Fling, Marry, Kill: Mainstream Edition

[rachelmanija]

Hope springs eternal. But I just bought two new bookcases, just in case.

If you're joining late, fling means "read now and see if you like it," marry means "keep for later because you surely will," and kill means "it sucks/you won't like it, toss unread."

If you're familiar with any of these, let me know what you think!

Poll #20317 Fling, Marry, Kill: Mainstream Fiction

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

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Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time, by Rumer Godden. Three generations in the same house, seen simultaneously. (Who am I kidding, there is no way I would ever kill this.)

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Fling
7 (30.4%)

Marry
14 (60.9%)

Kill
2 (8.7%)

The Steep Approach to Garbadale, by Iain Banks. Mainstream novel about a family that has a video game empire? Banks' books are very unpredictable for me in terms of whether/how much I'll like them.

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Fling
9 (47.4%)

Marry
2 (10.5%)

Kill
8 (42.1%)

The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett. A magician's assistant and also widow discover surprising things after his death or maybe faked death.

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Fling
11 (64.7%)

Marry
2 (11.8%)

Kill
4 (23.5%)

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. An ancient Haggadah uncovers mysteries. The premise sounds great but I read something else by Brooks and really disliked it.

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Fling
11 (55.0%)

Marry
0 (0.0%)

Kill
9 (45.0%)

And the Ass Saw the Angel, by Nick Cave. Nick Cave's southern gothic. I have taken a few cracks at this and never gotten far, but I love his music. Might just need more sustained concentration.

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Fling
10 (55.6%)

Marry
1 (5.6%)

Kill
7 (38.9%)

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson. A woman repeats her life in multiple variations. I love this premise.

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Fling
11 (45.8%)

Marry
9 (37.5%)

Kill
4 (16.7%)

Ladder of Years, by Anne Tyler. A wife and mother runs away and starts a new life. I often like Tyler but I'm having a knee-jerk "Did she let her kids think she was DEAD???" response to this one.

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Fling
9 (47.4%)

Marry
1 (5.3%)

Kill
9 (47.4%)

The Tiger Claw, by Shauna Singh Baldwin. Novel based on Noor Inayat Khan. Possibly depressing.

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Fling
15 (62.5%)

Marry
2 (8.3%)

Kill
7 (29.2%)

The Lords of Discipline, by Pat Conroy. Semi-autobiographical novel about military academy. I like the setting and I like Conroy, but for some reason I have never gotten far into this one. Try again?

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Fling
10 (43.5%)

Marry
1 (4.3%)

Kill
12 (52.2%)

Comments

[yhlee]

I suggested fling for the Rumer Godden based solely on the one book of hers I read, In This House of Brede, which I never would have tried on my own (Jo Walton handed it to me 14 years ago). It's about life in a...what do you call a Catholic monastery, except for nuns? Yes. And it's in roving omniscient with head-hopping among POVs sometimes literally in the same paragraphs...but it works. And it turned out to be one of my favorite non-sf/f fiction books. So maybe the other one is good?!

If you end up ditching Conroy's The Lords of Discipline now or later, can I buy it off you?! It sounds like something I might enjoy.

[rachelmanija]

I LOVE In This House of Brede - it's one of my favorite books. Godden's Thursday's Child (about a boy ballet dancer whose mother is only supporting his sister's dancing) and An Episode of Sparrows (sort of an urban Secret Garden) are also great. Some of her other books I have not liked.

If I don't like the Conroy, you can have it. Have you ever read him? He has a very distinctive approach/style.

[yhlee]

Isn't it so good?! I gave away my copy to a friend solely to spread the love :) -- I now have it as an ebook and I dig it out on long plane rides. (Mostly. Some parts make me cry so those bits are not so good for plane reading.)

Oh God, I need to see if the library has Thursday's Child. Even though I was a massive failure at ballet the one year I did it (I was like six), I still have a fondness for it. I bet it would be up my alley.

I've never read Conroy before, but you only live once! ^_^ But I do hope you end up enjoying the book. XD

[rachelmanija]

Conroy does overheated southern Gothic, very lush prose, lots of food porn, and truly amazing melodrama. In one of his books, which is set in South Carolina, the bad guys are eaten by a Bengal tiger.

There's another one (also set in South Carolina, mostly), which centrally involves 1) the Holocaust, 2) cancer, 3) suicide, 4) a completely random terrorist attack in which the main character is shot in the head saving his mother and daughter, nearly dies, slowly recovers, and then this has no further plot relevance and never comes up again, 4) tons of food porn in Italy, 5) multiple adorable scenes of sea turtle eggs hatching.

[yhlee]

If Joyce Carol Oates' Bellefleur was a Southern Gothic (?????), that's the only example of the genre I've read; I liked Bellefleur a lot--not least for its astonishing high-wire genius trick of having THREE layers of opinion at all times (that of the character under discussion, that of the flighty narrator, and a subtext layer of irony mocking the ostensible narrator).

That sounds amazeballs. *g*

Oh--forgot to mention, I voted kill for the Iain M. Banks (I have only read two of his sf books, which I did like) on the grounds that reading about a video game empire sounds weirdly unappealing to me, and I like gaming. :p

[rachelmanija]

If you ever want to try Pat Conroy, I highly rec Prince of Tides for being well-written in a purple way, extremely entertaining, and absolutely batshit. Content warning for mental illness, child abuse, and rape (all very central to the story) and probably other things I've forgotten. Forgotten because Conroy's books just have so much going on, it's easy to completely forget about stuff like the main character getting shot in the head by Italian terrorists because 400 pages worth of family drama, Holocaust, cancer, legal drama, sea turtles, football, food porn, lost love, and suicide later, the author clearly forgot about it too. (That one is Beach Music, not Prince of Tides.)

