Category: Reviews

Out on the Moor with the Brontes

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews7 Comments

Despite being an English major and a voracious reader for as long as I can remember, there are some key classics I’ve somehow missed.  As you may have seen on my challenges post, I’m endeavoring to catch up.  Most recently, I’ve ventured out onto the moor with the Bronte sisters.

First, I read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and absolutely loved it.  I stayed up late two nights in a row reading (and kind of felt good about that as a reason for missing sleep!)  I’m not entirely sure what hooked me in.  I liked Jane pretty well as a character, and I liked Mr. Rochester–he was a good dark, brooding hero.  The plot was engaging, especially the middle section at Thornfield Hall.

If you don’t know the plot, Jane Eyre becomes a governess at gloomy Thornfield Hall, owned by gloomy Mr. Rochester.  Jane falls in love with Mr. Rochester, and he with her, but complications, to say the least, arise when…this is a spoiler, but everyone knows it, right?…it comes out that he already has an insane wife locked away in one of Thornfield’s towers.

It was a good plot, even if I already knew about the crazy wife.  I don’t sound all that enamoured describing it, do I?  But I think it was the writing I really loved.  It was a pleasure to find a classic that was really well-written and–imagine!–enjoyable to read.

I think I also kept reading, those nights I stayed up, because I wanted to see how certain scenes played out.  I took to heart the lesson of Sense and Sensibility, and watched a movie first (1944, with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine).  It worked brilliantly–I didn’t wonder why Jane was only ten at the beginning, and I stayed up late waiting for Mr. Rochester to propose, because I knew it was coming any time.

After loving Jane Eyre, I was looking forward to Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  A different sister, but I felt hopeful anyway.  I tried a movie first–1939, Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.

I had fair warning–I liked the movie Jane Eyre much better than the movie Wuthering Heights.  And the same was true for the books.

Wuthering Heights is about Heathcliff and Cathy–she’s a fine lady, and he’s a gypsy orphan her father takes in to live at Wuthering Heights (another gloomy manor on the moor).  They’re close as children, but divided by class as they grow up.  When Cathy marries someone else, Heathcliff’s darker side emerges.

At least, that’s how the plot usually seems to be described, regarding that last part.  But I’m not sure you can really say his dark side emerges, because I’m not convinced he has a better side.  And therein lies the problem.

I actively disliked Heathcliff and Cathy.  They’re self-absorbed, unfeeling, and very possibly should be locked up like Mrs. Rochester.  Cathy is emotionally unstable, manipulative, and just plain annoying at times.  She deliberately launches into hysterical fits and makes herself sick because she knows it will make the men around her alarmed.

Jane may be too reserved at times.  She’s a very strong, self-reliant character.  Her strength is in some ways passive.  She can hold herself together very well when Mr. Rochester asks her to watch a bleeding man one dark night, and whatever you do, don’t unlock that door that has strange noises coming from behind it.  Jane handles that.  But does she take the active step of afterwards saying, “Hey, Mr. Rochester, what the hell is going on?”  No–not even in more diplomatic words.

So while I had some issues with Jane, Cathy is in the other direction–having passionate outbursts all the time.  I had much bigger issues with Cathy.

And then on the subject of Heathcliff compared to Mr. Rochester…but I think I have a lot to say about them.  Which is why I’m coming back to the moor in a second post later this week.  Stay tuned!  🙂

Belle and the Beast

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews6 Comments

One of the “Once Upon a Time Challenge” Quests involves watching fantasy or fairy tale-based movies.  So today we’re going to take a side-trip into Cinema-land.

I decided to revisit a favorite fairy tale, and watched Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.  I haven’t watched it in a long time–not since I got serious about finding the originals of the fairy tales.  Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is pretty far distant from Jean-Marie LePrince de Beaumont’s version–but I like the way they tell it.  Disney’s was the first version I ever saw/read so I’m sure that slants my view, but I do think they manage some clever revisions of elements of the original.

I like the handling of the rose.  Threatening to kill someone because they picked your flowers is, um, unstable behavior.  But that’s pretty much how it goes in the original.  Having the Beast freak out because it’s a special, magical rose tied into his curse is far more reasonable.  I also like it that the Beast locks up Belle’s father for staring at him, rather than messing with the garden.  Sure, it’s a huge over-reaction either way, but if he has to over-react about something, it makes so much more sense that he’d be overly sensitive about people looking at him funny.

