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Putting this list together, oddly enough, was inspired by a sweet, sad, lovely coming-of-age story about Mira Levenson, a twelve-year-old British girl of Indian and Jewish descent who's journaling the last month of her beloved grandmother's life (among many other things).
Although the Rwandan Genocide wasn't the primary focus of the book, it was an integral part of Mira's new, more complex understanding of the world (not to mention her crush, Jidé), her discovery and exploration of it was a huge part of her coming-of-age journey, and the scenes of her doing research made me wonder what fiction was out there. (Hence, as I said above, this list.)
In addition to all of the book's other virtues—seriously, it's so, so good—there's also a really nice thread about how her PARENTS react to and deal with Mira's maturation. On the one hand, they want to protect her from the horrors in the world, but on the other, they realize that she's growing up, and that learning about and understanding these hard things (as much as understanding is possible, anyway) is a part of that process. It's just really nicely handled.
I'm so very much looking forward to the sequel, which is out in September.
This one is heavily based on interviews with Rwandan refugees, and chronicles the life of a young Tutsi girl who witnessed her mother's murder when she was five years old. Now fourteen, living with the Hutu woman who took her in, still wracked by nightmares, she has to decide whether or not to testify in Gacaca court. According to the reviews I've read, the prose is quite spare, but Combres doesn't pull punches about the subject matter.
This fictionalized biography, translated from the original German, got multiple starred reviews as well as a Batchelder Award. It's about eight-year-old Jeanne d'Arc Umubyeyi, who was ultimately her Tutsi family's only survivor. The book doesn't only chronicle the violence, but the regular life leading up to it, and oddly enough, every review I've read has made me think of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, because the book is narrated by a child who is experiencing all of the trauma of a horrific event, but without any real understanding of the political situation that lead up to it.
The descriptions of these sound somewhat didactic to me (the Hankins title alone is pretty cringeworthy), but they both seem to have had decently positive receptions, so, onto the list they go. The Walters is about a fifteen-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a homeless soldier whose last mission was as a peacekeeper stationed in Rwanda; the Hankins is about a fifth grader who discovers genocide isn't just something that affects far away people—it's something that has touched people he knows. These two and the Combres were originally published in Canada.
Last week, in the comments of my post about YA Stories with Roots in Norse Mythology, a couple of books were recommended. One of those books was Icefall, which I PROMISE I'll get to (it's actually in a pile of books sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME on the couch), and the other was Margi Preus' West of the Moon.
In recommending it, CC said: Not Norse mythology, but a fascinating immigration/unreliable narrator/Norse fairy tale combination: West of the Moon, by Margi Preus which I LOVED (and I think you would like too, even though it's more middle grade. The narrator is just your type.)
And she was totally right on all counts! What can I say? She knows me well.
West of the Moon opens with thirteen-year-old Astri's aunt and uncle selling her to a goat-herder:
Now I know how much I'm worth: not as much as Jesus, who I'm told was sold for thirty pieces of silver. I am worth two silver coins and a haunch of goat.
She lives with and works for the filthy and brutish Svaalberd for months—she eats better with him, but she also sleeps with a knife under her pillow to fend off possible advances—waiting and watching for an opportunity to escape. Finally, her plans can't be put off any longer: a young man passes through on his way to catch a ship to America, and Svaalberd is finally about to make good on his threat to marry her.
She has two weeks to escape, get back to her aunt and uncle's house, grab her sister and get to the docks. Not to mention figuring out what to do with Svaalberd's OTHER prisoner, finding birth certificates, scrabbling together the money for passage (as well as the huge list of supplies required for the voyage), and avoiding re-capture. Achieving a single thing on that list would be NO SMALL FEAT, but Astri has to complete them ALL. And, despite her love for fairy tales, she doesn't have magic on her side, and no prince is going to rescue her. She just has herself: her lying, stealing, cheating, canny, bright, survivor self.
So much to love here!
