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cyphomandraI was all enthusiastic about catching up and then realised I'd forgotten two books (at least!). Have also moved house and lost broadband (unsatisfactory call to provider produced a) free dial-up and b) vague promises - initially a whimsical email suggesting I would get broadband again on Christmas Day 2009, although this has now been revised to May 5th). Anyway. Starting somewhere, with a re-read of one of my favourite books, and a new one that didn't work out...
The Falconer's Knot, Mary Hoffman. Arrgh. If you’re going to write a medieval murder mystery set in a monastery with a (admittedly supporting) character called Umberto, you should at least have the material to back it up, and this doesn’t. I’ve read two of Hoffman’s Stravaganza series; I liked the second better than the first, but still found them lacking, and the Italian alternate world setting, which I should have liked, also never quite fired for me.
This one is genuine historical, and in addition to the murders there’s a love story between Silvano (rich, noble, accused of murder hence flees to monastery) and Chiara (sent to conveniently neighbouring nunnery by oppressive relations) as well as a fair bit about fresco painting, which was probably the only bit I really liked (although as soon as someone absently mentions that certain pigments used in making the paints are poisonous you can see where it’s going). The plotting is obvious and the writing style irksome – multiple third person viewpoints, the sort of thing I think of as budget omniscient where every viewpoint is at the same distance and the reader is jolted from head to head to head. I love omniscient when it’s done well, when it’s flexible and controlled and moves from grand observational sweeps through cities to the thoughts of the smallest inhabitant (all right, yes, I am excessively fond of Dickens), and if your story is big enough (say, for example, George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series) I also don’t mind multiple pov, but there’s too little differentiation here and too much laziness.
The other problem, tho’, is the dialogue, which is on-the-nose to the point of making the characters unfathomably cardboard.
“I know we would be rivals if we were both selling wool in Gubbio,” said Angelica. “But we are both women trying to make a living among men. Perhaps we should think of going into business together?”
Or. Imagine being a member of a closed community in which there have been two murders, where suddenly you can no longer trust people you’ve lived with for years, and your safety is uncertain. Obviously, you would find yourself saying something like this to your fellow monk:
“I am sorry to say,” said Anselmo, “that however vigilant we may be, it might take another murder before we can find the killer.”
And your fellow monk would not thump you for being an insensitive moron or stare at you incredulously, instead only nodding at your deft encapsulation of the problem. Not.
Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit. This is one of my favourite books (admittedly a rather large and unwieldy category) and I’ve been wanting to re-read it since I plunged into Hikaru no Go last year, so I fell upon it whilst staying at my sister’s and swept through it in between sessions of DDR (the PS2 game rather than the former German republic). It is, like Hikaru no Go, about a board game – in this case chess – and follows Beth Harmon, a plain girl, orphaned, who learns chess from the janitor at the orphanage and is, unexpectedly, a genius at it. It gets across the love of the game as well as an appreciation for the work that has to underlie such talent – the coaching sessions, the memorisations; that bit where Beth talks about the power of grand master games, how every move opens up hundreds of potential, fascinating alternatives, all but one of which is then snuffed out by the next
It’s also, equally, about obsession – what haunts Beth is addiction, to alcohol and prescription sedatives, and she explores these with almost as much dedication as she does chess. Tevis himself was alcoholic, and it’s a narrative that’s obviously personal but always feels specific to Beth herself, rather than being a standard self-help addiction memoir or wrenching the story away from the chess. The characters are great – Beth’s friend Jolene, a black girl from the same orphanage who was never adopted, is particularly well done, but Beth’s foster parents, her fellow chess players, the orphanage staff… all excellent. There’s a nice moment where Beth is offered sponsorship for her trip to Russia from an anti-Communist Christian organisation, and when she goes – alone, having rejected the sponsors and their requests for her to “make a statement” – there’s an equally nice (and probably more historical) moment where her sometime lover and fellow chess player phones her about her game, talking through possible lines and responses and backing her up, finally, on the other side of the world.
