Diana Wynne Jones - Unexpected Magic

You know how it is. You're in Galaxy Bookshop (or any other fantasy-sci-fi treasurebox of your choice) and you can maybe, possibly, probably stretch your budget to one book. One book. Suddenly everything looks desirable, but nothing looks quite desirable enough to be The One. You slouch impecuniously towards the Diana Wynne Jones shelf in the YA section, knowing that her books are at least the kind that you will consistently reread and are thus usually worth purchasing.

Lo! And behold! Sitting neatly next to a handful of Chrestomanci books is something you've never come across before (excellent) and that you know your local library doesn't have (even better!): a book of short stories. Nice and thick, too. Decision made.

I read this collection slowly, especially because I was only a fraction of the way into the book when Diana Wynne Jones's death was announced. I felt as though every word of hers that I hadn't yet read had just become infinitely more precious.

If you've read any DWJ at all you probably have a fair idea of the kind of stories that are in this collection: fifteen shorts and one novella, all stuffed full of children and cats and families and England and annoyances and, as the title suggests, one sort of unexpected magic or another.

I enjoyed the novella, 'Everard's Ride', the most, because I think DWJ's characters are best when you have a bit of time to get to know them. It's a fairly standard normal-kids-get-mixed-up-in-affairs-of-magical-kingdom story, but with a frightening bite to the politics of it all, wonderfully drawn dynamics between siblings, friends, and acquaintances, and a hefty dose of class awkwardness thrown in.

There's probably not much point in faithfully listing every single story in the book, but I'll mention some favourites. 'Auntie Bea's Day Out' is another classic DWJonesian story of a family of a children under the eye of an unpleasant relative, and the strange things that start happening to them on a trip to the seaside. 'The Girl Who Loved The Sun' stands out as being much less deadpan and Kids Own Adventure; it's written as a fairytale, a lyrical myth, and brings some welcome variety of tone to the collection. 'Nad and Dan adn Quaffy' (no, that wasn't a typo) is a tongue-in-cheek, hilarious story about an author whose writing technique is to pretend that her word processor is the controls of a spaceship -- and who is one day surprised to find that the computer is talking back.

There are three stand-out shorts, in my opinion, and I think I liked them the most because they were most successful in conveying a real sense of niggling danger. 'The Master' is the disturbing tale of a newly qualified vet called out to a murder scene and faced with crypticism and wolves. 'Enna Hittims' is about a girl stuck at home with the mumps whose drawings come to life and try to take over her house. And 'Dragon Reserve, Home Eight' is a real masterpiece of worldbuilding, giving a strong sibling relationship and some dragons and a whole lot of fear and moral ambiguity, all in a very short space.

Telling any existing fan of Diana Wynne Jones to read this book would be the most pointless form of preaching to the choir, but if you've never read her, I think it would be an excellent introduction to her distinctive narrative style.

Annette Curtis Klause - Blood and Chocolate

There are many reasons why I follow the blogs of authors, not least of which is the vain hope that they might inspire me to WRITE SOMETHING YOU LAZY FOOL, but one of them is so that I can catch posts like this one from the fabulous Sarah Rees Brennan, in which she throws book recs around the place. Blood and Chocolate is, in her opinion, the best werewolf book ever. As someone whose favourite werewolf books has for years been, by default, Terry Pratchett's The Fifth Elephant (which is maybe not a Werewolf Book per se, but certainly the only book I can remember that contains a significant number of them), this sounded like an excellent genre-exposure opportunity.

Paranormal romance is not something I get excited about as a general rule. I will happily read sporkings of the more dreadfully written and blatantly rape-culture-endorsing examples of the genre, but by and large I will steer clear. (If you haven't read that post of bookshop's before, GO AND DO SO NOW. I'll wait.)

For the first chapter or so I was feeling dubious about Vivian, the protagonist, given that we are quickly treated to a description of her that teeters precariously on Mary Sue Precipice:

She was tall and leggy, like her mother, with full breasts, small waist, and slim hips that curved enough to show she was female. Her skin was gently golden; it was always golden, sun or not, and her tawny hair was thick and long and wild.

But although Vivian is gorgeous and a boy-magnet and speaks French with a perfect accent and has hair that changes colour super strength, there was a lot I ended up liking about her. I liked that she's a teenage girl with teenage girl problems ranging from how to fit in at school to how to cope with her mother's taste in new boyfriends. I liked that she has good self-esteem. She also has a healthy and enthusiastic attitude towards sex that I found really refreshing to read about, as even a lot of books aimed at adults tend to dial down the sexuality of women -- especially young women -- and so Vivian's HURRAH KISSING and GODDAMNIT WHEN WILL I BE ABLE TO SEDUCE THIS DUDE thoughts and feelings came across as part of a balanced portrayal of a teenager, not sexytimes for the sake of sexytimes; especially because romance and sex are definitely not the only thing Vivian thinks about. Not even the main thing she thinks about, I'd say.

The other enormous redeeming factor is that Vivian is not a normal human girl who happens to be the object of a paranormal being's affections. Vivian is a proud werewolf whose pack is having problems: some of their members started killing humans (which is absolutely forbidden) and they had to leave their last town in a hurry, but not before a fire was set on their property in revenge; a fire that killed a lot of them, including Vivian's father. And the pack is now having a lot of trouble settling into their new place, especially because they are lacking a leader, so there's a lot of infighting and bitchiness and power plays going on, which in Vivian's opinion is a whole lot of stress she really doesn't need. Especially now that she's gone and fallen in love with a human boy.

Basically: Vivian is what would happen if Edward Cullen were actually a vain and ballsy teenage girl who just wanted a) her family to stop being so crazy, and b) to have some sex already.