Astri. She is, as I've said, perfectly willing to lie, to cheat, and to steal. She's also not just willing, but UNFLINCHING, when it comes to using violence to protect not just herself, but HER STUFF. She's wonderfully contradictory: On one hand, she's a loving girl with empathy for others, but on the other, she doesn't allow that empathy to override her practicality. After months with Svaalberd, most people would have ended up submissive or even with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, but not Astri:
He doesn't reproach me or threaten me as I expect. He says, "Come summer, we will go down to the church and have the parson marry us. Then I'll take you to my bed."
"One of us will go to hell first," I mumble.
Above all, she is a GIRL OF ACTION:
"...And so shall someone rescue us, I shouldn't wonder."
That's what I tell her, but as her wheel whirs, my mind whirs along with it, and soon I've run out of golden thread with which to spin my pretty stories and I'm left with just the thin thread of truth. And that wiry, rough little thread tells me that if anyone is going to do any rescuing from this place, it's going to have to be me.
She is feisty and difficult and I have no doubt that plenty of readers won't find her at all likable, but I loved her, full stop.
The fairy tales. As her journey goes on, Astri comments on the parallels between her story and various Norwegian fairy tales, spinning the two together into a cohesive whole. For another character, it would be a coping mechanism, a distancing one, but Astri uses them to understand her own situation more clearly. She's always up-front about how the stories differ from each other, and unlike in the folktales, in her story, the actions she takes actually have consequences for herself and for other people. The villains, too—her aunt and uncle, Svaalberd—aren't demonized, they aren't simply flat-out monsters. They DO act monstrously, but Astri has an impressively fair-minded perspective of them, in that she considers their situations, their motivations, their outlooks.
The history. Beyond the fairy tales, beyond the adventure, West of the Moon is an AWESOME work of historical fiction about family, immigration, about trying to better your situation, and again, about becoming your own rescuer. Preus works in a TON of details about the period, the place, and the culture—I especially loved all of the commentary about the shift/clash between folk beliefs and church beliefs—but she does it so organically that I didn't even pick up on most of them until I read her (fantastically extensive) Author's Note and Bibliography.
I really, really enjoyed this one: it works as historical fiction, as science fiction, as a horror story, a romance, a coming of age, and as a retelling of H.G. Wells' original. The changes that Shepherd makes, the twists she introduces, they all feel organic and they play off the original and change it, but in ways that complement the Wells, if that makes sense. It changes it without trying to replace it or diminish it, maybe? Whatever it is I'm trying to say (YEESH), it's TOTALLY engrossing, and I TOTALLY DUG IT.
This is part of White's Echo Company series, and while it looks like 'Tis the Season also features Lieutenant Rebecca Phillips, The Road Home seems like it's more up my alley, as it's about her return back to the United States from Vietnam, and about the post-war healing process. I have to say, though, while I'm not usually drawn to war stories, I've been meaning to read the Echo Company books for ages: Ellen Emerson White is a treasure.
A seventeen-year-old girl with precognitive powers—she sees the impending deaths of loved ones, but no one believes her, making her a WWI-era Cassandra—joins a volunteer nursing corps and heads off to France in an attempt to save the life of her one remaining brother. Love Sedgwick, so I'm a little bit horrified that I haven't gotten around to this one yet.
Bedlam Hospital has a disturbing problem: every night, at precisely Twelve Minutes to Midnight, the inmates begin feverishly writing gibberish—on paper, on the walls, on themselves; in pencil, in ink, in blood. In the morning, none of the inmates have any memory of their actions, and every night, the madness spreads further. Having exhausted every medical avenue*, the authorities turn to Montgomery Flinch, an author who has recently taken England by storm with his macabre tales of terror published in the Penny Dreadful.
Little do they know, Montgomery Flinch doesn't exist. The stories are actually written by thirteen-year-old Penelope Treadwell, the orphaned heiress who owns the Penny Dreadful.
But Penelope isn't going to let a trifling detail like THAT prevent her from investigating...
Pros:
Loads of atmosphere, action, and tense moments.
Details like the secret door leading to the SPOILER, and the mysterious, beautiful widow are nice nods to the genre and suggest a real affection for it.
