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The depressing part of today's post is realizing that my last post reviewing two novels was nearly six months ago. I'm really hoping I've forgotten one or more books here. I'll make a new post if I am, but I fear I am not. Oh, dear. (I have been rereading the Narnia books with Small Child, but they perhaps deserve their own post. I haven't been thinking of them as my reading, either. I still enjoy them but am aware of flaws that I didn't see when I was a child.)
I'm writing my reviews for those who haven't read the books, then adding spoilery discussion at the end of the post. I'm trying to make it easy to skip the parts you don't want.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I'm not certain I'd have bought this book had I realized it's the first in a post-apocalyptic trilogy. I've enjoyed a lot of Atwood's writing, but she can really get me down, and I'm really not that into the apocalypse. I don't read apocafic in fanfic because I don't want to see my favorite characters enduring that level of disaster (which they have obviously been unable to stop); I make very few exceptions, and I virtually always regret those. I can read other kinds of post-apocalypse fiction because I meet the characters there; their lives and world were ruined before I met them. Somehow, that makes it tolerable. It's never fun.
Oryx and Crake is never fun, but it is worth reading. It starts with Snowman after some disaster has occurred. The novel has two timelines: what happens after we meet Snowman, and the memories he confronts as he goes through the action set in the book's 'now.' The two interwoven stories are mostly linear, but, not surprisingly, the memories sometimes jump around. I never found Snowman entirely sympathetic, but I wasn't completely unsympathetic, either. I do need a character for whom I have some sympathy, or I really don't relate to a novel. Atwood has imagined a not-so-distant future in great detail (as usual), and it's frighteningly realistic. She has done a lot of research, but only a few times did I stop to reflect on that (ideally, I never do—but as an academic, I find myself doing it more and more).
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic drama and doesn't mind, or wants, a trilogy. Now I kind of want to read the rest, but it seems that at least the second book involves other characters. I can get enmeshed in a whole new bunch of screwed-up characters' lives! I haven't decided yet whether I want to do this.
I suppose a warning that the book is depressing isn't needed given its premise. I do have a spoilery warning for people who are sensitive to certain subject matter. Highlight to read:
One of the characters is a survivor of multiple forms of abuse: sold off by family and exploited in various ways, including sexually. It's not graphic, but I did find it disturbing.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I missed reading it when I was the target audience, and I'm simply too old and too critical to read it the way I think I ought. It's a children's book, so it's kind of useless for me to complain that I could never keep some of the minor bunnies straight at all: insufficient character development! I did find it highly imaginative, and I certainly enjoyed it enough to keep reading. I was fond of the main characters. Brilliant Husband's warning "That's so sad" was off target; I did not find it sad.
Complaints involve spoilers and so belong at the end. I think Small Child may enjoy it, and I will see if she wants to read it and then discuss it when she has read it.
More thoughts on Oryx and Crake
I got really frustrated with the characters. I wanted to sympathize with Oryx, but she was always too distant from the point of view we were offered to feel that I knew her well enough to sympathize. Of course we get much dramatic irony from the very structure of the novel, because we know from early in the book that Snowman blames Crake for the disaster, long before we know what that disaster was. We also know about the new race of people he created. The effect makes most of the events feel inevitable, at least to some extent. I find the writing effective because it conveys Jimmy's sense that he's never really in control of anything until it's too late to stop the disaster, but I also found it really frustrating. I think that's part of the point.
I also became very frustrated with characters' attitudes towards sex, and I wasn't sure if that was also part of the point, or a divergence between my views on sex and other people's. Sex seemed largely divorced from love and commitment. Then again, I'm not all that interested in reading about sex. It's not awfully graphic in this novel, but it seemed to come up a lot (I tried that sentence two or three ways, and I can't avoid some kind of lame double entendre). Maybe it was a sign of Jimmy's shallowness that he seemed obsessed with it when a lot more was at stake.
