Princess Ben, "subversiveness" and kids' fantasy books

[lady_schrapnell]

Not the definitive post on subversiveness in kids' books - or even the long and rambling one that I may or may not get around to at some point - but just a cry of pain.

Those who know this LJ will know that I'm a huge admirer of Catherine Gilbert Murdock, who has written two YA novels I consider just about perfect - funny, intelligent, believable and deeply engaging. She's on my buy before it's published list, and as soon as I heard about Princess Ben, that's exactly what I did. When I read a bit about it, I thought it sounded as if it might be bog-standard fairy tale-with-a-twist fantasy in a lot of writers' hands, but I had complete faith in Murdock's ability to produce something fantastic. Into every reader's life a little Rain of Disillusionment must fall, I suppose, and it's all the more bitter for the growing feeling that everyone else is likely to heap praise on the book. (Though there is, at least, a third D.J. book in progress, and that, I'll snap up with all my previous CGM fervour.)

So, why am I not joining everyone else?

Well, for one thing, the writing style isn't to my taste - though I might be alone in this, the sort of faux-historical-formal style offered me no reading pleasure, and has, much more surprisingly, a fair number of slips or even errors. That would be a bit of a problem, but could be overlooked except for the other problems.

There's the -- world, though that seems a rather generous word - too. It has that feeling of being too small, inadequately built, that you occasionally get from fantasy. I don't just mean literally, although that is certainly the case, as the 'Kingdom' of Montagne seems to consist of one castle, one market town and a big, big mountain. (Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure this is intended as a completely invented world, as the France-and-Germany likeness of Montagne and its nearest neighbour and enemy, Drachensbett, is increased by one rather odd mention of France.) The castle itself is very cool, and I wish the rest of the setting had been done as well.

Those who know me a bit will possibly know that I've got a very sensitive button around the presentation of fat characters in children's/teen lit. Hell, I only fell for steepholm because he did it so well in his book The Fetch of Mardy Watt. (Okay, not really, though I did hold my breath right along with Deborah on the DWJ list when she asked him, in fear and trembling, please, please to tell her that Mardy doesn't lose weight as a side-effect of her magical coming-into-her-own. (She doesn't and she's perfect as she's a great character, who happens to be overweight and it doesn't mean anything else.) (Over-weight as it relates to health is an entirely different matter, and not one relevant to this discussion.) (I'm lost in a parenthetical maze again.... ) ....?)

So, Ben? Overweight when the book starts, shown stuffing her face with not very appealing sounding 'comfort food' fairly frequently, and gets more and more overweight as she gets more and more unhappy. And here's the kicker: she's taken prisoner, forced to slave away (mostly for the cook of the enemy's army's camp - oh, the irony), gets home, discovers that her bratty behaviour has left the whole country open to disaster (thanks to one of those rather-inexplicable World Government Rules), and becomes responsible, willing to mend her manners - and - guess what? Yup. She hadn't even noticed, but she's lost a lot of weight, so she's now curvy and pleasing rather than fat and a horror. She realizes the truth of her (dead) mother's words at last - "Fill the stomach, not the soul". It's spelled out more clearly in case that isn't crystal - "Wise that she was [sic], she recognized that for all the passion she put into her sauces and stews, food was only an emblem of devotion, not love itself."

That weight-loss-with-meaning would be more than enough for me, given my touchiness about this subject, but then, as part of her reformation, Ben tries to learn some of her mother's healing skills. She begins by chance with her maid, whose cold-curing starts all the castle staff rushing to Ben for cures, leading up to this one: "A baker with much hesitation and stumbling asked what I might recommend for his child suffering from stomachache. Scratching my head, I suggested a diet of peppermint tea and applesauce (another of my mother's remedies), and the baker returned the next week to inform me, awed, that it had worked to perfection." Awed? Yup, because we all know that nobody below the rank of princess, by birth or marriage, can possibly provide a simple, common-sense remedy for stomachache.

I was baffled as all get out as to how this could have come from a writer I love and admire so much, until I read this, at the very end.

And so I dedicate this work to [Queen Sophia]'s memory as well as that of my parents, for however we might criticize those who rear us, the fact that we survive at all into adulthood, however late that passage comes, is testament enough to their ability and perseverance.

