Living in Threes – Judith Tarr

This was a book received through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers (thank you!). I’ve been trying to cut back on the books I put my name in for on LibraryThing, because while I’ve had pretty good luck there have been a number of clunkers – plus I’m a ways behind on my Netgalley books. But when I saw Judith Tarr’s name on the book, it was a no-brainer – I had to request it, and I was happy when I received it.

I was not so happy with the cover art. This is one of those times when I’m happy to have the Kindle, so I don’t have to look at … that. It’s awful, amateurish and ill-conceived and just plain ugly. Book View Café, the cooperative publisher which allows authors to publish books they either can’t or don’t wish to take through traditional venues, apparently does not have an art department.

The book starts off much like one of the girls-and-horses books I loved when I was a tween and teen; it is a young-adult novel, and there is a heavy horse presence. I don’t know if I would have loved it when I was the age of the characters, though. Meredith is a sixteen-year-old Florida girl who is looking forward to a summer spent with her friends and her newly pregnant Lipizzaner mare. However, her mother – in remission from a serious bout with cancer (not that any bout with cancer is anything to take frivolously) – puts a very firm kibosh on the plans: Meredith’s aunt, an archaeologist working in Egypt, is on the verge of something big, and Meredith is going to go join her dig. And there’s not a thing she can do to prevent it: to Egypt she, sullenly, goes.

Just before she leaves, she takes refuge in one of her favorite pastimes: she begins writing a story. It writes itself, really: a science fiction tale set in the far future (about four thousand years out) about a sixteen-year-old girl named Meru whose mother – also an archaeologist, of sorts – has gone missing, whose last fragmented message sends Meru looking for her into areas where she should not go. Meredith is unsettled by the story; it’s too real. And then there are the dreams that begin about a girl named Meritre, who is a sixteen-year-old temple singer in the Egypt of four thousand years ago. It’s all very strange – and more and more there seems to be a reason for this strangeness.

English: Favory Pallavicina, approved Lipizzan stallion, Australia Deutsch: Favory Pallavicina, gekörter Lipizzanerhengst, Australien (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I liked the characters. They were a little precocious for their ages (“ages” can and should be taken two different ways here; Meritre was a bit too sanguine about all of the things which were completely alien to her, which would be … just about everything), but that’s part and parcel of the reading experience. I mostly liked the idea, which I won’t go into here (spoilers!), though it stretched willing suspension of disbelief for both me and the characters – with the fact that the latter had a hard time with it making it easier for me. Meredith, though sullen for much of her part of the story, had good reason, and was likeable anyway – quite an accomplishment.

Second-tier characters were lovely; I liked all three girls’ circles of family and friends. Were it not for the ending, I think I would have loved this to pieces when I was sixteen.

There were a few things that bothered me:

- I admit, I smirked a bit over the fact that Meredith’s horse is a Lipizzaner, given that Ms. Tarr devotes the non-writing bulk of her life to her Dancing Horse Farm, and that it took a little jiggering to explain how a sixteen-year-old Florida girl owns a Lipizzan mare. But it is explained, and “write what you know” can often equate to “write what you love”, and Ms. Tarr’s love of the breed cancels out my qualms.

- Meredith’s writing voice was no different from that of the rest of the book, which considering Judith Tarr’s skill means she’s a pretty remarkable writer for sixteen. I wouldn’t have wanted it to be worse – I wouldn’t want to be forced to read fake juvenile writing, but if that’s how the girl writes she should have a multi-book contract by now. Given that very little throughout the rest of the book is made of Meredith as a writer (she doesn’t really have time or inclination for writing after this one burst), another means of introducing Meru might have been smoother.

- Meritre reacts with bafflement when she first sees a horse. Now, I know Ms. Tarr knows her Egypt, so I’m not questioning her decision here to have the girl not know what a horse was … well, maybe a little. I’ve seen the pictures of wall paintings horse-drawn chariots; there were horses in Egypt, introduced “during the early Second Intermediate Period (1700 to 1550 B.C.)”; I found it a little hard to swallow that Meritre never heard of them.