More thoughts on Watership Down
My friend G was complaining about someone's feminism a while back, and I said, "I'm a feminist!" He said, "Yeah, but you're not always on your soapbox." I still don't know whether I should take this as a compliment, a mark of weakness in my feminism, or neither. I'm taking it as neither for the time being.
I finished Watership Down, but I think I would have finished it sooner but that the sexism really bothered me. I sometimes found myself thinking that I had time to read it, but I'd rather read something else. Yes, Adams did his research, and it's more the male rabbits who move away from the home warren, have adventures, and fight. But this man told the story to his daughters, in 1972. I can tolerate complete Bechdel fail in Chaucer a lot easier than I can tolerate it in a novel written in the 70s for girls.
We're more than halfway through the book (past page 200 of a little over 400 pages) before we really meet does, as they're called quite consistently, who have any part in the action. Male rabbits are "bucks" or "rabbits"; the default is male. The first does we meet who do take part in action are tame and don't have much action. We're past page 300 before we meet any does with anything like character. Some of them are named, but Bigwig escapes with a number of does, some of whom never receive names at all. Even though I can't tell you a thing about Acorn, he has a name. The bucks receive names in Lapine and English but are usually named in English, which makes it easier to remember their names and associate them with characters. The tame does have names in English, but the ones from the enemy warren have names in Lapine. We're given translations, but Hyzenthlay and the others are almost always called by those names, while Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and so on are almost always called in English. We get female as Exotic Other.
In the end, a couple of the does do develop character, but they still seem slight next to the bucks. The bucks only wanted them in the first place to dig better tunnels and in the second place because they felt the urge to mate. Companionship isn't a consideration until near the very end.
I know it's a children's book*; I know they're bunnies and not humans. Still, the bucks act very human in most ways, and they're clearly the characters with whom readers relate; relating to the does is almost not an option, because they appear so rarely until late in the book. A father created this story for his daughters? As a girl, I really enjoyed reading about boys. I always preferred the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew (but gave into pressure that I don't think my parents knew they were exerting to buy Nancy Drew books and just read my brothers' Hardy Boys). I don't doubt that his daughters enjoyed the stories he told about the bunnies. I am dubious, however, about how much I want my daughter exposed to that kind of attitude. I internalized certain kinds of behavior from books I read, tv I watched, and of course people in real life. I'm glad my daughter has a lot of tv shows about girls and even more books with girl protagonists. I didn't have that many. I won't stop her from reading Watership Down, but I can't recommend it highly. I think she'll enjoy reading about bunnies. If she's looking for a book, I may casually point it out to her.
*ETA:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
delphia2000 tells me that Watership Down isn't really considered a children's book: at her library, it's in the Adult section. That makes some sense, given the violence in it. And just because the author originally told the stories to his girls doesn't mean the final book is for children. Even his own girls were a lot older by the time it was published! The introduction to the edition I have notes how much trouble Adams had getting it published: the audience for bunny books were too young for the length and style of his book, and older children who could read his prose would, he was told, be too old for bunnies. (Now I'm also wondering how else the final book differs from the original stories, but that's probably impossible even for Adams to reconstruct. It's probably also a quirk of being a medievalist—or the quirk that made me a medievalist.)
I'm writing my reviews for those who haven't read the books, then adding spoilery discussion at the end of the post. I'm trying to make it easy to skip the parts you don't want.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I'm not certain I'd have bought this book had I realized it's the first in a post-apocalyptic trilogy. I've enjoyed a lot of Atwood's writing, but she can really get me down, and I'm really not that into the apocalypse. I don't read apocafic in fanfic because I don't want to see my favorite characters enduring that level of disaster (which they have obviously been unable to stop); I make very few exceptions, and I virtually always regret those. I can read other kinds of post-apocalypse fiction because I meet the characters there; their lives and world were ruined before I met them. Somehow, that makes it tolerable. It's never fun.