Oof. Aside from the crantankerous talking back I was doing to the book at that point '(Hello? Testament to the kid's ability and perseverance too/instead sometimes?!'), I had a sudden sense of insight - not into how the book was written, of course, but into how it felt to me as if it had been written. I could all too easily see the author, having read her kids a few fantasies with beautiful, dutiful princess heroines saying to herself that she should write a proper fantasy for them, which wasn't like that. And if the princess wasn't pretty and dutiful, wasn't interested in the boring lessons that the nasty Queen wants her to learn, but changed through hardship and diligent application - wow, that'd be really different. Nobody's done that. And Murdock's kids might have been misbehaving and driving her mad sometimes and the whole book developed a degree of parental Mary Sue-ism, in which the adult turns out to have been right all along.... (I'm a mother - I can see the appeal from time to time. But not really.)

I have one question remaining, only: this is getting a starred review in Horn Book, apparently, and Roger Sutton calls it 'slyly subversive'. For what values of subversive?

Comments

[breathingbooks.livejournal.com]

I hate the magical fat loss too. I don't mind it if the character loses weight while trudging with only a loaf of bread through the wilderness (bonus points if they head for the sweet shop upon reemerging), but so often it's tied to character growth and that stinks of both cheating and wish fulfillment. And if the heroine compulsively ate before, she's still going to struggle with it, not just wake up and go, "Oh lawks, I am thin! Fetch me a frozen grape and my shopping coach."

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

not just wake up and go, "Oh lawks, I am thin! Fetch me a frozen grape and my shopping coach."

:) That's wonderful.

Alas, in this case, it's tied to the character growth and the handsome-but-evil ('cept not really) enemy prince's regard too. Oh dear. I'll have to keep muttering 'Oh lawks, I am thin!' to keep myself out of the bad mood!

[jadelennox]

Oh, thank God. I had exactly the same reaction to the book and its fat politics, and also to Roger's claim that it is slyly subversive (heroine learns to kick ass, all while losing weight, becoming beautiful, and getting the boy is subversive in what planet in 2008?), and I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I don't think there was anything unusually wrong with the book, but it infuriates me that it is getting all of this glowing praise.

*too relieved to comment in blank verse*

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

*also very relieved not to be alone on this one*

I did hope that you'd find the fat politics (like the term, btw - I can never figure out if I should consider myself fattist, like feminist, or the Bad Books are fattist, like racist) equally off, if you'd read it, but didn't want to count on it 100%. I hate being the only one to see that kind of thing in a book! While watching it get the glowing praise, as you say...

[vcmw]

I really dislike books for children where the adults are all presented, within the frame of a book primarily following child characters, as intelligent, competent, and engaged. It sounds like this might be one of those? If so, I think I'll avoid it.

And magical fat loss is just strange, especially as it rarely seems to create any emotional or health problems or confusions for characters when their bodies change radically in one direction or another (for one thing, after puberty, wouldn't you respond weirdly to the changes in your desired gender's noticing of you, when your body changes radically to or away from whatever the beauty standard of your area is?). Also, modern standards of attractiveness seem to usually be pushed backward into whatever time period the story is set in, so we don't see characters plucking their foreheads or worrying whether their necks and upper arms were "smoothly rounded and pale" or whatnot. And no one comments on teeth not being rotted or skin not being poxed or any of the other big deal attractiveness features of times pre widespread use of antibiotics and dental care. It's all a bit strange to me.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

really dislike books for children where the adults are all presented, within the frame of a book primarily following child characters, as intelligent, competent, and engaged. It sounds like this might be one of those? If so, I think I'll avoid it.

Well, to be fair to it, it's not that way (adults all intelligent, etc.) as it goes along - or at least not overtly. It seems as if the adults are all wicked or stupid. I think you'd have to be a pretty unsophisticated reader not to have got a hint that Ben was barking up the wrong tree in a number of ways, but her growing awareness that the nasty, cruel Queen (her aunt, and guardian after the death of Ben's parents and uncle, the King) is really a competent and devoted leader, and just not very good with stoppy 15-year-olds, gathers force until there's that heavy-handed message at the end. (It's first-person, written by a much older Ben.) And her parents are both killed in the first chapter, so it's easy to see how the older Ben looking back would be full of 'weren't my parents wonderful' feelings. But that then raises the question of why she was doing all the supposed comfort eating back when she was perfectly happy with perfectly loving parents in a wonderfully happy country, rather. I honestly don't know - there's so much that doesn't make sense about this book to me, and I never felt that way for one second reading Murdock's first two (non-fantasy) books.

Yes, to your comment about the beauty standards of other times! I still remember first encountering the forehead plucking practice in Barbara Willard's The Lark and the Laurel as a child, and was amazed and shocked at the idea. But good to learn young that they do things differently there.

[amomandagirl.livejournal.com]

Eww, thanks for the warning.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the thanks! I honestly wouldn't discourage anyone from reading it, but I'd love to hear responses if you decide to try it yourself.

