So I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms (due to Personal Issues,) but my greatest takeaway from this novel is, in the end, who can explain these things? I’m not sure if that was A. Manette Ansay’s point (and if it was, I completely missed it) but I felt afterwards that it’s really none of our business if their obvious affection for one another ever turned into a physical affair. Because how does it affect us? How is their privacy less important than our prurient (as let’s face it, there’s no way one can label it as high-minded) interest? Every love story, like every family, happy or otherwise, is unique and dynamic and understandable really only to the people involved, though if we’re lucky, one of them is gifted enough to translate it for us. But again, what is the point of speculation, particularly in this case? They were best friends for decades, passionately attached to one another. Need we know more? This is a serious question: please chime in if you have an opinion.
As to the book itself, I found the fictionalization of Clara and Johannes far more convincing, and engrossing, than the modern half. Which I found odd, given the first-person narrative of the latter. It’s hard to be sympathetic to Jeanette’s self-sabotage, or to fathom Hart’s unreliably clinical attitude to their relationship, harder still to understand the necessity of using them to frame the narrative at all. Their story felt like filler in an already slight book. But I’m glad I read it, if only to lay to rest my own curiosity regarding Clara and Johannes with a firm “yep, none of my business.” Perhaps there’s a dash of transference there, but this exhaustive study of their relationship quite cured me of my need to know more.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/good-things-i-wish-you-by-a-manette-ansay/
Given my recent run of disappointment with books I’ve been rereading, this was quite the refreshing change! As muscular as I remembered, and convincing, it was yet better written and more complex than I’d given it credit for in my rememberings. And that ending! Once, I’d believed it incurably optimistic: now, I’m still convinced of its valor, but see better the layer of grimness that colors it. A terrific book for fans of sci-fi and, I suppose, dystopian fiction, with well-thought-out philosophies. The gender dynamics occasionally feel antiquated (if not outright condescending, particularly and ironically in Coker’s rant against the learned helplessness of women) but I imagine it was quite progressive for its time. A true classic, sci-fi/horror for adults, and miles better than most of the stuff being churned out today.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/the-day-of-the-triffids-by-john-wyndham/
First off, it is really weird reading a book about anorexia while fasting. There are parallels (and great divergences, of course) that really help you sympathize with the narrator even as you shy away from the excesses of control. I’ve never suffered from an eating disorder, tho I know people who have, but I have to say that as far as I can tell Wintergirls is a convincing, compelling look into the mind of teenage girls who do. Laurie Halse Anderson writes with sympathy and imagination, vividly navigating a hallucinatory inner world that reminds me only all too well of my own adolescence. Harrowing and sensitive, this is one of those books that I’m glad to have read because it makes me feel like I truly understand, at least a certain subset of, other people better now and can respond with more kindness and support than I might have before.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/wintergirls-by-laurie-halse-anderson/
Bought this in college, and kept it at my bedside for years. B acted in an adaptation of Absurd Person Singular, which I think was the driving force behind the purchase (also, I love scripts,) and I found Ayckbourn on the whole witty, trenchant etc. And then I grew up and got married.
And let me tell you, I’m one of those people who thinks very dimly of the sitcoms where the married couples just bicker and are mean to each other and this is somehow supposed to be funny. It’s not, it’s awful, and I feel desperately sorry for anyone who thinks this is acceptable or, worse, aspirational. To a certain extent, I do blame Ayckbourn and his ilk for making that sort of bedroom farce (if you’ll excuse the pun) the standard by which so many drearily untalented “comedy” writers measure themselves, as at least 85% of the latter forget that the entire point isn’t that these miserable people are married, it’s that they’re miserably married, and honestly probably shouldn’t be married at all (but we’ll save the rant for the Western world’s fetishization of death-do-us-part marriages for another time.) Ayckbourn used comedy to highlight the absurdity of the (ostensibly British, but really quite universal) middle-class and its ambitions, and nothing was more symbolic of such than their marriages. When I was younger, before marriage and motherhood, I thought these plays much funnier than I do now. Nowadays, while I’m thankful to have enough self-awareness to avoid most of the traps these poor, unhappy people fall into, I can’t laugh at them as easily as I once could. Nowadays, I can’t help seeing the tragedy lurking just beneath, and it takes away a little of the pleasure these plays once gave me.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/three-plays-bedroom-farce-absent-friends-absurd-person-singular-by-alan-ayckbourn/
Fascinating insight into the world of medicine and health at the turn of the 20th century. Lydia Pinkham was certainly a pioneer in her frank discussions with women regarding their health. Essentially a collection of the advertising material created for her medicines, this book presents the most up-to-date (for the time) science regarding women’s health in a way that’s accessible and candid, with none of the squeamishness so often attendant upon discussions of such. Some parts are incorrect, some parts questionable (it’s basically an advertising tract, after all,) but on the whole, a valuable trove of material on the times.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/treatise-on-the-diseases-of-women-by-lydia-estes-pinkham/
So that was weird. I first encountered this book in college where, haunting the oddly stocked shelves of the library, I stumbled across the Gollancz version: no blurb, no explanation, just a bright yellow dust jacket with the title, author and the symbol of the Crab people in brick red on the cover. Desperate for any reading material, I checked it out, and after a slow-ish start (because I did not give a shit about trains and I felt that The Lady Margaret chapter went on and on about their handling,) I was plunged into a world so different yet similar. And then the ending! The ending! The book has haunted me since, and when it finally came back into print, Jay got me a copy for a recent birthday. Finally had time to read it, and… I dunno. I think it’s a book that doesn’t bear re-reading. The surprise of it is so overwhelming that going into it again, you expect the same experience, and it just can’t happen. Also, with time and experience, certain things stand out, such as Roberts’ discomfort with writing adolescent women and, worse, the odd gaps in logic and story-telling. Almost two decades later, the ending doesn’t make sense to me any more, though it was perfectly mind-blowing to me at the time. But other things have become better: my annoyance with train talk, for example, matured into an appreciation for the love behind it. And I wonder, too, if my own style of reading hasn’t become more demanding of an author, less demanding of my own imagination to fill in the intellectual blanks.
