Uglies

This sci-fi for teens by Scott Westerfield is a good read. It's set in some post-apocalyptic era where everyone gets cosmetic surgery at age 16 and becomes one of the "Pretties" class. Sounds funny? It's not really a comedy, but an interesting look at what happens when diversity gets thrown out of the window, in the name of democracy and equality.

Tally is hanging out for her turn to made Pretty, when she meets a girl called Shay who weirdly enough doesn't want to go for the operation. Shay ends up running away; Tally gets forced by the Special Circumstance scary police to go and find her. She does, and discovers there's some good reasons why people are choosing not to be made "Pretty".

This is more than an allegory - it's an interesting view of what might be, in the future sometime. It's also the first in a series, so I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. Especially whether people with disability ever turn up; they haven't, yet. He has some interesting ideas about the future, such as hovering surfboards and total vegetarianism, with enough cool gadgets to keep the interest of most readers. It's not going to be the next "The Giver", but it reads well and it has some interesting ideas.

Meadowland

This historical novel by Thomas Holt was remarkably good. It was about the Norse discovery of America, covering several attempts at settlement there, and following several notable souls including Erik the Red, Leif Erikson, Gudric, and King Harald (not the guy who lost the battle of hastings, but the norse guy he killed earlier). And while doing all this, he manages to explain clearly how the Eastern Roman empire worked, how bits of chance turn into history, and how the Norse religion and Christian religion dwelt uneasily side by side for some time.

Thomas Holt read ancient history at Oxford, so he knows what he’s talking about. He’s also written a lot of stuff, so he knows how to do that, too. His characters all have very distinctive voices, and he uses a pretty challenging technique of having almost the whole story retold to us through three narrators. Despite this, none of the action seems to be happening “off-camera”, so to speak; you’re there, sometimes wanting to avert your eyes (they are kind of Vikings, after all), but feeling everything that happens. He also gives you – another triumph, if you ask me – an unreliable narrator, perhaps two, perhaps three. That’s difficult and yet he pulls it off beautifully.

By setting it up so that the main narrator is a foreigner (a Greek), he is able to explain parts of Norse culture through the narrators without it seeming forced. He’s also able to show the difference between the Greek way of thinking and the Norse way, their different values and cultures, in a way that is equally biased and so quite balanced. There’s quite a few thoughtful asides about religion and philosophy which make sense in terms of the narrative. One of the cleverest outcomes of the set-up is the way he is able to show the nature of different characters through giving them the same scenario – America – again and again. There’s a very clever twist with one of the characters at the end of the story, too.

This is a funny, clever, thoughtful and informative book, which I was unable to put down. I’ll be looking out for his other books – after all, ancient history is a wide field. Hopefully he’s covered a fair bit of it.

The African Queen

We had to read this book by C. F. Forester back in Year Eight (I’m not counting this as a reread, though, because I’m sure I only skimmed it), and I remember the whole class hated it and thought it ridiculous. I picked it up again because I thought that my twelve-year-old sensibilities would have changed, but they haven’t. It isn’t a particularly good book, and I’ve no idea who recommended it for a Year Eight class. Well, except there’s a movie of it, which makes teaching easier. It’s about a woman missionary in 1914 who escapes with a mechanic on a boat down a mighty river in Africa in order to strike a blow for England – literally, by blowing up a German ship. It’s clearly told, but that’s all I can say for it. It’s terribly sexist, and terribly elitist; the mechanic is cockney and has his dialogue all written out for him; and it’s all right that the missionary falls for him because apparently her father was only a shopkeeper, so she’s just a class above him. The “romance” is only as much as people of their class seem to manage, with slight endearments and some animalistic lust, and so is their thinking. C. S. Forester mocks everything in the story except the boat; he shows that thing great respect. The description is probably accurate (I wouldn’t know), for it’s far more real than any human being. Strangely enough the characters become more, rather than less, cardboard as the story goes on; perhaps because he insists on telling us rather than showing us more about their thought processes. I think, in short, it’s a terrible book, and I really hope people don’t write books like this anymore.

