Oct 14 2014

Tintentod by Cornelia Funke

This was the immensely satisfying end to a very good trilogy, although I will have to think about it a little longer to say just why.

The author thanks her English translator in the acknowledgements to German edition, so she is presumably very happy with its rendering as Inkdeath.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/14/tintentod-by-cornelia-funke/

Oct 12 2014

Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War by Max Hastings

This book only covers the first five months of World War I, but those five months were certainly horrendous enough to be worth remembering. The author does not buy into the the subsequent consensus that the war was pointless and not worth the cost; perhaps it never should have been fought, but in his view Germany was certainly to blame for starting it, and once it started it was necessary to resist the German onslaught in order to prevent a German hegemony of Europe. As an Englishman he does not think Britain’s sacrifice was in vain, although many of his compatriots did and do not agree with him. A good book that makes some good arguments, although much of it is a catalogue of horrors that undermines the author’s thesis.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/12/catastrophe-1914-europe-goes-to-war-by-max-hastings/

Oct 11 2014

The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson

This is probably the best book on ancient Egypt I have read so far. The author is clearly passionate about Egyptian civilization, but he acknowledges its dark side; for all its artistic and architectural achievements, it was a repressive autocracy that cannot have been pleasant for ordinary people to live under. The continuity of this civilization is extraordinary and makes the history of the United States seem like a mere blip in world history by comparison. This book is entirely history and fortunately leaves out any discussion of archaeology, which makes it much more readable and interesting than most works on egyptology. The historical record of ancient Egypt is quite sparse, but what survives is an incredible story. This book did a better job of bringing an often dry and dusty subject to life than any comparable book I have read.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-ancient-egypt-by-toby-wilkinson/

Oct 07 2014

The Unquiet Ghost by Adam Hochschild

The Unquiet Ghost is both a terrific historical and journalistic investigation and a historical document itself, as the author acknowledges in a preface written in 2002, some eight years after the book’s first publication. More than eight more years have passed, and the conditions that made the book both possible and urgent slip ever further into the past. And yet. The memories, most now second-hand, remain; the glimpses of another possible Russia refuse to fade completely, no matter what the present leadership might wish; the ghosts are still unquiet.

The Russia where I had come to live, in 1991, was then a country where only in the previous few years had it become possible to read those long-forbidden books at last, to look the past in the face, and to ask the question that obsessed the Russians as much as it did me: How could the country that gave the world Tolstoy and Chekhov also give it the gulag? Everywhere I went, it seemed, people were thinking about this. In addition to the men and women I sought out to interview, I kept stumbling into other unplanned conversations about Russia’s Stalinist past…

And so 1991 turned out to be the right moment for my journey of exploration. It was a time when mass graves had been newly opened, and I was able to walk through several of them, seeing, in one, skull after skull with a bullet hole through it. It was a time when it was finally possible to see the old gulag camps, and I will never forget standing in the ruins of one of them, Butugychag, a place so cold and remote and surrounded by barren snow-streaked rock hills that it seemed like another planet. Even there, in that desolate moonscape with nothing but snowfields to escape to for dozens of miles, even there, the camp had an internal prison with thick stone walls and cross-hatched iron bars on the windows. Above all, it was a time when people who had survived such camps and the era that produced them were eager to tell their stories. It would be harder to gather such stories today [2002], because so many of those who spoke to me were in their seventies or eighties and are now dead.

In another way, also, I was unexpectedly luck in my timing. The very month I arrived in Russia, the government lifted prohibitions that for decades had placed huge swaths of the country off-limits to foreigners. This meant that in several places I visited in Siberia, I was the first American of Western European whom anyone there had ever seen. … The novelty of meeting their first Westerner made many people particularly eager to tell their stories. I was the first witness from another world.

Hochschild settles into a still-Soviet Moscow in January 1991, where waking up and falling down seem to be happening simultaneously all around him. Memorial, a now-beleaguered institution of Russian civil society was still a protean organization founded four years earlier — gathering names, publishing, archiving what it could digitally, assisting victims materially. “The core of Memorial’s work is to try to restore a set of memories the government worked for several decades to erase.” Much of it was still individual initiative and handcrafted work.

As the book progresses, he moves between Moscow and further reaches, ending with a visit to Kolyma, one of the gulag’s worst regions, described then and now as the dark side of the moon. Along the way, he meets former inmates, former administrators, and descendants of both, fated to live in the same place with the acts of their forefathers between them, seldom spoken but always known.

