Stay Calm and Tell Stories: A Reading List for Self-Isolation

It’s official: all of New Zealand is in lockdown. I was at work on Monday, though the library itself was closed to customers, and that night Jacinda Ardern announced that all non-essential businesses and public venues would be closed for the next four weeks (today and tomorrow will be the grace period for people to start shutting things down).

The good news is that I was prepared for it: my father’s cousin is a doctor who warned him that this was a) serious and b) something that would last for a while, so that message was passed onto me about a week ago. The panic-buying has officially started, but I’m well-stocked. On the whole everyone is pretty calm: the government put a plan in place and has been following it for a while now; the local news stations have been wonderfully informative and Jacinda herself projects a sense of calm and competency.

I’ve no doubt there’ll be a few wankers who will make things difficult (despite all the warning signs, some people just didn’t bother to prepare) but on the whole the general feel is that we’re in control and nipping this thing in the bud. The number of cases is now over one hundred, but people are recovering and there have been no deaths so far.

So what to do when you’re in self-isolation? I’ve always got a pile of books to read and shows to watch, but I think it’s important to choice your material wisely. Don’t for example, watch HBO’s Chernobyl. Seriously, that would be a really stupid idea. Not something that I would ever do. No way.  

Be smart, and choose something from my recommendations: eleven chill, spiritual, life-affirming stories to read/watch while in self-isolation:

From My Favourites Shelf: The Messenger

I've decided on a new series of blogposts (to go with the dozen or so I'm already juggling) and it's one that delves into some of my absolute favourite stories from childhood and beyond. Let's call it: From My Favourites Shelf.

Some of these are going to be a bit obscure (more than a few are long out of print) but they're essentially the formative books of my youth, which have managed to stay with me across the years and which I'm now re-reading as an adult to see if they've held up.

First up is Monica Dickens's The Messenger quartet...

Reading/Watching Log #2

I got caught up in my studies this month and so didn't have an awful lot of time to spend on reading – though having said that, it's a bit scary to look back and realize how much material I managed to watch. I'm currently writing a sub-series for my column on Helen Lowe's blog called "Fantasy Movies from the Eighties that Weren't that Bad," which gave me the perfect excuse to revisit some of the movies I grew up with, and I finally got around to installing the requisite apps on my Tablet so I can access ebooks from the library.  

But it was a varied month, with stuff dating from 1985 to 2015: murders in India, intrigue in Ancient Egypt, romance in South Africa, and politics in a galaxy far, far away.

Meta: Margaret Mahy and the Precious Mundane, the Supernatural Threat

It's been over two years since Margaret Mahy passed away, one of New Zealand's best and most popular authors, winner of the Hans Christian Anderson Award for her lasting contribution to children's literature, and best known to me through her novels for young adults. Though I never got the chance to meet her in person, it's difficult to recall a time when I didn't know her name (or at least her work).

Her stories have followed me throughout my life, from childhood (The Lion in the Meadow, The Boy With Two Shadows), to primary school (The Downhill Crocodile Whizz) to early adolescence (The Haunting, Maddigan's Fantasia) and even my university years (The Changeover and The Tricksters). She lived in Governor's Bay, a twenty minute drive from my house and one of my favourite places to visit, with a memorial plaque now placed on a beautiful stretch of land that I've walked many times.

Yet for some reason I have no decent pictures of.

The more I think of her, the more I realize how much of an influence she's had on my experiences as a reader/writer, and having attended a seminar last May as part of the Christchurch Writer's Festival that focused on her best-known works, I was inspired to re-read three of my favourite Mahy novels.

In my mind at least, they form an unofficial trilogy: The Haunting (1982), The Changeover (1984) and The Tricksters (1986). The first two won the Carnegie Medal in their respective years (making her one of only seven authors to win it twice) and the third is generally considered one of her most mature and complex works.

Review: Clariel

Whether he's writing YA or Middle Grade, Garth Nix is one of my favourite fantasy authors. There are three reasons as to why I find his work so engrossing: amazing female characters (always protagonists), fascinating world-building, and sheer originality.

Bells of diminishing size that are used to subdue the dead, the personified days of the week, monstrous creatures posing as little white cats, houses that are as large as countries, familiar aspects of folklore that are reshaped to fit the contours of his own original worlds – these are just some of the marvels that Nix mixes into his stories, but his real gift is in describing them in such a way that makes them feel both wonderful and organic.

It's hard to describe, but he has this knack of pouring intense creativity into prose that contains and controls it. As a result, nothing ever feels outlandish or cumbersome, even when certain concepts technically are outlandish or cumbersome. Perhaps those who've already read some of his work know what I'm driving at here, but Nix really does have a gift when it comes to shaping his imaginary worlds, and it's in making the weird seem extraordinarily normal.

SPOILERS FOLLOW...