Love Without Resistance

This novella by Gilles Rozier could have been very good had it been written by a very good writer. It has some interesting themes - the protagonist's inability to resist the Nazi occupation and her guilt over that, for example - but sadly this guy just doesn't do it justice.

I read a review about this book and the whole way through it called the protagonist "he"; which is pretty funny, partly because the main character is a woman, but partly because really, you wouldn't know it. Basically Rozier has reluctantly made her female because otherwise she'd be in the war, but really you can tell he'd prefer to write about a man, and that he hasn't a clue about women . . . the thing that jumped out at me was the vague reference to explicit pornography being passed around her girls' school. Maybe a boys' school, but it's a bit ridiculous idea for girls.

Anyway, this story is written in a really distant vague tone from beginning to end. There's no change, to sense of climax, no use of language to vary anything at all. You can't really care about anyone, and as for love - there's no feeling evoked at all. Lots of explicit sex scenes, but that's it. It's full of German and Yiddish poetry (only translated at the back of the book, which stops the flow of it all for me at least), and no surprise that Rozier is a specialist in Yiddish literature. It feels like it's been dumped in there, though he gives adequate reason (the Jewish guy she's hiding in her cellar speaks Yiddish and knows her favourite German poems in that language). Interesting, or it could have been if it had been written more fully and more movingly.

Hobberdy Dick

This little book by K. M. Briggs was a real find; it’s probably been out of print for years, but they’ve reissued it as a classic. She was the woman who compiled “A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales”, which found its way to me as a child in the short form of “A Dictionary of Fairies”. This was very influential on my views of fairies, and it’s really invaluable if you’re interested in the British form of myth and magic. It’s probably out of print now too.

This particular story is about a house hobgoblin during the 17th century. It’s a great vehicle for understanding the way the old myths lingered on while science (industry, here) and Puritan Christianity were growing in strength. Basically Hobberdy Dick helps the family in whose house he lives (or vice versa, as you like) through a mixture of hard work and magic, preventing witches and ghosts from overrunning the place, and ensuring that the true descendants of the house’s original owners are able to live there safely. It covers the way some of the old festivals were celebrated – Christmas, Easter, Midsummer etc – as well as a lot of the basic spells or wards against evil that were used at that time (and probably right up till the beginning of the 20th century). It’s a good story, and a fascinating one for anyone interested in old British folklore.

Memoirs of an Infantry Officer and Sherston’s Progress

Siegfried Sassoon writes a very restrained prose – so restrained that it’s either emotionless or makes you feel that he’s hiding a kind of furious anger. Perhaps he doesn’t feel that passion is polite. But it is strange how land his prose is here, when other things he has written, like the introduction to the war poetry anthology, like his own poetry, is so beautiful and unique. It really mars this memoir. The detail of what happens, exactly, on a raid into no-man’s-land is both informative and important. It’s the most detailed WW1 stuff I’ve read, and it really underlines, in a way that everyone can relate to, how absurd it was, in the same way any kind of government project is absurd and divorced from reality and common sense. So what Siegfried Sassoon writes about is incredibly valuable and it’s a worthwhile piece of writing, but it isn’t beautiful.

It gets more insipid when it moves onto his war-time protest and his incarceration in a shell-shock hospital. Can it be both insipid and realistic? It does feel honest and it does seem to reflect what probably happened in his mind. You can’t tell whether he’s trying to acquit or accuse himself. Robert Graves doesn’t come across too well. I wonder if they remained friends!

The – sad? strange? – thing about his protest was that he was angry not about the killing but about the dying. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis’ essay, “Why I am not a pacifist”, which threw up so many reasons why dying in battle wasn’t so bad. Surely, surely, the pacifist hates to kill more than he hates to die? And actually, Siegfried Sassoon never talks about killing soldiers – he always seems to miss, seems to feel his bombs would have failed. Partly he is, of course, running himself down, underlining the absurdity of his “job” – but is he also excusing himself, also trying to see himself as someone who didn’t kill those men who weren’t his enemies? Is he trying to make peace with a guilt he can’t write about?

The end of the book is almost creepy. It reminds me – surely, it can’t be just me – of a 1920’s book written for girls.

“Oh Rivers, I’ve had such a funny time since I saw you last!”