I can’t decide how I feel about Belle finding the castle and volunteering to stay, rather than the Beast demanding that Maurice send a daughter to take his place.  On the one hand, I’m sure the goal was to reduce the Beast’s villainy.  But on the other hand, at least in the original he was taking a proactive step towards breaking the spell.  He needs a girl, so he tries to get a girl.  Not in the best possible way, but at least he was making an effort instead of just moping around.

It’s kind of too bad that Belle lost all her siblings who were in the original, but my guess is that was to make space for other supporting characters, so it was probably worth it.  Lumiere and Cogsworth are really wonderful, and Gaston is a brilliant addition too.

Gaston, besides adding extra comic relief, is a great idea because it gives the story a villain.  In the original, Beauty’s sisters are pretty nasty, and I think a case could be made for the enchantress as the villain, but nothing is clear-cut.

Gaston’s main contribution, I think, is all in the last couple scenes.  First, bringing the mob adds great extra tension, as well as being a fantastic example of mob mentality.  It just needs one charismatic leader and everyone else is swept along (you see the same thing in Disney’s Hunchback, only more so; that crowd makes hairpin turns about three times).  I also love the way the mob demonstrates fear of the Other.  The line “we don’t like what we don’t understand; in fact, it scares us, and this monster is mysterious at least” says it all.

Gaston’s most important purpose, though, is that his presence means there’s someone to kill the Beast.  In the original we have this disturbing bit where the Beast tells Beauty she can leave if she wants to but it’ll kill him, and then when she goes, he tries to starve himself to death.  That’s seriously manipulative and unhealthy.  It’s so much better to have it play out with the Beast sad that she left but not dying–until he’s stabbed by Gaston.

There’s just one thing I don’t understand in this movie.  The spell has to be broken by the Beast’s 21st birthday?  Lumiere tells us, “ten years we’ve been rusting.”  So…this encounter with the enchantress happened when the Beast/Prince was eleven?  Isn’t turning a bratty kid into a monster kind of an over-reaction?  Okay, he was nasty to her, but show a little maturity!  And it doesn’t seem to me that the Beast learned anything much about seeing past appearances.  Belle did that (and as a reward, she gets to marry someone handsome…?) but the Beast went and fell for a beautiful girl, so what’s proved?

But aside from a few of the weirdnesses that often crop up in fairy tales, it’s a wonderful version.  And when I hunted down and read the original, I was so glad to find out that Belle’s love of books goes back to Beaumont.  That’s a favorite part of the movie–and I think everyone I know who loves to read wants the Beast’s library!

Cursed by Christening Gifts

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young AdultLeave a comment

My quest for retold fairy tales most recently brought me to Sleeping Helena by Erzebet Yellowboy. As you can probably guess from the title, it was a retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  And it was…an odd one.

Helena has eight aunts, who all give her special gifts at her christening.  Six offer her well-meaning things like beauty and dancing ability.  One issues a complicated prophecy that seems to predict death.  And the eighth uses her gift to try to undo the curse.  Seven of the aunts raise Helena together, while desperately trying to protect her from the curse.  As the book goes on, we realize that the aunt who issued the curse, Katza, has more complicated motives than it seemed.  It’s all tied into the tragic death of their brother, a century before.

Yes, they have a brother who died a hundred years ago.  Everyone in the family is blessed (or cursed) with extraordinarily long life, which is the first place this starts to get odd.  It’s a little disconcerting when most of the characters are 105 or thereabouts.  Especially when they haven’t been given youth–they really are 105, and apparently feel that way.  I have nothing against elderly characters, but it makes it kind of hard to relate to.

It’s also rather depressing to think about seven sisters living together from childhood into old age, and if any of them ever got married or formed any meaningful attachments outside of their family group, we don’t hear about them.

The purpose of it is so that Helena’s sixteenth birthday can be exactly 100 years after Katza’s sixteenth birthday, which is also when their brother died tragically.  So you get Sleeping Beauty’s hundred years–but going back from the day the curse strikes, instead of forward.

Helena is the most interesting character, although more as a concept than as a person.  I love the way this examines what it would be like to have eight christening gifts.  Helena is so filled with her gifts, there’s no room in her personality for anything else (and they forgot to give her compassion or sympathy or kindness…)  She is utterly absorbed in herself and her gifts, which are constantly clamoring at her to be used–she wants always to dance, to sing, to admire her beauty, and so on.  In some ways, they seem more like curses than the curse.