Edge doesn't condescend to his audience: he doesn't over-explain plot points, and he never actually spills the beans about the specific events the prisoners are writing about. Deciphering those texts isn't necessary to enjoy the story, but they'll make a nice Easter Egg for any readers with a basic knowledge of twentieth-century history.
Cons:
I got the impression that Edge was shooting for Late Nineteenth-Century Verbose and Flowery, but there's a distinct lack of rhythm in the prose. For example: "Behind him, Alfie failed to hide the smirk on his face as he took a sip from one of Monty's discarded glasses before grimacing in sudden disgust." In other words, much of the book feels like one big run-on sentence.
There's nothing in the way of character arc or growth: at the end of the story, the main characters are exactly who they were at the beginning. (I suppose that could be chalked up as a nod to the conventions of the genre, but as always, I don't like that as an argument, as it suggests that genre fiction is somehow 'lesser' than 'literary' fiction. Anyway.)
For a smart girl, Penelope is amazingly slow to put two and two together. Also, three-quarters of the way in, a plot point requires her to suddenly possess Crazy Science Skills which she explains away by saying that she's 'always' had a strong interest in science. It was so out of left field that I wrote NANCY DREW MOMENT in my notes.
Nutshell: Plenty of atmosphere and action, but no character development or emotional depth.
_____________________________
*I think? Hopefully this wasn't their first choice of solution?
Anyway, enough pontificating from me, right? On to the actual book! Clearly, Marthe Jocelyn’s What We Hide succeeded in at least getting THIS reader thinking about truth; about secrets; about lies of malice and lies of boredom, about lies of omission and lies of desperation, about lies to loved ones and lies to ourselves; about perspective and worldview and, yes, the reliability of any given narrator.
It’s a book that will likely end up in the Important Book category—books that get taught in school or get used in book groups—rather than in the Best-selling Book category, which is unfortunate. Farrin and Sadira’s story is one that deserves to be heard, and as it’s just one of many, it deserves to be heard all the more widely. While it doesn’t seem likely that there will be a sequel, I do hope for one—while the book certainly stands alone, it left me with a BUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?-shaped hole in my chest.
Although there are a few problematic aspects, it has plenty to recommend it, the first of which is the premise: Charlotte and Emily Brontë have run-ins with various people—a desperate, possibly mad woman; a handsome ruffian with a big dog; an attractive-but-probably-evil mill owner (I mean, come on: He has a POINTY BEARD!)—who all, it turns out, are involved in the same mysterious drama that also involves the local Freemason lodge and their brother Branwell.
Relatedly, Kirkus has revamped their Blogs area, so now each blog has its own dedicated page. So that's very cool, and should make it easier to add them to feed readers!
...I wrote about Christine Kohler's No Surrender Soldier, which worked for me really well in some ways and not so much in others, but which ALSO inspired me to start looking for other books in the same vein.
I have no self-control whatsoever, and I accidentally blew through the rest of Longbourn yesterday. I really only meant to read one chapter, but I Just. Couldn't. Stop.
Rather than spoilerize the whole rest of the book for you—if you've found these posts even vaguely interest-piquing, you really, really should just pick it up because it's super in every way—I'll just wind this up with a few comments:
Wow, Mr. Bennet. As has been previously discussed in the comments of some of my previous Longbourn posts, Mr. Bennet is... kind of a jerk. More than kind of. Did he marry below himself intellectually? Yes. Does he have anyone to blame for that but himself? No. I can understand being bitter and being unhappy, but the way that he takes it out on his wife—not to mention Mrs. Hill—makes me despise him. I really don't think I'll ever be able to read him with any measure of affection again: Baker added some layers of unlikable behavior to his character and past, sure, but the majority of it came from Austen's original. I just never really looked beyond the entertainment factor of his zingers before to consider the effect they'd have on the target of his "wit".