Review: The Grisha Trilogy

 

Before reading a word of Leigh Bardugo’s The Grisha trilogy (comprised of Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising), I was left bemused by the endorsement from Stylist Magazine that was blazoned across the cover of the second instalment:

A New York Times bestseller, it’s like The Hunger Games meets Harry Potter meets Twilight meets Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones; basically epic magical fantasy but completely for grown-ups.

Wow, that’s... quite a list of comparisons. Technically all those books fall within the very broad spectrum of the fantasy genre, but to use them all at once is rather like comparing a meal of lamb chops to beef, bacon and venison. I mean, they’re all meat, right?

But just for the sake of it, let’s sift through Stylist’s chosen comparisons (and add a few more).

Review: The Amaranth Enchantment, The Iron Witch, Stolen Songbird

A few weeks ago I got a collection of books out of the library, all YA fantasy. As it turned out, I had so much on my plate that I was getting overdue notices for them before I had the chance to crack even one of them open, but I’ve finally been able to catch up with my reading in the past week. And having read three books in the same genre, I was struck by some of the similarities. If ever anyone was to ask me whether YA fantasy has a formula, my response based on these three books would be a definite yes - at least in one distinct regard.

The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry is best described as a loose rendition of the Cinderella story. Lucinda Chapdelaine was orphaned at a young age and now does menial labour in her aunt and uncle’s jewellery shop; treated well enough by her ailing uncle, but cruelly by her greedy aunt (a stand-in for the usual wicked stepmother).

Over the course of a single day, three visitors separately enter the shop to change Lucinda’s life forever. The first is a woman who asks that a precious gemstone be given a proper fitting, and it’s not long before she’s identified as the mysterious Amaranth Witch. The second is a young man looking for an engagement present, one handsome enough to catch Lucinda’s eye until her uncle tells her that he’s the crown prince Gregor. And the third is a boy called Peter, who sneaks into Lucinda’s bedroom at night in order to hide from pursuit.

She accommodates him for the night, only to find that by the morning he’s taken off – and the gemstone with him. Not only that, but her uncle died in his sleep and her aunt wastes little time in throwing her out onto the street. Remember, this is all within a twelve-hour period.

Lucinda decides to throw herself on the mercy of the Amaranth Witch, who wrangles a deal with her: if Lucinda returns her magical gemstone, she’ll be rewarded with the house she lived in with her parents (currently occupied by the witch herself). To do this she must track down Peter, who in turn tells her that he’s already sold it to the prince...

As you can probably tell, this book has more coincidences than a Dickens novel. Everyone seems to be related or connected to every other character in some way, and the plot can get quite convoluted as it attempts to untangle itself. Lucinda’s immediate goals are constantly shifting, from returning stolen property to pickpocketing the prince to escaping prison to sneaking back into the palace – after a certain point it’s easy to forget what she’s doing and why.

There’s also the inexplicable presence of a goat which acts like a dog that serves no narrative purpose and is never explained, and increasing levels of weirdness when the Amaranth Witch explains her backstory and breeches the subject of alternate dimensions.

You know what this reminds me of? Brace yourself for a bizarre comparison. The 1994 animated version of The Swan Princess. There was a period during my late teens in which I was obsessed with that movie, totally entranced by its barefaced weirdness. Like that film, The Amaranth Enchantment is the sort of book that has moments of real poignancy and suspense, followed by musical numbers that merge beauty pageants with Disney-esque revisionism with 19^th century ballet.

The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney is a dark urban fairytale in which Donna Underwood must grapple with malevolent wood elves in an attempt to rescue her best friend Navin Sharma. Raised by alchemists who strive to keep dangerous fey creatures contained in the Ironwood (with a little concocting of the Elixir of Life on the side) Donna no longer attends school after an “Incident” that ended with her destroying a locker with her bare hands.

Long story short, her father died saving her life from a monster when she was young, though her injuries required Donna to undergo a magical surgery that ended in silver and iron tattoos all over her arms – with the added bonus of super-strength. Now she wears a pair of elbow-length gloves to hide them, which caught the attention of high-school bullies, which in turn led to the aforementioned Incident.

But what was she doing out in the forest as a child that led to the fey attack? You’ll have to wait until the next book to find out.

At a party she meets Alexander Greyson (which amusingly enough, is the alias that Jonathan Rhys Meyer’s Dracula used in the recent television show of the same name) and strikes up a rapport. He decides to help her out when her best friend Navin goes missing, and confides to her that he has secrets of his own – two long scars on his shoulder blades where a pair of wings used to be.

Why did he have wings and who took them away? Wait until the next book.  

The structure of the story is decidedly odd. Navin’s kidnapping and subsequent rescue attempt doesn’t occur until over halfway through the book, and most of the interesting world-building and backstory is conveyed through dialogue. Unsurprisingly, this makes fey mythology and ancient alchemical societies a lot less interesting than they should be. Donna spends most of the first half of the book pinging between Navin and Xan, and by the time she finally meets the Queen of the Wood Elves and is ordered to steal the Elixir of Life if she wants to save her friend, it feels like too little, too late.