I suppose you could say all sorts of things about that relationship, which I won’t, but it was a sorry mess of a finish.

This poet deliberately made no mention of his, or any other war-time poetry – why? No mention of Wilfred Owens or Edward Thomas – why? Was he trying to make his experienced universal – surely not, with the last strange book. And for the same reason he couldn’t have been deliberately hiding his identity! I wonder why.

This is a good companion read to Robert Graves’ version, with the other side of the story, and a good overview of WW1, and an interesting look at a flawed human being, an ordinary, honest person, no hero, a very recognisable human being. Pity about the writing, but at least we have his poetry.

The Golden Bough

I first heard of this book by Sir James Frazer in a Diana Wynne Jones novel, and I thought it was another version of Greek myths. It isn't; it's an early anthropology book, from the turn of last century, with myths from all over the world. Apparently some of the references are spurious, and some of the inferences dubious, but it's still a really important read from a literary point of view. It’s very easy to see how it influenced a number of writers at the turn of last century (Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence to name only a few) and probably a significant number of philosophers as well. One of the reasons it was influential was its scope – he began to investigate a particular Roman ritual and ended up in twelve volumes analysing everything about myth, magic and religion across the entire world – but also because of its literary nature. It’s beautifully written.

I’ve been reading it over the last few weeks, mostly because it’s the kind of book you dip into. After a while, it does become quite repetitive to read of all the different kinds of sympathetic and homeopathic magical rituals; it doesn’t move forward in a cohesive manner. On the other hand, if you’re curious about the difference between magic and religion (in the first, man feels he can control the world; in the second, he realises someone else does), or about the number of different cultures which feature a soul which is separated from the body, or a man-god who takes on the sins of the people, or a King who must die, then this is the book for you. Or where many English customs originate, like Guy Fawkes night etc!

I think that if you’re a fantasy writer (or reader) then it’s almost a necessity – and it certainly should be required reading for theologians. It is disliked in some circles nowadays because of his belief (which reflects his time) that certain groups, such as Aboriginal Australians, reflect an early – i.e. primitive – kind of human being, while other groups, notably British anthropologists, reflect the zenith of man’s development. I think he’d be quite surprised to find his own views considered primitive today! On the other hand he’s quite clever in leaving options open about religion and science, for example. He tells you that “the man-god who dies taking on the sins of the world” can be found across all cultures – but he doesn’t follow that up by saying Christianity is therefore bunkum. It could be that those myths are there to lead all cultures to the truth, as many Christians believe. Equally, he doesn’t say science is the height of all knowledge, and ruminates that just as it has supplanted magic, so, perhaps, something might turn up to supplant it. As you can see, it’s a very interesting book philosophically but I’ll say it again – its literary merit is what has kept it in print ever since it was written at the turn of last century.

Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man

Siegfried Sassoon’s prose is quite dull, which is surprising in such a good poet. He’s writing here about pre-war England, which is probably what I think of when I think of England – villages, farms, and rich people going hunting. I think hunting was banned last year in England, and I have to say I can’t see why not, after this account – it seems a meaningless activity, limited to a small group of wealthy people.

Of course the sting in this tale of a boy (“George Sherston”, but it’s really autobiographical) is our knowledge of what is to come. His life seems the absolute antithesis of what is to come. Easy, pleasant, undisciplined, and apolitical. He fears socialists because they don’t like hunting. It’s almost like a conversion story, with the worldly man being eventually shocked into Christianity.

On the other hand, whether you think his life meaningless or not, there is a wistfulness about it all simply because he doesn’t worry about anything but the moment. Especially right now that seems like an unbelievable thing – to just exist for the weekly hunt, for sport. Does anyone live like that now? He has his 600 pounds a year, he need not work, he lives with his aunt and worries only that the weather be all right.

Sassoon’s prose is so calm that it doesn’t really bring anything to life, and in some places it’s dated by a certain floweriness in the prose which isn’t particularly effective. It’s not nearly so powerful as Grave’s fabulous Goodbye To All That, but I think Grave is a prose writer through and through, while Sassoon is a poet. As a social-historical piece it’s fascinating, especially as an insight into Sassoon, but as literature it’s not fantastic.