This does take some interesting turns, and I particularly liked the flashbacks to Katza and her brother, Louis, when they were young.  I ended up disappointed by the ending, though.  I won’t give away the details, but essentially just when it was getting to something really interesting–it ended.

I have to come down somewhere in the middle on this one.  It wasn’t so bad that I’ll talk a friend out of buying it (The Frog Princess—actually, she was going to buy one of the sequels and I convinced her it was a terrible idea) or so good that I’ll push it on friends (Robin McKinley–anything by her, really).  It was okay.  So if you have a particular fondness for Sleeping Beauty or some of the elements sound especially interesting, you could give it a try.

Author’s Site: http://www.erzebet.com/

Persephone Today

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Ruminations, Young Adult4 Comments

I seem to be on a mythology theme this week.  Heading back towards the Greek isles, in a way, after The Red Pyramid I read Abandon by Meg Cabot.

I’ve read a fair bit of Meg Cabot; she’s a good option when I feel like something light, fluffy and bubbly that I can read in a day or so.  Abandon turned out to be a very different Meg Cabot book.

Abandon is a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth.  In case you don’t know it, Hades, the god of the dead and Lord of the Underworld, kidnapped Persephone, who if she isn’t the goddess of flowers (I can’t remember for sure) nevertheless gives that distinct impression.  Depending on the version, Persephone and Hades may or may not fall in love.  Ultimately, Persephone ends up dividing her time between the Underworld with Hades and being with her mother, the goddess of harvest, up on Earth.

Abandon retells this, loosely, in the present day.  The lead character, Pierce, is a teenager who had a near-death experience.  While she was dead, she met the Lord of the Underworld (who conveniently looks like an attractive 19-year-old man).  He isn’t Hades, but he has the same job.  He chooses Pierce to be his consort, but Pierce flees, the EMTs bring her back, and she tries to get on with her life.  Except that she’s convinced he is following her, hoping to bring her back to the Underworld.

The funny thing is, I very much enjoyed this while I was reading it.  Then afterwards I started thinking about all the flaws–well, the one big overarching flaw, really.  So I’m not sure where I come down on this one, except that I do feel sufficiently positive that I’ll probably try the sequel when it comes out.

I really like the concept of this, and the plot, though far-fetched in spots, is reasonably good.  It’s the characters that bring me to that big overarching flaw.

One character thing I do love–I love that the dark, brooding, fearsome and mysterious Lord of the Underworld is named John.  Not a dark, mysterious name–just John.  That’s fun.  And John is actually a decent character.  I like dark, brooding heroes with good hearts, so he at least has potential.  Although the more I think about it, the more I think I’m just assuming he has a good heart in there somewhere because it’s the only way this will work at all, not because there’s actually much evidence for it.

But John is all right.  The real problem, the big problem, is Pierce.  She’s one of those bland, underdeveloped heroines.  Other than an understandable obsession with death since her accident, and a concern for animals and other people, Pierce has almost no personality.

I made a possibly unfortunate comparison, and realized there’s a lot of similarity to Twilight–brooding, handsome, not-human hero falls obsessively in love with ordinary, undistinguished girl for no particularly compelling reason.  Edward thought Bella’s blood smelled good.  And John was totally blown away when Pierce asked how he was.

No, really!  She accidentally spooked his horse, he fell off, and she asked if he was all right.  Granted, he’s a death deity, who mostly deals with people who are dealing with the fact of their own recent demise, so he doesn’t get this sort of thing very often–but it doesn’t make her Mother Teresa!  Nor does it seem a reasonable basis for deciding that this is the person you want to–literally–spend eternity with.

Pierce does demonstrate caring for others at other times, but Cabot must have a poor opinion of humanity if she thinks it’s enough to mark Pierce out as an extraordinarily kind and giving person.  The times when Pierce does go over the top trying to help people, it’s either meddling, or totally stupid and ill-advised.

I think one reason this didn’t strike me much as I was reading is that the book went by so fast, I felt like I was still just starting when I was halfway through.  So it didn’t occur to me how undeveloped a character Pierce is until I got to the end–and she was still undeveloped.  It is part of a proposed series, so maybe she’ll get more depth in the next book…but she had an entire book, she could have gotten deeper here.

