Tag: Fiction

Sensible and Sensitive–If Not Altogether Clear

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews3 Comments

A different sort of book today–if you’ve read my posts about my reading challenges for the year, then you’ll know that one of my goals is to read more classics.  Despite a college preparatory high school and an English major undergrad, there are a lot of classics I have somehow missed.  High on the list are Austen and the Brontes.  Somehow I was never assigned any of them (unless you count a seventh-grade book report on Pride and Prejudice, but even that I think I picked myself from a list of suggestions).

I reread Pride and Prejudice some months ago, and found out that Austen is not nearly as challenging as the impression given to my twelve-year-old self.  I shouldn’t have waited so long to pick her up again!  I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice–it’s quite funny in spots, very memorable characters (Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy!  Need I say more?) and the society was fascinating.  Although I did want to shake Jane when she didn’t give us dialogue in the final romantic scene…

After Price and Prejudice, I recently tried Sense and Sensibility for the first time.  The society was still interesting, maybe even more so.  What would it be like to spend all your time simply traveling about and living in other people’s houses, sitting around having tea or going shooting (depending on your gender) and to expect to live on your inheritance or your interest entirely?  Earning money seems to be out of the question.  And the endless societal rituals…although sometimes I think the boundless rules for interaction might almost make things easier, like knowing all the rules to the game and what it means whenever anyone does something.  The book was funny in spots too, sometimes because of the boundless societal rules.  All that said, though, I can see why Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s more popular book.  I wasn’t as attracted to the lead characters in Sense and Sensibility, for one thing, but the chief dilemma for me was the romances.

You see, there are two triangles in this one, one for each of the two sisters, Elinor and Marianne.  Marianne is the one represented by “sense”–emotive and dramatic to an extreme.  Elinor, by contrast is, well, sensible.  The trouble is, Elinor is so sensible and restrained that, when she fell in love, I couldn’t tell she’d done it.  Her romance begins earlier in the book, while Marianne’s (which is abundantly obvious when it happens) doesn’t come along until later.  So I was left for chapters trying to figure out which of the vast cast of supporting characters actually mattered.  I enjoyed the book more in the second half, after I’d worked out the two triangles and could see what plot threads I was following.  But it took some time to get there.

I watched the 1995 movie version after reading the book, and decided I should have handled things in the opposite order.  It would have been so much easier to discern the romances in the movie–when Hugh Grant walks onto the scene, you know he’s an important character!  The movie held up very well, even though I watched it immediately after reading the book (which doesn’t usually serve movie versions well).  I thought it was a faithful retelling, and the cast alone is impressive: Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Hugh Laurie…it’s just too bad they didn’t get Judy Dench into it somewhere; I thought all British movies based on classics required Judy Dench.  But no matter, it was a very good movie.

And it was a good book too, though I think I’ll like it better if I ever reread it, and already know which characters to pay attention to.  I have a new policy with my classics reading, to watch a good movie version first.  So far I’ve tried it with Jane Eyre, and found the book much easier to read because I watched the Orson Welles/Joan Fontaine version first.  And I ended up staying up late reading because I knew a good scene was coming and wanted to get there…

I can recommend Pride and Prejudice entirely, and Sense and Sensibility with a few reservations.  But possibly not at twelve years old, considering it did scare me off for a while…

A Shy Heroine, and a Hero Named for a Vegetable

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews2 Comments

I had The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig on reserve at the library since before Christmas.  I added it when I saw it on a list of Christmas novels, and decided I wanted to read a good Christmas story.  Apparently other people had the same idea, and it didn’t reach me until mid-February.  But I’m so glad I didn’t decide to cancel my hold on December 26th, or even after Epiphany, when Christmas stories stopped really feeling appropriate.  For one thing, this wasn’t that strongly a Christmas story.  And more importantly, it was excellent!

The book is set in Regency England, what I can only think of as Jane Austen’s England.  Jane herself is in the book as a supporting character, as the sympathetic friend of the heroine, Arabella.  Arabella is the lead character of the book, but has clearly been a supporting character all her life.  A shy, unassuming wallflower, she’s the one at the party whose name no one can remember.  I have a soft spot for characters who think they’re unimportant.  I love watching them discover their inner depths and come into their own, and I loved watching Arabella find new strength and confidence.  Here we have the extra bonus of watching the other lead, Turnip, also discover Arabella’s value.

