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Pratchett, Terry: Carpet People, The; The Bromeliad

Having finished with The Fiery Cross, for the first time in a month I didn’t know what I was reading next—and what’s worse, couldn’t decide what I felt like reading. (This is about level on my annoyance scale with, oh, being hungry but not wanting to eat anything that you can reasonably get your hands on.) Fortuitously, the day after my last post, I got a package from a friend abroad with Terry Pratchett’s The Carpet People (plus a couple of other books, including the aptly-named It Came From Schenectady). Perfect.

The Carpet People is Pratchett’s first novel, sort of. That is, it was originally published when he was seventeen (seventeen! I didn’t even have my one and only letter to the editor published by the time I was seventeen), and then re-written and republished when he was forty-three, after Discworld hit it big in the U.K. (It’s never been released in the U.S.) As Pratchett puts it in his Author’s Note,

This book had two authors, and they were both the same person. . . . It’s not exactly the book I wrote then. It’s not exactly the book I’d write now. It’s a joint effort, but, heh heh, I don’t have to give him half the royalties. He’d only waste them.

The Carpet People is the story of two brothers who lead their tribe away from the devastation caused by Fray and find that the Empire itself is threatened. It’s recognizably Pratchett in the themes and some of the characters, but was an odd read all the same. I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was paying more attention to the patches (or what I imagine are the patches) than the actual story. (It may also have been even less subtle than usual about its Messages for Pratchett, but I can’t be sure.) I wouldn’t recommend that any but the most die-hard Pratchett fans import it, certainly.

One of my distractions was actually caused by having read a later Pratchett, The Bromeliad (Truckers, Diggers, Wings), which I picked up for the relevant bit [1] and got sucked into re-reading. This turned out to be a good thing, because I like the Bromeliad very much, probably the best of Pratchett’s non-Discworld books.

The Bromeliad is also about very small people, though not as small—about four inches high. For generations, nomes have lived in the Store, thinking the Outside was just a myth; then some strange nomes arrive with a mysterious Thing that claims the Store will be demolished soon. The Thing turns out to be a computer, the nomes turn out to be aliens, and one of the most wonderful things in the world turns out to be frogs living their whole lives in epiphytic bromeliads.

I really like these; the serious bits are well-balanced by the humor of the nomes’ reaction to the larger world, and I just love turning the pretentious names of some fantasy series on their heads by calling the trilogy after a flower. But what am I going to read now?

[1] Does anyone really care what bit it was? Okay, here it is—we’re told early in the Bromeliad that nomes live faster because they’re smaller, so ten years is a lifetime to nomes. Well, if I hadn’t read that before, I wouldn’t have said to myself, “Okay, if a Carpet People city is that big >.<, then they must live really fast, and that would explain why the matches, penny, etc., haven’t been picked up yet. Except they seem to have day and night, and then the scale’s all wrong—” and then we’re off to the races trying to justify things that are a) just magic b) nothing that would have bothered me if I hadn’t thought of the Bromeliad . . . 

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Gabaldon, Diana: (105) The Fiery Cross (re-read)

Completed the re-read of The Fiery Cross that was interrupted by Thanksgiving break. This book’s structure clearly places it as the second-to-last book in the series, as do the themes it emphasizes.

Past books had structures that reflected their nature as natural divisions of a larger story. Outlander starts the story, covering the earliest part of Claire & Jamie’s marriage, and ending with their arrival in France. Dragonfly in Amber covers their time in France and elsewhere, trying—unsuccessfully—to prevent Culloden. It ends with their failure and separation. Voyager is what happened to them while they were separated, how they were reunited, and how they ended up in the New World. In Drums of Autumn, Claire and Jamie establish their life in America; the book ends with the resolution of part of Brianna and Roger’s story.

The Fiery Cross takes place from late 1770 to late 1772. It picks up, as the first section is titled, in medias res, the day after the end of Drums. However, one can’t really describe the story covered by this volume as a neat chunk, like prior books; instead, it’s clearly a prelude to the sixth and last book, which will cover the American Revolution.