The Hills. I was right about SO MANY THINGS! Due to Mrs. Hill's behavior towards and affection for James, I Had Suspicions about her past, and those Suspicions panned out, and the reveal was so well timed. (In addition to the realism and the period detail and the character development, I was so impressed by Baker's plotting: parallels to Pride and Prejudice abound, but they never feel contrived or obvious or unnatural.) I have such difficulty in understanding how Mrs. Hill didn't despise Mr. Bennet, especially—in addition to the way that he wronged her personally, though much of that is obviously heightened by my modern sensibilities—given her empathy and affection for Mrs. Bennet. The reveal about the comfort and trust behind the Hills' marriage did a lot to soften... well, everything, but especially Mr. Hill's storyline. It's nice that, given the era, he could find at least some measure of happiness.
Mrs. Bennet. Oh, laudanum. That makes so much sense. And is so depressing. It's so easy to imagine Lydia eventually going in exactly the same direction, albeit for slightly different reasons.
Wickham. Gross. I might need to re-watch Lost in Austen to regain some amount of affection for him.
Ptolemy Bingley. He was the only character who got short shrift, which was really too bad: his background and history would make for some super plotting & psychology, and I'd have loved to get to know him better.
I can imagine some readers having a hard time with Elizabeth and Darcy's not-exactly-happily-ever-after, but I A) found Lizzy's difficulty acclimating to her new life quite believable, B) reminded myself that this was all being filtered through Sarah's own unhappiness at Pemberley, and C) have confidence that Lizzy will find her footing eventually.
POLLY! MARY! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! I loved what Baker did with them. LOVED. Poor old Mary, she deserved some happiness. Of the younger Bennet girls, she's the one I've always felt for.
Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine. Oh, Mr. Collins. I do tend to feel bad for him in all of his awkwardness, and he seems so lost here. Lady Catherine, as always, is both hilarious and awful. I loved that Mr. Collins' servants live in just as much fear of her as he does.
And finally, James and Sarah. The chapters that finally give us his backstory are BRUTAL. But they're also wonderful, in that they make his showdown with Wickham all the more wonderful: when you realize what James has been through, and then compare that to the cockiness of these young bucks in the Militia... well, no wonder that James has zero regard, time, or respect for them. I loved, too, how James and Sarah's stories paralleled each other, in that they both had to leave home to find it again.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
The Militia marches through town; something gets James all nervous; Sarah pulls a Veronica Mars on James' quarters; the handsome footman from Netherfield comes to Longbourn to bring Jane an invitation to dinner.
Other thoughts:
Could James be AWOL? WHAT IS HE AFRAID OF/RUNNING FROM?? IT'S DRIVING ME BANANAS!!!
I liked the bit about Mr. Bennet being all crabby about the servants being unsupervised while the family is over at Lucas Lodge: because obviously he's not a remotely effective supervisor, he's just cranky that he has TO LEAVE THE HOUSE. Heh.
James has a book on abolition (not surprising, given his previous conversation with Sarah) and some seashells: I'm sure that Sherlock Holmes would have figured his whole story out by now, but I'm STILL IN THE DARK.
Mrs. Hill exhibits quite a bit of discomfort while the Netherfield footman waits for Jane's reply; Polly is quiet while he's there, but then lets loose a whopper of a cringe-inducing statement (to our modern ears) after he leaves: "Perhaps they couldn't get an ordinary man," said Polly. Ag. Sarah (rather spiritedly), says that she thinks "he's lovely", which seems to get a reaction out of James. IS THIS THE FIRST SIGN OF A THAW BETWEEN THEM??
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
James brings the Bennet women to the assembly in Meryton.
Other thoughts:
Below him, the ladies' voices twittered; the carriage was a cage filed with pretty birds. How could he ever show sufficient care? How could he ever repay the trust that that good man had placed in him? Things could change so entirely, in a heartbeat; the world could be made entirely anew, because someone was kind. He would keep his head down, draw no attention to himself. He would not even look at Sarah, for all she was so very good to look at. WELL, THEN. VERY INTERESTING...
Also, nice description of the goings-on outside of the dance, as well as the quiet return home.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
After Sarah dresses the girls for a ball, Jane and Elizabeth ask her about the dances on the village green, give her pick of their old dresses, and loan her a novel. Later, she tries to express her dissatisfaction with her life to Polly, but is told to "stop moaning" so that Mrs. Hill won't catch them loafing.