What consequences lie in wait for Donna once it’s discovered that she stole the precious Elixir from her guardians to save her friend’s life? You guessed it. Next book.

Finally Stolen Songbird by Danielle L. Jenson, which I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about for a while now. Cecile de Troyes is a teenage girl with a beautiful singing voice who is riding home from town one day when she's waylaid by a past acquaintance. Instead of seeing her home safely, Luc ties her up and forces her into a tunnel network under the Forsaken Mountain, insisting that she's on her way to the buried city of Trollus where the trolls dwell.

Cecile is horrified to realize that he plans to sell her to the royal family, who believe that she is the subject of a prophecy that will break the curse that holds them all under the earth. But to fulfil her destiny, she first has to marry their crown prince Tristan. When their "bonding" ceremony (which results in a psychic connection that forces them to feel each other's emotions) fails to release the trolls from their prison, Cecile is kept on at the palace in the hopes her presence will eventually weaken the magic that holds the population within the city.

At first Cecile can think of nothing but escape. Her family is no doubt frantically worried, and her life held precariously in the hands of her new husband and father-in-law. But gradually she comes to learn more about the society she's now a part of - the prejudice against half-bloods, the backstory of the witch's curse, and the longing for many citizens to form a new and fairer form of government. Against her will, she finds herself becoming invested in Trollus - helped along by her growing attraction to Tristan.

The world-building of Stolen Songbird (I just love that title) is generally very good. I enjoyed the city of Trollus, with its massive waterfall, floating lights and gardens of glass, and Jensen excels at her depiction of political intrigue. Having established some fundamental facts about troll culture – that they have to keep their promises, that they are unable to lie, and that the exchange of "favours" is practically a currency, these aspects are woven into the plot to provide plenty of twists, turns and loophole abuse. To survive in this world, Cecile has to remain sharp and focused, and she's refreshingly proactive in learning what she can and wielding it to the best of her ability.

Something I particularly appreciated: even though Cecile is bewildered by the thought that she might be desirable and attractive, she has a beautiful singing voice, knows it, and uses it at least once to attain something she wants. Nice to see a protagonist recognise her own talents without false modesty or contrived obliviousness.

The biggest weakness would have to be the depiction of the trolls as a species. To start with, there was some beautifully imaginative descriptions of what trolls looked like, from Cecile’s first glimpse of one:  “the two sides of his face, so flawless on their own, were like halves of a fractured sculpture put back together askew,” to the portrayal of the Queen as a Siamese twin with her much more verbose and intelligent doll-sized sister growing out of her back.

A species of grotesques? That’s just awesome, as well as an opportunity for an imagination to run wild. Unfortunately, it’s quickly explained that not all trolls are deformed – just the royal family as a result of in-breeding. Which means that we never get a proper understanding of what your average troll looks like. As far as I could tell, they’re just like humans with dark hair and silver eyes.

And as it happens, the consequences of in-breeding have skipped at least one member of the royal family. Not just skipped, but been inverted, for our crown prince (and love interest) Tristan is super gorgeous. Like most YA romantic leads, Tristan is as arrogant and unpleasant as he is handsome and wealthy, with a heavy social conscience and a noble heart that's just waiting to be melted by the right girl. Well of course.

Despite being the first in a new trilogy, it’s a surprisingly thick book, with enough here to make you feel as though you've enjoyed a complete story, regardless of the tantalizing hook in its final paragraph to pave the way into its sequel.

***

In one sense, these books couldn’t be more different despite belonging in the same YA category. Breaking them down further would put them into the subgenres of retold fairytale (The Amaranth Enchantment), urban fantasy (The Iron Witch), and epic fantasy (Stolen Songbird just squeezes in by dint of its world-building). The tone and atmosphere of each one differs wildly, as does the structure of each story and the long-term goals of each protagonist.

And yet it’s the similarities that caught my attention. Now, this is only a half-formed mini-essay and I’m certainly not ascribing to any hypothesis with any of this, but here are some basic facts:

Of these three books, two are told in first-person narration. Two are written with the intent of developing sequels. All have a teenage girl as the protagonist.

Of these protagonists, one is an orphan, one has a dead father (with her mother in a mental institute) and one has separated parents (she’s somewhat estranged from her mother who put career before family). Two have a significant moment based on being Dressed in Finery. All have their attractiveness commented on by another character; all three are surprised by this observation.

Two are given the choice between something they desperately want and the chance to do the right thing. All are given at least three opportunities to be proactive, cunning and/or kind in a way that benefits them later. Two (though this is more of a coincidence than a pattern) end up with silver tattoos on their hands.

