a complete lack of complaints
Sep. 13th, 2008 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI wanted to write about a book I loved, for a change, because it’s often easier to complain about things than try and convey how much you really enjoyed something. And then I found myself spoilt for choice, which is a nice position to be in – two re-reads and two new-to-me books that have really stood out. One of the re-reads (Pat Barker’s Regeneration) is for a course, and I will go on about it there, and one of the new-to-me will show up later as well as I hadn’t realised it was a sequel (Morris Gleitzman’s Then – Once, the first book, is still good, but not as good). Also, I am reading so many other things about war at the moment that I thought it would be nice to think about something else for a change. So I picked the other two, and went on (and on!) to discuss both of them in fairly thorough detail - I don't think it's possible to really spoil in Alice in Sunderland, but I'd suggest avoiding the first review if you haven't gotten around to reading Eight Days of Luke yet.
Eight Days of Luke, Diana Wynne Jones. This was my first Diana Wynne Jones – I was 11 or so – and I think that will always make it slightly special. If threatened with Sudden Doom or picking just one DWJ (I don’t know, some demented literary gameshow or a really odd serial killer gimmick), I would almost certainly go for Fire and Hemlock, but Eight Days of Luke is in the second tier of books I could not pick between if forced (Power of Three. Witch Week. Charmed Life. Time of the Ghost. The Homeward Bounders. The Ogre Downstairs. Something else really obvious that I will remember after posting this), thus ensuring my eventual elimination in the fictional gameshow semifinal.
Additionally, Eight Days of Luke was the first time I read a story that brought mythology crashing forward into contemporary life – and Norse mythology at that, which I’d been reading my way through in the library’s folk tales & mythology section (I toyed with Greek & Roman, and Egyptian for a bit, but Norse myth and King Arthur were my major (semi) nonfictional passions for much of my early childhood). I hadn’t known you could do that – and do it at a level where it’s not spelled out what’s happening (one of my favourite aspects of DWJ’s writing and why I so dislike her adult novels, where she stops doing it). There aren’t easy answers in this book, either – the ending is, at best, bittersweet – and characters don’t clearly slot into good and bad. I've read plenty of other books upgrading mythology since then, and some have done it equally well, but I'm not convinced anyone else has done it better.
Anyway. I feel like I’m attacking this backwards. David is an orphan, living with an assortment of unpleasant relatives (it took me a couple of reads to realise Astrid was Cousin Ronald’s wife, for all that it says it in the first paragraph, because they didn’t behave like any couple I’d ever read before, and, quite possibly, because she walks out on him at the ending and it’s so impressively underplayed. I will come back to this.). Home for the holidays, he gets into increasing amounts of trouble, and then, venting his anger on the garden wall, accidentally stumbles on the words needed to unlock Luke from his centuries-long imprisonment. At which point the trouble really starts.
I said above that it’s hard to convey how much you like books, and this is a perfect example – I keep flipping through the book and just end up staring at the sentences. It’s a clean narrative – no scene wasted, and each action leads inevitably (but unpredictably) to the next, and it’s all done with this dry, accurate humour, that never forgets what’s actually going on. Astrid & Uncle Bernard’s illness contests, for example, are funny on the surface level (““One of your heads,” David suggested, in a purely sporting spirit”), but underneath they show just how unhappy Astrid is, and how in order to cope with this family she’s become as manipulative as the rest of them. Astrid changes throughout the book, possibly more than any other character, and she’s the one who asks the question on the final page:
“[to David] Wouldn’t you say it was worth it, to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after?”
This is really why I started writing this more detailed review, because I’ve never been sure why Astrid’s asking this. It’s paired with Brunhilda’s decision – David, unable to answer, thinks of how she ends up sad forever – but also with Astrid’s decision to leave Ronald, which doesn’t seem to fit the emotional trajectory she’s talking about. It’s a very appropriate question for Luke (who, when David asks him, says he’ll tell him later, and goes to sleep), who is after all characterised by his inability to care about the longterm consequences of his actions – but he changes, too. Luke is a particularly impressive character in this, believable as a god of lies and trickery, and yet capable of following through on his promises to David, and helping him out of his own situation. I am curious as to how he’d answer this question, and if his answer has changed; I don’t think, tho’, for this story (which is David’s) that I should know.
I said the ending was bittersweet, and it’s not just this unresolved question – it’s David’s recognition that what he, personally, has done, is going to have major effects on his world. The Norse gods have power again, but that power is on one particular side, and Luke is opposed to it. It’s an unresolvable dilemma, and perhaps that’s what the question is about as well.
Hmm. I was not intending to end up contemplating the end of the world and the inevitability of fate. This is also a book that is funny, deft and subtle – the scene where David has to get the eye from the Three Fates (lurking, improbably, in a cupboard in the house of Alan, a boy David plays cricket with) could be just another hero-completes-task sequence, but the predominant emotion David feels is not heroism but embarrassment, for getting into the house in the first place, and for having not just Alan, but his sisters (“a row of four tubby girls”) follow him in. One of the reasons I love Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (yes, this digression has a point) is that it gets across that sense of guilt children have, where they feel that their every action affects the universe; Eight Days of Luke does this as well, although it’s the next step on, with embarrassment at your own failure to fit in with the world. Possibly there are plenty of people out there who never felt guilty or embarrassed as children as their predominant worldview, but my argument will probably be that they should have.
