Last reading roundup for April
Apr. 30th, 2020 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Like many people among my Dreamwidth circle (I've certainly discussed this with falena and I'm sure she's not the only one) I've had trouble focusing on books during the lockdown. What that's meant for me is limiting my reading to stories I find comforting and consoling (a lot of historical crime novels), and to short fiction (which, while it may not be comforting in content or tone, is short enough that my mind doesn't wander).
In the last two weeks of April, I read five short stories, and four novels.
Three of those novels were from Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series of mysteries, whose eponymous solver of mysteries is a free black man in 1830s New Orleans. I've seen some discussion in recent days among my circle about whether people find these books too much, too grim, too deliberate in piling on of hurt and anguish for the title character. For me I find them quite the opposite: the books certainly deal with the racism of the era, and of the gnawing terror that it was (and is, in different but similar ways) to be black in the slaveholding south of the United States. But the appeal for me is the way the protagonist, and his friends, family, and community find ways to be brave, and kind, and joyful in the face of that. I like stories set in imperfect worlds (obviously 'imperfect' is an understatement when it comes to 1830s United States), where characters accept that they cannot fight and dismantle all the horrors, and don't exactly reconcile themselves to said horrors — simply find ways to survive and build community in spite of them.
Most of the mysteries in Hambly's series revolve around social/economic phenomena of the times, or crime novel clichés, or both. Dead Water, the first of the three books I read, takes place entirely on a Mississippi steamboat, Dead and Buried opens with a coffin falling open at a funeral to reveal that a stranger's body has been substituted for that of the dead man whose funeral it is, and The Shirt on His Back takes place among a wild community of frontier fur trappers, and their relationship with the various First Nations peoples who have been displaced by them, and by the expansion of the US state.
The other novel I read was The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, which is a literary fiction novel told from a variety of perspectives: a successful American artist who is placed under psychiatric care when he attempts to vandalise an Impressionist painting in an art gallery, his ex wife and ex lover, the psychologist assigned to care for him, and the young nineteenth-century French woman and artist whose life and secrets haunt all the other characters. I liked the bits about the Impressionists (and about the life of artists in general), and I thought Kostova did her best to portray the way that Great Artist men's success is often only possible due to the unacknowledged sacrifices (and basically servitude) of the women around them — but in this latter strand she pulled her punches slightly, and the novel lacked bite.
I was prompted in a recent short fiction roundup byforestofglory to go back and read a few older short stories by Aliette de Bodard, most of which are set in her Xuya universe. I read four stories by her:
'Dancing for the Monsoon' — the only non-Xuya story in the set. It's a story of sacred dancing, dancers who have supernatural powers, and has that fairytale theme of the tension between love and duty. This is a very early work of de Bodard's (it was published in 2009), and as such felt a bit less polished than some of her more recent work. It was interesting to me in the sense of her progression as a writer.
'Scattered Along the River of Heaven' — a Xuya story about a poet imprisoned for inciting rebellion through poetry, and a revolution that escapes the original intent of its instigators, turning into something darker and more uncontrollable. Like many of de Bodard's stories it has an elegiac tone of exile and loss.
'Immersion' — another Xuya story, about the pain of assimilation into the dominant culture, of your name, language, and culture being mangled, altering yourself for the sake of survival and the comfort of those of the majority culture around you — and what that costs you.
'A Salvaging of Ghosts' — a Xuya story which tackles very familiar themes for de Bodard: memory, ancestry and familial expectations, and people scratching out a life in the ruins of war and empire, finding joy and community in the spaces between.
'An Explorer's Cartography of Already Settled Lands' by Fran Wilde — gorgeous, poetic, dark and haunting, about life, love, loss and grief. It reminded me of the song 'Where Will I Be?' by Emmylou Harris.
All these short stories are available for free online via various SFF journals.
falena and I'm sure she's not the only one) I've had trouble focusing on books during the lockdown. What that's meant for me is limiting my reading to stories I find comforting and consoling (a lot of historical crime novels), and to short fiction (which, while it may not be comforting in content or tone, is short enough that my mind doesn't wander). In the last two weeks of April, I read five short stories, and four novels.