But of course, all three of them have a love interest. And here is where the similarities get really interesting. I’m not even going to tell you which quote belongs in what book; all that’s important here is the way in which all three love interests are described:

1. Underneath his broad brimmed hat, his features were so noble and fine, he looked like he’d swallowed the sun for breakfast... he smelled of perfume and fur and mint, and looked even more carved from sunlight up close.

2. His eyes were the greenest she had ever seen. Viridian-bright, but with textures swirling within that looked like fresh moss on the bark of a tree. His toffee coloured hair was a shade or two lighter than hers, short at the back and longer on top so that it fell choppily into those otherworldly eyes. His skin was smooth and golden, as if he’d just returned from vacation.

3. He was tall and lean, and a fierce intellect gleamed in his silver eyes. Dressed impeccably, he wore a black frock coat with a single-breasted best and fine linen shirt beneath. He also had the most exquisite face of any boy I’d ever seen. Inky black hair, sculptured cheekbones and jaw, and a full but unsmiling mouth. He looked like Prince Charming from the fairytales, except for one thing: Prince Charming was human and the boy standing in front of me was decidedly not. His pale skin was too flawless, his motions too smooth and controlled.

Of these three characters, two are princes, two are bad boys, two have magical powers, and all have their hearts melted by what seems to be the mere presence of our heroine’s beauty, spirit and/or bravery.

And with this it struck me that in YA fantasy books full of fairies and trolls, enchantments and curses, elves and witches, the male love interest slides just as easily into the very same category of magical imaginary being. The youthful princes on display here bear no resemblance whatsoever to real life human males (and I don’t mean that one is in fact a troll, and another used to have wings).

No, these males are always supernaturally gorgeous, splendidly dressed, achingly self-aware, and desperately interested in every thought and feeling and expression of our protagonist. They are willing to sacrifice everything (including the kingdom, the cause, and himself), not to win her love but to keep her safe, because a world without her is just unthinkable.

The romantic connection between him and her, which could logically be used to create a very human connection that grounds the fantastical elements of the story, is often described with such over-the-top flair that it carries about the same plausibility as a magic spell. And a lot of the time romantic love is equated with magic in regards to the heroine’s description of her feelings for said love interest – not to mention the briskness with which pretty much all of these courtships take place (hey, it’s a YA book – there’s a page count).

So what does all this mean exactly? These days any author who isn’t brain dead (so, probably most of them) knows that any female lead needs more going on in her life than a dude. She needs a personality, she needs personal goals, she needs agency. That last one is particularly interesting, since ALL of the leads in the above three books are thrown into dire circumstances against their will and without their permission, struggling with the attempt to claw back some autonomy – even the tiniest bit – so they can use to help those with even less.

The impact this has on the average male romantic lead is that he has gone from the goal to an accessary. A necessary accessory, like a book or a purse or a frock, but an accessory nonetheless, and that’s only because you’d have to pry romantic subplots out of the cold dead hands of YA novels before they’d be willing to give them up.

What remains is this odd sort of limbo in which no one can conceive a YA novel without a super-gorgeous-hunk-of-a-teenage-boy to fall in love against his will with the female lead, but nobody really knows what else to do with them. The heroine usually has things well in hand and the author is often extremely self-conscious about not making her a damsel in distress. Any life-threatening dangers are usually designed in order to make the dude confront his true feelings for her.

And sure, some manage to integrate super-hunk into the plot better than others (Stolen Songbird doesn’t exist without Tristan; The Iron Witch would have worked just as well without Xan), but most of the time the romance feels obligatory.

That’s the word. Obligatory. Almost as if they’re well aware of this, each author goes to great lengths to wax lyrically about the stunning good looks of their lead male characters, and paint the ensuing courtship with as much flowery and/or heated descriptions as possible. It’s like a form of compensation: yeah, this is pointless in regards to the plot, but falling in love with a hot guy feels amazing! It’s at this point I should probably convey my utter astonishment that none of these three books have love triangles.

But the step past this is of course a novel in which there is no romantic subplot. The male lead is either absent or the romance is. I don’t think readers (or writers) are ready for that yet. YA is too synonymous with coming-of-age stories and coming-of-age stories are too intertwined with physical attraction to another human being. But based on these three books? It’s definitely time to consider letting romance go.

Christchurch Writer's Festival

This has been one of the longest weekends of my life, all thanks to the biannual Christchurch Writer’s Festival.

On Friday I was very lucky to have the opportunity to interview author Laini Taylor about her Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. The vid is currently posted on Fantasy.Lit, so please check it out. Laini was very generous with her time and enthusiastic about her trilogy, with plenty to say about her inspiration, the creative process, and the upcoming film adaptation.

Eventually I’ll post it here as well, but I want the site to have exclusivity for a few weeks.