The last thing I should say about Eight Days of Luke is that it does everything perfectly in 165 pages. I am still awed by this.
Alice in Sunderland, Bryan Talbot. I should start by specifying that this is a graphic novel, in case you all think I’ve gone too weirdly visual. Bryan Talbot also wrote/drew The Tale of One Bad Rat, which is an excellent abused teenaged runaway finds hope in Beatrix Potter story, and The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, yet another book I haven’t finished due to moving house (I move a lot), but the half I’ve read was interesting in a Michael Moorcock-ish way, and I liked the art.
Alice in Sunderland is, mostly, an argument that Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice in Wonderland comes from his attachment to the northeast (especially Sunderland). In proving this, we go through the history of the area, circling around the place and up and down through time, into and out of the world of fiction, of history, and, ultimately, the author, all in one night’s performance at the Sunderland Empire Theatre. It’s brilliant and moving, both as an argument and as an entertainment. It also made me horrendously homesick, which highlights a shortcoming in the English language as I don’t have another word to describe the intense longing for a place – I spent a year in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and it’s not my home, as such, but I do miss it (as I do most of the other places I’ve lived, from time to time), and this book made me miss it so much more. This is despite (or possibly because of) the bitter enmity between Newcastle and Sunderland, now largely related to football (I met a guy who’d kicked his son out of the house for supporting Sunderland) but, as detailed here, going back at least to the English Civil War.
The art is fabulous – mixing real documents (maps, photos, tourist leaflets, book covers, movie posters) with Talbot’s art, in his or other styles, as part of an ongoing dialogue about what comics are and how they, and this one works – analysis of original narrative art like the Bayeux Tapestry and Hogarth’s Gin Lane/Beer Street engravings, or parodies/homages to others (Scott McComics-Expert – a strangely familiar figure ☺ – turning up in a toga and swirling clouds, hand upraised, admonishing Talbot – “Don’t confuse the genre with the medium!”, and a truly glorious Tintin bit). It is all very much analytical and meta-analytical, but not in a way that ever does anything other than propel the story forward and enhance the characters ( “Now listen, ducks, I’m part of an ‘onourable tradition of British bawdy humour that goes back to the medieval mystery plays!”). And it all builds, layer on layer, evidence on assumption on suggestion, to the finale, which is remarkably effective.
I can’t pick up this book again without getting dragged into it, and that’s true for Eight Days of Luke as well. With Eight Days of Luke there’s familiarity with narrative, and with Alice in Sunderland it’s more familiarity with place, but in both of them there’s that feeling of being able to completely trust the author; I don’t know, necessarily, where I’m going or what it all means, but I know they’ll get me there.
Eight Days of Luke, Diana Wynne Jones. This was my first Diana Wynne Jones – I was 11 or so – and I think that will always make it slightly special. If threatened with Sudden Doom or picking just one DWJ (I don’t know, some demented literary gameshow or a really odd serial killer gimmick), I would almost certainly go for Fire and Hemlock, but Eight Days of Luke is in the second tier of books I could not pick between if forced (Power of Three. Witch Week. Charmed Life. Time of the Ghost. The Homeward Bounders. The Ogre Downstairs. Something else really obvious that I will remember after posting this), thus ensuring my eventual elimination in the fictional gameshow semifinal.
Additionally, Eight Days of Luke was the first time I read a story that brought mythology crashing forward into contemporary life – and Norse mythology at that, which I’d been reading my way through in the library’s folk tales & mythology section (I toyed with Greek & Roman, and Egyptian for a bit, but Norse myth and King Arthur were my major (semi) nonfictional passions for much of my early childhood). I hadn’t known you could do that – and do it at a level where it’s not spelled out what’s happening (one of my favourite aspects of DWJ’s writing and why I so dislike her adult novels, where she stops doing it). There aren’t easy answers in this book, either – the ending is, at best, bittersweet – and characters don’t clearly slot into good and bad. I've read plenty of other books upgrading mythology since then, and some have done it equally well, but I'm not convinced anyone else has done it better.
Anyway. I feel like I’m attacking this backwards. David is an orphan, living with an assortment of unpleasant relatives (it took me a couple of reads to realise Astrid was Cousin Ronald’s wife, for all that it says it in the first paragraph, because they didn’t behave like any couple I’d ever read before, and, quite possibly, because she walks out on him at the ending and it’s so impressively underplayed. I will come back to this.). Home for the holidays, he gets into increasing amounts of trouble, and then, venting his anger on the garden wall, accidentally stumbles on the words needed to unlock Luke from his centuries-long imprisonment. At which point the trouble really starts.