I’m wistful, still, for that first experience of wonder now colored by a more adult disappointment that what I once thought exquisitely beautiful and strange just wasn’t as much as I’d thought it.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/pavane-by-keith-roberts/
So I got the Eye/Camera version, and I’m probably in the minority of people who found Francesco’s side more compelling than George’s, if only because it felt like a whole arc, unlike George’s half, which just sorta ended. But I’ve never been a fan of the grief narrative, as evidenced by my disdain for the vast majority of autobiographies written by people 40 or under: too much wallowing, not enough art.
Which is something that could never be leveled at Francesco’s half. Art abounds! I loved the imaginative invention of Francesco’s history, even as I’m not entirely sure why B sent this to me. We’d been discussing a boy I know, whose pre-Raphaelite beauty sneaks up on you unexpectedly, prompting her to send me this book. And there are certainly passages that spoke to me of love and reality in ways other books didn’t. One of which I’ll quote to end this review (ironically from George’s half):
You can’t just make stuff up about real people, George says.
We make stuff up about real people all the time, H says. Right now you’re making stuff up about me. And I’m definitely making stuff up about you. You know I am.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/how-to-be-both-by-ali-smith/
So how to describe this book without devolving into a slew of Personal Issues that had me sobbing so hard at points in the book that I had to set it aside and just cry from the relief of knowing that someone, somewhere, experienced the same pain and came out intact and even, dare I say it, happy?
Anyway, terrific biography of an astounding woman. The value placed on the maternal instinct and how it matters just as much to a woman’s sense of self and personal fulfillment as outside work, and on crafting the best life possible even when circumstances work against you, and of the role of literature and art in giving life meaning, really resounded in me, as did the value of childcare that was loving and nurturing without being prohibitively expensive. When I first received this book as a gift from darling B, I didn’t know what it had to do with me that she thought I needed to read it so urgently: it’s nice to know that she still understands me through time and distance. Gorgeously written, One Life is a fitting tribute to someone who loved and was loved, fully and thoughtfully.
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/one-life-my-mothers-story-by-kate-grenville/
Ugh, Brandon Sanderson, why are you so good at writing?!?!
Stayed up the other night just to finish this, and cried my way through the ending. Not as badly as I cried through 40 entire pages near the end of Way of Kings (which was also partly due, I feel, to the Mistborn trilogy being stylistically less polished than WoK, but that’s understandable since Sanderson continues to hone his craft to exquisite result,) but still, there was quiet sobbing in the dark. It was a very satisfying conclusion, though, and cements my respect for Sanderson even more.
I’m also glad I went and bought this in the trilogy format for my Kindle so that I forced myself to read the entire thing through. I think I’m done with not reading completed series novels in a row: it works so much better if you just go through them all at once. But then, I usually feel compelled to re-read earlier novels in order to make sure I’m refreshed on the events that might take place in following books. I no longer have the time for that kind of reading, tho!
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/04/the-mistborn-trilogy-boxed-set-by-brandon-sanderson/
How do you pronounce the first word of the title? I asked a couple of friends who had read Od Magic before me, and their first response was a pause, and then, “Hm.”
Online Scrabble has since taught me that “od” is an actual English word, somewhat archaic, meaning “a hypothetical power once thought to pervade nature and account for various scientific phenomena.” Which in a way is too bad, because before stumbling across the definition (fortunately, with a double-word score), I had thought about different ways to parse the word as part of the title, and to tie it together with the considerations of magic that form one of the book’s key themes.
An early chapter points in that direction, too:
Continue reading
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2015/07/02/od-magic-by-patricia-a-mckillip/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire