Princess Ben, "subversiveness" and kids' fantasy books
Not the definitive post on subversiveness in kids' books - or even the long and rambling one that I may or may not get around to at some point - but just a cry of pain.
Those who know this LJ will know that I'm a huge admirer of Catherine Gilbert Murdock, who has written two YA novels I consider just about perfect - funny, intelligent, believable and deeply engaging. She's on my buy before it's published list, and as soon as I heard about Princess Ben, that's exactly what I did. When I read a bit about it, I thought it sounded as if it might be bog-standard fairy tale-with-a-twist fantasy in a lot of writers' hands, but I had complete faith in Murdock's ability to produce something fantastic. Into every reader's life a little Rain of Disillusionment must fall, I suppose, and it's all the more bitter for the growing feeling that everyone else is likely to heap praise on the book. (Though there is, at least, a third D.J. book in progress, and that, I'll snap up with all my previous CGM fervour.)
So, why am I not joining everyone else?
Well, for one thing, the writing style isn't to my taste - though I might be alone in this, the sort of faux-historical-formal style offered me no reading pleasure, and has, much more surprisingly, a fair number of slips or even errors. That would be a bit of a problem, but could be overlooked except for the other problems.
There's the -- world, though that seems a rather generous word - too. It has that feeling of being too small, inadequately built, that you occasionally get from fantasy. I don't just mean literally, although that is certainly the case, as the 'Kingdom' of Montagne seems to consist of one castle, one market town and a big, big mountain. (Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure this is intended as a completely invented world, as the France-and-Germany likeness of Montagne and its nearest neighbour and enemy, Drachensbett, is increased by one rather odd mention of France.) The castle itself is very cool, and I wish the rest of the setting had been done as well.
Those who know me a bit will possibly know that I've got a very sensitive button around the presentation of fat characters in children's/teen lit. Hell, I only fell for Steepholm because he did it so well in his book The Fetch of Mardy Watt. (Okay, not really, though I did hold my breath right along with Deborah on the DWJ list when she asked him, in fear and trembling, please, please to tell her that Mardy doesn't lose weight as a side-effect of her magical coming-into-her-own. (She doesn't and she's perfect as she's a great character, who happens to be overweight and it doesn't mean anything else.) (Over-weight as it relates to health is an entirely different matter, and not one relevant to this discussion.) (I'm lost in a parenthetical maze again.... ) ....?)
So, Ben? Overweight when the book starts, shown stuffing her face with not very appealing sounding 'comfort food' fairly frequently, and gets more and more overweight as she gets more and more unhappy. And here's the kicker: she's taken prisoner, forced to slave away (mostly for the cook of the enemy's army's camp - oh, the irony), gets home, discovers that her bratty behaviour has left the whole country open to disaster (thanks to one of those rather-inexplicable World Government Rules), and becomes responsible, willing to mend her manners - and - guess what? Yup. She hadn't even noticed, but she's lost a lot of weight, so she's now curvy and pleasing rather than fat and a horror. She realizes the truth of her (dead) mother's words at last - "Fill the stomach, not the soul". It's spelled out more clearly in case that isn't crystal - "Wise that she was [sic], she recognized that for all the passion she put into her sauces and stews, food was only an emblem of devotion, not love itself."
That weight-loss-with-meaning would be more than enough for me, given my touchiness about this subject, but then, as part of her reformation, Ben tries to learn some of her mother's healing skills. She begins by chance with her maid, whose cold-curing starts all the castle staff rushing to Ben for cures, leading up to this one: "A baker with much hesitation and stumbling asked what I might recommend for his child suffering from stomachache. Scratching my head, I suggested a diet of peppermint tea and applesauce (another of my mother's remedies), and the baker returned the next week to inform me, awed, that it had worked to perfection." Awed? Yup, because we all know that nobody below the rank of princess, by birth or marriage, can possibly provide a simple, common-sense remedy for stomachache.
I was baffled as all get out as to how this could have come from a writer I love and admire so much, until I read this, at the very end.And so I dedicate this work to [Queen Sophia]'s memory as well as that of my parents, for however we might criticize those who rear us, the fact that we survive at all into adulthood, however late that passage comes, is testament enough to their ability and perseverance.
Oof. Aside from the crantankerous talking back I was doing to the book at that point '(Hello? Testament to the kid's ability and perseverance too/instead sometimes?!'), I had a sudden sense of insight - not into how the book was written, of course, but into how it felt to me as if it had been written. I could all too easily see the author, having read her kids a few fantasies with beautiful, dutiful princess heroines saying to herself that she should write a proper fantasy for them, which wasn't like that. And if the princess wasn't pretty and dutiful, wasn't interested in the boring lessons that the nasty Queen wants her to learn, but changed through hardship and diligent application - wow, that'd be really different. Nobody's done that. And Murdock's kids might have been misbehaving and driving her mad sometimes and the whole book developed a degree of parental Mary Sue-ism, in which the adult turns out to have been right all along.... (I'm a mother - I can see the appeal from time to time. But not really.)