- Again, Meritre was cool with the concepts Meredith and Meru were exposing her to – including the archaeological dig that was opening up the tomb which in Meritre’s time was just being sealed. She didn’t like that – but she accepted it. And I didn’t buy her acceptance of it: it violates every precept of her religion.

- The future world of Meru lacked depth for me. It was, I think, to some extent down to the fact that ancient Egypt is relatively familiar, almost as much so to Northeastern me as present-day Florida is (and the Florida-ness of the present-day setting was not overly stressed), and so shorthand went a long way in placing Meredith and Meru in their backgrounds. Meru, though, lives in an unimaginable future, and I floundered with where on Earth she was (literally) and how far she had to travel and in terms of alien presence are we talking Starfleet or Mos Eisley Cantina or Serenity, or what? What there was was intriguing; there just didn’t seem to be enough.

- The aspects of the three worlds, past and present and future, were in a way both too closely parallel and not closely enough. They’re all about the same age – though that means something drastically different in ancient Egypt from what it means in modern Florida. (Don’t know what it means in the far future…) All three girls have mothers in peril – one dies early, one will probably be fine, and one dies at the end. All three have fathers who are absentee, or all but – one works a lot and is ill, one is divorced and elsewhere, and I honestly don’t remember a thing about the third. Love is blooming for two, but not the third; all three have aspirations and vocations (at least, Meredith wants to write and spend a lot of time with her horse). I think I would have been slightly happier if there had been more resonance among the three girls than the name similarity … but too much would have been irritating. Ah well.

- That ending. Meredith discovers that her mother sent her off to Egypt knowing that she was about to go into hospice, that the cancer was back with a vengeance and she did not have much more time. By the time Meredith finds out she can only arrive home in time to – just barely – watch her mother die. My mom is eighty-five years old, and I don’t need this crap. I would have hated it like poison when I was sixteen, and I hate it more now. That’s on me, and not the book – it was the right way to end this story, and it tied it up without tamping all the edges down overly neatly – but I hated it.

These are, really, quibbles. The writing – always reliable, in the word’s best possible meaning – carried the book through whatever difficulties I had with the details. The idea was fascinating, if outré – it pushed the envelope without busting through. Am I glad I won this book? Absolutely. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Will I read it again? No. Do I still love Judith Tarr? Oh yes.

 

Daphne and the Silver Ash – Joss Llewelyn

This was a novella received through LibraryThing’s Member Giveaways – thank you. It is a short, sweet, melancholy yet ultimately hopeful story, aching with a feeling of might-have-been and will-never-be-again as one thoughtful and gallant young woman tries to deal with the repercussions of what three selfish and powerful magical beings have done each in their own self-interest. It is nicely conceived, based on folklore – some very nice worldbuilding which would lend itself very well to a longer work, perhaps set in the city’s past – and nicely written; I think the only reason it took me as long as it did to read it was that I had a bad feeling about the ending. The exploration of the magic and its effects on the city and on Daphne were beautiful.

I think my only quibble with the story is that Daphne is introduced as a shoemaker in a city too poor for people to afford shoes or for there to be leather from which to make them. It seems as though this means that her city’s decline has been extremely rapid in the past few years, because Daphne is extremely young; she must have been able to ply her trade at some point, but no longer, which just seems improbable at the age of nineteen. It would have been interesting to know how and why she became a shoemaker, and it would have tied the story together nicely if her trade had had some bearing on the denouement. The Chekhov’s Gun technique is particularly worthwhile to keep in mind with a novella, I think. But, again, this is a minor detail, and barely detracted from my enjoyment of the read; I’ll be looking forward to the author’s other works with pleasure.

 

LTER: One Was a Soldier, Julia Spencer-Fleming

I do get lucky with these LTER’s.  Oh, not all – there was one self-published ESL fantasy that I doubt I’ll ever finish, and the book about writing which was extremely uneven, and Roma was not something I’d ever have bought for myself (and would have been right not to).  But then there were Chesterton and Schell and McKinley – and now, just received last week, another book I might not have bought for myself: One Was a Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming. 