The book also structured somewhat unusually for the series, which had previously employed both flashbacks and interweaving of timelines, but in a fairly even-paced way. Some points in time are still going to have more happen during them than others, but this book takes that toward one extreme. The first 160-odd pages all take place during the last day of the Gathering of area Scots, of which weddings are a particular focus. Then there’s a domestic interlude as the characters prepare to muster the militia to deal with the Regulators, North Carolinans disaffected with corrupt British officials, and then adventures during the muster. Another domestic interlude, and then another 150-odd pages on another wedding-focused gathering (note the recurring bench and glasses, and some dialogue parallels) and then back to the Regulators again. The structure loosens up a bit after that; more domestic interludes on the aftermath of the Regulators, and then another crisis, and then after that, bits and pieces from the prior gatherings jump back up and get (partly) dealt with. The book then ends with some new time-travel information and the characters looking ahead to the coming Revolution.

Whew. You see why it’s almost a thousand pages.

This structure makes sense; after all, Claire and Jamie are living on a remote mountain, and there is just naturally more scope for plot when there are more people around, as during the gatherings. And it also displays the general themes the series is exploring: marriage, and the changes in society during the 18th century. It just felt a bit odd on the first time through.

At first, I thought the book ended too abruptly. Upon reflection, I think it doesn’t, but on a theme level rather than a plot one. Without getting into spoilers, Claire and Jamie are certainly having to face their own mortality these days (Jamie turns fifty in this book, and Claire is several years older). Time and change and the (im)mutability of history—those are all themes that, as played out in events towards the end of the book, are likely to sharpen that realization. And since Gabaldon has said that she thinks the story is going to end around 1800, when Jamie would be approaching 80 . . . well, I rather suspect that we’re going to see all of Claire and Jamie’s lives from the point they met.

Some thoughts on the rest of the book: I think the other viewpoint characters continue to be developed in ways that I find very interesting and realistic. The story is also still very engrossing; there’s one sequence that pulled me in far enough that I could just feel my skin crawling. (There’s also bits that had me snickering, like Claire’s first use of her microscope.) However, there’s another sequence late in the book that bothers me, because I can’t believe Jamie would be quite that stupid in that manner. This might reflect what I suspect was a fairly hasty editing process. And one last minor annoyance: I had “Clementine,” which is a terrible song (here’s one set of lyrics, though the book doesn’t use the “dreadful sorry” line, thankfully), stuck in my head for days.

Overall verdict: worth both the lengthy wait and the loss of sleep. If I’m still doing this book log in four years or so, y’all can see me get twitchy all over again waiting for book six . . .

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Sayers, Dorothy L.: (13) Busman’s Honeymoon [2001 read]

I feel like there ought to be more to say about Busman’s Honeymoon than 1) it’s very well done and 2) see Gaudy Night for the ways in which it’s well done, except that this time the focus is on marriage, but I’m very tired and don’t seem to be able to think of much else.

Oh, except that there’s some fine poetry quoted in it that I would not otherwise have found.

               Love? Do I love? I walk
Within the brilliance of another’s thought,
As in a glory. I was dark before,
As in Venus’ chapel in the black of night:
But there was something holy in the darkness,
Softer and not so thick as other where;
And as rich moonlight may be to the blind,
Unconsciously consoling. Then love came,
Like the out-bursting of a trodden star.

—Thomas Lovell Beddoes, The Second Brother

I have no idea who Beddoes is, but I like that. “Within the brilliance of another’s thought.”

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Bryson, Bill: Notes from a Small Island

Bought a copy of Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island as a birthday present for a friend now studying in London (who I doubt reads this, but if I’m wrong, ummm, hi, Laura). Though I have scruples about reading books that are gifts to other people, these don’t extend to books I’ve read before; thus, I flipped through it at lunch yesterday looking for the good bits (besides, this way it will be fresh in my mind so I can have a conversation with Laura about it).

I like the extremes about this book best: the details like This is Cinerama, the fifth Duke of Portland, and the dead-on description of what it’s like to visit Stonehenge (though Bryson apparently missed out on juggling, in the bitter cold, an umbrella, a camera, and an oversized cell phone-thing that squawks a tinny audio tour), and the overall sense of “yeah, that is what it’s like to live there.” A lot of the places mentioned I never went to in the three months I was there and don’t particularly want to go to, but I did enjoy living there and would like to visit again someday. For now, though, this will do as a nostalgia fix.

