Recent reading

[troisoiseaux]

Finished A Tale of Two Cities, which I was relieved to discover I still love— I'd spent so long considering it my favorite Dickens novel that it was genuinely disorienting to try to re-read it last summer and feel absolutely nothing. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has written a paper on the depiction of now-recognized mental health conditions in A Tale of Two Cities - Doctor Manette's PTSD, Sydney Carton's depression - which I'd be interested to read. I was also struck by the anonymity (?) of Dickens' depiction of the French Revolution, as compared to, say, Baroness Emma Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel books or Victor Hugo's Ninety-Three, which include Robespierre et al. in at least cameo roles— the only actual historical figure he references (besides the "king with a large jaw and queen with a fair face") is the executioner Sanson. In the tragedy of its closing scene I'd forgotten how absolutely bananas the last act is. Sydney Carton is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters; probably even in my top five.

Read To the Chapel Perilous by Naomi Mitchison, which is SOOOOO good. Arthurian legend retold through the charmingly anachronistic lens of two reporters at rival papers— Merlin's Camelot Chronicle ("intimately connected with the Court and scarcely less so with the Church") and the pro-Orkney Northern Pict, run by (I confess, I snickered every time I read the name) Lord Horny (Satan, possibly??). This review by skygiants has better commentary on the Arthurian-retelling aspect than I am able to give, but I can say that my favorite knight-centric chapter was the one about Sir Bors, in the same way that when I read the Odyssey I was charmed by how normal Menelaus and Helen were.

I really enjoyed Lienors (reporter for the Chronicle) and Dalyn (for the Pict), both individually and together! Their dynamic reminded me of the line from Good Omens about how field agents often found they had more in common with their opposite numbers than their minders back at headquarters. Mitchison's depiction of a partisan press was utterly unsurprising to read in 2022; what is surprising is that no one seems to have written an op-ed about revisiting To the Chapel Perilous in these days of "alternative facts."

I've been dipping in and out of Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva, by Rosemary Sullivan, for a couple of months now— it's not that long, or particularly difficult, but I've found it taken best in small doses, because hoo boy did she go through it. I just got to the point where Svetlana, who defected to the U.S. in the 1960s, joined Frank Lloyd Wright's widow's cult, which is not a sentence I could have predicted writing.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

I've been on the fence about whether I should read Naomi Mitchison, but this review has tipped me over the edge. Who does NOT wish to read a book about two reporters of rival papers reporting on the situation in Camelot?

I knew that Svetlana's life was A Lot but I had NOT realized that she ended up joining Frank Lloyd Wright's widow's cult (I also did not realize that Frank Lloyd Wright's widow had a cult! Wright himself yes; the widow, no) so perhaps I need to read that book too.

[skygiants]

The Bors scene was so charming! Sometimes a famous knight is just a guy!

[copperfyre]

I am very into this Arthurian take, it sounds delightful! *adds to my very long to read list*

[oursin]

'The Horny' - appears as a name for (at least in the historical context of the time) the Devil, in Mitchison's The Bull Calves, in Kirstie's ?hallucinations of being part of a witches' coven. OED gives 'Auld Hornie' as Scottish dialect (sourced to Burns) for the Devil, which fits.

[kore]

Chapel Perilous sounds really good! I have Stalin's Daughter here somewhere in this apartment....

[regshoe]

Oh, good that you enjoyed A Tale of Two Cities!

To The Chapel Perilous sounds amazing and weird in a brilliant way—I think my library has a copy, I must bump it up the list of Naomi Mitchison novels to get to next.

[sovay]

Sydney Carton is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters; probably even in my top five.

That was the conclusion of one of the first memes I ever did on LJ, seventeen years ago.

Mitchison's depiction of a partisan press was utterly unsurprising to read in 2022; what is surprising is that no one seems to have written an op-ed about revisiting To the Chapel Perilous in these days of "alternative facts".

Write and pitch it to Uncanny or Strange Horizons! Worth it!