The only reason I read this one so soon after receiving it was that I finished a couple of books, and I do always feel a subtle pressure to hurry with books I’ve received for review.  And – - What a book.  What a superlative book.  (Like how I did that?  I couldn’t decide on a superlative, so I sort of used them all.)  I’m actually a little surprised, in retrospect, that I put my name in for it, and so very glad I did.  But it doesn’t sound like me: the jacket description is interesting, but not my usual cuppa: an Iraq war veteran, Grace Fergusson, comes home after 18 months out, and finds coming home isn’t so simple as stepping off the plane.  And when a fellow vet is found dead, she won’t believe it’s suicide.  By no means does this sound bad or uninteresting – just not usually what I would pick up and spend time with.  Idiot.  

The above is the kernel of the story – but the book is a great deal more.  It *is* a story about coming back from war, and the good and wonderful and bad and ugly and impossible of readapting to being a civilian.  It’s about PTSD, and coping with it (or not), and coping with someone who has it (or not).  It’s a story about a romance, a love.  It’s a story about a murder, perhaps, and a theft, perhaps – or perhaps more than one of each.  It’s a police procedural, with a grain of cozy mixed in as amateurs get in on the detecting – which isn’t because the police are stupid or any of the other clichés.  

That’s one of the main things the book is about: avoiding clichés.  Yeah, one of the amateur detectives is Clare Fergusson, the girlfriend of the town’s chief of police (Russ Van Alstyne) – a trope you’ll find in a good half dozen series I could put my hands on.  But Clare is a helicopter pilot, is just coming home from Iraq at the start of the book, is an Episcopalian priest, with genuine faith in God if not the details of the Episcopalian rites used to honor Him, and is suffering from PTSD and dependency on assorted substances.  And she is deeply in love with Russ, a good man who is 14 years older and a Vietnam vet and an agnostic (or atheist; I don’t know how deep his disbelief runs), and who is deeply in love with her. 

The pattern of disdaining the usual ruts a story with these basic bones might fall into runs true throughout: the setting is real enough that I could call the Realtor who hopes at one point to sell Clare a house and start looking for a home in Millers Kill, New York (great name).  (Heh – there’s a community on Livejournal called “Would you really want to live in Millers Kill?”  Well, maybe not – although some of the danger of the place is effectively offset by a terrific police force…)  And the characters … There are a lot of them, and introduced rapidly enough in the beginning that I had a little trouble processing – there was some flipping back of pages as the people introduced in the first mini-chapter showed up again in the primary timeline, and as I matched Russ and Clare to the main protagonists listed on the cover.  But once I had them, I had them, and never lost track of any of them again – which is an accomplishment for a writer.  And by the end I not only knew who was who, I cared who was who and who was with whom and where and why, from Clare and Russ (on whom I’m developing a healthy crush) to the secondary and tertiary characters.  I was inwardly hopping up and down when one second-tier character was offered a wonderful opportunity.  I muttered a dismayed curse when a character only tangentially involved in the book died off-screen.  I was delighted by the main characters’ delight, and felt a cold, disappointed, sympathetic horror at the terrifically stupid and yet nastily understandable choice a secondary made – one which wounded what may be one of my new heroes.  That scene is going to haunt me – along with several others, but maybe that rejected possibility most of all.  I hate that that happened to characters I truly like – and I love that Julia Spencer-Fleming made the choices she did and made me care.  One of the greatest gifts a reader can receive is a book – or, even better, a series – in which the characters become friends, people I look forward to visiting with in rereads and catching up with in new books.   It’s pretty rare. 

I’d never read Julia Spencer-Fleming before, or heard of Clare and Russ.  I hate starting a series in the middle; it would have been fun to follow the two of them from their first meeting to One Was a Soldier.  I’m absolutely buying the preceding books in the series (possibly new: income tax refund!), but this book was one huge spoiler for the story, and seems to have resolved a lot of plotlines that run through the others.  This is a setting and these are characters which grow and change, and it will be interesting to see what things were like when this all began.  Interesting? I can’t wait. 