Hochschild brings the liveliness of good journalism — every page bristles with specifics — and the perspective of a historian. Fitting, then, that his book has become a testament to its times — the first flush of openness and the glimmerings of a new Russian state — as much as a document of the times before it.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/07/the-unquiet-ghost-by-adam-hochschild/

Oct 06 2014

Paladin Of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

After reading The Curse Of Chalion to prep myself for this book, that had come highly recommended to me by various sources, I made the mistake of reading the Wiki page and discovering that the Chalion saga is based very much on the historical House of Trastamara, the royal family that wound up uniting Spain around the turn of the 16th century despite great personal tragedy. Of course, remember that the unification of Spain allowed the Inquisition to run unchecked and that religious minorities were, at best, expelled from the peninsula — not that you’d suspect any of that given the way the subjects of religion and politics are handled in Paladin Of Souls. Despite being mapped very closely to historical figures, the characters in general are given none of the nuance of motive that real people have, instead being either good or evil based on which nation they belong to. This is problematic because these characters, despite changes to the specifics of religion and the addition of magic, are clearly stand-ins for Iberian Catholics and Muslims, and the depiction of Quintarians/Catholics as being tolerant and cosmopolitan whereas Quadrenes/Muslims are savage zealots when any student of history knows it was the reverse was deeply disturbing to me. It’s as if someone wrote a fantasy take on the Civil War where the Union was intent on zombifying the poor Africans whom the Confederates had saved from lives of savagery, y’know? That kind of revisionism is not okay.

But I can see where the allure of it would be hard to deny, in a way that isn’t explicitly bigoted against a particular people. The story of the Trastamarans is compellingly high drama, and if you just wanted to write a high romance with elements of fantasy in it, where you could explore your philosophical leanings but didn’t want to write something ridiculously long and probably overly complex, it’s easy to reduce the enemies of the main characters to being Bad People so you could get on with telling an exciting story. It just seems unethical, sort of the opposite side of the coin of what I complain about when I complain about Guy Gavriel Kay. GGK is too cautious as he retells history as fantasy. Here, I feel, Lois McMaster Bujold takes too many liberties. Both ways, it’s still pretty lazy.

History aside, would I have liked the book better? Maybe if Ista weren’t so awful. I tried so hard to like her: we’re both mothers, of middle age, with dim views of our “traditional” roles in society. But it bothers me that she doesn’t show actual remorse over dy Lutez’s death: she only seems upset that killing him didn’t end the curse, and she spends way too much time blaming him for not having the will to… what exactly? Live again so he could die again for her children? As much as I love my kids, I couldn’t kill someone on the off-chance it would save them. A person, for example, who would kill an organ donor in hopes it would help extend the life of her terminally-ill child is a fucking psychopath. As one of my favorite TV characters recently said, “Cool motive. Still murder.”

And then I didn’t care for her treatment of Cattilara. I get it, Catti is annoying and self-involved and hysterical, but maybe if Ista weren’t such a psychopath, she’d see how similar she and Catti are and try to relate to her that way. Instead, Ista is completely high-handed and awful to her, never even trying empathy and kindness as she forces Catti to do the right thing.

A friend compared this book to a sort of high fantasy Eat Pray Love and that probably also explains my dislike of the book, as well — the only thing worse than memoirs of privileged men in their angsty 20s are the memoirs of privileged women “finding themselves” in their 30s. Unlike my friend, I did enjoy the action sequences, which I thought were done better than in TCoC, or were at least more believable/coherent in their magic. And don’t get me wrong: I didn’t dislike the book, as critical as I sound. The prose is beautiful, the plot is great and when the religion/magic is unmoored of its historical roots, it’s really appealing. If Ista were only less of a psychopath, I would have liked the whole thing a lot more.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/06/paladin-of-souls-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/

Oct 06 2014

Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal

Glamour in Glass is the second novel in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Glamourist Histories series. This review contains spoilers for Shades of Milk and Honey, the first in the series.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/06/glamour-in-glass-by-mary-robinette-kowal/

Oct 04 2014

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

This is a highly acclaimed novel, but I found it somewhat disappointing. The characters mostly are sweet, uncomplicated people, the kind of people who are nice to know but not very interesting to read about. This is basically the life story of a fictional character, but like the life story of a real person it goes on for quite a while without seeming to have much point to it. The story does pick up at toward the end, and finally you see what this rambling narrative was leading to, but I found most of it rather dull and unsatisfying. Not a totally wasted effort, but I loved *The World According to Garp*, and I definitely expected more from this author.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/04/the-cider-house-rules-by-john-irving/

Oct 03 2014

The Curse Of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

An almost perfect fantasy novel, with one major exception. Cazaril is a compelling hero but there are parts where his heroism seems less a function of himself than of the story. I loved that he had personality and flaws, but the author sometimes seems to forget those flaws and forego realism for the epic, when a few more lines explaining the manifestation of his inner strength might have served to ground his actions in the believable. I spent the whole book rooting for him, but in scenes such as his last confrontation with dy Jironal, I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to really enjoy what was happening, which quite drew me out of the book altogether. Otherwise, it’s an excellent novel, and I loved the philosophical underpinnings of the religious system. Lois McMaster Bujold writes beautifully, with the occasional intrusion of the hero-on-steroids trope the only flaw in this otherwise excellent book.