On Saturday I attended two panels, the first called The Truth About Writing KidLit with Gavin Bishop, Melinda Szymanik and Tania Roxborogh, and the second The Changeover: Thirty Years On with Stuart McKenzie, Elizabeth Know and Karen Healy.

The first dealt with the discussion on whether or not children’s literature should be ranked alongside adults in terms of quality and respect (yes!) and gave each of the three writers a chance to share the difficulties in writing for children – basically you have to say more but with less words.

The seminar on The Changeover was special – although this book by Margaret Mahy wasn’t a formative book of my childhood (though it was actually published the year I was born), it is a hugely important one in regards to how the supernatural can be used to accentuate characterization and theme. If you haven’t already, please read it.  

Plus I found out that a film adaptation is in the works, which was news to me!

An amusing thing happened immediately prior: a woman approached me and said: “hi” only to blink and realize I wasn’t who she thought I was, covering her mistake with: “I’m glad you’re here!” before fleeing. Turns out she was Karen Healy, a speaker at the second panel.

And on Sunday I attended Supernaturally with Laini Taylor and Elizabeth Knox, moderated by my friend Helen Lowe, which was filled with insight, compliments, and the inevitable Twilight discussion. Now this I can share with you:

The rest on this playlist.

And yes, if you watch both this and my Laini Taylor interview you’ll notice that the presence of beverage holders threaten to overthrow both recordings – first a disposable coffee cup and then a water jug. Let’s pretend they have thematic significance as symbols of creativity and replenishment (there’s only so much I can do with a Tablet).

And finally I attended Beyond the Veil: Historical Ghost Stories, with Diane Setterfield, Rosetta Allan and Coral Atkinson, admittedly because I wanted to hear Diane Setterfield, author of The Thirteenth Tale (though I’m certainly going to track down the published work of the others).

I even summoned up the courage to ask her what she thought of the BBC adaptation of her novel (she liked it, and said it was the closest she’d ever get to seeing inside the mind of a reader considering it was a creative endeavour that was more-or-less completely outside her control).

There were a lot of familiar faces there; I ran into my MA supervisor and my old high school English teacher, and was pleasantly gratified that both of them recognised me. I chatted to a few nice people and came home feeling re-galvanised in regards to my own creative efforts – which is naturally the main point of any such festival.

Which also means I’ve entered my most recent manuscript for the Tessa Duder Award, a New Zealand based competition for YA books. I don’t hold out much hope for actually winning, but at this stage it’s all about just getting your work out there.

Review: The Magician's Nephew

Despite the recent(ish) reordering of the books’ sequencing, there’s no doubt that The Magician’s Nephew was written as a prequel and intended to be read as such. Not just because it references events from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in such a way that it assumes the reader is already familiar with that particular text, but because it basis a lot of its plot on the appeal that only prequels can provide.

Some might say that prequels undercut the sense of suspense any story might otherwise have, simply because the reader already knows (at least in broad strokes) how it all works out. And sure, I never feared for Digory’s safety (who after all, appears as Professor Kirke in other books) in the same way I get anxious for Eustace and Jill in The Silver Chair.

Review: The Horse and His Boy

If The Silver Chair was a book of firsts (first three-dimensional female protagonist, first non-related boy/girl pairing, first story that didn’t rely on Aslan as a deus ex machina) then The Horse and His Boy is a book of onlys. This the only book in the series to take place entirely within the world of Narnia, the only book to include a romance, however slight, between its two protagonists, and the only book that exists as a “midquel”, taking place as it does within the Golden Age of the Pevensie reign as briefly mentioned in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Unlike The Lion or Prince Caspian, whose narratives revolved around putting the rightful monarchs on the throne, or The Silver Chair, which is a straightforward quest, or Dawn Treader, a voyage of discovery, The Horse and His Boy is an escape/identity story, in which Narnia is the destination, not the setting. The attempt that Shasta and Bree take to reach Narnia safely provides the book’s catchphrase “Narnia and the North!” though this plot is hijacked about halfway through when our protagonists stumble onto a political plot that threatens the safety of Narnia and its neighbour Archenland.

Links and Updates

Why did I go to the library when I already have a TBR pile that’s taller than I am? WHY?

Well I did and here’s the result. A couple of weeks ago I provided a link to one of Leigh Bardugo’s short stories on Tor, so naturally her name leaped out at me when I was browsing the bookshelves. I told myself I wouldn’t read the first one unless the other two were available... and the universe was obliging.

I’ve also been hearing a lot of recent buzz about Danielle Jensen’s Stolen Songbird, and though Julie Berry’s The Amaranth Enchantment is a few years old by now, I’ve had that gorgeous cover art saved in my Pictures Folder for ages. The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney just looked cool.

This is on top of re-reading Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy in preparation for the Writer’s Festival, as well as Elizabeth Knox and Margaret Mahy. And The Chronicles of Narnia read-along. Argh!