Oryx and Crake is never fun, but it is worth reading. It starts with Snowman after some disaster has occurred. The novel has two timelines: what happens after we meet Snowman, and the memories he confronts as he goes through the action set in the book's 'now.' The two interwoven stories are mostly linear, but, not surprisingly, the memories sometimes jump around. I never found Snowman entirely sympathetic, but I wasn't completely unsympathetic, either. I do need a character for whom I have some sympathy, or I really don't relate to a novel. Atwood has imagined a not-so-distant future in great detail (as usual), and it's frighteningly realistic. She has done a lot of research, but only a few times did I stop to reflect on that (ideally, I never do—but as an academic, I find myself doing it more and more).
I'd recommend it to anyone who likes post-apocalyptic drama and doesn't mind, or wants, a trilogy. Now I kind of want to read the rest, but it seems that at least the second book involves other characters. I can get enmeshed in a whole new bunch of screwed-up characters' lives! I haven't decided yet whether I want to do this.
I suppose a warning that the book is depressing isn't needed given its premise. I do have a spoilery warning for people who are sensitive to certain subject matter. Highlight to read:
One of the characters is a survivor of multiple forms of abuse: sold off by family and exploited in various ways, including sexually. It's not graphic, but I did find it disturbing.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I have very mixed feelings about this book. I missed reading it when I was the target audience, and I'm simply too old and too critical to read it the way I think I ought. It's a children's book, so it's kind of useless for me to complain that I could never keep some of the minor bunnies straight at all: insufficient character development! I did find it highly imaginative, and I certainly enjoyed it enough to keep reading. I was fond of the main characters. Brilliant Husband's warning "That's so sad" was off target; I did not find it sad.
Complaints involve spoilers and so belong at the end. I think Small Child may enjoy it, and I will see if she wants to read it and then discuss it when she has read it.
More thoughts on Oryx and Crake
I got really frustrated with the characters. I wanted to sympathize with Oryx, but she was always too distant from the point of view we were offered to feel that I knew her well enough to sympathize. Of course we get much dramatic irony from the very structure of the novel, because we know from early in the book that Snowman blames Crake for the disaster, long before we know what that disaster was. We also know about the new race of people he created. The effect makes most of the events feel inevitable, at least to some extent. I find the writing effective because it conveys Jimmy's sense that he's never really in control of anything until it's too late to stop the disaster, but I also found it really frustrating. I think that's part of the point.
I also became very frustrated with characters' attitudes towards sex, and I wasn't sure if that was also part of the point, or a divergence between my views on sex and other people's. Sex seemed largely divorced from love and commitment. Then again, I'm not all that interested in reading about sex. It's not awfully graphic in this novel, but it seemed to come up a lot (I tried that sentence two or three ways, and I can't avoid some kind of lame double entendre). Maybe it was a sign of Jimmy's shallowness that he seemed obsessed with it when a lot more was at stake.
More thoughts on Watership Down
My friend G was complaining about someone's feminism a while back, and I said, "I'm a feminist!" He said, "Yeah, but you're not always on your soapbox." I still don't know whether I should take this as a compliment, a mark of weakness in my feminism, or neither. I'm taking it as neither for the time being.
I finished Watership Down, but I think I would have finished it sooner but that the sexism really bothered me. I sometimes found myself thinking that I had time to read it, but I'd rather read something else. Yes, Adams did his research, and it's more the male rabbits who move away from the home warren, have adventures, and fight. But this man told the story to his daughters, in 1972. I can tolerate complete Bechdel fail in Chaucer a lot easier than I can tolerate it in a novel written in the 70s for girls.
We're more than halfway through the book (past page 200 of a little over 400 pages) before we really meet does, as they're called quite consistently, who have any part in the action. Male rabbits are "bucks" or "rabbits"; the default is male. The first does we meet who do take part in action are tame and don't have much action. We're past page 300 before we meet any does with anything like character. Some of them are named, but Bigwig escapes with a number of does, some of whom never receive names at all. Even though I can't tell you a thing about Acorn, he has a name. The bucks receive names in Lapine and English but are usually named in English, which makes it easier to remember their names and associate them with characters. The tame does have names in English, but the ones from the enemy warren have names in Lapine. We're given translations, but Hyzenthlay and the others are almost always called by those names, while Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and so on are almost always called in English. We get female as Exotic Other.
