Orlando: A Biography

Virginia Woolf

Completed 8/27/2019, Reviewed 8/27/2019

3 stars

I haven’t read much classic literature.  I often find it difficult to read, being so different than contemporary writing.  Often I find the prose, while beautiful, gets in the way of plot and characters.  “Orlando: A Biography” is one such book.  It is beautifully written, with lush prose and imagery.  However, there is little to no plot, only a concept really, that the main character begins the tale as a man and halfway through the book, wakes up a woman.  Woolf acknowledges in the book that there isn’t a cohesive story.  Rather, it’s a biography, so it jumps from point to point in Orlando’s life.  It is a fantasy, though not in the traditional sense, but in that something fanastical happens and the characters react to it. 

The book has been described as a love-letter to Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West, where VSW’s life is thinly recounted as the character Orlando.  There was an introduction, a preface, and annotation.  There is a little information about VSW.  Unfortunately, the notes weren’t noted with numbers in the text.  They were all just gathered at the end, seventy pages worth.  Bouncing back and forth between the text for that many notes would have been somewhat tiring, but it probably would have added a lot of understanding of VSW’s life as well as Woolf’s jokes, irony, and satire.  Needless to say, I think I missed a lot of this.

The story begins in the 1500s with Orlando is a nobleman.  It recounts some episodes from his youth, including an encounter with Queen Elizabeth I.  As he grows older, he falls in love with a Russian noblewoman during the Great Frost, when the river Thames froze over.  The relationship does not succeed, and Orlando takes a post as an ambassador in Turkey.  There, he one day wakes up to discover he’s become a woman.  She eventually returns to England where she lives for over three hundred years. 

The prose really is gorgeous.  It had a very pacifying effect on me, often making me sleepy.  Now, I do often fall asleep while reading, but the nature of this book was simply very lulling.  There is nothing really dramatic that happens to keep the adrenaline pumping, no action to speak of, just beautiful words and sentences.  Perhaps if I was more trained in the classics, I would have found this riveting in and of itself.

I give this book three stars out of five.  It’s good, but not exactly my cup of tea.  I’m not quite cultured enough to appreciate this type of literature.  Perhaps if I read this for a class, I would have gotten much more out of it.  I’m glad I read it though, if nothing else, as an exercise in the classics. 

Maximum Light

Nancy Kress

Completed 8/17/2019, Reviewed 8/17/2019

4 stars

I’ve come to really like Nancy Kress.  This is the first full novel I’ve read of hers and I enjoyed it very much.  It packs a punch, much like her novellas.  The only problem I had with it was that the ending felt a bit dragged out.  It went on a bit too long after the big climax.  Otherwise, I’d say this was a terrific book.  It tackles the problem of the effects of the chemicals in plastics on our bodies.  In this book, the effect is that it has reduced human fertility, so that few children are being born.  This book was nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 1999.

The book is told from the perspective of three main characters.  The first, Shana, is an army reserve grunt who wants to be accepted into the army itself.  I believe she’s nineteen in the story.  She’s a very rough character.  Her plans to get into the army are thwarted when she is assigned to help with a railway disaster, helping people retrieve their pets from the neighboring houses.  The man she’s assigned to escapes from her, but before he can get completely away from her, she sees him carrying cages with monkeys that have human faces and hands.  And they all have the same face.  Nobody believes her, giving her a black mark on her record and little chance of getting into the army.

The second character is Cameron.  He’s a relatively famous, young ballet dancer who has undergone a procedure to remove a major part of his memory.  The book begins with him falling in love with the guy with whom he previously had a relationship.  The problem is, everyone who knows why he had his memory deleted is sworn to not tell him the reason behind the procedure.

The third character is Nick.  He’s a wealthy and famous older scientist on the committee that reviews Shana’s perjury case.  He comes to believe in what she is saying.  He’s also dying of a strange type of cancer in the mucous membranes of his nose and sinuses.  All three characters come together, not necessarily willingly, in an attempt to find the cover up of Shana’s story.  The key seems to be Cameron and his missing memory.

I really like Kress’ writing.  She writes good, unobtrusive prose, telling a story without the writing getting in the way, but still producing a lush world.  Everything I’ve read of hers is very readable, with enough action to keep you interested.  My only issue with the book was the ending.  After the climax, the pace seemed really off.  It went on way too long tying up the loose ends.  It just wasn’t as interesting as the rest of the book.  However, the loose ends do get resolved, so in that sense, it is satisfying.

The characterization is really good.  Cameron is very likeable, Nick induces empathy, and Shana is a selfish brat.  Even most of the minor characters get a decent treatment.  I felt most for Cameron, as I think most readers do, because of the horrible things that happened to him, for which his memory was erased.  Revealing that however would be a spoiler. 

I give the book four stars out of five.  Except for the very end, it’s a taut mystery set in an all too believable near future.  Kress has been nominated for a lot of awards and won several, mostly for her shorter works.  She’s definitely someone who I am going to keep an eye out for in the future.

Jack of Shadows

Roger Zelazny

Completed 8/11/2019, Reviewed 8/17/2019

4 stars

I really like Zelazny’s work.  He comes up with some really strange concepts.  This short but complicated novel was a mix of fantasy and science fiction, and though at times the execution seemed a little off, it was still a masterful work.  The book was nominated for a Hugo when it first came out in 1971, but has long since been out of print.  It’s recently been put on e-book and I was glad to pick it up as a cheap Deal of the Day. 

In this universe, the Earth doesn’t rotate.  One side always faces the sun.  That side is the land of science and technology.  On the side that faces away from the sun, it is a land of magic.  Jack of Shadows is a master thief who lives in both worlds.  He doesn’t have a soul, like the people of the dark side, and he has mighty powers that draw from shadow.  He can’t work his magic in the total light or total darkness.  He must have a shadow in which to use his powers.  The book begins with his execution.  He was recognized and captured while trying to steal a great treasure.  After dying, he’s resurrected like all dark-siders, though only a specific number of times, and takes his revenge on the people who did him in, including the powerful Lord of Bats. 

Jack is basically an anti-hero.  He’s not really that likeable, and by the end of the book, you question whether he is good or not.  But he is still an interesting character.  The book is basically about his journey from his resurrection point on the dark side in the dung pits to the light side, and then back to the dark side.  His only friend is what seems like an angel or demon captured and chained down by the gods who can foresee the future. 

This is a short book, as many of Zelazny’s books are.  He manages to cram a lot of plot into it.  He’s short on character development, though, with the other characters, especially the women.  There is one woman though who gets a fair amount of page time.  She’s a light side woman who has learned some magic and now lives on the dark side.  She’s an interesting character as well, having once been a love interest of Jack’s, but is now old.  Jack of course isn’t old because he gets resurrected repeatedly (although we know it’s only a limited number of times). 

The book has some flaws, like the two dimensional-ness of the other characters.  The whole second half seems like a different book from the first half.  It’s much darker and is the part where you really start to dislike Jack.  But the ending makes up for it.  I give the book four stars out of five because the despite the problems, I really enjoyed it.  Like most of the books of Zelazny’s I’ve read, it’s very unique, feeling like it’s nothing I’ve read before.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

Nancy Kress

Completed 8/10/2019, Reviewed 8/10/2019

4 stars

This is my second novella by Nancy Kress, and I liked this one almost as much as the first, Yesterday’s Kin.  This one is a multi-threaded story that takes before, during, and after a cataclysmic event takes place that destroys most of the earth.  The three different parts progress until they all converge at the end.  It’s interesting, fast-paced, and gut wrenching.  It won the Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Novella in 2013, and was nominated for a slew of others.  I have another book of hers on the docket, a full-length novel, which I am now looking forward to on the strength of these two books. 

The book begins in 2035 where a small group of adults and teens are living in a bubble called the Shell.  They were put there by aliens called the Tesslies, named because they appear in a shower of sparks that look like those produced by a Tesla coil.  The problem is the adults are dying and the teens are deformed and infertile.  The Tesslies have provided them with the Grab machine which sends them back in time where they abduct children to bring to the future where they can reestablish the human race.  The narrative is told through the eyes of Pete, one of the deformed teens who travels back in time through the Grab machine.  The book also follows Julie, a mathematician in 2013 who has developed an algorithm that seems to predict the place and time of these seemingly mysterious abductions.  The narrative also has short chapters in 2014 that illustrate how the earth seems to be trying to cause its apocalypse. 

As I said in my last entry in this blog, I’m coming to love novellas.  They are longer than short stories, but generally faster paced than full length novels.  This one was no exception.  It was very fast paced, but still had time to flesh out the two main characters, Pete and Julie.  Pete is a very realistically drawn teenager.  At fifteen, he is obsessed with sex, filled with the drive to compete, and full of anger at the Tesslies.  He’s stubborn, yet cooperative, and still somewhat malleable in this near future world in the shell.  Julie is an academic who would prefer to be alone.  She’s on a special task force to get to the bottom of the disappearances of the missing children.  While on the force, she gets pregnant by a married coworker, but is determined to have the baby herself.  She has some friends who just don’t quite get her need for solitude. 

This novella being short, I can’t go into too much other detail, or I’ll be giving it all away.  Already with what I have described you can see where the story is probably going.  So I’ll just conclude here with my rating of four out of five stars.  Kress can write a terrific yarn and I hope to see how she fairs in longer works.  But if you see one of her novellas for cheap, which I did, it’s definitely worth the investment.

In Calabria

Peter S. Beagle

Completed 8/8/2019, Reviewed 8/10/2019

5 stars

Beagle is known mostly for “The Last Unicorn”.  Here is another book about unicorns, written just two years ago.  This one takes place in present day Italy.  While it is not fantastical like “The Last Unicorn”, e.g., the unicorns don’t speak, it introduces the magical into the everyday humdrum of rural life.  It is also a love story between and middle-aged farmer and the twenty-three-year-old sister of his postman.  I loved this book.  It transported me to Italy about as much as Call Me By Your Name.  I could identify with the farmer whose pragmatic disposition tries to suppress his feelings for the young woman.  I could feel the suffocation he felt as he was barraged by news and paparazzi.  I felt a lot in this short book, which why I rated it so highly.

