3 posts tagged “fiction”

I just finished The Stolen Child, which is essentially a fairy tale about changelings.  It is beautifully written, but overwhelmingly sad.  The Amazon.com synopsis reads:

From Publishers Weekly
Folk legends of the changeling serve as a touchstone for Donohue's haunting debut, set vaguely in the American northeast, about the maturation of a young man troubled by questions of identity. At age seven, Henry Day is kidnapped by hobgoblins and replaced by a look-alike impostor. In alternating chapters, each Henry relates the tale of how he adjusts to his new situation. Human Henry learns to run with his hobgoblin pack, who never age but rarely seem more fey than a gang of runaway teens. Hobgoblin Henry develops his uncanny talent for mimicry into a music career and settles into an otherwise unremarkable human life. Neither Henry feels entirely comfortable with his existence, and the pathos of their losses influences all of their relationships and experiences. Inevitably, their struggles to retrieve their increasingly forgotten pasts put them on paths that intersect decades later. Donohue keeps the fantasy as understated as the emotions of his characters, while they work through their respective growing pains. The result is an impressive novel of outsiders whose feelings of alienation are more natural than supernatural.

This, like The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly, is one of those fairy tales that takes awhile to fully digest.  It has several rather haunting themes, the one that stood out to me the most being, how well can a parent ever know their child?.  The story is extremely well written and switches back and forth in perspective from the changeling who becomes Henry Day, to the child who becomes a changeling.  The changeling Henry Day ages like a normal human, but the original Henry Day, stolen away from his human life, remains eternally seven years old, although he would have been in his thirties at the end of the book.  As the changeling settles into life as Henry Day, the seven-year-old child he was becomes remarkably more mature than his now-human counterpart in many ways.

I loved this book.  It took me a few chapters to get into it - the changeling who becomes Henry Day starts out as quite a snotty little brat - but the narrative sucks you in, and you can't help but try to figure out how it will be resolved in the end.  It was not the ending I expected, and I think the book is richer for that.  I would definitely recommend this book - it is dark and poignant, but uplifting in that it is a story extremely well-told. 

Hey, look!  I read something that was NOT set more than 10 years ago!  Aren't you impressed?  I know I am, because when I glanced at the summary I read the word "Puritan," knew that Gregory writes historical fiction, and thought I was picking up English Reformation fiction.  Whoops.

My experience with Philippa Gregory's books have, so far, been hit or miss.  The Other Boleyn Girl was fantastic, but I picked up Earthly Joys and couldn't, for the life of me, get into it. 

I'm not really sure how I feel about this book.  I certainly can't rave about it, but it wasn't a bad book.  It was just odd. 

The summary of this book on amazon goes like this:

Masquerading as a trashy novelist may solve English writer Isobel Latimer's financial problems, but it also plunges her into a full-fledged identity crisis in Gregory's flighty, overplotted novel. Isobel needs money to support her ailing husband, Philip, and his newfound interest in pool building, so when her agent, Troy Cartwright, informs her that her literary novels are earning less and less, she tells him, "If they won't pay me to write good books, then I'll just have to write bad." She and Troy invent the persona of Zelda Vere, a heavily made-up, well-dressed blonde bombshell, the opposite of 52-year-old country matron Isobel. Zelda's "survivor fiction," The Devil's Disciple, is a major hit that earns Isobel all the money she could ever need, but she finds herself increasingly caught between superego and id, between an unfulfilling loyal marriage and sexual experimentation with Troy. When Isobel sets off on her book tour with Troy, Gregory's plot takes an exotic and erotic turn, depicting a world of cross-dressing, cocaine and champagne. Returning to her home in Kent, Isobel finds Philip miraculously recovered and expending all his energy on the construction of an expensive new pool. Philip has also decided to invest (with Isobel's money) in the handsome pool man's business. Backstabbers reveal themselves, to no one's surprise, and Isobel's deliberations--should she stay or should she go?--are prolonged until an abrupt, bewildering denouement puts a stop to the runaway narrative.

Yeah.  That sums it up pretty well.  It's a book about the trashiness of trash fiction, but the entire book is unwieldy and trashy itself.  That's not to say that I don't enjoy trash, but give me either plain trash or a "real" novel, please--I don't enjoy being preached to on one page and then reading a cross-dressing sex scene on the next.  (I'm not exaggerating in the least, here.)

It did occur to me that I didn't "get" this book, but I'm pretty sure that I do get where Gregory was going with this book - she just didn't do it very well.  It had a lot of potential, but the ending comes very oddly and abruptly, with very little regard for the plotline she had established in the previous 300 pages.  I came away from this feeling a bit cheated. 