On a side note that didn’t affect my enjoyment of this novel: I was somewhat horrified at how easily Ista passed off the (truth of the) death of dy Lutez. I’m hoping it’s addressed in the sequel, Paladin Of Souls, which I’m about to gleefully devour.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/the-curse-of-chalion-by-lois-mcmaster-bujold/

Oct 03 2014

St Joan Of Arc by V Sackville-West

What student of English literature hasn’t felt the slightest prurient interest in the personal lives of the Bloomsbury group? My fascination with Vita Sackville-West stems, of course, from her role as muse to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, but I found her own novel, All Passion Spent, to be tedious rather than reflective. But here in this biography of St Joan of Arc, one sees clearly Ms Sackville-West’s genius, in presenting with clarity and sympathy — though not unduly so except at times, I felt, with Cauchon — the known facts and reasonable suppositions that can be drawn therefrom of the life of one of the most remarkable women to ever live. The only failing of the book is hardly the fault of the author, in that the medical and psychological advancements of her time would not be able to advance other theories of Joan that have come since to supplant or support some of those Ms Sackville-West discusses. Overall, though, this is an excellent biography of a controversial figure, well-researched and -written, intelligent and illuminating and, above all, interesting from start to end.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/st-joan-of-arc-by-v-sackville-west/

Oct 03 2014

Just Send Me Word by Orlando Figes

From the Preface to Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag, by Orlando Figes:

Three old trunks had just been delivered. They were sitting in a doorway, blocking people’s way into the busy room where members of the public and historical researchers were received in the Moscow offices of Memorial. … Noticing my interest in the trunks, they told me they contained the biggest private archive given to Memorial in its twenty years of existence. It belonged to Lev and Svetlana Mishchenko, a couple who had met as students in the 1930s, only to be separated by the war of 1941-5 and Lev’s subsequent imprisonment in the Gulag. …
We opened up the largest of the trunks. I had never seen anything like it: several thousand letters tightly stacked in bundles tied with string and rubber bands, notebooks, diaries, documents and photographs. The most valuable section of the archive was in the third and smallest of the trunks, a brown plywood case with leather trim and three metal locks that clicked open easily. We couldn’t say how many letters it contained – we guessed perhaps 2,000 – only how much the case weighed (37 kilograms). They were all love letters Lev and Svetlana had exchanged while he was a prisoner in Pechora, one of Stalin’s most notorious labour camps in the far north of Russia. The first was by Svetlana in July 1946, the last by Lev in July 1954. They were writing to each other at least twice a week. This was by far the largest cache of Gulag letters ever found. But what made them so remarkable was not just their quantity; it was the fact that nobody had censored them. They were smuggled in and out of the labour camp by voluntary workers and officials who sympathized with Lev. Rumours about the smuggling of letters were part of the Gulag’s rich folklore but nobody had ever imagined an illegal postbag of this size. …
As I leafed through the letters, my excitement grew. Lev’s were rich in details of the labour camp. They were possibly the only major contemporary record of daily life in the Gulag that would ever come to light. Many memoirs of the labour camps by former prisoners had appeared, but nothing to compare with these uncensored letters, composed at the time inside the barbed-wire zone. Written to explain to his sole intended reader what he was going through, Lev’s letters became, over the years, increasingly revealing about conditions in the camp. Svetlana’s letters were meant to support him in the camp, to give him hope, but, as I soon realized, they also told the story of her own struggle to keep her love for him alive.
Perhaps 20 million people, mostly men, endured Stalin’s labour camps. Prisoners, on average, were allowed to write and receive letters once a month, but all their correspondence was censored. It was difficult to maintain an intimate connection when all communication was first read by the police. An eight- or ten-year sentence almost always meant the breakings of relationships: girlfriends, wives or husbands, whole families, were lost by prisoners. Lev and Svetlana were exceptional. Not only did they find a way to write and even meet illegally – an extraordinary breach of Gulag rules that invited severe punishment – but they kept every precious letter (putting them at even greater risk) as a record of their love story.
There turned out to be almost 1,500 letters in that smallest trunk. … These letters are the documentary basis of Just Send Me Word, which also draws from the rich archive in the other trunks, from extensive interviews with Lev and Svetlana, their relatives and their friends, from the writings of other prisoners in Pechora, from visits to the town and interviews with its inhabitants and from the archives of the labour camp itself.

Does the book live up to the promise of its preface? Yes. Yes, it does.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2014/10/03/just-send-me-word-by-orlando-figes/