There may be flaws in this book, but I can’t think of any.  Any hiccups I had with it were flaws in my reading of it, not in the writing; I didn’t read the first pages with enough attention and felt foolish when I realized I had skipped the second part of a descriptive phrase, proceeding with the belief that Clare was a black woman, not “black-clad woman”.  (That’s part of the peril of starting a series at the end: I would have known Clare if I’d started at the beginning, and been as glad to see her as her parishioners.)  The non-linear story-telling used until real-time catches up with counseling-session-time threw me for a loop until I caught on and started paying close attention to the dates at the head of each section; it was not a frivolous use of time-hopping.  It took a few minutes for me, Roman Catholic born and bred, to adapt to not just a priest who is a woman but a priest who is a woman who sleeps with her boyfriend (and her homecoming both scandalized and tickled me), and also a priest who was an Army officer and helicopter pilot before her ordination and whose function in the Army isn’t as chaplain.  (Come on – is there a more fascinating character anywhere in the genre?)  I loved it.  I absolutely loved it.

 

LTER: Pegasus

Recently I won a LibraryThing Early Reviewer that I really, really wanted: Robin McKinley‘s Pegasus.  This must be why I don’t win anything in radio contests – too lucky here: Adam Schell, GK Chesterton, and now this. 

Pegasus is a purely unique, yet purely Robin McKinley fantasy, and my review in two sentences is: What a gorgeous, gorgeous book.  But be warned: it’s not a stand-alone novel. 

Well, and there’s a third sentence: how has no one done this before?  Unicorns are everywhere, but pegasi … I can’t think of any.  Thestrals don’t count.

Hundreds of years ago, humans crossed the mountains, and stumbled into a war.  It was the pegasi versus … everything else the magical bestiary could throw at them, and the pegasi weren’t doing very well.   The humans came in on their side, and when the dust settled a treaty had been written in which the two species would be permanent allies – equal, except for the fact that the humans are just a bit, very courteously, dominant.  A system was developed wherein members of the pegasus royal family would henceforth bind themselves to members of the human royal family, to be their frequent companions.  Although communication between the species has always been iffy at best, there are some human wizards who can serve as speakers to get the point of human speech across to pegasi present and vice versa.  A body of rules has grown up to protect the slightly lesser status of the pegasi: One never even thinks of suggesting one might ride a pegasus.  (Humans are too heavy, as pegasi have hollow bones, and it’s very very rude.)  And no matter how incredibly beautiful and tempting the coat or wings might be, one never touches a pegasus. 

And all of this apparently works just fine, until it comes time for Princess Sylviianel - Sylvi - to be bound to her pegasus.  The moment Ebon approaches her, the two of them discover that they can communicate,  mind to mind, with absolute clarity and no barrier at all.  When this comes out, it causes great consternation among the human wizards … and after a time the reasons for that consternation, beyond simply the uniqueness of the situation, start to become disquietingly clear.   Their unique bond is perceived as a threat – not only to those wizards whose job it is to act as pegasus-human human-pegasus translators, but to the whole kingdom. 

I loved this book, even though it broke some of my cardinal rules.  Characters said “Okay” – which usually makes me throw a book across the room.  I forgave it here.  Let that be an indication of how much I loved it.  Also, the book ended on a particularly nasty cliffhanger… I had no idea that would happen (most of McKinley’s books do stand on their own), until a couple of chapters from the end it started to become clear there was no way this was going to wrap up in the diminishing pages that were left.  Apparently the sequel won’t be out till 2012, hopefully well before the world ends – I want to know the rest of the story. 

The reasons I forgave the “Okay” and the cliffhanger are many.  The pegasi were wonderful.  For them alone I’d forgive darn near anything. They are beautiful, so much so they leave your mouth dry and your head light, and the two things most strongly forbidden are two of the only things you can think of when in the presence of one – you want to stroke the gleaming neck, and to be taken, clinging to a powerful back, into the clouds.  They are much as our own mythology indicates – but to facilitate their civilization they have tiny hands at the joints of their wings, and although they envy humans our big, strong hands, with what they have they can accomplish marvels.  This book does something with the pegasi that a great many science fiction novels could learn a great deal from: it presents a species completely and utterly alien to humanity in every conceivable way, from anatomy to language to point of view and methods of governance.  I don’t read a great deal of sci fi, but what I have read tends to have gone along the lines of “no, really, he’s an alien, look at his ears!”  So often there is a race of people who look different but think much the same, and after a few dead ends communication is established and viola (yes, I did that on purpose) everyone is chatting away.  And then, of course, there’s Star Trek… the only ST race I can think of off the top of my head that fulfilled the definition of “alien” as well and beautifully as the pegasi was the Horta (and I’d rather hang out with a pegasus.) (Or Diane Duane’s Ensign Narhaht).  In Pegasus communication starts out troublesome, and never improves.  Of course, there are extra reasons for that. 

