Which of us is the tiger?
Apr. 17th, 2021 10:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12It's a beautiful sunny day, and in a few hours' time, Matthias and I will be heading out to sit in the courtyard garden of one of the lovely cafe/bars in town, with notasapleasure and her husband. The combination of springtime, and sunlight, and this slight easing of restrictions that permits outdoor socialising makes my spirits soar.
Today's book meme prompt is as follows:
17. The one that taught you something about yourself
I think that most books — indeed, most stories, whatever the medium in which they're told — teach us something, if we find them meaningful. I feel that in my case this tends to fall into the category of confirming something I already believed, or giving me the words with which to articulate it, but I don't necessarily feel that that's a bad thing.
The book I have selected here is The Tiger in the Well, the third in Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries, set in Victorian London. I enjoy the whole series, but the third book — which I first read on a holiday around Europe with my mother and sister, aged fourteen — has always been my favourite.
I would describe the series as something of a pastiche — Pullman takes the over-the-top scenarios of Victorian music hall melodramas or penny dreadfuls, and injects them with a twentieth-century focus on the darker side of empire (rampant, rapacious capitalism, racist exploitation in the name of colonialism, nationalistic extremism and the scapegoating of minorities). The Tiger in the Well has a dual focus on the horrific poverty in London, and the antisemitism directed at the city's Jewish population (many of whom were recent arrivals fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe) — and the book demonstrates that these twin evils are the work of the same people (as is ever the case, it suits a lot of those in positions of political power and economic privilege to keep a population simultaneously in poverty, and in resentment of supposed outsiders who they are directed to believe are responsible for their exploitation and lack of good fortune).
What I would say about this book (which I first read in the late 1990s and probably went on to read regularly every couple of months for many years after that) is that it did a lot to awaken and solidify my own teenage political understanding. It was first published in 1990, but I could easily map its politics onto the political landscape of the early 2000s, both in Australia and globally. The book is written for a teenage readership, so obviously it is a little simplistic in its outlook, but it helped me clarify my own beliefs and understanding of the world. And its description of the moment Sally Lockhart's ally — a Jewish socialist community leader — talks down an angry mob remains one of my favourite moments in a work of fiction (much as it reads like naïvely wishful thinking, thirty years later). There are undoubtedly other books which taught me in a more nuanced and subtle way, but this one feels like a turning point in my own thinking, and matters more to me for that reason.
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A book written into your psyche
22. A warm blanket of a book
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
notasapleasure and her husband. The combination of springtime, and sunlight, and this slight easing of restrictions that permits outdoor socialising makes my spirits soar.Today's book meme prompt is as follows:
17. The one that taught you something about yourself
I think that most books — indeed, most stories, whatever the medium in which they're told — teach us something, if we find them meaningful. I feel that in my case this tends to fall into the category of confirming something I already believed, or giving me the words with which to articulate it, but I don't necessarily feel that that's a bad thing.
The book I have selected here is The Tiger in the Well, the third in Philip Pullman's Sally Lockhart mysteries, set in Victorian London. I enjoy the whole series, but the third book — which I first read on a holiday around Europe with my mother and sister, aged fourteen — has always been my favourite.
I would describe the series as something of a pastiche — Pullman takes the over-the-top scenarios of Victorian music hall melodramas or penny dreadfuls, and injects them with a twentieth-century focus on the darker side of empire (rampant, rapacious capitalism, racist exploitation in the name of colonialism, nationalistic extremism and the scapegoating of minorities). The Tiger in the Well has a dual focus on the horrific poverty in London, and the antisemitism directed at the city's Jewish population (many of whom were recent arrivals fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe) — and the book demonstrates that these twin evils are the work of the same people (as is ever the case, it suits a lot of those in positions of political power and economic privilege to keep a population simultaneously in poverty, and in resentment of supposed outsiders who they are directed to believe are responsible for their exploitation and lack of good fortune).
What I would say about this book (which I first read in the late 1990s and probably went on to read regularly every couple of months for many years after that) is that it did a lot to awaken and solidify my own teenage political understanding. It was first published in 1990, but I could easily map its politics onto the political landscape of the early 2000s, both in Australia and globally. The book is written for a teenage readership, so obviously it is a little simplistic in its outlook, but it helped me clarify my own beliefs and understanding of the world. And its description of the moment Sally Lockhart's ally — a Jewish socialist community leader — talks down an angry mob remains one of my favourite moments in a work of fiction (much as it reads like naïvely wishful thinking, thirty years later). There are undoubtedly other books which taught me in a more nuanced and subtle way, but this one feels like a turning point in my own thinking, and matters more to me for that reason.
18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion
19. A book that started a pilgrimage
20. A frigid ice bath of a book
21. A book written into your psyche
22. A warm blanket of a book
23. A book that made you bleed
24. A book that asked a question you've never had an answer to
25. A book that answered a question you never asked
26. A book you recommend but cannot love
27. A book you love but cannot recommend
28. A book you adore that people are surprised by
29. A book that led you home
30. A book you detest that people are surprised by
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Date: 2021-04-17 10:32 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2021-04-17 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-18 01:50 pm (UTC)We actually went out during the day, over lunchtime. It was absolutely lovely!
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Date: 2021-05-02 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 12:28 pm (UTC)That's such a cool memory with your dad! I knew about the Opium Wars from school, because modern history classes in Australia tend to focus a lot on Asian history, and we had done a unit on the modern history of China, Japan and Korea the same year I first read those books.