Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane
429 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 24 to September 28
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
I've long placed Macfarlane in the company of Helen Macdonald, Rebecca Solnit, Ellen Meloy, and Roger Deakin, practitioners of the English language's most affecting and gorgeous nature writing in recent years. He has his moments of transcendence here, whether expounding upon the philosophical weight of the geologic past or the disorienting new realities of climate change, plastic pollution, and nuclear waste disposal. Despite that, I feel this isn't Macfarlane's best effort.
Underland flourishes when Macfarlane makes connections between disparate concepts, forming a coherent and powerful teleology of meaning for those of us adrift in the Anthropocene, such as when the "atomic priesthood" conceptualized by Thomas Sebeok, tasked with relaying warnings of nuclear waste into the far future using folklore and myth, disconcertingly mirrors the warnings in the Kalevala concerning a deeply buried cache of powerful spells and objects, which can only be approached while armored in copper and iron, and must never be loosed upon the surface world.
Oddly, Macfarlane's writing was at its worst when simply describing the scenery. Here he adopts a terse prose, clipped of its subject and flattened into present tense, a mechanical printout of sensory information without anyone to experience it. Perhaps this was a conscious choice reflecting the solastalgia of a world falling apart in our hands. Regardless of intent, it became repetitive and didn't match the fluent, beautiful nature writing Macfarlane has displayed in the past.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Monday, September 23, 2019
2019 read #14: Circe by Madeline Miller.
Circe by Madeline Miller
394 pages
Published 2018
Read from September 21 to September 23
Rating: 4 out of 5
Women, throughout the history of the written word, have been relegated to roles as helpmeets, trophies, obstacles, cheerleaders, and convenient plot devices. The few famous literary characters who were women tended to appear as chapters in the narratives of men. The mythological figure of Circe exists almost entirely as an appendage to Odysseus: initially a powerful and dangerous foil for him to overcome, subsequently conquered by his supreme manhood and serving a domestic role for him and his crew. In texts where her existence doesn't revolve around Odysseus, Circe is depicted (more or less literally) as a maneater, a manifestation of female libido and power who transforms her male "victims" into swine.
It's satisfying to read a modern novel based on Circe's legends that, for a good chunk of its length, refuses to center Odysseus as the upright pillar of her story. Miller's treatment explores age-old topics like godhood and mortality and the capricious cruelty of the divine, centering Circe herself as a belittled outcast in a divine household where nymphs are treated merely as bargaining chips and as playthings. She is the focus of her own story—an obvious choice rendered significant by the overwhelming numbers of male storytellers (and readers) who would be baffled by it to this day.
I grew up with the safely sanitized versions of the classical Mediterranean myths we all absorbed. Odysseus was my favorite as a child. A hero who used his brains far more than his brawn sailed directly into my nerdy, shrimpy little heart. I put myself in his sandals when I read a bowdlerized and abridged version of The Odyssey, right up until the end, when I also identified with Telemachus and viewed Odysseus as the esteemable and good father figure I lacked. The chapters in Miller's novel when Odysseus arrives on Aiaia, the romance he shares with the wary and cynical witch Circe has become, felt nice, cozy, fulfilling. All of which made Miller's subsequent deconstruction of that little domestic interlude all the more powerful and eye-opening.
394 pages
Published 2018
Read from September 21 to September 23
Rating: 4 out of 5
Women, throughout the history of the written word, have been relegated to roles as helpmeets, trophies, obstacles, cheerleaders, and convenient plot devices. The few famous literary characters who were women tended to appear as chapters in the narratives of men. The mythological figure of Circe exists almost entirely as an appendage to Odysseus: initially a powerful and dangerous foil for him to overcome, subsequently conquered by his supreme manhood and serving a domestic role for him and his crew. In texts where her existence doesn't revolve around Odysseus, Circe is depicted (more or less literally) as a maneater, a manifestation of female libido and power who transforms her male "victims" into swine.
It's satisfying to read a modern novel based on Circe's legends that, for a good chunk of its length, refuses to center Odysseus as the upright pillar of her story. Miller's treatment explores age-old topics like godhood and mortality and the capricious cruelty of the divine, centering Circe herself as a belittled outcast in a divine household where nymphs are treated merely as bargaining chips and as playthings. She is the focus of her own story—an obvious choice rendered significant by the overwhelming numbers of male storytellers (and readers) who would be baffled by it to this day.
I grew up with the safely sanitized versions of the classical Mediterranean myths we all absorbed. Odysseus was my favorite as a child. A hero who used his brains far more than his brawn sailed directly into my nerdy, shrimpy little heart. I put myself in his sandals when I read a bowdlerized and abridged version of The Odyssey, right up until the end, when I also identified with Telemachus and viewed Odysseus as the esteemable and good father figure I lacked. The chapters in Miller's novel when Odysseus arrives on Aiaia, the romance he shares with the wary and cynical witch Circe has become, felt nice, cozy, fulfilling. All of which made Miller's subsequent deconstruction of that little domestic interlude all the more powerful and eye-opening.
Friday, September 20, 2019
2019 read #13: The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
831 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 5 to September 20
Rating: 2 out of 5
This is one of those exceptionally rare occasions in which a standalone epic fantasy novel the size of a cat would have been improved had it been split into a trilogy and padded out with an extra hundred or two hundred pages of worldbuilding and introspection.
Some spoilers ahead.