In the end, a couple of the does do develop character, but they still seem slight next to the bucks. The bucks only wanted them in the first place to dig better tunnels and in the second place because they felt the urge to mate. Companionship isn't a consideration until near the very end.
I know it's a children's book*; I know they're bunnies and not humans. Still, the bucks act very human in most ways, and they're clearly the characters with whom readers relate; relating to the does is almost not an option, because they appear so rarely until late in the book. A father created this story for his daughters? As a girl, I really enjoyed reading about boys. I always preferred the Hardy Boys to Nancy Drew (but gave into pressure that I don't think my parents knew they were exerting to buy Nancy Drew books and just read my brothers' Hardy Boys). I don't doubt that his daughters enjoyed the stories he told about the bunnies. I am dubious, however, about how much I want my daughter exposed to that kind of attitude. I internalized certain kinds of behavior from books I read, tv I watched, and of course people in real life. I'm glad my daughter has a lot of tv shows about girls and even more books with girl protagonists. I didn't have that many. I won't stop her from reading Watership Down, but I can't recommend it highly. I think she'll enjoy reading about bunnies. If she's looking for a book, I may casually point it out to her.
*ETA:
delphia2000 tells me that Watership Down isn't really considered a children's book: at her library, it's in the Adult section. That makes some sense, given the violence in it. And just because the author originally told the stories to his girls doesn't mean the final book is for children. Even his own girls were a lot older by the time it was published! The introduction to the edition I have notes how much trouble Adams had getting it published: the audience for bunny books were too young for the length and style of his book, and older children who could read his prose would, he was told, be too old for bunnies. (Now I'm also wondering how else the final book differs from the original stories, but that's probably impossible even for Adams to reconstruct. It's probably also a quirk of being a medievalist—or the quirk that made me a medievalist.)Tags:
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There are a lot of good 'animal' stories that are juvenile/children's level available tho. I can suggest some if you'd like.
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Small Child very much likes to choose her own reading, so that I have to be very, very careful when suggesting books. She generally avoids ones we suggest (but not enough that we could suggest a book to keep her away from it; we never know what she'll do!). She is currently Not Reading the Anne of Green Gables books because I loved them. I finally got her to read The Egypt Game, and she loved it so much she has read it repeatedly.
I figure if she's interested, she's free to read it. She knows that I was reading it and said early on that she might like it. She hasn't shown any interest since. I'll hold off on getting recs from you for anything else, because that would just as likely be a waste of your time!
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Has she tried Diana Wynne Jones?
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No, and there surfaces the problem I mentioned to a different commenter above: Small Child is biased against books we recommend! We must be very, very careful. I did finally get her to read The Egypt Game, but the gentlest push towards Anne of Green Gables and the sequels seems to have ensured that she has no interest, though her grandmother gave her the first two books as gifts. (I think the seriously unattractive cover on the first one doesn't help!) SC is very contrary. I remind myself all the time that we can hope this annoying quality also protects her against peer pressure to do dangerous, stupid, or immoral things.
I loved Diana Wynne Jones and am rather hoping she'll find DWJ on her own so that I can reread the books! At this point, I don't even remember which of her books I read. I know it was Witch Week that got me hooked, and then I read all the ones our library had.
I only learned fairly recently that DWJ has written some adult fiction, too. Have you read any of it? Do you like it?
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I now have this image of you leaving books casually lying around and hoping she bites *g*.
I didn't realise DWJ had written adult fic. Have you read any?
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I have not read any of DWJ's adult fiction. I have piles of books waiting for me to read them all over the house, and I'm so horribly slow! If I ever do get round to her adult books, I'll try to post about them.