Other thoughts:
Jane is described as being "as sweet, soothing and undemanding as a baked milk-pudding, and as welcome at the end of an exhausting day". Which would make her an ideal employer, I'd think, though maybe a somewhat boring friend. Then again, when compared to the rest of her family, boring might be occasionally preferable.
Elizabeth also comes off quite well in this chapter, warm and bright and good-humored.
Oh! And this line—"Lyddie would give anyone anything, just for the asking."—has me quite curious about how she'll be portrayed here. Because that certainly doesn't line up with how she's come across in the past.
As Sarah gets a hand-me-down because the girls got new dresses, one can only assume that Mrs. Hill was successful in talking Mr. Bennet into buying them.
It's less than a full paragraph long, but the description of the village dance is GREAT. I could see and hear it all.
When the Bennet girls leave, it's like they take the light with them, and Sarah is left feeling like she's just a shadow. Which is pretty much this entire book (so far) in a nutshell: her very existence pretty much depends on them, and her life even parallels theirs... but whereas they're meant to be seen and admired, she's meant to stay invisible and hidden.
And finally, a major facet of Sarah's discontent: she remembers being part of a family, before she was orphaned, before she was in service, and since she was happy once upon a time, she knows what she's missing.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
Mrs. Bennet asks Mrs. Hill to be her go-between with Mr. Bennet, and to convince him to let her get the girls fitted out with new dresses.
Sarah gets sent to Netherfield to bring Mr. Bingley an invitation to a Family Dinner.
Other thoughts:
This is quite a lot more sympathetic towards Mrs. Bennet than any other portrayal I've seen. Like, she has a point about the dresses: the girls are commodities, basically, and they need to look their best if they're going to reel in someone with enough money to allow the rest of the family to live comfortably after Mr. Bennet's death and ownership of Longbourn is transferred to Mr. Collins.
I find it somewhat depressing that Mrs. Bennet knows that requests are more likely to be met if she has Mrs. Hill ask than if she asks herself. At the same time, points to her for knowing how to manipulate the situation, I guess.
But, of course, the second I feel for her, I think of the other major thing that happened during that scene: she gave Mrs. Hill her yellow silk dress, and in so doing, A) totally dismissed the amount of work the servants had done to clean it after the last time she wore it and B) shows an utter lack of understanding about Mrs. Hill's life. Like, where's she supposed to wear a flouncy yellow silk dress? When she's making dinner?
That footman at Netherfield is VERY handsome and VERY flirty, two factors that throw Sarah even more than the fact that he's the first black man she's ever seen in person: So was he what they called a black man, then, even though he was brown?
Speaking of being thrown, the conversation about where Bingley's money comes from threw ME. Because, sugar. And sugar = slavery.
Polly is reminding me more and more of Lydia.
James is quite well educated in re: the sugar trade. Something that Sarah comments on, but then Tempers Flare and Conversation Gets Heated.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
Mrs. Hill gives James Smith her patented Orphan Treatment, telling him at Longbourn, he'll always have food, and that "you eat, and then you work" (rather than the other way around) and I rather think that he's hers for life after that. He wins her over as well, as well as Mr. Hill, Polly, and Mrs. B.
Not Sarah, though. Despite him doing all of her most dreaded morning tasks—re-filling the wood and getting the fires going, lugging the water inside, etc.—which gives her an hour reprieve from work and gives Polly the chance for an always-needed catnap, he still makes her bristle.
Also, she realizes that James and the Mysterious Scotchman from the first chapter are one and the same, and that he's lying about where he came from.
Other thoughts:
I'm really enjoying the push-pull of Sarah's feelings about James: she wants attention from him, and when she doesn't get it, she wants to kick him. But when he does something thoughtful, like opens a door for her or does all of those chores, she is thrown... which makes her want to kick him some more. I like that she finds him attractive, and that that ALSO makes her want to kick him.
Basically, I like how prickly she is.