I said above that it’s hard to convey how much you like books, and this is a perfect example – I keep flipping through the book and just end up staring at the sentences. It’s a clean narrative – no scene wasted, and each action leads inevitably (but unpredictably) to the next, and it’s all done with this dry, accurate humour, that never forgets what’s actually going on. Astrid & Uncle Bernard’s illness contests, for example, are funny on the surface level (““One of your heads,” David suggested, in a purely sporting spirit”), but underneath they show just how unhappy Astrid is, and how in order to cope with this family she’s become as manipulative as the rest of them. Astrid changes throughout the book, possibly more than any other character, and she’s the one who asks the question on the final page:
“[to David] Wouldn’t you say it was worth it, to be really happy for a while, even if you knew you were going to end up sad ever after?”
This is really why I started writing this more detailed review, because I’ve never been sure why Astrid’s asking this. It’s paired with Brunhilda’s decision – David, unable to answer, thinks of how she ends up sad forever – but also with Astrid’s decision to leave Ronald, which doesn’t seem to fit the emotional trajectory she’s talking about. It’s a very appropriate question for Luke (who, when David asks him, says he’ll tell him later, and goes to sleep), who is after all characterised by his inability to care about the longterm consequences of his actions – but he changes, too. Luke is a particularly impressive character in this, believable as a god of lies and trickery, and yet capable of following through on his promises to David, and helping him out of his own situation. I am curious as to how he’d answer this question, and if his answer has changed; I don’t think, tho’, for this story (which is David’s) that I should know.
I said the ending was bittersweet, and it’s not just this unresolved question – it’s David’s recognition that what he, personally, has done, is going to have major effects on his world. The Norse gods have power again, but that power is on one particular side, and Luke is opposed to it. It’s an unresolvable dilemma, and perhaps that’s what the question is about as well.
Hmm. I was not intending to end up contemplating the end of the world and the inevitability of fate. This is also a book that is funny, deft and subtle – the scene where David has to get the eye from the Three Fates (lurking, improbably, in a cupboard in the house of Alan, a boy David plays cricket with) could be just another hero-completes-task sequence, but the predominant emotion David feels is not heroism but embarrassment, for getting into the house in the first place, and for having not just Alan, but his sisters (“a row of four tubby girls”) follow him in. One of the reasons I love Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (yes, this digression has a point) is that it gets across that sense of guilt children have, where they feel that their every action affects the universe; Eight Days of Luke does this as well, although it’s the next step on, with embarrassment at your own failure to fit in with the world. Possibly there are plenty of people out there who never felt guilty or embarrassed as children as their predominant worldview, but my argument will probably be that they should have.
The last thing I should say about Eight Days of Luke is that it does everything perfectly in 165 pages. I am still awed by this.
Alice in Sunderland, Bryan Talbot. I should start by specifying that this is a graphic novel, in case you all think I’ve gone too weirdly visual. Bryan Talbot also wrote/drew The Tale of One Bad Rat, which is an excellent abused teenaged runaway finds hope in Beatrix Potter story, and The Adventures of Luther Arkwright, yet another book I haven’t finished due to moving house (I move a lot), but the half I’ve read was interesting in a Michael Moorcock-ish way, and I liked the art.
Alice in Sunderland is, mostly, an argument that Lewis Carroll’s inspiration for Alice in Wonderland comes from his attachment to the northeast (especially Sunderland). In proving this, we go through the history of the area, circling around the place and up and down through time, into and out of the world of fiction, of history, and, ultimately, the author, all in one night’s performance at the Sunderland Empire Theatre. It’s brilliant and moving, both as an argument and as an entertainment. It also made me horrendously homesick, which highlights a shortcoming in the English language as I don’t have another word to describe the intense longing for a place – I spent a year in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and it’s not my home, as such, but I do miss it (as I do most of the other places I’ve lived, from time to time), and this book made me miss it so much more. This is despite (or possibly because of) the bitter enmity between Newcastle and Sunderland, now largely related to football (I met a guy who’d kicked his son out of the house for supporting Sunderland) but, as detailed here, going back at least to the English Civil War.
The art is fabulous – mixing real documents (maps, photos, tourist leaflets, book covers, movie posters) with Talbot’s art, in his or other styles, as part of an ongoing dialogue about what comics are and how they, and this one works – analysis of original narrative art like the Bayeux Tapestry and Hogarth’s Gin Lane/Beer Street engravings, or parodies/homages to others (Scott McComics-Expert – a strangely familiar figure ☺ – turning up in a toga and swirling clouds, hand upraised, admonishing Talbot – “Don’t confuse the genre with the medium!”, and a truly glorious Tintin bit). It is all very much analytical and meta-analytical, but not in a way that ever does anything other than propel the story forward and enhance the characters ( “Now listen, ducks, I’m part of an ‘onourable tradition of British bawdy humour that goes back to the medieval mystery plays!”). And it all builds, layer on layer, evidence on assumption on suggestion, to the finale, which is remarkably effective.
I can’t pick up this book again without getting dragged into it, and that’s true for Eight Days of Luke as well. With Eight Days of Luke there’s familiarity with narrative, and with Alice in Sunderland it’s more familiarity with place, but in both of them there’s that feeling of being able to completely trust the author; I don’t know, necessarily, where I’m going or what it all means, but I know they’ll get me there.
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Date: 2008-09-14 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-14 11:34 am (UTC)