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lady_schrapnellAfter grousing so much about the last two audiobooks I listened to (Austenland and The Sharing Knife: Beguilement), and being a little worried about sharing Gatty's Tale with
steepholm, though I quite liked it, it was a bit of a relief to listen to the sample of The Foreshadowing [ETA - not sure about that link, I've tried it again.] and have no hesitation about choosing it. I could barely make myself stop listening, and had a strong feeling that this was an almost perfect marriage of reader/narrator and book, to the extent that I suspected I might have found it less gripping had I read it instead of listening. Today I had a look to see if the reader had done any other books they had available, and realised Anna Maxwell Martin is a well-known (BAFTA-winning, indeed) actress, though I've only seen her as Bessy in the wonderful production of North and South. Her voice -- oh, it's just so good. And reading this spare, atmospheric, stark prose... Listen to the sample! It's well worth it. Anyway, the story is an interesting one in itself, and I think the reasons the audiobook narration works so well are also. Sasha (Alexandra) Fox is the 17 year old daughter of an eminent doctor living in Brighton at the start of World War I. She had her first premonition - of death, always of death - at the age of five, though nobody in her family can accept her entirely unwanted ability to predict the future. She isn't totally sure about the premonitions herself at first, but when she's finally allowed to go the the hospital her father runs as a volunteer nursing assistant, they start to get clearer and more specific and beyond any doubt. Like hearing the voice of the person say 'I must go now. I had a bayonet put into my back as I was doing the same to another man. I must go now. I am dead and I must go.' (Yeah - imagine that read by someone with beautifully clear diction, and controlled emotional depth. Chills!) Before she knows he's dead. She can't do anything about the prophecies, but feels totally alone as nobody believes her - like Cassandra, surely one of the more heart-rending characters of literature.
When she has a dream showing her brother Tom (just a year older than Sasha and always closer to her than the eldest, Edgar, who went off eagerly as soon as the war began, to 'do his bit') being killed, however, she knows she has time to try to do something to prevent its happening. She manages to get herself to France, pretending to be a trained nurse and starts working in a rest station in Boulogne. If you might get a hint just reading this that finding Tom will be a hugely difficult problem in itself, let alone preventing his getting in the way of a bullet, you're not wrong. I've no intention of saying more about what happens, as there's such tension between the seeming inevitability of the future Sasha has seen and her absolute determination to risk and do anything to stop it happening. And then the climax - everything goes into slow motion and the tension is even greater when you suddenly realise what's about to happen and what could result...
Once I'd raced through to the end, I was determined to get hold of the book and see how severely abridged the audio version had been, and try to see how the prose read on the page. And I had a few thoughts about why I felt, as I said earlier, that this reading worked so well. One of the things is that - quite unusually for YA historical fiction (I think) - Sedgwick seems to have intentionally written Sasha much more 'of her time' than the more typical 'spunky' and highly independent heroine of the past. Some readers would probably even find her a bit irritatingly naive and sheltered at the beginning. (She may still be highly misguided in the likelihood of her 'plan' by the end, but she can hardly be faulted for being passive.) But I really liked this, as it seemed so very believable - and certainly the Cassandra parallel worked with it. The goddesses of Greek myth may have had all the independence one could wish for, but the women- no. And the voice of the narrator just exudes the perfect mix of privileged background and vulnerability.
I also had Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth very firmly inhabiting my head as I listened - not only in Sasha's family background and nursing experience but also in the sense of being out of step with the pervading belief about the war. And there was the same waste of a willing (and experienced in Brittain's case) nurse because the family (i.e. father) decreed the daughter should be at home in both stories. I was sure Sedgwick must have read it, but wouldn't have known from the audiobook, as one thing which was cut entirely is author's notes. I got hold of the book yesterday, and sure enough, there's a mention of Brittain's books in the acknowledgment, before page one. Now that I've read about a quarter of the book as well, it's very clear how different the experience really is, though I couldn't begin to rank them, even for myself. The audiobook has been quite pared down, and some of what's been cut is bits of the historical - if I say 'padding', I only mean material going around the frame-work or skeleton. So it becomes an even more sparse, bare-bones story. (It's probably not a coincidence that the words that come to mind relate to dead bodies, in this case.) I loved that story - the economy of the prose, the eerie atmosphere, the underpinning of myth, and the sheer dead weight of the history really worked for me. Without being quite as grim as that may make it sound.