He's wicked squirrelly about where he's been before, what he's done, who he's worked for, etc. WHAT IS HIS DEAL? IS HE A RUNAWAY OF SOME SORT WHO SECRETLY HAS BUCKETS OF MONEY AND WILL EVENTUALLY SWOOP SARAH AWAY FROM A DULL LIFE FULL OF TOIL?
Even if none of that happens, all things considered, the servants at Longbourn have it pretty good (so far). I mean, comparatively. Despite the Bennets' apparent inability to see them as human beings (which makes sense given the era and culture), they aren't MEAN employers, in terms of personality or generosity.
Oh! And there's a great Pride and Prejudice parallel moment in this chapter, except James' response is waaaaaaaaay more blunt than Mr. Darcy's:
"I don't know what to make of you at all," she said. "Please don't trouble yourself to try."
versus the original:
"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity." "I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
Sarah thinks about the men in her orbit (unsuitable for various reasons) and considers the different ways that the Bennet sisters (minus Mary, because Mary) charm young gentlemen (none of them work for her). She waits and waits and waits to meet the New Young Man, building the anticipation of the moment up so much that when it happens—and happens disastrously—she pretty much hates his guts on sight.
Other thoughts:
It's a nice point that Baker makes about the in-between-ness of Sarah's station—as a housemaid, she's below the gentlefolk, but above the farmhands... and as she works for a semi-impoverished family who live in the country, there isn't much chance of her meeting eligible bachelors.
I also really liked the description of Mr. B. being "only really present in the physical sense". Of course, after the last chapter, I'd love to get Mrs. Hill's take on that.
Although Sarah was in some distress after her literal run-in with the new manservant—I'm going to have to work "cack-handed lummox" into my vocabulary—her back-and-forth with Mrs. Hill about the possibility of her leg falling off made me laugh out loud.
SO, WAIT. IS THIS GOING TO BE PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, LIKE, WITHIN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE?
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
Sarah is carrying a (full) chamberpot downstairs to be emptied when she overhears Mr. Bennet speaking in his study. That isn't unusual, as he has a habit of talking to himself or to his books—he says it's the only "decent conversation" to be had at Longbourn—but she quickly realizes that he isn't alone: Mrs. Hill is in there with him, and they get into an actual voices-raised FIGHT.
Sarah can't hear any of the words, but it sounds bad. She flees before anyone can catch her eavesdropping.
INTRIGUING.
Other thoughts:
Apparently my reading of the last couple of chapters has been less-than-generous towards Jane: Oil on troubled waters, Jane was; a blanket over flames.
Then something changed. Three words from Mr. Bennet, like dropped stones: You may go, Sarah guessed. Well, maybe. But there are other, way more interesting three-word sets that I'm leaning towards, especially given Mrs. Hill's reaction.
How could she be so angry? How could she dare to be? Well, that's depressing.
And I was right about the affection Sarah has towards Mrs. Hill: a poorhouse orphan, she was taken in by the estate when she was six years old, and Mrs. Hill showed her kindness right from the start.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
Due to Mr. Hill's aforementioned uselessness (Ha! I called that one!), Mr. Bennet has—without consulting Mrs. Hill—hired on a new manservant, a man who goes by the rather suspiciously generic name of "James Smith".
AND SCENE.
Other thoughts:
During this scene, Lydia is the most overtly jackassy—she goes on and on, IN FRONT OF MRS. HILL, about how great it'll be to have a "nice young man" to drive them about, instead of Mr. Hill, who looks like a shaved monkey in a hat—but no one else comes off particularly well, either. Except Kitty, who doesn't even get a line. Poor old Kitty.
Mrs. Bennet is excited about it because it's THE THING to have manservants (who, by the way, get higher wages than female employees) and she's looking forward to the neighbors finding out. Credit where credit's due, though: beyond, obviously, the servants, I found her the most likable of the bunch.
Although Lizzie and Jane chide Lydia for the spider monkey comment, I got the impression that it was purely because it was impolite, and not because of any real concern for Mrs. Hill's feelings: because, beyond that, the only thing in the scene that makes Lizzie and Jane visibly uncomfortable is the moment when Mrs. Hill forgets herself and dares to speak in their presence without being addressed first.