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I actually tend to be contrary like that, too, and prefer to find my own reading rather than having someone suggest things. Which is odd since I spent most of my career suggesting books to library patrons who relied on me for that and were actually quite demanding about it! My life's easier now that I can just read for the fun of it--I used to be always thinking of who all might enjoy the book I was currently reading.
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One memory associated with that title is of a library patron I liked (we were about the same age, she was a teacher) telling me how she'd been crying while reading it and her husband had said in an exasperated tone: "Joleen, it's just a bunch of rabbits!"
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The main characters seem very human, so I can see how someone could get caught up in it. I cried for Bambi's mother and would probably do so again in a heartbeat, except that I don't intend ever to watch that movie again!
It is long indeed. It's over 450 pages in not very big print in the copy I have. Then again, The Hobbit is really long—and the later Harry Potter books. Small Child started HP and then didn't want to read any more, and I'm certainly not going to push her to read them. (I was Not Pleased with the sixth and seventh books.)
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I used to get rather annoyed by all the uproar over HP books when I felt there were many other fantasy books for kids and young adults that were better. On reflection, I decided it must be the humor in the HP books that made them more appealing than others. I would push Cooper's The Dark is Rising series and the books by DWJones, as well as many other good fantasy series. Some kids would read them but most just wanted HP, alas.
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Small Child loves reading, so we don't push her too much towards particular books. We figure there's yet time for good taste to develop!
I think humor drew me to the HP books and was the reason I was so turned off by the last two of them. I found them fairly humorous (and overly long and dull).
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But when I quit working in 2003, I remember I read the one that came out that summer, but then I don't think I read any after that.
Oh, Diane Duane--I enjoyed her So You Want to Be a Wizard and then I loved the sequel, Deep Wizardry (the best of the series, I thought). I think it was the next one that was more on computers so I was barely interested in that one, and the following ones were OK but never involved me as much as the first two, as I recall. I did buy some of them to give to a young boy who was very bright and whose mother died the last year I worked (she had cancer and as her librarians we did all we could to help her, and her kids, including, in my case, baking the family brownies each week). Besides the fact that they were fantasy, which Kent loved, one of those books has the main character's mother dying of cancer and some hope thru the pain, for the family, which after a lot of reflection, I hoped might help Kent. I was very attached to a lot of my good library patrons.
So maybe your local librarians might help you to at least steer SC toward some good reading--maybe just lay a book or 2 out when they see her coming. I know I'd have done that--probably depends on the size of your library, and your librarians.
Good luck!
Melissa M.
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spoilers for Watership Down included
I loved WD. Still do, really.
Yes, it's an adult book, although I read it aloud to my sister when she was 10 years old (and skimmed over a lot of the description, heh).
To me, the rabbits were acting very rabbit-like, not human. In fact, it's what I most enjoy about WD - that while Adams made Hazel et al into real characters, he kept them lapine. I would never have finished it if the rabbits had been so anthropomorphized as to worry about the Bechdel test or feminism. In fact, there's a sequel of sorts, written long afterwards, called Tales of Watership Down that I couldn't finish for precisely that reason: the rabbits became too human. The idea of one rabbit calling another "dear" just got on my nerves. But I'm wondering now if you'd like it, because it includes (among other things) a sort of feminist revolution in the warren.
I am fascinated at how the things that seem to bother you most are aspects I particularly liked. The does' names, for example - I always preferred the Lapine (Thlayli vs Bigwig) so that the English names felt like a dumbing-down - something the does didn't need.
And, of course, there's that fabulous line of Hyzenthlay's that made me laugh out loud the first time I read it, and still makes me grin every time I reread. It's when Blackavar warns against making scrapes in "fox country," and after one of the does is killed, Bigwig apologizes for ignoring his advice. Blackavar genuinely doesn't remember giving the warning, and Hyzenthlay explains that in Efrafa, if your advice is dismissed, it's as if it was never given.