Three of those novels were from Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January series of mysteries, whose eponymous solver of mysteries is a free black man in 1830s New Orleans. I've seen some discussion in recent days among my circle about whether people find these books too much, too grim, too deliberate in piling on of hurt and anguish for the title character. For me I find them quite the opposite: the books certainly deal with the racism of the era, and of the gnawing terror that it was (and is, in different but similar ways) to be black in the slaveholding south of the United States. But the appeal for me is the way the protagonist, and his friends, family, and community find ways to be brave, and kind, and joyful in the face of that. I like stories set in imperfect worlds (obviously 'imperfect' is an understatement when it comes to 1830s United States), where characters accept that they cannot fight and dismantle all the horrors, and don't exactly reconcile themselves to said horrors — simply find ways to survive and build community in spite of them.
Most of the mysteries in Hambly's series revolve around social/economic phenomena of the times, or crime novel clichés, or both. Dead Water, the first of the three books I read, takes place entirely on a Mississippi steamboat, Dead and Buried opens with a coffin falling open at a funeral to reveal that a stranger's body has been substituted for that of the dead man whose funeral it is, and The Shirt on His Back takes place among a wild community of frontier fur trappers, and their relationship with the various First Nations peoples who have been displaced by them, and by the expansion of the US state.
The other novel I read was The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, which is a literary fiction novel told from a variety of perspectives: a successful American artist who is placed under psychiatric care when he attempts to vandalise an Impressionist painting in an art gallery, his ex wife and ex lover, the psychologist assigned to care for him, and the young nineteenth-century French woman and artist whose life and secrets haunt all the other characters. I liked the bits about the Impressionists (and about the life of artists in general), and I thought Kostova did her best to portray the way that Great Artist men's success is often only possible due to the unacknowledged sacrifices (and basically servitude) of the women around them — but in this latter strand she pulled her punches slightly, and the novel lacked bite.
I was prompted in a recent short fiction roundup by
forestofglory to go back and read a few older short stories by Aliette de Bodard, most of which are set in her Xuya universe. I read four stories by her: 'Dancing for the Monsoon' — the only non-Xuya story in the set. It's a story of sacred dancing, dancers who have supernatural powers, and has that fairytale theme of the tension between love and duty. This is a very early work of de Bodard's (it was published in 2009), and as such felt a bit less polished than some of her more recent work. It was interesting to me in the sense of her progression as a writer.
'Scattered Along the River of Heaven' — a Xuya story about a poet imprisoned for inciting rebellion through poetry, and a revolution that escapes the original intent of its instigators, turning into something darker and more uncontrollable. Like many of de Bodard's stories it has an elegiac tone of exile and loss.
'Immersion' — another Xuya story, about the pain of assimilation into the dominant culture, of your name, language, and culture being mangled, altering yourself for the sake of survival and the comfort of those of the majority culture around you — and what that costs you.
'A Salvaging of Ghosts' — a Xuya story which tackles very familiar themes for de Bodard: memory, ancestry and familial expectations, and people scratching out a life in the ruins of war and empire, finding joy and community in the spaces between.
'An Explorer's Cartography of Already Settled Lands' by Fran Wilde — gorgeous, poetic, dark and haunting, about life, love, loss and grief. It reminded me of the song 'Where Will I Be?' by Emmylou Harris.
All these short stories are available for free online via various SFF journals.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-01 09:29 am (UTC)This is exactly the appeal for me — and the fact that they all (possibly with the exception of Ben's mother!) recognise that this is a hellish world with great capacity to hurt them, and they do their best to help each other in the face of that.
I mean, I don't want to just put out a blanket recommendation for the series. I'm a white Australian woman who migrated to the UK, and the author is white as well. There are perspectives and experiences which neither of us will ever have — and others may find the books less 'comforting' than I do for that reason.
Xuya is great.