Reginald “Turnip” Fitzhugh…where to begin?  The name, I suppose.  I can’t tell you how much I love it that the hero has a vegetable for a nickname.  And not even a tough vegetable (I don’t know what vegetable would be tough–asparagus spears, maybe?–but I’m pretty sure turnips are not the heavyweight champions of the vegetable world).  It fits him–and he’s a wonderful character!  Endlessly well-meaning, charming and gallant, not a brilliant intellect, capable of throwing a punch when the situation calls for it, but not really all that good at derring-do and dashing exploits, frequently bumbling, very thoughtful, addicted to outlandish waistcoats.  Somehow, it works so well and is so much fun.  I love dashing heroes, but this time I really enjoyed a hero who stumbles more than he dashes–but rushes forward anyway, well-intentioned and grinning.

So you can check off the first requirement for a good book–great characters.  If you couldn’t tell already, lots of good humor too.  Occasionally this book tries a little too hard to be witty, especially in the dialogue, but most of the time it succeeds.  Third, we’re given a very sweet romance.  So, check, check, and check!

Fourth, there’s an engaging plot as well.  If it had been up to me to name this, I would have called it The Puzzle of the Pudding (to keep some nice alliteration).  Mistletoe barely features, while the plot is mostly set in motion when Arabella and Turnip discover a hidden message in the wrapping of a Christmas pudding.  This launches a series of intrigues and efforts to uncover the truth, which kept me and the characters guessing until the end about whether they were dealing with international spies and a threat to England’s security,  or with pranks among schoolgirls–or both.  Turnip staunchly believed the former, while Arabella mostly leaned towards the latter.

It turns out that this is actually Book Six, in the Pink Carnation series.  The Pink Carnation is England’s most elusive spy (in the style of the Scarlet Pimpernel).  As near as I can tell from reading plot summaries, the books are all set in the same social circles, but focus on different characters.  It’s obviously possible to start with the Mistletoe and enjoy it, since I did!  I probably missed a few things, but I don’t think it seriously impacted my reading. 

I read The Secret History of the Pink Carnation afterwards (it came much more quickly at the library) and enjoyed it as well–not quite as much, as I liked Turnip, Arabella and their romance better.  Good enough that I will definitely go on to the rest of the series though!  And if you go look up a plot description for the first book, every one I’ve read has been wildly misleading–it looks like it’s about a modern-day character doing historical research, and it is, but she’s only a very small part and most of the book is set in the past.

Since I normally review young adult books, one note I should make: this series is in the grown-up section, and while Mischief of the Mistletoe has a discreet,  Austenish feel that I think keeps it appropriate for younger readers, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is not so discreet.  Fair warning given.

The Mischief in the Mistletoe was dedicated in part to “everyone who asked for a book about Turnip.”  I completely understand where those requests came from.  If I do a round-up of favorite characters met in 2011 at the end of the year, I expect Arabella and Turnip to be strong contenders.

Author’s Site: http://www.laurenwillig.com/index.php

When Fairy Tale Retelling Fails

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

As you know if you visit here regularly, I love retold fairy tales.  But…not always.  Unfortunately, including fairy tale elements is not a guarantee of a high quality book (just a usually promising sign).  Towards the end of last year, I read a book that made this abundantly clear: The Frog Princess, by E. D. Baker.

On Monday, I mentioned that I could name lots of characters from Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles.  As for The Frog Princess…I can’t think of a single name.  Granted, I only read it once and it was a few months ago…but I don’t think it’s entirely me.

Illustration from "The Frog Prince." Emma's not this pretty.

The princess (I’ll look up her name to make this easier to describe–Emma) is one of a big crop of ordinary princesses who seem to turn up in books often.  She’s not pretty enough and she trips and she doesn’t like dancing.  Without trying, I can think of three other books with princesses like that (plus one Cinderella), and most of them have more going on to make the heroines interesting.  Cimorene, from Enchanted Forest, doesn’t like her princess lessons, so she bullies various people at the castle to teach her other things, like cooking and fencing and sorcery.  That’s interesting.  I’m not sure what Emma does, other than irritate her mother and run off to the swamp sometimes.

In the swamp, she meets a talking frog who claims to be a prince.  After a lot of balking about kissing him (by the way–he’s a talking frog and all he wants is for you to kiss him so he can be human again–just do it, it’s not asking that much and what’s the worst that could happen?) she goes ahead and does.  Only to turn into a frog herself (okay, I guess bad things could happen).  Sound a lot like the Disney movie?  I’m not sure the precise connection, but at least some editions of this have a label saying it’s the inspiration for the movie, so they must have bought rights or something.