"But you're an Efrafan. Do you think like that, too?"
"I'm a doe," said Hyzenthlay.
It does get awkward when I want to recommend it to someone -- "Oh, it's this fabulous book about a group of friends escaping destruction and trying to make a new life for themselves. Lots of subtle, character-specific humor. Er. Did I mention they were rabbits?" :)
For Small Child, perhaps you might want to emphasize the way the rabbits learn to work together against adversity, and that brute strength doesn't always translate into leadership. Woundwort would have never believed that the lame rabbit he almost had casually killed was actually Bigwig's Chief Rabbit - he was sure it had to be someone physically stronger.
...Back when I was part of the Lois and Clark fandom, my nick was Hazel for a reason. :)
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Re: spoilers for Watership Down included
I would have been perfectly happy to have all the rabbits named in Lapine, but the difference in the way Adams names them really struck me. Maybe if I hadn't read the introduction first and gone into the book knowing that he first created the stories for two girls, I would have experienced the book differently. As it was, does were mentioned early and repeatedly, and I thought of the book as a story not only for children but specifically for girls, so I kept expecting that very soon they'd be introduced as characters. I found myself surprised over and over.
That said, I mostly enjoyed the book. I very much liked Hazel and Fiver, and I grew to like Bigwig, though I didn't like him at the start. I was interested in the portrayal of General Woundwart, which had elements of sympathy even though he was clearly the enemy. The deaths of the enemy rabbits are necessary but sad. I thought it had a fair amount of complexity for a story about animals! (That's partly why I kept expecting the minor named rabbits to develop some character I could recognize, and there, and with most of the does, I was disappointed. The problems I saw with the book didn't ruin it for me at all, unlike, say The Difference Engine, where I got to the end and regretted having plowed through. I kept hoping The Difference Engine would somehow redeem itself, but it never did!)
I loved the stories of El-ahrairah told by Bluebell; there's a lovely contrast between the fairy tales within the novel and the novel itself.
I'm glad to see someone enjoyed it! I didn't like it as much as you did, but for the most part I did enjoy it. I certainly don't regret reading it. Everyone who saw me reading it or asked what I was reading seemed to have loved it, so I was very surprised by the reactions to my post.
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Re: spoilers for Watership Down included
I didn't mean to imply that you did. :) I only meant that since, for me, the rabbits were not anthropomorphized (as you said they felt to you), their attitudes didn't bother me.
I am very, very intrigued that your reading of the introduction might have colored your expectations for the story. My well-worn copy has no such intro. It circles back to a very common discussion in fandom: author's intent vs. reader's subtext. I wish I could remember what I first thought of the book when I read it, but alas, it was lo these many years ago and I don't remember.
Like you, I very much enjoyed the stories-within-the-story, especially since they often affected the actual goings-on. (I don't tear up at Hazel dying; I tear up when he sees the silvery light in the ears and realizes who the stranger is and accepts it so quietly.) My favorite, I think, is the casual throwaway reference to the rabbits' perception of the Ark. :)
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Re: spoilers for Watership Down included
What reference to the Ark? I can't remember now; I'm not sure if I missed it, or registered it at the time and forgot! (It took me an embarrassingly long time to read the book.)
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Re: spoilers for Watership Down included
I wasn't saddened by his dying. Just... very moved by the personal touch, so to speak. As you say, he lived longer that we might have expected. (Fiver, now. I felt sad for him.)
Here's page 214 of my copy:
...and one of Dandelion's tales of El-ahrairah was followed by an extraordinary story that left everyone mystified but fascinated, about a time when Frith had to go away on a journey, leaving the whole world to be covered with rain. But a man built a great floating hutch that held all the animals and birds until Frith returned and let them out.
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Re: spoilers for Watership Down included
My brother gave me Killer, pictured in my icon. Small Child loves him to bits and hugs him and would take him for her own if I weren't paying attention.
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