I'm trying to remind myself that although it's told in the third person, much of the narration is colored by Sarah's perception: I get the impression that she's pretty close in age to Lizzie and Jane, and so it makes sense that she'd be the hardest on them. After all, it's purely random chance that they were born into their position in life, and that she was born into hers.
As mentioned in my 2014 Reading Goals post, I'm trying to add more adult fiction into my diet. And, as I like to chronicle this stuff, here I am, chronicling it.
Feel free to read along! (If you end up posting about it, let me know in the comments and I'll link up.)
Basic rundown:
The life of a housemaid in Regency England—especially a housemaid in a somewhat impoverished household—is not an easy one. We've got Sarah (older) and Polly (younger); Sarah tends to take on extra work because she feels bad for Polly, who really is still a child (it's easy to see parallels between Polly and Lydia, actually); there is some amount of affection between Sarah and Mrs. Hill, though Mr. Hill seems (so far) to be rather useless.
It's laundry day at Longbourn. In a word, laundry day is AWFUL, and there is no romanticizing it. Baker organically integrates loads of interesting details about the process, while also creating a three-dimensional portrait of the personalities at play. I'm rather in love with this book already.
Other thoughts:
First line: There could be no wearing of clothes without their laundering, just as surely as there could be no going without clothes, not in Hertfordshire anyway, and not in September.
Less than two pages in, and I'm completely hooked: Baker does a fabulous job of contrasting Sarah's early morning ritual—already outside and pumping water for the laundry at 4:30 in the morning, in weather so cold she can see her breath—while her employers, the Bennets, are still snug in their beds. She dreams of living in a warm place populated with half-clothed men—like Jamaica or Antigua—because there would be "consequently very little in the way of laundry". Heh.
In opening with a scene dealing with laundry, Baker is immediately reminding the reader that the Bennets—Lizzy and Jane included—are actual, real people, with actual, real bodily functions. Which sets a very different tone from the original. It's the first Austen fanfiction I've ever read that I'd describe as 'earthy'. Also! While I'd still call this fanfiction, it's already very clear that the focus really is going to be on Baker's own characters, not on Austen's.
If Elizabeth had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them. Heh. Makes Lizzy's rambles slightly less romantic, eh?
And speaking of the actual, real people thing: It had been that unfortunate time of the month, when all the women in the house had been more than usually short-tempered, clumsy and prone to tears, and then had bled. The napkins now soaked in a separate tub that smelt uneasily of the butcher's shop; they'd be boiled last, in the dregs of the copper, before it was emptied. There's an aspect of Bennet family life that hadn't occurred to me: all of the girls—and the maids—would probably be on the same cycle. Criminy.
Souse = pickled brawn = head cheese. Groooooooooss. From Wikipedia: "The parts of the head used varies, but the brain, eyes, and ears are usually removed". USUALLY. There are brains in this one.
Although the Bennets aren't portrayed particularly sympathetically—not nasty, just self-absorbed, entitled, clueless, and useless—in this chapter, there is a bit about Mr. Bennet loaning books to Sarah for evening reading. So that's something.
While hanging laundry, Sarah spots a Mysterious Stranger from afar. As something disturbs the horses in the barn later on, I have No Doubt that said stranger will come into play very soon.
Up and working by 4:30am, only headed to bed by 11pm. Ag.
...I wrote aboutDiamonds & Deceit, the second book in Leila Rasheed's At Somerton series.
If you're looking for some light, Luxe-ish fun, you can't go wrong with this one:
You get the idea. And those are only a FEW of the characters and storylines! Rasheed clearly comes from the Dickens school of literature, in that there are apparently only 43 people living in London: Every single detail—right down to the romance novel that everyone in the book is obsessed with—factors in, coincidences abound (in a generally delightful manner) and there’s a healthy dose of humor to balance out all of the soapiness.
