's the gist of it) and then you as the reader feel rather shallow and guilty, because we're all like Wimsey, we all read detective stories because it is all fun and exciting, but of course it is dealing with pretty horrible themes in the end, so you feel a bit guilty and shallow when someone points out that you use these horrible things for fun, which is really an exceedingly strange thing for a woman who makes a living writing murder mysteries to say to her readers in one of her own books.
And then there was this whole thing of Wimsey being shell-shocked from the war, and he has a flashback in the middle of the book, which was kind of an unnerving thing for me, living with a mother who has post-traumatic stress disorder, and being reminded of her flashback episode when I was about fourteen, which was the ultimate in strange/scary experiences. And since I have to live with this stuff, I've always tried to avoid books or movies or anything that deals with it, because you don't want be reminded there too; fiction is to escape from that. So to encounter it here, of all places, in any small measure, is disconcerting, to say the least.
And, to top it all off, I figured out who did it even before Wimsey did, so as it went on I'd already put together how it had happened, so it was kind of creepy to read the villian's confession at the end, because if you don't know what happened, you're too absorbed in digesting the facts to be disturbed by it, but once you know how it went down and can anticipate it, hearing the villian calmly and proudly giving the blow-by-blow is actually hugely creepy.
So, several days of gloom ensued after all this. When one has to live with dark gloomy crap all the time, one wants things that are shiny and certain wherever one can get them. Clearly I can't get it here, but still, weird as it may seem, I started reading the next one, and it's pretty good so far. Maybe it'll be cathartic somehow; even if everyone is damaged by someone or something, and you carry it with you no matter how long after, maybe you can still get over it enough to have a real life again some time. If a fictional character can, hopefully life can imitate art.