It’s a surprisingly elegant book in terms of plotting and characterisation, and the plain prose style almost disguises just how much is being said with so little. It’s also less relentlessly depressing than the other couple of books by Tevis I’ve read, although they’re also good.
The Falconer's Knot, Mary Hoffman. Arrgh. If you’re going to write a medieval murder mystery set in a monastery with a (admittedly supporting) character called Umberto, you should at least have the material to back it up, and this doesn’t. I’ve read two of Hoffman’s Stravaganza series; I liked the second better than the first, but still found them lacking, and the Italian alternate world setting, which I should have liked, also never quite fired for me.
This one is genuine historical, and in addition to the murders there’s a love story between Silvano (rich, noble, accused of murder hence flees to monastery) and Chiara (sent to conveniently neighbouring nunnery by oppressive relations) as well as a fair bit about fresco painting, which was probably the only bit I really liked (although as soon as someone absently mentions that certain pigments used in making the paints are poisonous you can see where it’s going). The plotting is obvious and the writing style irksome – multiple third person viewpoints, the sort of thing I think of as budget omniscient where every viewpoint is at the same distance and the reader is jolted from head to head to head. I love omniscient when it’s done well, when it’s flexible and controlled and moves from grand observational sweeps through cities to the thoughts of the smallest inhabitant (all right, yes, I am excessively fond of Dickens), and if your story is big enough (say, for example, George RR Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series) I also don’t mind multiple pov, but there’s too little differentiation here and too much laziness.
The other problem, tho’, is the dialogue, which is on-the-nose to the point of making the characters unfathomably cardboard.
“I know we would be rivals if we were both selling wool in Gubbio,” said Angelica. “But we are both women trying to make a living among men. Perhaps we should think of going into business together?”
Or. Imagine being a member of a closed community in which there have been two murders, where suddenly you can no longer trust people you’ve lived with for years, and your safety is uncertain. Obviously, you would find yourself saying something like this to your fellow monk:
“I am sorry to say,” said Anselmo, “that however vigilant we may be, it might take another murder before we can find the killer.”
And your fellow monk would not thump you for being an insensitive moron or stare at you incredulously, instead only nodding at your deft encapsulation of the problem. Not.
Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit. This is one of my favourite books (admittedly a rather large and unwieldy category) and I’ve been wanting to re-read it since I plunged into Hikaru no Go last year, so I fell upon it whilst staying at my sister’s and swept through it in between sessions of DDR (the PS2 game rather than the former German republic). It is, like Hikaru no Go, about a board game – in this case chess – and follows Beth Harmon, a plain girl, orphaned, who learns chess from the janitor at the orphanage and is, unexpectedly, a genius at it. It gets across the love of the game as well as an appreciation for the work that has to underlie such talent – the coaching sessions, the memorisations; that bit where Beth talks about the power of grand master games, how every move opens up hundreds of potential, fascinating alternatives, all but one of which is then snuffed out by the next
It’s also, equally, about obsession – what haunts Beth is addiction, to alcohol and prescription sedatives, and she explores these with almost as much dedication as she does chess. Tevis himself was alcoholic, and it’s a narrative that’s obviously personal but always feels specific to Beth herself, rather than being a standard self-help addiction memoir or wrenching the story away from the chess. The characters are great – Beth’s friend Jolene, a black girl from the same orphanage who was never adopted, is particularly well done, but Beth’s foster parents, her fellow chess players, the orphanage staff… all excellent. There’s a nice moment where Beth is offered sponsorship for her trip to Russia from an anti-Communist Christian organisation, and when she goes – alone, having rejected the sponsors and their requests for her to “make a statement” – there’s an equally nice (and probably more historical) moment where her sometime lover and fellow chess player phones her about her game, talking through possible lines and responses and backing her up, finally, on the other side of the world.
It’s a surprisingly elegant book in terms of plotting and characterisation, and the plain prose style almost disguises just how much is being said with so little. It’s also less relentlessly depressing than the other couple of books by Tevis I’ve read, although they’re also good.
