Archive for Asides
April 26, 2008 at 11:57 pm · Filed under Asides
» Sundered by Sarah Monette
I read this a few minutes ago, and it instantly became my favourite of Sarah Monette’s short stories (or at least, of those freely available on the internet.)
I could tell you how great I think this is, or how much I love the thought she’s put into the social science and linguistics behind this story, or how well she’s fit those things together with a more personal, human story, but it would be easier if you just went and read this story for yourself.
I love it, and I hope you will, too.
Tags: Sarah Monette
April 3, 2008 at 12:27 pm · Filed under Asides
» From The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche…and other odd acquaintances by Peter S. Beagle; audio version PC001: Come Lady Death [41:20] from PodCastle.
PodCastle is the world’s first fantasy audio magazine, and the recording of Come, Lady Death is their first podcast.
I’m not really familiar with Peter S. Beagle. Of course I’ve heard of The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, and they’re even on that casual if-I-ever-see-it-in-a-used-bookstore tbr list, but I don’t really know anything about his writing. Or I didn’t.
Come, Lady Death is the story of a party given by one of Georgian London’s most fashionable ladies. Lady Neville, who has always been entertained by life, comes to a time when even her own parties bore her. Unable to work up enthusiasm for anything, she finally hits on a scheme so original that even she couldn’t possibly find boring: she will give a grand party, and the guest of honour will be Death.
I can’t say I loved the story. The writing was excellent, and I even liked the reading (I’m not particularly a fan of audio books, though I’m not sure why.) I found the depiction of Death very interesting. I think the problem is one of time and expectations. When I spend 40 minutes on a story, I expect a certain length of story, with an accompanying level of complexity, that was absent here, because I can read a lot more in 40 minutes in my head than a narrator can read out loud! Still, this was a nice introduction to Peter S. Beagle, and I look forward to ferreting out his novels and giving them a try.
Tags: audiobook, Peter S. Beagle, The Rhinoceros Who Quoted Nietzsche
March 27, 2008 at 12:44 pm · Filed under Asides
http://poodlerat.bellonae.com
» From Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, selected and edited by Joyce Carol Oates (pp. 1-6)
This short story marks my very first introduction to the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. So far, I’m tremendously impressed.
My desire to experience Lovecraft began when I read Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald” (available online as a pdf file, in the most gorgeous and effective layout I’ve ever seen.) Of course I knew that he, along with Poe, was pretty much the master of the classic horror genre, but I didn’t think of myself as a fan of horror. Then I read Sarah Monette’s The Bony Key. It turned all my expectations on their heads, and reminded me that John Bellairs’s children’s gothic novels were favourites when I was growing up. When I started my personal Fantasy Classics Challenge, I knew at least one Lovecraft short story collection had to make the list.
But where to start? Lovecraft has so many stories, some sharing a particular universe, others standing alone. Which of the many collections available would give me the best introduction? Serendipity came to my rescue when my favourite used bookstore got quite a few remaindered copies of Tales of H.P. Lovecraft, a 1997 collection edited by Joyce Carol Oates. I glanced over the table of contents and introduction, and noted that the stories were selected with new readers like me in mind. Perfect. I snapped up a copy.
The Outsider is only 6 pages long, and so doesn’t have much plot to speak of. Instead, Lovecraft creates an atmosphere so thick you can almost taste it, breathe it in. A nameless narrator has grown up entirely alone in an ancient and desolate castle, a place entirely surrounded and overshadowed by trees, which block out the sky and cast the place into a permanent, gloomy twilight. Reading Lovecraft’s description, I could almost feel the hideous castle—both its physical mass and the weight of all its years—pressing down on me. It seemed no wonder at all that the narrator would feel oppressed, choked, stifled by it, and long to escape somehow into the light and open air he saw pictured in the books that were his only connection to the outside world.
Lovecraft sketched out an entire world, albeit a small one, within only a few pages. Not what it looked like, or its history, but how it felt, the essence of the place. I don’t know yet what he’ll be able to do in a longer story, with greater scope for plot, characterization, and world-building—but I’m excited to find out.
Tags: H.P. Lovecraft, Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
March 10, 2008 at 9:48 pm · Filed under Asides
» From We Are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin (pp. 61-72)
When Naina becomes pregnant, everything proceeds normally until the day of her delivery, when the baby simply refuses to be born. Fourteen years later, Naina is still pregnant, and still doesn’t know why her baby has chosen to stay in the womb, until she agrees to consult a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, Dr. Chi.
My only experience with magical realism thus far has been Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, for which I conceived a cordial loathing. This story is better, although I still have a sneaking suspicion that the genre in general won’t be to my taste.
Naina’s story is set squarely in the real world, in modern-day Toronto. She takes streetcars, cleans offices, and wrestles with OHIP. Dr. Chi, like so many foreign-qualified professionals, must retrain in order to practice in Ontario. I sort of liked the contrast between the fantastic element of Naina’s pregnancy and the everyday world.
The story fell down for me in two places. Most importantly, I really had no interest in Naina or her pregnancy. At only twelve pages, the story simply wasn’t long enough to make me care.
I was also very sceptical about Naina’s passive acceptance of her long pregnancy. I’ve met women nine months pregnant, and none of them seemed likely to accept a 14-year extension of that state with equanimity, to say the least. Naina’s attitude made her seem less real to me, which didn’t help me to invest in the story.
Tags: Shauna Singh Baldwin, We Are Not in Pakistan
March 10, 2008 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Asides
» From We Are Not in Pakistan by Shauna Singh Baldwin (pp. 9-59).
In October 1985, Olena’s husband Viktor is assigned to the Lenin Power Station, which will mean leaving Moscow and moving closer to Kyiv—and closer to her mother-in-law. Olena has her reasons for disliking Viktor’s matushka; reasons that become clear as the story tells Olena’s thoughts and feelings in snatches from the following fifteen years.
I really liked the writing of this story. Baldwin has a deft hand with personal narratives, and although the story is told in tight third-person rather than first-person perspective, I felt like I got to know Olena really well.
Unfortunately, although I enjoyed reading Only a Button, I left it confused about what story Baldwin was trying to tell. Even though Chernobyl does have a huge impact on Olena’s life, I didn’t find that its emotional impact on her was enough to justify including it in the story. It felt like it was there just to further the plot, which might have been okay in a novel, but in a short story, there wasn’t room to fully explore what the disaster meant for Olena and tell another story on top of that. In consequence, both were shortchanged.
It’s a shame, because like I said, the writing was very good. I would have been happy to read more about Olena, to have time to really immerse myself in her life, to get to know more about her childhood, to explore her relationships with family and friends more deeply. Really, I suppose my complaint is that Only a Button was a short story and not a novella or a novel!
Tags: Shauna Singh Baldwin, We Are Not in Pakistan