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

It sounds like I would not enjoy reading that, but I did enjoy very much your review. Which of the other two Catherine Gilbert Murdoch would you recommend higher? or no preferences?

And I must whine a little bit, a smidgeon just, I am a bit fed up of YA books about princesses! Not that I have anything against them, but how many new YA books got Princess in the title?

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

oh, nevermind the request for recommendations, Dairy Queen and Off Season of course, i feel stupid! I have read Dairy Queen and enjoyed it very much even if american football really is totally alien to me.

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

me yet again, sorry, but honestly, but why does somebody who wrote The Dairy Queen go out and write about medievaloid *princesses*?!?

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I know! I mean I don't know! Aside from the possible trap of the non-spec-fic reader turning to writing it without knowing what's already been done to death.
Wish I could do a spot of time travel and have given her Court and Crown Duet to read, so she could see unconventionally-behaving nobility and great world-building and fun romance, before she wrote this! (And also with you on the football being - not as alien, maybe, but so not interesting to me - and yet I loved the book.)

Just saw I'd missed your last post somehow, and am going to join the huzzahs over your re-appearance there now!

[generalblossom.livejournal.com]

I think it is very strange that a writer can make me love a book based on american sports scenarios and then seemingly not being able to write convincingly a much more appealing ( to us) scenario. I guess, it´s not the setting, it´s the characters and plot and just the story which matters.

About princesses, oh I blame Disney. Or possibly, in the nicest possible way Meg Cabot. Not that I do blame Cabot, I enjoyed a lot of her books, they are not exactly ambitious, but I get a strong sense of voices, of characters and beyond diction I just got to totally agree with Meg Cabot about somethings ( vampires´ appeal for example. enough already). But it´s like everywhere you look, princesses. Bah. I want more McKillip heroines, oh please.

I must post more, I want so much to do some book pushing of my own!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

I think it is very strange that a writer can make me love a book based on american sports scenarios and then seemingly not being able to write convincingly a much more appealing ( to us) scenario.

Absolutely, totally, completely agree with you! (Very late saying so, but not because I had to think it over or anything...)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder just how much 'fat' and 'female' cultural conditioning escapes people. I still shudder when people say they loved Miyazaki's Spirited Away</i. the best of all his films, with its thin, shivering little girl who sobs and cries and is agonized every single time she tries to eat a tiny meal, whereas all the fat characters are gobbling and smacking and being turned into gross animals right and left. Shudder.

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Yikes. I haven't seen that film for ages, and am not sure I remember much about it at all. But I'm sure you're right about our missing things left, right and centre. The overweight character losing weight after coming into his/her magical abilities & developing self-worth thing would be easy to miss if you hadn't read much spec-fic and didn't realise how common it was. (But how RS could see subversiveness there, I still can't begin to imagine!)

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

You have now inspired me to track down "Hostage!", a book I read as a child, and now cannot remember who wrote it, but maybe it's still in my parents' house, or my brother might have it.

Mainly because the hero is a fat boy, and after spending several weeks as a hostage to some Middle-Eastern terrorists, I remember that he comes out thin because there wasn't much food available, but I can't remember how, if at all, he deals with his weight loss.

[somanywings.livejournal.com]

ah, i always enjoy reading your reviews! I haven't read this book, but well said!

Oh how i hang my head in shame when thinking back to my favourite characters when i was a child, and how i'd push myself to be more like them, conscientious, well-mannered, submissive and, of course, pretty. I hold a grudge against Enid Blyton to this day!

It's frustrating to see that not much has changed in the last fifteen years. I dislike writers who have a particular agenda or moral to enforce through children's literature.

I'm actually going to recommend this book to a few 'feminist' friends of mine, and see what they make of it. Thank you for the entertaining review though!

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Thanks! What a nice thing to say... (I was away and spaced when I got back.)

I do have to say that the same author wrote very different books before (though also YA/teen). In fact, now that I think of it, her main character is given power and autonomy in one of the most male-only arenas imaginable: US football. (Kind of like rugby, in that brute strength counts for a LOT, and there aren't anything like the number of women's teams you get in soccer.) So odd that those two books are wonderfully different from the Enid Blyton type, and this one isn't.

On the matter of the agenda or moral - I tend to agree, but then hit up against books with an agenda that's something like female empowerment, or being yourself and not worrying about what everyone else might be thinking of you -- or worrying about the environment or some other issue I agree with. Then I think I"m like the conservatives in a lot of ways, which doesn't make me happy. ;)