Recent reading
Aug. 16th, 2022 09:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxFinished South Riding by Winifred Holtby, which— oh my god. Oh my god!!!! I was not expecting the plot to go where it did?! I read the last several chapters in one sitting, finished it just after midnight, and then spent at least another hour staring at the ceiling contemplating, like, the meaning of life and how We Live In A Society. (I've spent the past week listening to The Trials of Cato's 2018 album Hide and Hair on repeat for unrelated reasons, but their song "These Are the Things" has become tangled up with this book in my head: when you live by the day at the market's command / where profit and property's the law of the land / to be held, to be heard, to be dealt a fair hand / these are the things that our people demand.)
Finished The Idylls of the Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr! Re-reading my original review from two years (?!) ago, I had noted that Karr's interest really lies with the, if not outright villainous, at least maligned characters of Arthuriana - Mordred, Morgan(a), churlish Kay - but this time, I was struck by the overlap between that narrative goal and how much of a voice (and depth, and sympathy) she gives to the women of Arthurian myth— although not, notably, Guenevere herself? (Karr apparently has another book, The Gallows in the Greenwood, that does something similar: a retelling of Robin Hood with a female sheriff of Nottingham.)
Karr's Mordred is my favorite Mordred, because he's so messed up by the prophesy that he's going to kill Arthur, when he doesn't want to— he responds to the situation half by building up a properly villainous reputation (e.g., sharp of tongue and creepy of habit - I love the bit about him carving snake rings as something to do with his hands; at first glance it seems like a fun detail, and then at second glance it's a punch-you-in-the-feels one: he's preoccupied with snakes because of the symbolism in Arthur's dream that led to the whole May Babies thing) and half by desperately hoping someone will do him the favor of killing him before he can go full grimdark, as it were. And then!! The thing that pushes him over the edge!! Is finding out that one of his own brothers actually killed their mother, not Lamorak!! It's all very Shakespearean, really— somewhere between Richard III ("I am determined to prove a villain") and Hamlet.
I am also deeply fond of Karr's Kay, who is just so bitter, all of the time, and occasionally feels like he wandered in from, if not a modern setting, at least from somewhere outside of the narrative rules of Arthurian myth that everyone else seems to have fully embraced...? (MAGIC, everyone cries. Maybe someone used a pin to inject poison? Kay asks, wearily. And as a modern reader you're like, yes! good! some common sense! But also it is an Arthurian retelling and magic literally exists so it's not like everyone else is stupid for suggesting that it may be an option??)
Anyway, go readosprey_archer's review!
Read House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones, a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle— Sophie and (an amusingly disguised) Howl and Calcifer are in it, but the focus of the story is Charmain Baker, a rather spoiled young bookworm tasked with looking after her wizard great-uncle's house - which is Bigger On The Inside - at the same time she's granted her dream of volunteering in the king's royal library. In some ways, there are shades of Howl and Sophie in the interactions between Charmain and Peter, her uncle's apprentice, with various aspects of their personalities and circumstances swapped— Peter is the one cleaning the house with a fury and scolding Charmain for her tendency to slither out of things, although Charmain has Sophie's ability to yell inanimate objects into doing what she wants. There's a dog! 10/10, an absolutely delightful book.
Finished The Idylls of the Queen by Phyllis Ann Karr! Re-reading my original review from two years (?!) ago, I had noted that Karr's interest really lies with the, if not outright villainous, at least maligned characters of Arthuriana - Mordred, Morgan(a), churlish Kay - but this time, I was struck by the overlap between that narrative goal and how much of a voice (and depth, and sympathy) she gives to the women of Arthurian myth— although not, notably, Guenevere herself? (Karr apparently has another book, The Gallows in the Greenwood, that does something similar: a retelling of Robin Hood with a female sheriff of Nottingham.)
Karr's Mordred is my favorite Mordred, because he's so messed up by the prophesy that he's going to kill Arthur, when he doesn't want to— he responds to the situation half by building up a properly villainous reputation (e.g., sharp of tongue and creepy of habit - I love the bit about him carving snake rings as something to do with his hands; at first glance it seems like a fun detail, and then at second glance it's a punch-you-in-the-feels one: he's preoccupied with snakes because of the symbolism in Arthur's dream that led to the whole May Babies thing) and half by desperately hoping someone will do him the favor of killing him before he can go full grimdark, as it were. And then!! The thing that pushes him over the edge!! Is finding out that one of his own brothers actually killed their mother, not Lamorak!! It's all very Shakespearean, really— somewhere between Richard III ("I am determined to prove a villain") and Hamlet.
I am also deeply fond of Karr's Kay, who is just so bitter, all of the time, and occasionally feels like he wandered in from, if not a modern setting, at least from somewhere outside of the narrative rules of Arthurian myth that everyone else seems to have fully embraced...? (MAGIC, everyone cries. Maybe someone used a pin to inject poison? Kay asks, wearily. And as a modern reader you're like, yes! good! some common sense! But also it is an Arthurian retelling and magic literally exists so it's not like everyone else is stupid for suggesting that it may be an option??)
Anyway, go read
osprey_archer's review!Read House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones, a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle— Sophie and (an amusingly disguised) Howl and Calcifer are in it, but the focus of the story is Charmain Baker, a rather spoiled young bookworm tasked with looking after her wizard great-uncle's house - which is Bigger On The Inside - at the same time she's granted her dream of volunteering in the king's royal library. In some ways, there are shades of Howl and Sophie in the interactions between Charmain and Peter, her uncle's apprentice, with various aspects of their personalities and circumstances swapped— Peter is the one cleaning the house with a fury and scolding Charmain for her tendency to slither out of things, although Charmain has Sophie's ability to yell inanimate objects into doing what she wants. There's a dog! 10/10, an absolutely delightful book.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 01:14 am (UTC)Yes, I think you're onto something with the sense of modernity coming from the female characters - haven't actually read Malory so perhaps I am doing him a wrong, but I suspect they don't get much perspective there.
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Date: 2022-08-17 09:15 pm (UTC)I have decided I am genuinely interested in finding a version of the conception of Mordred that requires neither Merlin nor Morgause to be a villain—I'm sure it can be done!—and I have no idea if it actually exists.
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Date: 2022-08-18 01:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-18 01:11 am (UTC)I am indeed curious about how that works.