So Many Books

I totally jumped the Roman Britain ship on Sunday, when a headache made me feel I couldn't bear one more page of the book steepholm chained me to with chains of burning pain...   (Okay, he did no such thing at all, but the burning pain part is all too true.)  Honestly - the wretched book is full of scenes in which our druid wannabe feisty girl heroine says things like "Oh Goddess, I will dance this sexy dance among the sacred trees to honour you in your eco-friendliness, as I did last moon and the moon before, though I could better honour you and save our Blessed Mother Earth if my hair curled like the flaming red curls of the warrior princess Sabrina, who should really marry my lame companion (damn! - he noticed my sexy dance!) and they can ride off together on the Mare Goddess, Epona, with all of Britain riding behind them to fight the evil Romans at whom I throw rocks and deep curses like 'Bastards!', united by his sensible words about presenting a United Front and not fighting each other - well, all of Britain except his nasty betraying uncle who's a Shadow Master really, and Caligula's boot-boy (bovver!) to boot, and - wait, the Sun God is almost at his zenith and I must go use the privy first!"  BLEH. 

Where was I? Oh, right, on Sunday, read Carolyn MacCullough's Saving Henry, which I loved, as much as I loved Drawing the Ocean, instead of reading the blech book.  (Will try to say more about both, as they deserve it.) And then I got a really bad headache yesterday, and cracked out Sutcliff's Blood Feud, which is one I picked up a few years ago, rather than a childhood favourite.  There was a Thames TV production, which I'd love to get hold of and watch (or hear about, if anyone saw it.  It was called Sea Dragon, and came out in 1990, I think.)

The thing which really struck me about it was that it's in essence - if a very boiled-down essence - giving the story to Esca from Eagle of the Ninth, though over a very different landscape and about 800-some years later.  steepholm and I noticed on our recent Eagle reread, the total lack of the conflict one might expect Esca to feel about helping Marcus retrieve the Eagle and so prevent its ever being used against the Roman forces by the British tribes.  His one loyalty is to Marcus, as is made very clear - and being killed in helping him would not be loss because 'I have shared the hunting with my brother, and it has been a good hunting'. While Marcus is 'keeping faith' with his father, the Legion and Rome, Esca is sharing the hunting with him, and that's enough.

In Blood Feud, Jestyn (later called Jestyn Englishman) is sold into slavery (in Dublin, no less!) and bought by a Viking, Thormod, who seems to do it pretty much on a whim, although there is one moment of eye-catching like the one between Marcus and Esca at the Saturnalia Games (though not nearly as intense).  When Thormod and his ship-mates are planning to go home, Jestyn realises with desperation that he can bear being owned by Thormod, but not by anyone else.  Thormod frees him and then offers him the choice of going back with him to Denmark, and that's it.  There's quite a bit of mention of the feeling of being shoulder-to-shoulder with Thormod, but essentially Jestyn follows him - back to Denmark, where they become blood brothers (in a startlingly slashy ritual), and then head off to Constantinople to fulfill the blood feud - kill or be killed by two brothers who have killed Thormod's father.  And he never really feels the fight as his own, any more than he feels the desire to become a fighter, or than he wants to worship the 'many gods' in the Norse 'god-house' with Thormod instead of his own, one God.  But he does everything without any of the conflict you'd expect him to feel about allowing Thormod's beliefs to supersede all his own.  (This doesn't cover the end of the book, btw, so no spoilers).

I found it fascinating in light of Esca, and interesting in being both a very typical Sutcliff (strong male friendship; characters displaced or with their world changing - often catastrophically - around them; someone wounded and left crippled by it; a healer;society with conflicting or clashing ideologies or peoples) and a quite different one, in only briefly - and rather vaguely - having a British setting.  This one ends in Constantinople, where Jestyn permanently settles, and although he says he remembers his childhood home, especially when spring twilights 'turn the heart homeward', definitively states that 'Home is not Place but People', which surely isn't a typical Sutcliffian sentiment?

After 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...


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.

1 slightly demented Lady-Schrapnell with serious headache

+ 1 Firefox/Bloglines crash

+ a Saturday afternoon

- food

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+ 1 industrial strength headache

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The first picture is of a rather spur-of-the-moment project cast-on, when I couldn't stand looking at the computer any more and the second represents having finished reading Linda Buckley-Archer's The Tar Man. I could just barely manage to read at first (the headache, not the book!) but it got better. It's very difficult to know how to write about this, as anyone who's read Gideon the Cutpurse will no doubt be eager to read The Tar Man, and conversely, you'd really want to read Gideon before The Tar Man. So behind the cut, a bit of discussion that's spoiler-free for The Tar Man (though it makes it even harder to say anything significant) but not for Gideon. ( Read more (safely)... )

Blowing a virtual kiss to Kevin Crossley-Holland, which is about the sum-total of my commenting ability just now.