The book itself though, even the paperback edition (didn't see anything else) is beautifully done, and not only is there the list of books which Sedgwick says were 'invaluable for capturing the spirit of the time' before you start, but also more details pinning the story firmly to the historical era (the psychiatric book and essay (Bergson!) Sasha's father has in his office, for example, which aren't mentioned in the abridged version). I like a lot of details in historical fiction on the whole, so that worked too, if differently. The book is divided into 100 sections, which count down from 100 to 1 - presumably related to Sasha's despondent feeling that seeing the future is like knowing the end of a story from the start - like reading it backwards. (Which I found less than convincing, personally, but never mind). Each section has an ink drawing of a raven's feather at the head. I can't do a clean slate reading, obviously, and it might have been different had I not known the ending, but I did find the short, spare sections almost a little annoyingly short, while appreciating the greater amount of detail in the uncut book. Again, read, I found the prose wonderful.
That highlighting of the historical accuracy is so significant in historical fiction, especially children's and teen's, of course, and I think really does have an effect on the reading experience. But for some reason this morning I also remembered that it was going on as far back as Dracula, where the lack of realism resided only in the inexplicable stupidity of going off and leaving the victim alone to be.... (Sorry. 'Nother story!) Anyway -- easier to avoid the problems of accuracy vs. sympathy for the protagonist, the closer to the present day you get, but I still give the author full credit for making the protagonist about as sheltered and unrealistic as a girl of her class and background probably would likely have been, rather than making her the generic feisty historical girl. I wasn't entirely sure about the social standing of a doctor at that period, and was also a little bit dubious about the private teacher (a woman probably in her early 30s, 'not yet married', who taught four girls in her home) having them study the Iliad. Maybe, but maybe not too. Not very serious quibbles though, and I was delighted to have stumbled across this one in the new releases on Audible.
I also had Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth very firmly inhabiting my head as I listened - not only in Sasha's family background and nursing experience but also in the sense of being out of step with the pervading belief about the war. And there was the same waste of a willing (and experienced in Brittain's case) nurse because the family (i.e. father) decreed the daughter should be at home in both stories. I was sure Sedgwick must have read it, but wouldn't have known from the audiobook, as one thing which was cut entirely is author's notes. I got hold of the book yesterday, and sure enough, there's a mention of Brittain's books in the acknowledgment, before page one. Now that I've read about a quarter of the book as well, it's very clear how different the experience really is, though I couldn't begin to rank them, even for myself. The audiobook has been quite pared down, and some of what's been cut is bits of the historical - if I say 'padding', I only mean material going around the frame-work or skeleton. So it becomes an even more sparse, bare-bones story. (It's probably not a coincidence that the words that come to mind relate to dead bodies, in this case.) I loved that story - the economy of the prose, the eerie atmosphere, the underpinning of myth, and the sheer dead weight of the history really worked for me. Without being quite as grim as that may make it sound.
The book itself though, even the paperback edition (didn't see anything else) is beautifully done, and not only is there the list of books which Sedgwick says were 'invaluable for capturing the spirit of the time' before you start, but also more details pinning the story firmly to the historical era (the psychiatric book and essay (Bergson!) Sasha's father has in his office, for example, which aren't mentioned in the abridged version). I like a lot of details in historical fiction on the whole, so that worked too, if differently. The book is divided into 100 sections, which count down from 100 to 1 - presumably related to Sasha's despondent feeling that seeing the future is like knowing the end of a story from the start - like reading it backwards. (Which I found less than convincing, personally, but never mind). Each section has an ink drawing of a raven's feather at the head. I can't do a clean slate reading, obviously, and it might have been different had I not known the ending, but I did find the short, spare sections almost a little annoyingly short, while appreciating the greater amount of detail in the uncut book. Again, read, I found the prose wonderful.
That highlighting of the historical accuracy is so significant in historical fiction, especially children's and teen's, of course, and I think really does have an effect on the reading experience. But for some reason this morning I also remembered that it was going on as far back as Dracula, where the lack of realism resided only in the inexplicable stupidity of going off and leaving the victim alone to be.... (Sorry. 'Nother story!) Anyway -- easier to avoid the problems of accuracy vs. sympathy for the protagonist, the closer to the present day you get, but I still give the author full credit for making the protagonist about as sheltered and unrealistic as a girl of her class and background probably would likely have been, rather than making her the generic feisty historical girl. I wasn't entirely sure about the social standing of a doctor at that period, and was also a little bit dubious about the private teacher (a woman probably in her early 30s, 'not yet married', who taught four girls in her home) having them study the Iliad. Maybe, but maybe not too. Not very serious quibbles though, and I was delighted to have stumbled across this one in the new releases on Audible.
Now mixing reading the paperback (with flags! and notes!) with E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which arrived the other day. Now that is a mind-bending combo. But the impatient wait for Frankie is being so well-rewarded. And I've got two of Sherwood Smith's just arrived to read and Catherine Gilbert Murdock's Princess Ben is on its way, and my first Carrie Jones is here, and In the Serpent's Coils, which sartorias recommended recently is ordered, and there's a new Skulduggery Pleasant out.... Yep, I am one very happy reader.