Unfortunately, the book only had the one good idea.  Disney, wisely, used that single idea and nothing else.  Emma and the frog (Eadric, I looked him up too) go off to find the witch who enchanted him, and have a series of adventures along the way.  Which is all well and good, but kind of like Emma doesn’t stand out at all as an ordinary princess, the adventures and the world they’re in don’t stand out either.  There was nothing at all distinctive about it.  I’m not looking for Tolkien, who invented entire languages for his magical races.  But when you have a generic princess having generic adventures in a generic magical kingdom…not very memorable.

If all this genericness was the backdrop to something else–funny scenes or interesting relationships between the characters–this still might be passable.  But it’s really not that funny.  A few “help, I’m a frog” jokes.

The relationships were overwhelmingly flat too.  No one had any depths of emotion.  I’d forgotten the characters’ names, but I did remember a scene where they’re talking about something or other, and Emma tells Eadric he’s her best friend.  This should be revelatory.  They haven’t known each other long, they spend as much time arguing as not, it’s not like saying that to an old friend who already knows it.  Yet Emma says it off-hand, and Eadric–doesn’t react!  I think I actually stared at the page for a few seconds wondering if I’d missed something.

Sometimes I’ve heard someone comment that they don’t expect as much depth in children’s or young adult books.  It’s a comment I actually disagree with–children’s and YA books may cover different emotions and perhaps explore them in different ways than books for grown-ups, but the good ones will still have depth.  There is no reason a children’s book can’t sound deeper emotions in the areas of friendship, finding one’s place in the world, dealing with a life-altering situation, falling in love for the first time or going on an extremely dangerous quest.  But I think those people who don’t expect depth are imagining a book just like The Frog Princess.  It’s a kid’s book, so even though all that’s going on, we don’t really need to explore any of it.

I rarely recommend a movie over a book, but in this case, if you want a story about a girl turning into a frog, watch the Disney movie.

Author’s site: http://www.edbakerbooks.com/

Disney’s site for The Princess and the Frog

Meeting Fairy Tales in the Enchanted Forest

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews5 Comments

I was recently sketching over the plotline of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede for a friend, and realized that I actually remembered all the character names.  As I’ve mentioned in at least one other post, I am bad at character names.  Oh sure, I remember the main character, but the main character’s best friend?  Possibly not. 

But, for The Enchanted Forest Chronicles…Cimorene is the heroine, and her best friend is named Alianora.  And I could probably give you at least another six or seven names besides.  All of which should say something about how great this series is!

Don't mind the creases--they're well-read

It all starts with Cimorene, a princess who decides that she’d rather be kidnapped by a dragon than marry the boring prince her parents picked out.  Princesses are kidnapped by dragons sometimes, you know, so, taking advice from an enchanted frog, Cimorene goes off to find a dragon and volunteer.  The dragon Kazul agrees to take her on, especially after hearing that Cimorene can cook cherries jubilee.

Is that already enough to convince you these are wonderful books?  If not, I can also tell you that the story goes on with evil wizards, all manner of enchanted creatures, a magical forest (of course) and endless fun references to fairy tales.  They’re funny, exciting, and even romantic in spots.

It’s not a romance with that boring prince from the beginning–Prince Therandil does turn up, but he stays insufferable.  He comes to fight the dragon to rescue Cimorene; he would have come back earlier in the book, except that he was waiting for Kazul to defeat an impressive number of challengers first.  He’s very put out when Cimorene explains no one’s actually fought Kazul–she’s been talking the challengers out of it, which has been very inconvenient and time-consuming.

Wrede has created one of those wonderful things in retold fairy tales–a world where there are strange and marvelous things like djinns and enchanted swords and magical caves and (of course) dragons, but where you also have to deal with getting the right pot for your cherries jubillee, and cleaning the dust out of (non-magical) caves.

The series is a quartet, plus a couple of short stories.  I think my favorite book is the third, narrated by the witch Morwen, who has nine talking cats (who only she understands).  This one also features a rabbit named Killer, who has a penchant for stumbling into spells, piling layer after layer of enchantment on himself.  In a magical, rabbit sort of way, he’s not unlike my character, Jones.