Finished Gatty's Tale ... yesterday, I think it was. Yesterday's close enough. I went straight through the Arthur trilogy (The Seeing Stone, At the Crossing-Places and King of the Middle March) and into Gatty, and have many Thoughts about all the books in relation to their historical 'accuracy', how history is written and read, and the Arthur trilogy's fantasy element, which I found rather variable in effectiveness, but now just a brief rave about Gatty. Or Gatty's Tale, as Gatty herself is very much alive in the Arthur trilogy.

Gatty is a 'field-girl', who was born on and lived all her life on the Caldicott manor, but is sent to the manor of her lady's sister [EDAmend to cousin, not sister], some several days journey away, to be a chamber-maid. This unexpected change is nothing to what follows, however, as Gatty is taught to read and write and taken on pilgrimage to Jerusalem - which she hadn't even known to be in another country, when Arthur tells her he's going off on crusade. Originally, Gatty's value to the pilgrim group is her amazing singing voice, which is as much charm as entertainment. But readers will know before Gatty herself does how very much else she has to offer - courage, loyalty, common-sense, and an ability to laugh at herself, all qualities which make her easy to love. And perhaps most useful to the author's intent (crossing fingers to avoid being struck down for daring to use the word) is her eagerness to learn, her observant nature and her openness to different people and ways of viewing the world. This makes for a completely gripping read, without a dull page, to my mind.

The pilgrimage starts in the year 1203, and when I put my analytical shutter back, I may have to focus rather hard on the almost across-the-board questioning of the beliefs which sent so many off on the various crusades - even those who firmly believe all Saracens (heathens) are going to hell are fairly open: Oliver, the priest at Caldicot, for example is quite sympathetic and prepared to let people of differing opinions have their say in a way that would be a huge improvement for many today. And I might have a hard look at the Christian knight married to the (gorgeous, graceful, etc, etc,) Muslim woman, and at the other rather impressivly fluid-with-respect-to-class couples. But I'm a romantic sap, and if some hard-headedness is satisfied, my heart can be melted completely, and hence the kiss blown to Kevin Crossley-Holland. (Like throwing flowers, for the last scene of the book - and a purely chivalric kiss!) (And you didn't fool me one bit, Kevin, by the misdirection!) (But no hard feelings for the effort.)

As if a genuinely nice spirit didn't shine through this book brightly enough, I found him saying this about one of my favourite books (and one which I regularly use as a comparison point of how historical fiction for children can be done brilliantly): 'But I also read historical fiction for children by living writers, and if there is one book that set me on fire and emboldened me to write in the first person, it is Karen Cushman’s wonderful Catherine, Called Birdy.' (From the Kevin Crossley-Holland website.)

Overdue enough that I'm in danger of forgetting anything I thought about it, other than a grunt of 'good'. Gideon (by Linda Buckley-Archer) apparently came out in June, but first I noticed of it was the rave by Gail Gauthier, followed by the chance to hear the author at the IBBY conference (which I wrote up here), followed by the book's nomination for the Cybils' Fantasy/Sci Fi award, and Michele's review . I'd better not try to link to all reviews of it, or will never get to saying anything myself.

I like historical fiction, like time travel, liked Linda Buckley-Archer and everything she had to say, so was pretty sure I'd like the book when I finally got around to reading it, which I did, very much. The beginning, with 12-year-old Peter let down by his workaholic/ambitious/neglectful father and taken by the au-pair to visit the much closer (as well as bigger) Dyer family, dragged a bit, but I had a feeling the action would pick up when Peter and Kate ended up accidentally transported to 1763. And it did - but only after they met Gideon and were taken by him to an aristocratic family who turn out to live in the building which houses Kate's school in 2006. Having the children - stunned, confused, often terrified, but sometimes just amused - to mediate the differences as well as the similarities of life a couple of hundred years earlier - works extremely well. (I think I may have stolen steepholm's phrasing for this benefit of time travel as opposed to 'straight' historical fiction here.) Peter especially develops from a rather one-dimensional, somewhat self-centred (if understandably so) boy, to a bright and open-minded one, who is thrown back and forth realistically between his appreciation of life in 1763 and shock and repulsion at the injustices experienced by so many then. The book is especially vivid and gripping when the children and Gideon arrive in London - and the sequel, The Tar Man, will be following the villainous Tar Man in 21st century London, which should be amazing. The appearance of historical characters was generally a lot of fun, there was serious talk (when the scenes shifted back to the children's parents, the scientists involved in the antigravity project on which Kate's father had been working, and the police investigating the children's disappearance) about the ethics and scientific results of time travel, and few characters were just saintly good or horribly nasty-without-some-cause, after some initial appearances in those guises.

So, was there anything I wasn't mad about? (Or should I say, am I picky enough to find fault with a book this much fun?) Yes. ( Pickiness behind a cut )
Quibbles quibbled, I'll be eagerly getting the sequel as soon as I can get my hands on it, as this was overall tremendously enjoyable. And now off to read Farah's report on Inter-galactic Playground...

One old - Simon, by Rosemary Sutcliff, one newer, The Ballad of Lucy Whipple, by Karen Cushman. With a little blathering about Karen Cushman's others thrown in for whatever kind of measure.


( More on Simon )

( Lucy (and other girls) )