So yes, there were a lot of things to like: I liked Vivian and her pro-active attitude, I liked the werewolf mythology and the werewolf politics, I liked the characterisation of a lot of the supporting characters, I liked the plot. I liked that there was a scene where Vivian bit out another werewolf's eye and then spent a few hours afterwards going ugh, I did what? But...as a whole, the book fell flat for me, and there were too many things that pulled me up short and made me frown.

The lack of positive female characters other than Vivian herself was depressing. Vivian's relationship with her mother is at least complicated, but Esme is presented as being sort of flighty and status-hungry, and not really there as any kind of emotional support. Vivian is also the only female werewolf of her generation in the (admittedly quite small) pack, and it's quite clear that her milkshake brings all the boy-wolves to the yard, not just because she's all sexy but because...well, there's nobody else? All of Vivian's inner struggles and identity issues and boy troubles etc. are dealt with inside her head because she has absolutely zero female friends, or even friendly acquaintances, to confide in.

As for the love story, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop for the first half of the book, but when it did, it just didn't make sense. Suddenly there's another love interest? That guy who sexually harrassed you quite a few times without ever apologising? Remember when you accidentally won some kind of ritual battle and he expected you to be his queen and you were like hell to the no? Can't we stick with that interesting storyline, ie. loyalty to pack law vs. dislike for powerful jerkface?

Spoiler alert: no.

It's not that I was heavily invested in the original love interest, either, it's more that I would have been just as happy -- happier -- for Vivian to end up single and a bit wiser. (Although an unfortunate side effect of the lack-of-female-confidantes problem was that for the ending to be a happy one, Vivian needed to end up with some kind of close relationship. It's just sad that romance was presented as the only option.)

For a story that has at its heart a great portrayal of identity problems, the frustration of two conflicting aspects to one's life, and the determination to follow one's heart even if it leads one outside the norms of one's community, I found the ending disappointing. Inasmuch as it answers the question of 'Can one defy one's appointed role in life and society?' with a resounding APPARENTLY NOT.

Blood and Chocolate is an easy read and a fun inversion of the usual paranormal romace tropes -- I'd certainly hold Vivian up a a role model to any young girl who might be tempted to stray down the Bella Swan path -- but as far as my favourite werewolf book goes, I think The Fifth Elephant is still at the top of the list.

Daniel Keyes - Flowers for Algernon

Recently I opened one of my notebooks and was momentarily puzzled by a list of book titles on one page. Then I remembered that some expat friends of mine living in Brussels had taken me out for a night on the town while I was visiting them. By the book-list stage of the evening I was already down a bottle of raspberry beer (ah, Belgium) and two gin-based cocktails, and would be consuming more alcohol before the end of the night, so perhaps it's not surprising that the intense hour-long conversation about books in which I loudly insisted that everyone! at the table! tell me their favourite book! so I could borrow them all from the library! became a memory with a hint of fuzziness to it.

Nevertheless.

Flowers for Algernon. I'd heard the name before, and the title sounded suspiciously like something that might have oozed from the pen of Mitch 'Cloying Sentimentality And Cheap Fucking Pathos' Albom. Then I found out about the Hugo and Nebula awards.

(Booklogging by Faye: fifty years behind the times! Next up: the Iliad.)

For those of you who, like me, didn't study this book at school, the premise is this: an intellectually disabled man called Charlie volunteers to be the first human subject of an experimental procedure which proposes to increase intelligence, and has been shown to do so in a mouse called Algernon. The book is made up of Charlie's progress reports, a diary which shows the gradual improvement of his intellectual power, and the consequences that this has for his life and happiness. As far as literary achievement goes, I think Daniel Keyes did an excellent job with the portrayal of a personality and a mind constantly in flux. One of the most important things it tries to convey is how the people around Charlie think about him, act around him, and relate to him, and how these things change as he does; assuming you-the-reader to be someone of average intelligence, the journey that you go through mirrors that of these people in a way that borders on the uncomfortable at times.

I am nowhere near as conversant in social justice and discrimination theory as it pertains to disability as I should be, I expect, but this book does a very good job of whacking you pointedly around the face with its Major Themes (which is, as with a lot of sci-fi, not necessarily to its detriment). It's even more interesting when reading it now, in the twenty-first century, to think about the particular Slippery Slope Of Humanity that this book is addressing: the drive to fix. The balance between lauding medical advances that can improve someone's quality of life, and adequate acknowledgment that perhaps a person's life is just fine without an external standard of normality being imposed upon it. But then, as someone whose medical school shoves a lot of ethics tutorials in her direction, I was interested by the detail that one of his family members had to sign off on the procedure because Charlie was not considered to have Capacity To Consent, even though Charlie's commentary shows you that he did indeed understand both the benefits and the risks as they were communicated to him.

A clear distinction is drawn between academic intelligence and emotional intelligence which is certainly not neurologically arbitrary, but comes across as...narratively so, I suppose? The fact that smart-Charlie is still devoid of well-developed social skills becomes more and more apparent, and more and more important, as does the fact that his personality becomes a lot less pleasant as a result. I wasn't entirely sure what I was meant to be learning from this -- it's better to be extremely nice than extremely clever? It's impossible to be both? Does extreme intelligence automatically lead to a disdain for the rest of humanity? This was the only point on which I was unwilling to be happily swept along in the story, because I didn't feel that was communicated with the clarity that illuminates the rest of the book.

I don't have much more to say about this one, really. It's clever and thought-provoking and I'm glad I read it. And unlike a high school essay, I can stop this review at any point I please, so let's leave it at that.