All of the characters were wonderful.  I loved Sylvi’s parents – quirky, three-dimensional, lovely people.  I loved the relationships among the family.  I loved the writing, of course – no one can spin a simile like Robin McKinley.  She’s a terrible example for beginning writers who hear from all angles they ought to avoid simile and metaphor – how can you avoid something as beautiful and effective and as much fun as she makes it?  She plays on language like a musical instrument.  It’s a marvel. 

So is the book.  I’ve read reviews where people complained about the first half going nowhere, or about flashbacks into Sylvi’s past … I don’t get it.  I had a wonderful time on just about every page … until the last, when it was beyond obvious that the end wasn’t near.  But if it wasn’t the middle of NaNoWriMo, and if I didn’t have eleventy-one other books stacked up to be read, I’d happily sit down and read it again right now. 

ETA – according to the WP stats, this is my 100th post on gold-of-fish!  Woo hoo!  *confetti*

 

Early review: The Devil Amongst the Lawyers

The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (Sharyn McCrumb) is the tale of a 1935 trial in Wise County, Virginia, which gains national attention because of two factors: the country (or the newspaper business, at least) is hungry for a new sensation now that the Lindbergh kidnapping has run its course – and the defendant is pretty.  The one thing the journalistic community in this book is honest about is that had she been ten years older or half as pretty no one would have paid the least attention outside her own community. 

There was also a movie about to come out called The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, set in Appalachia, which was the basis of a raft of clichés and stereotypes about Appalachians that bore little resemblance to reality.  Funny how small things affect lives…

Circumstances being what they are, all major newspapers send representatives to Wise, and … put it this way.  When Annie Le was killed at Yale, representatives from everywhere showed up in New Haven, converging, for one, on the police station.  It was absurd – and it was an intense inconvenience, to put it nicely, for anyone who lived or worked (*waves*) in the area.  Add to the simple inconvenience the fact that the general American public’s perception of Appalachia did not fit the reality, and it wasn’t pretty.  When what they found failed to fit the mold of pre-set American opinion, they … simply manufactured what they needed.  Reading this made me feel like the most credulous naïve gull ever to pick up a newspaper – how remarkably easy it is to manipulate an article to produce the illustration desired, and how remarkably quick the public was – is – to eat it up with a fork. 

The book features three journalists: Henry Jernigan, with his reputation for high-toned writing and literary reference (when he thinks his audience will “get it”); Rose, a “sob sister”, following as all woman reporters of the time do the emotional angle and grateful (as they all are) that the girl really is attractive; both Henry and Rose are from a major newspaper (though not as major as the syndicate that paid for exclusive access to the defendant, in a move that stinks to high heaven from every angle).  The third journalist is Carl, a nineteen-year-old just beginning his journalistic career at a tiny hometown paper, and hoping that this will be his break. 

There is also Shade, the photographer sent with Henry and Rose, who goes out seeking broken down cabins to take pictures of for the story (preferably one with a pig on the porch) and has a terrible hard time finding one; and Nora Bonesteel, here aged 12, the ghost-visited old lady who is the common thread through the Ballad novels. 

 The Trail of the Lonesome Pine set the stage, and the play that went on in Wise County had to be made to fit those props and backdrops that already existed in Americans’ minds.  Sure, they could report the simple facts – and Carl tries to, only to learn why it’s a terrible idea. 

The writing is beautiful.  (Hardly an adverb in sight!)  The characters – from the old men who try to give Carl a bit of a break to the ones we spend the most time with – are wonderful – Henry with his Japanese ghosts, and Rose with her “dog fox” light o’ love Danny, and Carl with his clear-eyed read of the facts battling with what would further his career and get him out of the sticks.  And Nora, with her gift that no one understands … I found the ending disturbing, in a way, because it fell out so very differently from what I still – credulous, naïve gull that I am – hoped would be the result of a properly held trial covered by experienced reporters. 