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Sayers, Dorothy L.: (06) Strong Poison [2001 read]

Though the past couple of days have been quite busy, Strong Poison is quite short. This is the first Wimsey-Vane book; Harriet Vane is a mystery novelist on trial for poisoning her former lover—doubly scandalous in 1930. Peter Wimsey has fallen in love at first sight, and, when the jury deadlocks, determines to solve the case and prove her innocent.

Of course Harriet, being in prison, doesn’t get much screen time, though some of her personality comes through. But the real surprise in re-reading this is Peter, who is barely recognizable as the same person from Gaudy Night. Consider this passage, when Peter goes to propose both marriage and assistance to Harriet (in their first conversation):

“Oh, by the way—I don’t positively repel you or anything like that, do I? Because, if I do, I’ll take my name off the waiting-list at once.”

“No,” said Harriet Vane, kindly and a little sadly. “No, you don’t repel me.”

“I don’t remind you of white slugs or make you go gooseflesh all over?”

“Certainly not.”

“I’m glad of that. Any minor alterations, like parting the old mane, or growing a tooth-brush, or cashiering the eye-glass, you know, I should be happy to undertake, if it suited your ideas.”

“Don’t,” said Miss Vane, “please don’t alter yourself in any particular.”

“You really mean that?” Wimsey flushed a little. “I hope it doesn’t mean that nothing I could do would make me even passable. . . . You—er—you’ll think it over, won’t you, if you have a minute to spare. There’s no hurry. Only don’t hesitate to say if you think you couldn’t stick it at any price. I’m not trying to blackmail you into matrimony, you know. I mean, I should investigate this for the fun of the thing, whatever happened, you see. . . . Well, cheer-frightfully-ho and all that. And I’ll call again, if I may.”

“I will give the footman orders to admit you,” said the prisoner, gravely; “you will always find me at home.”

I mean, it’s almost Miles Vorkosigian in full sexual panic mode, but with an English accent. (You might miss the full effect because I cut out some of the babbling, but the quote was feeling too long. [We take a very scientific approach to posting here at Outside of a Dog.])

Compare that to this passage from Gaudy Night, where Peter and Harriet meet on the street and decide to go for a drive to discuss the latest happenings in the Poison-Pen mystery:

“We’ll dawdle along the lanes and have tea somewhere,” he added, conventionally, as he handed her in.

“How original of you, Peter!”

“Isn’t it?” They moved decorously down the crowded High Street. “There’s something hypnotic about the word tea. I am asking you to enjoy the beauties of the English countryside, to tell me your adventures and hear mine, to plan a campaign involving the comfort and reputation of two hundred people, to honour me with your sole presence and bestow upon me the illusion of Paradise—and I speak as though the pre-eminent object of all desire were a pot of boiled water and a plateful of synthetic pastries in Ye Olde Worlde Tudor Tea-Shoppe.”

Obviously someone easily intoxicated by words, but still capable of coherence—and I didn’t even pick one of the more emotionally charged conversations, feeling obscurely that it would be unfair, the difference being so great.

I like the Peter of Gaudy Night far better.

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Sayers, Dorothy L.: (12) Gaudy Night

When I was leaving for Thanksgiving break, I wanted to bring along a nice long dense paperback, so I got Dorothy Sayer’s Gaudy Night from the library. The cover of the most recent U.S. paperback calls it “A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery, with Harriet Vane,” but really (and unlike the other Wimsey-Vane stories) it ought to be the other way ’round. This is very much Harriet’s book, both in plot and theme.

The plot centers around a nasty campaign of vandalism and poison pen letters at Harriet’s old Oxford college, the fictional Shrewsbury. Harriet experiences the start of the Poison-Pen’s campaign when she goes back for a Gaudy (which appears to be something like Homecoming or Alumni weekend in American terms). When the administration discovers the problem, they ask Harriet to quietly investigate, which she does alone for most of the book (Peter is present a distinct minority of the time). It’s hard to say how mysterious the mystery is, because I’ve read this before—all I remembered was the solution, so whodunnit was blindingly obvious to me the first time the person appeared. However, the puzzle in this book is at least as important for its effect on the characters as for the sake of being a puzzle itself.