So if things feel a little slow around here in the coming weeks, it’s because I’m devouring books. Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in a couple more Arrow reviews, as I’m nearly finished the first season, at which point I can get cracking on Penny Dreadful and Vikings (which I’ll probably review on a season-long basis instead of episode-by-episode).

Okay, I’m going in...

Review: The Silver Chair

I was looking forward to getting to The Silver Chair as it was actually my very first foray into Narnia. Since as long as I can remember I’ve owned the (disappointingly abridged) audiobook, and in re-reading it, I could still hear the narrator’s voice in my head and the voices he put on for the different characters. There’s even a good chance that somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain it’s the story’s vivid descriptions of caves and tunnels and darkness that sparked my problems with claustrophobia.

My point is that although I read all the Narnia books in childhood, The Silver Chair is the one that I came to so early that I have no memory of discovering it for the first time. The dying king, the four signs, the desolate moor, the Harfang giants, the gloomy subterranean network, the enchanted prince – I’ve always had these images in my head.

Review: Winter's Tale

So I just finished Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale two days ago.

And I watched Akiva Goldsman’s filmic adaptation last night.

Where do I even start with this?

It’ll have to be with my own discovery of the story. I first learnt about the existence of Winter’s Tale through the trailers for the film, which promised...what exactly? Jessica Findlay Brown as the female lead. New York at the turn of the century and after the millennium. Russell Crowe as an Irish Javert. Music and dialogue that sounded treacly enough to rot my teeth, but visuals so lovely that I’d probably be willing to put up with it. And apparently a new twist on the angels versus demons conflict in which the emphasis was on individual souls rather than world domination.

I mentioned it to my friend Helen, who had a copy of Helprin’s book to lend me. I was surprised on two points, first that it was so long (I envisioned something about the size of The Time Traveller’s Wife) and second that it was older than I expected (published the year before I was born).

And then I started reading. I tried to average a chapter a night, got stymied twice, read at least a dozen other books in the meanwhile, and eventually buckled down to get through the final two-thirds in the three days before my scheduled lunch with Helen. In short, it was a challenge.

The only other reading experience I can compare it to would be Little, Big by John Crowley. Both books are doorstoppers, each are set in or around New York, both are quasi-fairytales, both are seeped in magic realism, each one favours setting over character, and both utilize poetic-prose as dense as anything in Dickens – but so beautiful that there were times I’d stop reading in order to savour a particular sentence or passage.

And like Little, Big it’s fairly inscrutable. Seriously, I have no idea what it was about. Ask anyone who has read Winter’s Tale to give a brief summary of the plot, and I guarantee their first words will be: “aah...err...umm...”

As far as genre goes, I’d tentatively say contemporary fantasy with a heavy dose of surrealism, romanticism, and/or magic realism. Confused? Let’s just say there’s a white horse that I think is meant to be an angel disguised as a dog disguised as a horse.

Set in New York City between (roughly) 1895 and 2000 (which was still a few decades away when the book was first published in 1983), the main character (again, roughly) is Peter Lake, whose immigrant parents are denied admission at Ellis Island and so are forced to cast their infant son adrift in a small model ship called City of Justice.

Like Moses in the bulrushes, he’s found and raised by the Baymen of Bayonne Marsh, only to be sent to Manhattan once he’s reached manhood to seek his fortune.

There he becomes an accomplished mechanic, though he also runs afoul of Pearly Soames and the Short Tails Gang, who rope him into their circle of thieves. Soon enough he’s as accomplished in pick-pocketing as he is at fixing machines, but it’s only after breaking into an Upper West Side mansion that Peter falls in love for the first time.

It’s here we meet Beverly Penn. How to describe Beverly Penn? Well, I quite like this review’s summation of her:

She insists on always being in freezing temperatures, is ethereal in her beauty, writes equations she thinks describe the movements of the universe despite having no training in the sciences, and although she is young and terminally ill, she is Wise Beyond Her Years and lives on an actual pedestal on the roof of the house.

Yeah, she pretty much takes the Mary Sue litmus test to a whole new level. Slowly dying of consumption, she quite matter-of-factly falls in love with Peter, operating under the logic that if he doesn’t love her, no one ever will (seriously, that’s actually what she says to him – the line is in the trailer and everything). They go to the Penn family holiday home at the Lake of the Coheeries, Peter meets her father, they go to a New Year’s dance together, they consummate their love on the rooftop, and a few pages later, Beverly dies. Spoiler.

Seriously though, it’s not a spoiler, as at a generous estimate we’re only about one-third of the way through the book. So what fills up the rest of the pages?

Um...stuff. About a dozen new characters are introduced, all journeying to New York and each one with an above-average chance of falling in love once they’ve arrived. There’s a mysterious "cloud wall" that lingers at the edges of human habitation and occasionally swallows people up. Two daily newspapers war with each other for supremacy over their readership. The aforementioned white horse occasionally comes to the aid of those in desperate need. There are some vague stirrings of an apocalyptic event on the horizon, one which may sweep the city into a Golden Age or destroy it entirely.