The story of the elephant in the prologue is true, I’m sorry to say.  The story of Erma Morton is true, or the basic facts are – her name was really Edith Maxwell.  I’m sorry to say that, too, because that means that the rest of it is probably close to truth.  A beautiful, sad, disheartening book – and I’ve never read a more stinging indictment of the newspaper world.

One thing I feel a bit silly admitting – I can’t find a source for the title.  It doesn’t seem to fit very well, to me – unless the devil amongst the lawyers is meant to be the ladies and gentlemen of the press …

Quotes:

Gettin’ above your raisin’, are ye, Carl?
A-lord, he hoped so.  People always meant that remark as a dig, but Carl couldn’t see why they would think it so.  His own never-expressed reply was: If some of us didn’t get above our raising, then all of us would still be living in caves.

But Carl was different.  To hear his family tell it, he had stuck his nose in a book from the time he could life one, and he would have considered it no punishment at all to be locked in a small room alone with a stack of books.  It would be a long time before he missed people in general.  At least the ones you found in books made sense.  [Sounds familiar ... ]

Rose: “I don’t care what the world thinks.  I just want to live a few glorious days with my dog fox, before I am as forgotten as yesterday’s headlines.”

 

The world will never starve for want of wonders

… but only for want of wonder.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

I do sincerely love the Early Reviewers giveaways on Librarything. It was through this that I received Tomato Rhapsody, for which I am deeply grateful; and it was through this that I just received On Tremendous Trifles, by G.K. Chesterton. GKC is perhaps best known as the author of the Father Brown mysteries, but wrote so very much more – reams and sheaves and shelves, including essays for The Daily News, twenty-one of which are gathered here.

This is a small, slender trade paperback from Hesperus Press, which just feels pleasant to the hand, with its matte finish and front and back flaps. (The margins could be wider, but I’m half Scot; more words to the page I understand.) It is foreworded by Ben Schott – who is clearly someone I need to follow up on soon; the foreword was as much fun as one of the essays.

And when I say it’s as much fun, that’s a tremendous compliment, because these essays are great fun. I’ve laughed out loud reading them more often than during any other book I can think of recently; the best word I can associate with this book is “delight”. A turn of phrase here, the turning upside down of a phrase there, a philosophical conceit somewhere, a purely GKC insult elsewhere – I love it.

One essay in particular, (
http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/chalkessay.htm
)”A Piece of Chalk”, was especially delightful in that I can honestly imagine it as having inspired two of the giants in my reading pantheon, Dorothy L. Sayers and J.R.R. Tolkien. For JRRT: I found myself grinning as GKC played “what have I got in my pockets” – “Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past…” I can just imagine a thought process whereby that subliminally influenced the beginning of the Ring story. (Then, of course, the 12th essay in the book is actually called “What I Found in My Pocket”.) And for DLS: suffice to say without spoiling anything that something forgotten in this essay is almost exactly identical to something that helped give Lord Peter the tip that an artist’s death was murder, no accident, in The Five Red Herrings. From what I can find, DLS certainly read Chesterton; it’s no great stretch of the imagination that Tolkien did as well. I love it.

Throughout, the essays provoke laughter, and nodding of my head, and blank stares as a new way of looking at things unwinds behind my eyes. They’re essays about his sprained ankle - and thus the advantages of having a leg; and the wind in the trees, or is it the trees in the wind?; and a cab-man’s mistake, which becomes a metaphysical question about what is real. There is the hansom cab that throws him out, and the cows which gather to consult about his strange behavior, and the croquet game which alarms him (which was one of my favorites), and, of course, his pocket contents … I would start listing my favorite quotes, but that would entail most of the book. What a gift and treasure this book is. Everything else I own by him just moved up a great many rungs on the “need to (re)read soon” ladder.

Wikipedia: “Chesterton is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on June 13.” (Why not the 14th, which is the anniversary of his death (in 1936)?) (Oh – the 14th belongs to Basil the Great, Bishop of Cae) But how did that happen? *Did* it happen?? I’m not seeing it on calendars I can locate online … Perhaps it’s in the works. This will bear further looking into. What fun. There’s a saint I could feel utterly comfortable calling upon. Though his response might be somewhat erratic…