I can't recommend this book. 

 

All the things I am struggling not to buy or just ran out of, or things that I've tried and ran out of.  I am embracing my materialism with arms (and wallet) wide open. :D  If I can't have it, might as well blog about it.

 First order of business: Books.  As you will soon see, I like history a little too much...it creeps into my "fun reading" all the time.  I have many, many books on my wishlist, so I'll just focus on the highlights.

 

Margaret George's The Memoirs of Cleopatra is one of those historical fiction books that you come along once in a great while: she likes to write about the people history tend to condemn, and make you sympathize with them almost immediately.  Henry VIII wasn't such a bad guy after all!  These books are meticulously researched, beautifully written, and just epic.  She makes the reader realized how incredibly important one person's life can be, and how unimportant everything becomes as thousands of years obliterate their memory.  Cleopatra in our minds now was a scheming temptress, but it's hard to remember that she wasn't just a caricature of herself - she was probably our age and went through the same rites of passage we do.  I highly recommend this and I want a copy for myself.

 

Kelley Armstrong's Bitten is not at all historical (yay, says the reader who is sick of my desire to rub up against my hot, sexy textbooks); rather, it is the story of the world's only female werewolf.  To say this is a sensual and dark novel is an understatement (oh, my), but it is also excellently written with three-dimensional characters.  Armstrong has yet to top this with anything else she's written, but she's developed a series around this book.  Read this one first.  It's like Blood and Chocolate (by Annette Curtis Klause) for grown-ups.  Also recommend Blood and Chocolate.

 

 

To round out the books selection is Rosalind Miles' Isolde trilogy.  This has gotten some abysmal reviews on Amazon, but I really enjoyed the telling of one of my favorite Arthurian legends (my other passion - history related, of course).  It can be saccharine at times, but that's Miles' writing style, and after all - it's a love story with court and political intrigue.  I recommend reading all three books, especially if you like Arthurian legends (her Guenevere trilogy is an interesting take on those as well).  (Of course, I want the Tristan and Isolde movie too.)

 

 

 

 

Next, random materialism:

I have two basic tarot decks and a Rune-tarot deck, but I have found myself desperately wanting these two sets as well (and don't even get me started on the Gummy Bear Tarot, so cute!).  The Golden Tarot is this beautiful computer-collaged deck that uses medieval and renaissance artwork to create the familiar tarot imagery, so it's right up my alley.

The Housewives' Tarot is this quirky vintage deck that comes in a recipe box with funny twists on the familiar Tarot images: The Devil is a chocolate cake with devil horns, holding a martini.  Death is spoiled mayonnaise.  The Swords suit feature cocktail swords, and the Cups suit - what else? - features martinis.  If you've ever tried to keep a house clean, I have a feeling you could appreciate this deck.  The snarky descriptions in the booklet are also hilarious, and it includes instructions for a "martini spread."  Hee.

 

 

 

 

Now, a perennial favorite,  Lush products.  I sadly just ran out of my Christmas Kisses bubble bar, am close to finishing my Ma Bar bubble bar, and they just came out with a whole load of things I don't need but desperately want.  Pictured to the right is the Soft Couer massage bar, which smells like honey, white chocolate, chocolate, and orange.  It's great for massages (boy, is it ever!) but I also swipe it across my wrists as solid perfume.  The thing with Lush, if you aren't familiar with them, is that their products are all-natural and so the scents smell real, not like chemical reproductions of those scents.  When I say "honey, white chocolate, chocolate, and orange" I mean that you will want to eat this stuff. 

 

To the left is the Ma Bar bubble bar, which is toffee, honey, orange, and chocolate scented.  Bubble bars are pretty much the penultimate bubble bath: a small slice (it's soft and easily sliced with a kitchen knife) will make your whole tub fill up with bubbles that smell like a pastry chef is working in your house.  There is also Honey Trap lip balm (not pictured) that has the same general smell as the last two products, lasts in its tin forever, and is really nice on the lips. 

I want to try the Sunny Side bubble bar (citrus-scented - and glitter!) and the Pop in the Bath bubble bar next, as well as the two delicious sounding new lip balms, Lip Squeak (apple pie) and Happy Talk (coffee).  At an average of $7-8 per item, Lush can be pricey for your college student type, but I can personally vouch that it's high quality and will last a good amount of time for the price you pay (just remember to slice up your bubble bars!).  And I don't know about you, but their stuff just makes my bathtime happier.  That 20 minutes of relaxation is worth it to me.

I'll save the makeup post for later, but let us say that I'm really looking forward to MAC's fall collections and have been updating my makeup collection with a few key pieces that I'll review later.