Oh, and plenty of descriptions of winter. At least fifty of ‘em, and vivid enough to make you feel physically cold whilst reading. But if you were to ask me what actually *happened* in this book... well, that's where I got a bit lost.

I feel safest when I’m lauding Helprin’s poetic-prose, whether it’s describing subterranean caves...

They felt vast space above and to the sides, and no matter which way they walked they found no walls but only level floor of rock and earth. They crossed small well-behaved streams as warm as bathwater and saw in them glowing chains of phosphorescent creatures.

Or complex philosophical notions...

If there were one great equality, one fine universal balance that he could understand, then he would know that there were others, and that someday the curtain of the world would lift onto a sunny spring-like stillness and reveal that nothing - nothing - had been for nought, neither the suffering of all the children that he had seen suffering, nor the agony of the child in the doorway, nor love that ends in death: nothing.

Or, you know, winter...

Outside, the wind picked up in a sudden clear gale that had come unflinchingly from the north, descending quite easily from the pole, because all the ground between it and New York was white and windblown. On nights of arch cold and blazing stars, when the moon was in league with the snow, Beverly sometimes wondered why white bears did not arrive on the river ice, prowling silently in the silver light.

Nearly everything he writes is conveyed so beautifully that even when I didn’t know exactly what was happening (which was often), I couldn't help but love the *way* it was happening. Even little observations (when a cat walked in the snow, it walked like an exiled queen, the epitome of caution and pride) and throwaway lines of characterization (he was full of laughter that gurgled from his nose and throat like water going down a stuffed drain) fill me with frustrated writer’s envy.

I really have no idea who to or to what extent I should recommend Winter’s Tale. It’s weird, it’s frustrating, it’s beautiful, it’s long and it’s fairly inexplicable. I loved the writing, but I just couldn’t grasp the narrative, and though I compared it to Little, Big there is one fundamental difference between the two. I know that one day I’ll return to John Crowley’s novel and be excited to read it again with fresh eyes. Though complex and virtually impenetrable at times, there was an underlying theme that slowly took shape over its course, one that unified the proceedings and excited my imagination.

But if there was such a thing in Winter’s Tale, I’m afraid I was too dense to find it. That’s as good an excuse as any to end with an appropriately-themed analogy: I skated happily over the book’s surface, but never found a way to crack the ice.

***

And then there’s the film.

Imagine this scene: a woman falls down a staircase accompanied by several unpleasant sound-effects that convey the snapping of bones and the weight of her falling body.

Now imagine the same woman falling down a staircase to the sound of canned laughter.
The same thing occurs in both scenarios, but the tone is so drastically different that they are completely divorced of all similarities.

It’s a florid analogy, but it’s the best way I can illustrate the profound disconnect between book and film. In fact, I can imagine a lot of viewers eagerly rushing out to buy a copy of the book (which has been re-released with movie-themed covers) only to end up as bewildered and angry as all those teenage girls who read Wuthering Heights on the recommendation of Edward Cullen in Twilight.

Case in point: both the book and film has Beverly seduce Peter with the line: “if you don’t love me now, no one ever will.” In the book, it’s stated comically matter-of-factly (I can’t recall whether it was in the text or just my imagination that Beverly casually flips her hair while saying it), whilst in the film, the line is delivered with earnest, breathy sincerity by Jessica Findlay Brown.

Book and film are only tangentially related, with writer/director Akiva Goldsman taking a few of Helprin’s characters and the basic premise of two lovers separated by time and death, to craft his own tale into something that’s rather like Love Story meets Paradise Lost. Gone are most of the book’s secondary characters and bizarre concepts – though the film has plenty of its own to make up for it.

The biggest change (aside from all the omissions and the shift in tone) is in giving Pearly Soames a demonic background and a vested interest in Peter Lake, something that is only ever-so-vaguely hinted at in the book, and which changes the entire narrative into a romance set against a backdrop of warring demons and angels.

It’s... hard to know what to make of it. The film was a box-office flop and critics completely savaged it (the Rotten Tomatoes rating is currently at 13%) but I think it might find a second life on DVD – it certainly has all the prerequisites (that is, weirdness) of a cult classic.

As in the book, Peter Lake arrives in New York in a tiny model ship called City of Justice, the final desperate act of his parents who are denied entrance at Ellis Island. He grows up off-screen into Colin Farrell, and when we see him again in 1916 he’s being pursued by Pearly Soames (a nearly unintelligible Russell Crowe) and the Short Tails Gang, only to escape on a mysterious white horse that can clear six foot fences.