"There was a line in Pride and Prejudice that just stopped me dead, and I couldn't get past it on one of my re-readings," she says. "It's that period leading up to the Netherfield ball when it's just been raining for days and days, and there's no way the Bennet girls are going to venture out into the muddy roads ... but they need these decorations for their dancing shoes. And the line is 'the very shoe roses for Netherfield were got by proxy,' and I just thought, who's proxy?"
I've been wanting to read Longbourn for a while now, and this NPR piece only made me more eager to do so... however, WHY ON EARTH would they title it "Don't Call It Fanfic: Writers Rework Their Favorite Stories"? IT IS TOTALLY FANFIC. Fanfic is fanfic is fanfic, traditionally published or not.
While I'm probably the last person in the blogosphere to read Dark Triumph, I'm going to go ahead and tell you all about my various feels anyway.
Dark Triumph is the companion/sequel to Grave Mercy: companion, in that it focuses on a different character than Grave Mercy, and in that it has a different tone/focus than its predecessor—it's much more about Sybella's personal journey towards self-forgiveness and personal (as in, in her own mind, not so much in the eyes of others, because in the eyes of Those Who Care About Her, she was never in any need of it) redemption—and a sequel in that it continues the larger political story that began in the first book.
That was a really, really long sentence.
Anyway, so Lady Sybella, like Grave Mercy's Ismae Rienne, is both handmaiden to Death and his daughter. She acts on His behalf, killing those who bear his marque, and she's currently embedded in the household of Alain D'Albret, who is the embodiment of Pure Evil as well as being Sybella's biological father. (As opposed to Mortain, who is her True Father. It's kinda vaguely confusing, but roll with it.) She's there to A) spy on D'Albret and B) assassinate him when (IF) Mortain's marque ever appears.
It's hell being back in the arms—literally, in the case of her half-brother—of her family. In order to fit in and avoid her father's notice (and suspicions), she has to pretend to be callous and vicious, uncaring and bloodthirsty. Being back has stirred up memories that she's tried to exorcise for years, and being back has also given new life to her worry that she's just like her father: heartless, violent, unworthy of love.
After secretly thwarting yet another attempt on her father's part to kidnap and forcibly marry Anne, the Duchess of Brittany, Sybella receives new orders from her abbess: find Benebic de Waroch—a berserker affectionately known as the Beast—in her father's dungeon, free him, and make sure he is reunited with the Duchess, whom he has sworn to protect.
I could go on, but A) you've probably already read it, and B) if you haven't, you get the gist: politics and adventure and romance and personal growth and every good thing.
Because Sybella is so damaged, so emotionally scarred, it's hard to engage with her at first. For the first third or so of the book, everything she feels—or at least everything she admits to feeling—towards others is either dark and violent, or tinged with self-loathing and fear. She hates and fears her family; she distrusts her abbess; she fears that if Ismae knew her true self, that she would lose their friendship. Once she starts to embrace herself, to forgive herself, and to realize that she HASN'T DONE ANYTHING THAT REQUIRES FORGIVENESS, she becomes much easier to engage with, and her fierce joy in fighting, in righting wrongs, and in Beast himself is just... profound.
Like, I felt it in my head, my heart, my gut, my toes.
It deals with faith in God versus faith in those who claim to speak for him.
It deals with blood family versus the family we choose.
It deals with carrying guilt for the actions of others, and with letting that guilt go.
It's not for the faint of heart: it's got incest, infanticide, multiple uxoricides (LaFevers cites Bluebeard as one of her inspirations), rape, murder, torture, mutilation, a gut shot (with intestines!), a threatened (complete with graphic description!) drawing-and-quartering, possible zombification, and I have no doubt that I'm forgetting something.
But at its heart, it's a story of, as I said, forgiveness, love, and redemption; it's a story about how a god can be more than one thing to different people; it's a story about bringing people together through love, encouragement, trust, justice, and inspiration, versus bringing people together through violence and terror.
Lastly, I have no doubt that the Beast of Waroch will be a fan favorite, with his endless warmth, his ice-blue eyes, his honor, loyalty, bravery, and his willingness to let Sybella be Sybella and for loving her for who she is... but my heart belongs to Yannic and his slingshot.
