Recent reading
Dec. 29th, 2021 07:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxRead Return to Night by Mary Renault, mostly with a strong sense of second-hand embarrassment. Romance between a doctor in her mid-30s and an aspiring actor a decade her junior, set in England in the months before WWII. I quite liked the protagonist, Dr. Hilary Mansell, which made me feel all the more girl, RUN, you do not need these vibes in your life about the whole situation with Julian and his mother.
For most of the novel, my theory on why Julian's mother is Like That was that she's pretty sure he's gay, but (this being the 1930s) thinks it would be horribly gauche to acknowledge this out loud in any way and is instead trying to passive-aggressively stiff-upper-lip it out of him. The actual Watsonian explanation, eventually revealed, is that Julian's biological father was a "cad of an actor" rather than the dearly departed war hero Mr. Fleming— though, to be fair, this doesn't necessarily preclude my own theory. The Doylist explanation is, of course, Renault's Oedipus complex kink.
If I had a nickel for every Mary Renault book I've read that ends with the love interest almost committing suicide, I'd only have ten cents, but it's weird it happened twice.
Read Strange Weather In Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami, which oddly enough is also about a woman in her 30s in a friendship-turned-romance with a significant age gap, although in this case, her love interest is thirty years her senior and (it's not as sordid as it sounds, I promise) had been her high school teacher. Reminded me of Tove Jansson's Fair Play, both in its structure of a novel in vignettes and in that it deals with similar themes of solitude and intimacy, albeit in different ways.
Read Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly, a warm and laugh-out-loud-funny contemporary fiction novel about a pair of siblings living in Auckland, New Zealand, navigating life in their mid-to-late 20s (Greta is a graduate student in comparative literature; Valdin spent eight years studying physics, had a breakdown, and became a comedian) and love (both of them end up living out their own gay rom-coms!) and their chaotic Russian-Maori-Catalonian family. Absolute 10/10.
For most of the novel, my theory on why Julian's mother is Like That was that she's pretty sure he's gay, but (this being the 1930s) thinks it would be horribly gauche to acknowledge this out loud in any way and is instead trying to passive-aggressively stiff-upper-lip it out of him. The actual Watsonian explanation, eventually revealed, is that Julian's biological father was a "cad of an actor" rather than the dearly departed war hero Mr. Fleming— though, to be fair, this doesn't necessarily preclude my own theory. The Doylist explanation is, of course, Renault's Oedipus complex kink.
If I had a nickel for every Mary Renault book I've read that ends with the love interest almost committing suicide, I'd only have ten cents, but it's weird it happened twice.
Read Strange Weather In Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami, which oddly enough is also about a woman in her 30s in a friendship-turned-romance with a significant age gap, although in this case, her love interest is thirty years her senior and (it's not as sordid as it sounds, I promise) had been her high school teacher. Reminded me of Tove Jansson's Fair Play, both in its structure of a novel in vignettes and in that it deals with similar themes of solitude and intimacy, albeit in different ways.
Read Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly, a warm and laugh-out-loud-funny contemporary fiction novel about a pair of siblings living in Auckland, New Zealand, navigating life in their mid-to-late 20s (Greta is a graduate student in comparative literature; Valdin spent eight years studying physics, had a breakdown, and became a comedian) and love (both of them end up living out their own gay rom-coms!) and their chaotic Russian-Maori-Catalonian family. Absolute 10/10.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-29 12:27 am (UTC)Not in technical legal terms but in moral terms, however much of a pill Elaine Fleming was, she was also a rape victim.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-29 01:17 am (UTC)Also super uncomfortable, in retrospect (e.g., the gap between 1947 and 2021, but also, of actually thinking about the Details of the Reveal), that the narrative made the fact Mrs. Fleming reported the guy to his superior officer and got him dishonorably discharged sound like she Wanted To Speak To The Manager™ instead of reporting a rape. Yikes.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-29 08:45 am (UTC)I can certainly believe acting talent is heritable but (as Renault knows quite well and indeed writes superbly about in The Mask of Apollo) the reason you get acting dynasties is because the sprogs get all the opportunities from an early age but also get a first-hand look at how much work it takes to succeed and either decide they're interested in putting the work in or not. So definitely much more nurture than nature.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-05 05:15 pm (UTC)...I mean, I can see why Julian wants desperately to think the best of his biological father, especially considering his obsession with the idea that he himself has perhaps inherited an Innate Flaw. But also DUDE.
Also just baffled by what the Renault Approved (tm) response would be to finding oneself to be bigamously married. My impression is that she thinks Mrs. Fleming's shock and horror are hopelessly conventional lies to herself about her own feelings (lying to oneself being the cardinal Renault sin) and that if she was TRUE to herself and her feelings she would have... continued to be bigamously married to a guy who lied to her about his marital status. It's not like being lied to about something so massive might change someone's feelings or anything.