Deciding to steal what he needs from some Upper West Side mansions before getting out of New York for a while, he breaks into the home of Isaac Penn, whose daughter Beverly is dying of consumption. Symptoms include great hair, perfect skin, and the occasional hot flush which requires a sensual dip in a cold bath or whimsically walking barefoot through the snow. More amusingly, she’s played by Jessica Brown Findlay, who presumably died on Downton Abbey just so she could come die in Winter’s Tale.

She's alone in the house when Peter breaks in, but after an unorthodox meet-cute the two of them realize their mutual attraction. A tentative romance blossoms, but Pearly is incensed at their connection, certain that it foreshadows an impending miracle – something that he's determined to prevent.

From this point it’s all chase scenes, declarations of love, unadulterated melodrama, and stuff that’s undeniable Narm, from the fairy wings that sprout from the horse’s back, to the Littlest Cancer Patient bumping into a complete stranger and asking his name, to Beverly dying seconds (literally seconds) after she and Peter consummate their love. In the immortal words of Paul Scheer: “this is going to sound vulgar...was his dick too warm?” There are stock characters (the black best friend, the Native American mentor, the precocious children, a confused-looking Jennifer Connelly), and arbitrary rules concerning destiny and miracles.

Oh, and when is entertainment going to retire the voice-over narration? It’s always unbearably trite, even when it’s recited in Jessica Findlay Brown’s lovely voice. But honestly, who can repeat this without sounding utterly banal:

What if, once upon a time, there were no stars in the sky at all? What if the stars are not what we think? What if the light from afar doesn’t come from the rays of distant suns, but from the light of our wings as we turn into angels? Destiny calls to each of us, and there is a world behind the world where we are all connected, all part of a great and moving plan. Magic is everywhere around us, you just have to look. Look, look closely – for even time and distance are not what they appear to be.

Compare that to the passages quoted above and try to grasp that they belong to the same story. Shifting Helprin’s sardonic prose into pure sentimentality means that the tone of the films that's just all wrong.

But here’s the thing. Throughout its run-time, all I could think about was how much I would have loved this as a fourteen year old. Seriously, it would have been my favourite movie. I would have adored every second of it. For that reason I walked away with a certain amount of affection for it, as well as appreciation for its visuals, soundtrack and Jessica Findlay Brown in period gowns.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I wanted to like Will Smith’s cameo as Lucifier, I really did, but it ends up being the weirdest part of the movie – even more than the flying horse. I think Viggo Mortensen has ruined all Lucifer cameos for me.

Lucy Griffiths (Marian from the BBC’s Robin Hood) also had a small role near the beginning as Peter’s mother, even though her consumption made her look wane instead of radiant. So I guess Jessica Findlay Brown wore the disease better?

More great lines from the book:

Though the portraits had been mostly of happy or contented faces, years and years of silence and stillness had given those who were portrayed the hurt expressions of abandoned ghosts. They seemed to resent that they had been forgotten, and were perhaps horrified that the wizened old man now walking among them with a torch had been at one time a young child in whom they placed their hope.

Emerging from the darkness for a second or two, the portraits seemed bitter and angry that they had been condemned to stillness forever and ever, and that, despite their sacrifice and concern for future generations, their house had been abandoned to the wind and night.

As compared to dialogue from the film:

I’ve had no memory for as long as I remember. Maybe there was once a blow on the head but I can’t find a scar. And the whole world seems like a deep fog that’s only just beginning to lift. Although not fast enough for my liking. I’ve become convinced that if I can just learn what this Coheeries is it may help jog my memory. But now they’re telling me that I have to wait two weeks and that I need to have two forms of ID that I don’t have just to even get back there. Although I have a growing suspicion that I may be able to get to what I need faster as soon as everybody goes home for the night. If only I knew what a microfiche looked like.

It’s raw, untreated exposition delivered to a complete stranger. Oy.

Oh, and what was up with the doorman with the stitched-up mouth?

Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

One thing that C.S. Lewis is to be commended on is that he never told the same story twice. It’s odd to think it, but only three of the seven Narnia books take place predominantly in Narnia. The others involve other countries across different time periods, with protagonists who had vastly different goals, motivations, and reasons for being there. Adventure stories, quest narratives, rescue missions, fairytales – each book is vastly different in its structure and content, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is possibly the most different of all.

With Peter studying with Professor Kirke and Susan in America with the Pevensie parents (this, by the way, is the first time the last names of Pevensie and Kirke are mentioned), Edmund and Lucy are stuck with Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta in Cambridge – which wouldn’t be so bad except that they’re also saddled with their cousin Eustace Scubb.

Photography

I splurged the other day and treated myself to two of the most beautiful books I've ever seen in my life: Classic Shakespeare Stories and East of the Sun, West of the Moon, each one illustrated by two of my favourite illustrators: Angela Barrett and Jackie Morris.

I'm just holding out for the weekend so that I can sit down and soak them in properly. Much like a fine wine, beautiful books have to be savoured.