I don’t think any of the books retell any specific fairy tale, but they’re all riddled with references, sometimes made quite casually.  When Cimorene’s parents want her to get married, she says she’s too young.  Her mother replies, “Your Great-Aunt Rose was married at sixteen…One really can’t count all those years she spent asleep under that dreadful fairy’s curse.”  In the second book we meet a giant who’s very friendly as long as your name isn’t Jack, and a dwarf named Herman who tried the Rumpelstiltskin trade, but got stuck with tons of children when no one could guess his name (and he thought Herman would be easy).

I could probably go on citing incidents and examples for a long time…but better to just read the books.  They’re good adventures, very funny–and obviously, have memorable characters!

Author’s site: http://pcwrede.com/index.html

She also has a blog with great writing advice!  http://pcwrede.com/blog/

Journeying to Mars to Meet Tavia

On By cherylmahoneyIn Reviews, Science Fiction7 Comments

Having just reviewed one of my favorite authors, L. M. Montgomery, it seems only fair to also review my other favorite author this week: Edgar Rice Burroughs.

They have some interesting differences and similarities.  The differences may be more obvious: Montgomery wrote about the small things of life in a rural village.  Burroughs wrote exciting adventures set in the jungle, or on the surface of Mars, or deep under the Earth.  But they both knew how to create a vivid world (albeit very different ones!) and how to write beautiful prose and wonderful descriptions.  Montgomery almost always has a young girl as her lead character.  Burroughs almost always has a strapping, warrior man as his hero.  But they both wrote sweet and very discreet romances–those warriors of Burroughs are also perfect gentlemen.  They also have in common that I’ve read book after book after book by them, and very, very rarely found one that wasn’t top quality.

An odd coincidence of a similarity: they were born less than a year apart.

Since I showed all my Montgomery books, why not all my Burroughs books too.

I already reviewed Burroughs’ most famous book, Tarzan of the Apes.  As you can tell from the picture above, he went on to write a lot of sequels about the lord of the jungle–over twenty.  But what I really want to write about today is his other most famous series: his Mars books.

They begin with A Princess of Mars.  John Carter is in a desert in Arizona, where he has a strange out of body experience.  He looks up at the sky, and sees the planet Mars.  He holds his arms up to the sky, and wishes–and finds himself on the plains of Mars.  In Burroughs’ world, Mars (called Barsoom by the natives) is populated by a number of warlike races, from the red Martians who look much like us, to the giant, twelve-foot-tall green Martians.  There are all kinds of other strange animals with six legs or weird stripes or bizarre abilities.  John Carter goes on to have a series of adventures full of swordplay and races against time and endless hazards and escapes, all to win the beautiful Dejah Thoris, princess of Mars.

The first three books in the eleven book series, as well as a few later ones, focus on John Carter.  My favorite, however, is A Fighting Man of Mars.  John Carter is referenced, but the action focuses on Tan Hadron, a red Martian warrior.  In some ways it’s not unlike every other Burroughs adventure: swordplay and kidnapping and a desperate quest to rescue the girl.  (Burroughs only had two plot devices, kidnapping and castaways, but he spun them into 70 adventures.)  A Fighting Man of Mars, however, is different because of Tavia.

Image taken from ERBzine.com

People who have known me on the internet for a long time will know that when I need a fake name online, a username for example, I will usually use Tavia or some variation on it.  In a way it’s a habit–I started doing that at about thirteen, and it’s easy to carry on using the same name whenever this comes up.  And it got started because Tavia is a wonderful character in a wonderful book by one of my favorite authors who, I must admit, rarely wrote a really good heroine.

But Tavia is actually capable.  She escaped on her own out of a harem (fleeing when the King first noticed her–Burroughs heroines get into dangerous situations but are never actually harmed).  She’s pretty much as good with a sword as Tan Hadron.  She’s extremely capable at almost anything that needs doing on their adventure.  Though I do think she’s pretty, her internal characteristics are emphasized much more than her external beauty.  And I find this to be one of Burroughs’ more meaningful and compelling romances.

Sure, there are more impressive heroines when you look across the range of literature.  But Tavia is a great character in her own right, and she’s the best of the ones that Burroughs gave us.  It’s the combination of all of Burroughs’ strengths of writing and excitement and world-describing, combined with a much more appealing heroine, that makes A Fighting Man of Mars my favorite Burroughs book.  It’s the seventh book in the Mars series, but don’t feel obligated to read the first six first.  They’re great books too, but it’s an independent story and Burroughs even provides a helpful overview of Martian society in the foreword.  So I think you’ll do fine if you want to jump ahead to number seven to meet Tavia.