Wednesday What Are You Reading
Aug. 20th, 2014 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kafjCurrently Reading
Fame is the Spur, Howard Spring. This for HQ book club, which does rather tend to go in for lugubrious political novels. My father describes it as 'band as before, but not so good' - but since I had not read any other Howard Spring that didn't mean much. I am a chapter in so far (chances of finishing it before I leave on Friday: low) and impressed by the linking of the Great War and Peterloo.
Malinche, Laura Esquivel. The story of Malinalli, Hernán Cortes' translator. It's clearly been thoroughly researched, and the details are precise and vivid, but the prose is very clumsy. I think this may be a translation issue.
Recently Finished
Stir-fry, Emma Donoghue. Utterly delightful. One of those books that makes you wish the slow train went just a little bit more slowly - as it was, I finished it on the way home. Such a rich, deep book, with the most perfect ending. I loved it.
White Feathers, Susan Lanigan, which I have been ridiculously excited about for months because I SAW THIS BOOK BEING WRITTEN, PEOPLE! Bits of it, anyway. Actually, the loveliest part for me was seeing how all the snippets I'd already seen (David Wentworth Hopkins! the importance of Russian literature! Sybil and Roma in Greece!) fitted in to the overall arc.
And knowing there is More Lucia Damnit that didn't make it into this novel is terribly frustrating. Lucia is a fantastic character, even in her limited role here. I do hope she gets her own book.
Anyway - a token attempt at an impartial review. The plot turns on the start of the Great War in 1914, and the pressure placed on men to enlist. More specifically, the pressure placed on women to place pressure on men to enlist - and for the central character, Eva Downey, it's sharpened to an 'either/or' point, when she is forced to make the choice between denying her sister a potentially life-saving operation and presenting her lover with a white feather. The results are, of course, devastating.
Eva is a convincing character, simultaneously clever, confident, and out of her depth. I've mentioned Lucia Percival above - a Jamaican nurse and aspiring opera singer, who's very vivid and three-dimensional. Christopher Shandlin, Eva's sometime teacher and eventual lover, also deserves a mention. (Usually teacher-pupil relationships squick me no end, but both try so hard here to do the decent thing that they get away with it.) Oh, and Sybil! I like Sybil a lot. A definite page-turner, particularly once the war gets under way.
I was a little frustrated by the way some important episodes (Eva's roasting for cheating, for example) happened off-screen, and there were a few turns of phrase that struck me as anachronistic. The only real major weakness, though, was the fact that we didn't see enough of Imelda, the consumptive sister, to make her a compelling character, and therefore make Eva's dilemma really convincing.
All the same, I very much enjoyed this book (and no, I'm not just saying that!) and I think it is going to be big.
Up Next
Not sure. By the time I get to the end of Fame is the Spur I'll probably be in a completely different mindset. Maybe The Spirit Level.
Other Media
I watched Bill and Ted' Excellent Adventure for the first time the other night. It was quite fun, but I didn't really see what all the fuss was about. Also continuing with The West Wing.
Fame is the Spur, Howard Spring. This for HQ book club, which does rather tend to go in for lugubrious political novels. My father describes it as 'band as before, but not so good' - but since I had not read any other Howard Spring that didn't mean much. I am a chapter in so far (chances of finishing it before I leave on Friday: low) and impressed by the linking of the Great War and Peterloo.
Malinche, Laura Esquivel. The story of Malinalli, Hernán Cortes' translator. It's clearly been thoroughly researched, and the details are precise and vivid, but the prose is very clumsy. I think this may be a translation issue.
Recently Finished
Stir-fry, Emma Donoghue. Utterly delightful. One of those books that makes you wish the slow train went just a little bit more slowly - as it was, I finished it on the way home. Such a rich, deep book, with the most perfect ending. I loved it.
White Feathers, Susan Lanigan, which I have been ridiculously excited about for months because I SAW THIS BOOK BEING WRITTEN, PEOPLE! Bits of it, anyway. Actually, the loveliest part for me was seeing how all the snippets I'd already seen (David Wentworth Hopkins! the importance of Russian literature! Sybil and Roma in Greece!) fitted in to the overall arc.
And knowing there is More Lucia Damnit that didn't make it into this novel is terribly frustrating. Lucia is a fantastic character, even in her limited role here. I do hope she gets her own book.
Anyway - a token attempt at an impartial review. The plot turns on the start of the Great War in 1914, and the pressure placed on men to enlist. More specifically, the pressure placed on women to place pressure on men to enlist - and for the central character, Eva Downey, it's sharpened to an 'either/or' point, when she is forced to make the choice between denying her sister a potentially life-saving operation and presenting her lover with a white feather. The results are, of course, devastating.
Eva is a convincing character, simultaneously clever, confident, and out of her depth. I've mentioned Lucia Percival above - a Jamaican nurse and aspiring opera singer, who's very vivid and three-dimensional. Christopher Shandlin, Eva's sometime teacher and eventual lover, also deserves a mention. (Usually teacher-pupil relationships squick me no end, but both try so hard here to do the decent thing that they get away with it.) Oh, and Sybil! I like Sybil a lot. A definite page-turner, particularly once the war gets under way.
I was a little frustrated by the way some important episodes (Eva's roasting for cheating, for example) happened off-screen, and there were a few turns of phrase that struck me as anachronistic. The only real major weakness, though, was the fact that we didn't see enough of Imelda, the consumptive sister, to make her a compelling character, and therefore make Eva's dilemma really convincing.
All the same, I very much enjoyed this book (and no, I'm not just saying that!) and I think it is going to be big.
Up Next
Not sure. By the time I get to the end of Fame is the Spur I'll probably be in a completely different mindset. Maybe The Spirit Level.
Other Media
I watched Bill and Ted' Excellent Adventure for the first time the other night. It was quite fun, but I didn't really see what all the fuss was about. Also continuing with The West Wing.