The first half of this book is great. It has many of the flaws common to epic fantasy—too many coincidental meetings and overheard conversations driving the plot forward, too many feasts where every dish gets listed, too many repetitions of the word "trencher"—but big things start happening a hundred pages in, and for a while, the accelerating pace and the appealing characters are enough to grip your interest and keep you going. Around the halfway point, though, the book begins to feel a bit undercooked. A major climax occurs with the thwarting of a palace coup, and as the dust settles, the narrative sputters out, losing much of its momentum. It feels like a logical place to end the first book of a trilogy: falling action after a climax, wrapping up some loose ends, setting the scene for the next book. Coming as it does in the middle of a single volume, however, it just feels like sloppy pacing—a feeling compounded by how everything after that point feels rushed and only half-finished.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, a viewpoint character who has completed his first character arc is randomly given the responsibility of interviewing suspects among the nobility (presumably because he has nothing better to do), just so that there can be a couple dramatic prison cell monologues. As soon as those are wrapped up, the viewpoint character gets taken off the case and sent on to his next plot function, never really regaining agency as anything other than a plot device.
The book's strict reliance on the same four viewpoint characters forces similar detours and epic journeys upon each of them. All four crisscross the world in a period of just a few pages; the result feels more like the outline of the second novel in a series than an actual narrative. People we've followed from the very beginning just happen to meet at the ends of the earth, or just happen to be on hand at exactly the right time to witness tertiary characters duke it out, literally half a world away from where they started.
A semi-legendary character teased from the setting's ancient past appears, gains an intriguing layer of nuance in a memorable scene, and then does a ridiculous heel turn that never coheres into something that makes sense. Her "Everything you thought you knew was a lie!" gambit never pays off or affects the plot in any way, and then she dies like a chump.
Worst of all, almost every main character gets a fake-out death scene just to manipulate your emotions. Hell, some characters get two. It all feels like a mess of clumsy plotting, hurrying you along to the preordained set-piece battle between the forces of good and evil. With the rushed pacing, the repeated cliffhanger "death scenes" that get walked back in the next chapter, and the lack of space for the characters to breathe, each new setback the characters face becomes an annoyance for the reader rather than a source of dramatic tension. Like, we know so-and-so will get dramatically reunited with her dragon, and we know the magic MacGuffin sword will do what it's supposed to do in the end, so if you aren't going to bother giving us more than plot checkpoints for half the book, and you're giving us fake death scenes instead of character development, why bother slowing things down with extra steps? Just get to the end already.
So, contrary to all the laws of nature and book criticism, I have to say that stretching this tome into three would have fixed many of its issues. Build up the characters' setbacks organically. Let them experience doubt and growth beyond the plateau they all reach at the halfway mark. Maintain the excellent balance of character beats and plot movement from the first half of the story by giving the rest of it space to take root and spread its crown.
831 pages
Published 2019
Read from September 5 to September 20
Rating: 2 out of 5
This is one of those exceptionally rare occasions in which a standalone epic fantasy novel the size of a cat would have been improved had it been split into a trilogy and padded out with an extra hundred or two hundred pages of worldbuilding and introspection.
Some spoilers ahead.
The first half of this book is great. It has many of the flaws common to epic fantasy—too many coincidental meetings and overheard conversations driving the plot forward, too many feasts where every dish gets listed, too many repetitions of the word "trencher"—but big things start happening a hundred pages in, and for a while, the accelerating pace and the appealing characters are enough to grip your interest and keep you going. Around the halfway point, though, the book begins to feel a bit undercooked. A major climax occurs with the thwarting of a palace coup, and as the dust settles, the narrative sputters out, losing much of its momentum. It feels like a logical place to end the first book of a trilogy: falling action after a climax, wrapping up some loose ends, setting the scene for the next book. Coming as it does in the middle of a single volume, however, it just feels like sloppy pacing—a feeling compounded by how everything after that point feels rushed and only half-finished.
In the aftermath of the attempted coup, a viewpoint character who has completed his first character arc is randomly given the responsibility of interviewing suspects among the nobility (presumably because he has nothing better to do), just so that there can be a couple dramatic prison cell monologues. As soon as those are wrapped up, the viewpoint character gets taken off the case and sent on to his next plot function, never really regaining agency as anything other than a plot device.
The book's strict reliance on the same four viewpoint characters forces similar detours and epic journeys upon each of them. All four crisscross the world in a period of just a few pages; the result feels more like the outline of the second novel in a series than an actual narrative. People we've followed from the very beginning just happen to meet at the ends of the earth, or just happen to be on hand at exactly the right time to witness tertiary characters duke it out, literally half a world away from where they started.
A semi-legendary character teased from the setting's ancient past appears, gains an intriguing layer of nuance in a memorable scene, and then does a ridiculous heel turn that never coheres into something that makes sense. Her "Everything you thought you knew was a lie!" gambit never pays off or affects the plot in any way, and then she dies like a chump.
Worst of all, almost every main character gets a fake-out death scene just to manipulate your emotions. Hell, some characters get two. It all feels like a mess of clumsy plotting, hurrying you along to the preordained set-piece battle between the forces of good and evil. With the rushed pacing, the repeated cliffhanger "death scenes" that get walked back in the next chapter, and the lack of space for the characters to breathe, each new setback the characters face becomes an annoyance for the reader rather than a source of dramatic tension. Like, we know so-and-so will get dramatically reunited with her dragon, and we know the magic MacGuffin sword will do what it's supposed to do in the end, so if you aren't going to bother giving us more than plot checkpoints for half the book, and you're giving us fake death scenes instead of character development, why bother slowing things down with extra steps? Just get to the end already.
So, contrary to all the laws of nature and book criticism, I have to say that stretching this tome into three would have fixed many of its issues. Build up the characters' setbacks organically. Let them experience doubt and growth beyond the plateau they all reach at the halfway mark. Maintain the excellent balance of character beats and plot movement from the first half of the story by giving the rest of it space to take root and spread its crown.
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