The story unfolds on Claudio Bianchi’s farm, a small farm he inherited from a distant cousin.  He works the land alone, with no hired hands, and having only been married once, and for a brief time.  He’s content to smoke his pipe alone in the evenings surrounded by his dog, three cats, and goat.  One day, a white unicorn takes up residence on his land.  It takes a while, but Claudio realizes the unicorn is pregnant is nesting in preparation for birth.  He’s determined to keep it a secret, but eventually, the unicorn is discovered by Giovanna, the sister of his postman who’s been delivering the mail on Fridays.  He binds her to secrecy, but of course, she tells her brother.  The brother also swears to secrecy, but soon, rumors start to fly.  Claudio is at first visited and then inundated by journalists, paparazzi, activists, and looky-loos all trying to find out the truth about this rumored unicorn.  Eventually the mob takes interest.  All the while, Claudio and Giovanna try to keep the unicorn secret and help prepare it for birthing.

I’m finding I’m really enjoying novellas.  I can get more emotionally involved than in short stories and I don’t get bored with the middle section as I sometimes do in full length novels.  And this one proves my point.  Especially now that I’m going through a bout of shingles, my patience and tolerance is quite low.  But reading this book in its peaceful pastoral setting and the subsequent invasion of the crazy outside world both relaxed me and grabbed my attention.  I was caught up through the magical ending.  At the end I wished the book were longer so I could stay in Claudio’s world, but then was glad it ended when it did. 

One of the amazing things about Beagle is that his prose is not flowery and bogged down by tons of similes, yet it creates a beautiful environment.  The characterization is great, though it is not overdone either.  You get to know Claudio and Giovanna through the dialogue more than their descriptions. 

So I give this novella five out of five stars, something I only reserve for books that move me deeply, and this one did.  I guess you could categorize this book as magical realism, because it imbues magical elements into a mundane setting.  And that’s what I loved about the book, the possibility of love and magic in a mundane world. 

Under the Poppy

Kathe Koja

Completed 8/4/2019, Reviewed 8/5/2019

3 stars

This book was a chore to get through.  It had beautiful pose, lush and lyrical.  So much so that I continually lost the plot and started forgetting which character was which.  To be honest, I was able to get through the first hundred to hundred and fifty pages easily, but then it just become difficult to follow.  I often fall asleep while reading, but less than halfway through the it, it would knock me out in four or five pages.  Also, in my opinion, it barely qualifies as speculative fiction.  It won the Gaylactic Spectrum Award in 2011, and the author’s books continue to be nominated for the award, so it must be the publisher categorizing the books as fantasy.  I saw it labeled as slipstream on one site, which means, according to Wikipedia, a literary genre that pushes the boundary between traditional fiction and either science fiction or fantasy.  I guess I can see that. 

The plot is about a brother in Brussels called Under the Poppy.  It is owned by Decca and Rupert.  What sets this brothel apart is that they put on little shows for the customers, a sort of vaudeville scene.  Decca’s brother Istvan shows up with his puppets and incorporates them into the acts, to the acclaim of many.  In the meantime, Decca is in love with Rupert, but Rupert is in love with her brother.  Rupert and Istvan have had an on again off again relationship since they were young.  With Istvan’s return to the brothel, it is more or less on again.  But all is not well in Brussels.  War is raging just outside the city.  Before it’s invaded, Rupert and Istvan decide to leave, but Decca won’t go.  One of the women who has taken to the puppets leaves with our two men.  The rest of the women and employees go their ways as well.  The book then follows Rupert and Istvan to their next city, and that’s where I lost the plot. 

I did finish the book.  There are a lot of society parties and conspiracies, along with the development of Rupert and Istvan’s relationship.  A few more triangles form.  But a lot happened that I did not follow.  My problem was that there would be long, long sentences with lots of flowery details.  Then in the middle or near the end of the paragraph, there would be something to indicate someone was talking, although it wasn’t always the character’s name.  I would have to scroll back through the pages to figure out who was doing the thinking, or who was engaged in the dialogue.  Sometimes, the dialogue would be in quotes and sometimes in italics.  It just became a confusing mess.

Another thing that bothered me was that all the women workers of the brothel were called whores, not prostitutes or any other less offensive term, just whores.  The author used the word a lot.  And she likes to throw the C-word around too.  Granted, some of the clients of Under the Poppy were rough, particularly the soldiers, but still, I flinched whenever these words were thrown around.

The prose, however, was beautiful.  It wasn’t self-conscious prose, of the “look at me make new and exciting similes” variety.  It really was lavishly written, and I can see how people would fall in love with that.  But I thought it was to the detriment of the story.  Oh yeah, and the blurb on most book sites would have you believe that this was a sexy novel.  Romantic, yes; sexy, no. 

I give the book three stars out of five.  I would have given it two stars, but the prose is so good.  I recommend this book more to fans of historical romance rather than fantasy, unless slipstream is your thing.  There are a lot of fans of this book, but I’m really not one of them.