It is also tightly integrated with the themes of the book, love, intellect, and independence. Harriet, who has excellent reasons for fearing a relationship with Peter, learns rather a lot about herself, him, and themselves over the course of the book, so that she finally (after a five-year courtship) agrees to marry Peter. Their relationship is painted with exquisite detail and sense, and while I’m not sure it had to take five years, it certainly had to take a while.

I finished the book, though, and realized it made me feel vaguely uneasy. After thinking about it for a bit, I pinned it down. It is entirely understandable that Harriet should fear marriage and see it as a loss of her autonomy and intellectual life, given her past history. But practically everyone else in the book sees marriage the same way, and (it seemed at the time) spends rather a lot of time pondering the question of

Could there ever be any alliance between the intellect and the flesh? It was this business of asking questions and analysing everything that sterilised and stultified all one’s passions. Experience, perhaps, had a formula to get over this difficulty; one kept the bitter, tormenting brain on one side of the wall and the languorous sweet body on the other, and never let them meet. So that if you were made that way you could argue about loyalties in an Oxford common-room and refresh yourself elsewhere with—say—Viennese singers, presenting an unruffled surface on both sides of yourself. Easy for a man, and possible even for a woman, if one avoided foolish accidents like being tried for murder [as Harriet had been]. But to seek to force incompatibles into a compromise was madness; one should neither do it nor be a party to it. . . . Let the male animal take the female animal and be content; the busy brain could very well be “left talking” . . . . In a long monologue, of course; for the female animal could only listen without contributing. Otherwise one would get the sort of couple . . . who rolled on the floor and hammered one another when they weren’t making love, because they (obviously) had no conventional resources. A vista of crashing boredom, either way.

Granted, Harriet was a bit overwrought when she thought that, but the theme bothered me; I eventually decided that it made me wonder if I was shallow or thoughtless not to have agonized at length on the question, when all those intellectual and thoughtful women in the book had done so. (An entirely idiosyncratic reaction, to be sure.) Now that the question’s presented, though, I don’t think I am; instead, I’m lucky in at least two ways. I live in a time and a place where it is accepted that a woman’s independent existence need not be, and is usually not, extinguished upon marriage (Gaudy Night was written and set in the mid-1930s); and I have had no personal experiences to contradict my instinctive belief that of course one can have intellect and passion all together with the same person. Late in the book, the reader is told that Harriet “went to bed thinking more about another person than about herself. This goes to prove that even minor poetry may have its practical uses.” Novels too may have their practical uses, spurring realizations about ourselves and others.

I now want to re-read the start of Peter & Harriet’s story, Strong Poison, and the end, Busman’s Honeymoon, and since I got both of them from the library today (my copies being elsewhere presently), I shall. The Fiery Cross can wait a bit more, I think. But then I might want to re-read Possession (though probably not Tam Lin) . . . hmmm. Decisions, decisions.

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Pratchett, Terry: (28) The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Finished Terry Pratchett’s latest Discworld book, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, yesterday. This is a putative Young Adult novel; you can tell Pratchett’s YAs from his adult novels because 1) the YAs are a bit shorter; 2) they have chapters; and 3) they are at least as dark as any of the adult novels (and much darker than most).

The rodents of the title aren’t actually Educated, though they’re getting there; they’re rats that ate something off the dump behind the wizards’ university and became sentient. Maurice, a cat, was also Changed. Together with a stupid-looking kid who plays the pipes, they’ve been running a Pied Piper scam; the rats have discovered ethical scruples, though, and plan to make the next town their last. This town apparently has a real rat problem, and with the dubious help of the mayor’s daughter (a perfectly horrible girl convinced everything is a story), they soon discover that something is quite wrong.

The story feels very dark, even though it’s on a much smaller scale than the end of the world (which happens practically every other book on the Discworld). Part of the reason is that the rats are struggling throughout with building a civilization from scratch, with all the attendant questions of ethics, morality, and religion that the newly-intelligent must confront. The scale might be small, but the stakes are both high and very relevant to human concerns.

The problem I have with the book, though, is that a key element isn’t explained and doesn’t seem to comply with the Discworld’s general rules and logic. (The Discworld is undoubtedly a daft place, but given its premises, the results do follow.) I can think of a couple of half-assed ways in which this element might have come about, but they’re just that, half-assed—and what’s more, I don’t think I should have to come up with my own explanation of something so central to the story. Which is definitely a pity and not at all what I’m used to in a Pratchett story.

