Topic: Reading
I'm in no mood to do actual housekeeping, so instead I will catch up on my 50BC posting, because I've neglected it lately.
Reinventing Eve: Modern Woman in Search of Herself by Kim Chernin, is the kind of book I probably would have loved in my early 20s, since it's all about reclaiming goddess images so that women will find their own bodies sacred. I was more Radical a feminist then, and probably would've responded more readily to Chernin's portrayal of women's oppression. Now, though, I am resistant to narratives in which an author extrapolates from her own experience and the similar experiences of some other women to write a story about all women's oppression. I felt like that was what Chernin was doing in this book. That, coupled with some mysticism that just didn't sit well with me, had me keeping this book at a distance while I was reading. I did, however, enjoy the author's account of her discovery of various cultures' goddess imagery and how it helped her establish a better relationship with her body and food.
I checked out Fledgling from the library the day that I heard that Octavia Butler had died. I had read her Xenogenesis series last year, and was fairly impressed with it. My sense upon starting Fledgling was that Butler's storytelling skills must have grown even stronger and more refined over the years, because the story grabbed me from the beginning, whereas I had to give myself some time to be drawn into the Xenogenesis books. What stands out for me in the books of Butler's that I've read is her ability to create alien others that are uncomfortable but not unbearable. Her work addresses the way that people adapt to each other because they need each other - the familiar figure of the solitary, alienated hero is largely absent from her novels. Fledgling has the distinction of being truly unlike any other vampire story I've ever read, and the fact that it's protagonist is a black, female vampire is just the start. Butler addresses race, community, morality and family throughout a page-turning story with lots of action and intrigue. I read this one twice because there's so much going on, and there are so many insightful observations.
No Place for a Woman: The Autobiography of Outback Publican Mayse Young by Mayse Young and Gabrielle Dalton, was a birthday gift from The Good Doctors. Mayse Young grew up in a family that followed the railroad work around northern Australia in the early part of the 20th century. Her accounts of a childhood spent living in camps put me in mind of the 'Little House on the Prairie' books. Unlike Laura Ingalls, though, Mayse Young ended up running a number of hotels, which in small Australian towns would usually be both the only boarding house and the only pub in town (even today, many bars which have long since turned their guest rooms into function rooms still go by the name 'hotel'), and Young offers lots of colorful anecdotes from her long history as a publican.
Pardonable Lies by Jacqueline Winspear, is the third book in a series that I started reading last year, at the Good Doctors' recommendation. I'm not into mysteries, generally, but Winspear has created a fascinating detective: Maisie Dobbs, a young woman living in London in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Maisie came up in the world from very humble beginnings, thanks to her intelligence and a generous employer. She has been deeply affected by her experiences of the first world war, in which she served as a battlefield nurse, as have most of the people she interacts with in the course of her investigations. Maisie consciously employs observation, empathy, and psychology in the course of her investigations, an approach that sets her apart from other detectives. In Pardonable Lies, two cases involving young men killed in action in France force Maisie to confront her own wartime experiences and draw her into dangerous intrigues. Winspear is good at crafting plots that don't betray too many clues too early, and surrounds Maisie, who is a rich character in her own right, with a widely varied supporting cast that adds depth and color to her novels.
I fell in love with Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, almost immediately. Her facility with language is apparent from the very first lines, as she swiftly sets the scene: a diva, a smitten, accompaniest, an international audience at a small party in an unnamed South American country that is about to be crashed by a guerrilla group intent on kidnapping the president of the country. The ensuing hostage crisis, in Patchett's hands becomes not a matter of frenzied political and military maneuvering, but a meditation on how people connect, adapt, and create their own worlds, even in the most peculiar situations. This is a gorgeous novel, one that I will be reading again.