I do recommend Abandon–I enjoyed reading it–but don’t expect to find a new favorite character in the heroine.  Despite the similarity in how they met their heroes, Pierce is no Jane Eyre.

Author’s Site: http://www.megcabot.com/

Egyptian Mythology in the Present Day

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

After enjoying the Percy Jackson books, I decided to try another Rick Riordan series, and read The Red Pyramid.  It’s basically the Egyptian Percy Jackson.  Which in a way is a good thing–I mean, I liked the Percy Jackson series.  And Riordan’s given us another book where ancient mythologies turn out to be true, the pantheon of gods is still hanging out in the current day, and ordinary-seeming kids have to discover their hidden powers to fight an ancient evil threatening to destroy the world.

All right, so it’s a formula.  But it’s a fairly unique and specific formula, at least the ancient mythologies part.  And, the most important thing for a formula–it works.

The Red Pyramid is about Carter Kane (who rather resembles Percy) and his sister Sadie (who really resembles hot-tempered and strong-willed Annabelle).  I may be oversimplifying in my character comparisons, and there are distinctions…but not broad sweeping ones.  Things go rather awry for Carter and Sadie when their father blows up the Rosetta Stone using Egyptian magic, and unleashes ancient gods into the world.  Carter and Sadie come to realize that they have magical powers they have to learn how to use, in order to fight the evil god Set, who has captured their father and is also planning to destroy all of North America.  Mostly because he can, I think–it’s all part of an ancient feud among the gods, and an even more ancient conflict between order and chaos.

It’s a good thing, by the way, that all these kids are around to deal with ancient evils, because apparently they’re all in the same fantasy world.  At one point Carter and Sadie are in Brooklyn, and a comment comes up about Manhattan.  The Egyptian magicians don’t get involved there, because Manhattan has other gods to deal with.  Love the reference, as the Percy Jackson books tell us that Mount Olympus is floating above the Empire State Building.

The mythology is the biggest way this differs from the Percy Jackson books, not only the gods themselves but the way the gods relate to the world.  The Greek gods are, to large extent, sort of like very ancient and very powerful humans, who interact with the world more or less like humans do–just in larger than life ways, and in ways that may involve monsters and destruction.

The Egyptian gods seem to lead a more metaphysically-complicated existence.  They mostly exist in a sort of dream world, and primarily access the physical world by possessing humans or objects, but preferably humans with the blood of the pharoahs.  Timelines and chains of events are also a little confused, as the gods apparently act out the same patterns and stories again and again over millenia.

The Egyptian way of engaging the world is certainly more complex, and fascinating in some ways.  But on the other hand–I like that Hermes uses a cell phone, that Poseidon hangs out on the beach, and that Aphrodite and Ares use the Tunnel of Love at the theme park.  The Egyptian gods are, mostly, less relatable, and I can’t decide if I like that or not.  I suppose it’s just different, and both ways have merits.

In the end I think I have to come down saying that I did prefer the Percy Jackson books, but that’s mostly for two reasons that I should elaborate on, because they may not be relevant for other people.

For one thing, I’ve always been a Greek and Roman mythology buff.  Maybe it’s a product of watching Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as a kid (a truly brilliant TV show, by the way).  When I was around twelve, I had run out of new Greek mythology books to read at my library.  The Egyptian gods, on the other hand, I’ve mostly had brief encounters with through friends who love Egypt, or in an occasional historical fiction book.  So when a Greek god shows up, my reaction is usually “oh, them, I know them, they had this story and that story and were the god of this, and it’s so cool how they’ve been portrayed!”  When an Egyptian god shows up, my reaction is more along the lines of “yeah, I guess I recognize your name…”  That skews my impression of the book, I’m sure.

Second thing: my favorite character in the Percy Jackson series is Grover, and there was no Grover equivalent here.  The funny baboon is, well, funny, and Bast as a supporting character is pretty great, especially when she exhibits cat-like tendencies.  But they’re still not as much fun as the ecology-obsessed satyr who loves eating burritos and tin cans.

So if you enjoyed Percy Jackson, and especially if you like Egyptian mythology, give The Red Pyramid a go.  It’s maybe a little darker and a little more complex, but pretty much…it’s an adventure about ordinary (except not) kids on a quest through ancient mythology to save the world.