I have one question remaining, only: this is getting a starred review in Horn Book, apparently, and Roger Sutton calls it 'slyly subversive'. For what values of subversive?
Those who know this LJ will know that I'm a huge admirer of Catherine Gilbert Murdock, who has written two YA novels I consider just about perfect - funny, intelligent, believable and deeply engaging. She's on my buy before it's published list, and as soon as I heard about Princess Ben, that's exactly what I did. When I read a bit about it, I thought it sounded as if it might be bog-standard fairy tale-with-a-twist fantasy in a lot of writers' hands, but I had complete faith in Murdock's ability to produce something fantastic. Into every reader's life a little Rain of Disillusionment must fall, I suppose, and it's all the more bitter for the growing feeling that everyone else is likely to heap praise on the book. (Though there is, at least, a third D.J. book in progress, and that, I'll snap up with all my previous CGM fervour.)
So, why am I not joining everyone else?
Well, for one thing, the writing style isn't to my taste - though I might be alone in this, the sort of faux-historical-formal style offered me no reading pleasure, and has, much more surprisingly, a fair number of slips or even errors. That would be a bit of a problem, but could be overlooked except for the other problems.
There's the -- world, though that seems a rather generous word - too. It has that feeling of being too small, inadequately built, that you occasionally get from fantasy. I don't just mean literally, although that is certainly the case, as the 'Kingdom' of Montagne seems to consist of one castle, one market town and a big, big mountain. (Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure this is intended as a completely invented world, as the France-and-Germany likeness of Montagne and its nearest neighbour and enemy, Drachensbett, is increased by one rather odd mention of France.) The castle itself is very cool, and I wish the rest of the setting had been done as well.
Those who know me a bit will possibly know that I've got a very sensitive button around the presentation of fat characters in children's/teen lit. Hell, I only fell for Steepholm because he did it so well in his book The Fetch of Mardy Watt. (Okay, not really, though I did hold my breath right along with Deborah on the DWJ list when she asked him, in fear and trembling, please, please to tell her that Mardy doesn't lose weight as a side-effect of her magical coming-into-her-own. (She doesn't and she's perfect as she's a great character, who happens to be overweight and it doesn't mean anything else.) (Over-weight as it relates to health is an entirely different matter, and not one relevant to this discussion.) (I'm lost in a parenthetical maze again.... ) ....?)
So, Ben? Overweight when the book starts, shown stuffing her face with not very appealing sounding 'comfort food' fairly frequently, and gets more and more overweight as she gets more and more unhappy. And here's the kicker: she's taken prisoner, forced to slave away (mostly for the cook of the enemy's army's camp - oh, the irony), gets home, discovers that her bratty behaviour has left the whole country open to disaster (thanks to one of those rather-inexplicable World Government Rules), and becomes responsible, willing to mend her manners - and - guess what? Yup. She hadn't even noticed, but she's lost a lot of weight, so she's now curvy and pleasing rather than fat and a horror. She realizes the truth of her (dead) mother's words at last - "Fill the stomach, not the soul". It's spelled out more clearly in case that isn't crystal - "Wise that she was [sic], she recognized that for all the passion she put into her sauces and stews, food was only an emblem of devotion, not love itself."
That weight-loss-with-meaning would be more than enough for me, given my touchiness about this subject, but then, as part of her reformation, Ben tries to learn some of her mother's healing skills. She begins by chance with her maid, whose cold-curing starts all the castle staff rushing to Ben for cures, leading up to this one: "A baker with much hesitation and stumbling asked what I might recommend for his child suffering from stomachache. Scratching my head, I suggested a diet of peppermint tea and applesauce (another of my mother's remedies), and the baker returned the next week to inform me, awed, that it had worked to perfection." Awed? Yup, because we all know that nobody below the rank of princess, by birth or marriage, can possibly provide a simple, common-sense remedy for stomachache.
I was baffled as all get out as to how this could have come from a writer I love and admire so much, until I read this, at the very end.And so I dedicate this work to [Queen Sophia]'s memory as well as that of my parents, for however we might criticize those who rear us, the fact that we survive at all into adulthood, however late that passage comes, is testament enough to their ability and perseverance.
Oof. Aside from the crantankerous talking back I was doing to the book at that point '(Hello? Testament to the kid's ability and perseverance too/instead sometimes?!'), I had a sudden sense of insight - not into how the book was written, of course, but into how it felt to me as if it had been written. I could all too easily see the author, having read her kids a few fantasies with beautiful, dutiful princess heroines saying to herself that she should write a proper fantasy for them, which wasn't like that. And if the princess wasn't pretty and dutiful, wasn't interested in the boring lessons that the nasty Queen wants her to learn, but changed through hardship and diligent application - wow, that'd be really different. Nobody's done that. And Murdock's kids might have been misbehaving and driving her mad sometimes and the whole book developed a degree of parental Mary Sue-ism, in which the adult turns out to have been right all along.... (I'm a mother - I can see the appeal from time to time. But not really.)
I have one question remaining, only: this is getting a starred review in Horn Book, apparently, and Roger Sutton calls it 'slyly subversive'. For what values of subversive?