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Rowling, J.K.: (01) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Like six gazillion other people, I saw the movie version of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (yes, here it’s the Sorceror’s Stone, but I refuse to participate in the dumbing-down of books) earlier this week, and decided to re-read the book after.

The book, unsurprisingly, is better. Most of the movie’s flaws come from picking the wrong bits of the book to be faithful to, such that lots of useful information gets shoved aside by the parade of individual events that are crammed in. However, the movie also tries to make some of the events more visual, and in doing so makes them make much less sensible (the wand-buying and the chess game are cases in point). Someone else observed that the movie seemed to have been written only for people who had already read the book, which I think is a fair description of the effect, if not necessarily the motivation.

The characters are all cast brilliantly, but their appearances, as fitting as they are, haven’t really displaced my mental images on re-reading the book. Indeed, I prefer my mental image of Dumbledore—though not because the actor does a bad job, but because the script takes all the whimsy out of the role, turning him into a Gandalf clone.

The main problem with the movie is less a problem with the book: the plot is fairly lumpy, with the major drama mostly relegated to the very end. In the book, the charms of discovering the world and learning about Hogwarts help carry the reader past this, as does the knowledge that this is a setup book. I think a movie needs to be more evenly paced, though, and stand better alone. Anyway, the book (and the series as a whole) is charming, though not so good that I re-read it without an outside motivation, like this movie or the release of another book.

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Gabaldon, Diana: (105) The Fiery Cross (mid-way through re-read)

Well, I’m not going to finish my re-read of The Fiery Cross before I have to take a train tomorrow (or later today, now), which is a pity because I’m not taking it with me and I’ll have lost the flow by the time I get back. Also, this will extend the time I’m tempted to make Scottish throat-clearing noises in response to everything:

“I hope Roger’s managed all right,” I said, leaning back against Jamie’s chest with a small sigh.

“Mmphm.” From long experience, I diagnosed this particular catarrhal noise as indicating a polite general agreement with my sentiment, this overlying complete personal indifference to the actuality. Either he saw no reason for concern, or he thought Roger could sink or swim.

“I hope he’s found an inn of sorts,” I offered, thinking this prospect might meet with a trifle more enthusiasm. “Hot food and a clean bed would be lovely.”

“Mmphm.” That one held a touch of humor, mingled with an inborn skepticism—fostered by long experience—regarding the possible existence of such items as hot food and clean beds in the Carolina backcountry.

“The goats seem to be going along very well,” I offered, and waited in anticipation.

“Mmphm.” Grudging agreement, mingled with a deep suspicion as to the continuance of good behavior on the part of the goats.

I was carefully formulating another observation, in hopes of getting him to do it again—three times was the record so far—when [the plot started happening again].

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MacDonald, George: Gray Wolf, The

I did something fairly rare last night: I gave up on a book. I got George MacDonald’s collection The Gray Wolf on a whim, because it was only two dollars and the title story was fairly well done, and because I’ve been reading more collections these days to keep from being sucked into a long story at bedtime. I should have paid more attention to the blurb on the back extolling C.S. Lewis’s admiration of MacDonald; I am not a religious person and do not particularly warm to religious stories (religious characters being a different matter). However, the title story was indisputably fantasy and not overtly religious, so I said why not.

Well, while I haven’t read all of the stories in the collection, I wouldn’t be surprised if I picked the only one that was both actually a fantasy and not overtly religious. Anyway, I tried one more story after reading this passage, but really I should have just stopped there:

And may it not be believed of many human beings, that, the great Husbandman having sown them like seeds in the soil of human affairs, there they lie buried a life long; and only after the upturning of the soil by death, reach a position in which the awakening of their aspiration and the consequent growth become possible. Surely He has made nothing in vain.

Suffice it to say that when the story’s omniscient narrative voice [*] is espousing a worldview so contrary to my own, I just can’t enjoy the story.

[*] Habits of precision compel me to describe it this way, though I imagine it’s probably safe, under the circumstances, to assume that it’s simply the author’s voice.

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