Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
249 pages
Published 1990
Read from February 14 to February 16
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
One of the few bits of worthwhile advice I remember from all those "How to Write" books I devoured as a teen is: Choose your narrator wisely. As with Sherlock Holmes, whose stories would be dull fare without the human perspective of Watson (demonstrated by the two stories narrated by Holmes, which are terrible), in many instances the hero's tale is best told not by the hero, but by those around him. (I use "him" because both Holmes and Thomas the Rhymer fall under the pronoun.) This book is divided into five sections: two before Thomas' abduction by the Queen of Elfland, told by an old couple who came to care for him during his rakish youth; the longest tale by far, told by Thomas himself of his time in Fairyland; and two after his return, again by people who love him. The four chapters written from bystanders' perspectives are superb, rich with gentle pathos and kind humanity, sketching a multifaceted, imperfect, but generous-hearted Thomas and the sometimes hearty, sometimes tragic path he cut across their lives. The middle half of the book, however, narrated by Thomas, feels bland and impersonal by contrast, a winsome enough fairy narrative on its own, but less memorable and graceful than the supposedly clumsy words of those around him.
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