Back to the books...
Nov. 24th, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellBeen doing a few flocked entries, with (extremely boring) comments about my study programme which I didn't really want public, but hopefully the need for such has passed for the moment.
This was certainly not my favourite of Cushman's books, which is all down to the main character, whose unlikable behaviour is entirely understandable but no less unlikable for that. The book opens when Matilda, an orphan being raised (if it can be called that) by a priest at the manor where her father was a clerk, is left again. This time it's with Red Peg, a bonesetter, who lives and works in Blood and Bone Alley. Although Matilda, who reads and writes Latin fluently and seems to know all about gazillions of saints, considers Peg, her husband, and their friends horribly ignorant, the reader knows all too well where the ignorance lies. (And the pious Father Leufreudus, who taught her everything about 'religion', has pretty clearly lied when he told her he'll be back to collect her.)
It's possible to do characters who aren't used to helping with chores and resent being made to do so, and still have them sympathetic (the rebellious Kit in The Witch of Blackbird Pond comes readily to mind), but it's much harder when said character is hurtfully contemptuous of those around him or her. Of course Matilda learns, but not in time to make this an easily engaging read.
What it does have going for it is the details of medical treatment in Medieval England. Which are pretty fascinating, in an often gruesome way. And I think Cushman has possibly tapped into the somewhat ghoulish love of blood and guts many children seem to have. (Or I assume they have it, given the success of the Horrible Histories books and others like them.) There's humour when Matilda prays to one or other of her vast repertoire of saints, and gets answers (usually a refusal or inability to help, based on the particular saint's unique and hideously painful method of martyrdom) but this is dissipated by her apparent self-righteous rejection of the people she now lives and works with. Of course it isn't really self-righteousness - it's the defensive attempts of an abandoned and unloved child to find some way to fit in, to get approval. But Cushman's other heroines are so much easier to like in their attempts to do similar things.
This was certainly not my favourite of Cushman's books, which is all down to the main character, whose unlikable behaviour is entirely understandable but no less unlikable for that. The book opens when Matilda, an orphan being raised (if it can be called that) by a priest at the manor where her father was a clerk, is left again. This time it's with Red Peg, a bonesetter, who lives and works in Blood and Bone Alley. Although Matilda, who reads and writes Latin fluently and seems to know all about gazillions of saints, considers Peg, her husband, and their friends horribly ignorant, the reader knows all too well where the ignorance lies. (And the pious Father Leufreudus, who taught her everything about 'religion', has pretty clearly lied when he told her he'll be back to collect her.)
It's possible to do characters who aren't used to helping with chores and resent being made to do so, and still have them sympathetic (the rebellious Kit in The Witch of Blackbird Pond comes readily to mind), but it's much harder when said character is hurtfully contemptuous of those around him or her. Of course Matilda learns, but not in time to make this an easily engaging read.
What it does have going for it is the details of medical treatment in Medieval England. Which are pretty fascinating, in an often gruesome way. And I think Cushman has possibly tapped into the somewhat ghoulish love of blood and guts many children seem to have. (Or I assume they have it, given the success of the Horrible Histories books and others like them.) There's humour when Matilda prays to one or other of her vast repertoire of saints, and gets answers (usually a refusal or inability to help, based on the particular saint's unique and hideously painful method of martyrdom) but this is dissipated by her apparent self-righteous rejection of the people she now lives and works with. Of course it isn't really self-righteousness - it's the defensive attempts of an abandoned and unloved child to find some way to fit in, to get approval. But Cushman's other heroines are so much easier to like in their attempts to do similar things.