[kore]

Ehh, Oates writes kind of Oates-Gothic (Bellefleur is also set in NY state, like I think nearly all her books are). It's more supernatural/magical realism, which a lot of modern Southern gothic has, but isn't really necessary to the genre.

[yhlee]

Ah, gotcha! Haha, it's been so long since I read it that I couldn't remember where it was set at all. I'm also clueless about literary (?) fiction subgenres...thanks! :D

I loved Bellefleur, but man is it a weird book. I've never read any other Oates so I don't know whether it's typical of her or not.

[kore]

It kind of depends, Oates writes a terrifying number of books all in different genres, but there's a unique Oatesian mindset of nihilism and a kind of delight in the grotesque/unpleasant/gross that is constant. I think of her more as Urban (Northern) Gothic. I don't think she's great at characterization but she's kind of compulsively readable, and very good at pastiche. Probably my favourite of her literary takeoffs is Wild Nights! Stories about the last days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James and Hemingway which does just what it says on the tin in spite of that terrible title. I like her short stories better than her novels, the short stories are exquisitely written and constructed, but I just can't spend a whole novel in her headspace.

[kore]

I really don't think Conroy is southern Gothic -- he's way too idiosyncratic and while some of his plots are batshit, they don't have that grotesque quality. His earlier stuff is often military-specific, and while he's famous (or infamous) for Prince of Tides and Beach Music, they're kind of outliers if you look at his whole body of work.

[conuly]

Episode of Sparrows is, afaic, a hugely underlooked classic. I never read her other stuff, but I ought to.

[kore]

Nooooo neither of you want that Conroy book. Trust me. It's a lurid roman a clef about the Citadel, the famous Southern military academy, and while it's a good thing to take down institutions like that, it is just a total hot mess of a book.

[yhlee]

...you're not making me want to read it less! XD

(I had to look up roman a clef, embarrassingly enough...)

[kore]

It's partly an expose of the terrible racism in the Citadel and the South but it's been so long since I read it, I don't remember if the portrayal of the one (1) major black character is any good or not. Conroy obviously loves and hates the military life and macho-ness and his father and the "code" of the South and the soldier, it's an interesting push-pull. But even before he went full on batshit in those two very late, very lengthy, novels, there's a kind of OTT-but-mediocre quality I really dislike. Some of his novellas and memoirs are good, though.

[cyphomandra]

Of these I have only read Lords of Discipline, but I did that standing in a bookshop in my teens and all I remember is that it didn't match up to the completely bonkers southern gothic of The Prince of Tides (but then, what would?).

I am voting for the Noor Inayat Khan even though it will be depressing because I have just finished reading Leo Marks' Between Silk and Cyanide, which is the best book I've read all year and is a ferociously brilliant memoir about his time making & breaking codes in SOE in WWII. He briefs Khan and as her training reports have been not all that favourable reads her short story collection first as a way of getting into her head, and making her focus on the code. (Marks is the son of the Marks who runs the second-hand bookshop made famous by 84, Charing Cross Road )

[rachelmanija]

Nothing can possibly match Prince of Tides. Beach Music a random attack by Italian terrorists, sea turtles, and the Holocaust, and it still didn't.

[kore]

I wonder if Conroy would have ever published that book if he'd known it would be what he was kinda infamous for, forever. Like Erica Jong and the zipless fuck.

[bironic]

Oh, man, Life After Life. I *did* love the premise, and the book has stuck with me for a long time, but it was a dark, difficult read.

[rachelmanija]

Huh. I had no idea it was dark!

[kore]

It's pretty dark to start with, and then it goes into detail about WWII in England, and Hitler and the Nazis appear. It's beautifully written, though, one of my favourite modern experimental novels. There's no stated reason for the premise of the novel, though, and I think that tends to irritate you.

[rachelmanija]

I read it! Much darker than I would have expected without the warning.

https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2421571.html

[osprey_archer]

I read Take Three Tenses when I was on my Rumer Godden kick and... I don't actually remember it very well, so it's probably not up there with In This House of Brede or An Episode of Sparrows, but on the other hand that means it's not Pippa Passes, either.

My other favorite book of hers is The Kitchen Madonna, in which two children make a Madonna icon for their housekeeper out of found materials - it's all about using ingenuity to make something beautiful and there are very few books constructed like that and it was lovely.

[rachelmanija]

OH HEY I THINK I MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE THAT.

(Look below. We all unite in hate for Pippa Passes.)

[ironed_orchid]

I love Rumer Godden and would marry all her books.

I read And the Ass Saw the Angel in my 20s and really liked it, but my tolerance for pretentious fiction by men is much lower now.

I would give it one more try, and if it doesn't hook you, give up, turn off the lights, lie in the dark and listen to The Firstborn Is Dead really loud.

Hell, just listen to Tupelo.

I tend to like Bank's SF, but be quite wary of his other fiction.

[adrian_turtle]

I love Rumer Godden and would marry all her books.
I love Rumer Godden and would marry all her books except Pippa Passes, which made me cringe.

Oddly, Godden's An Episode of Sparrows felted like a darker take on Streatfeld's Thursday's Child. I never read Godden's Thursday. Here it is Wednesday....

[rachelmanija]

I think everyone hates Pippa Passes.

If you like Godden you should DEFINITELY read Thursday's Child. It's like a darker take on Ballet Shoes.

[ironed_orchid]

I have somehow managed to avoid Pippa Passes and now I will consciously continue to avoid it.

[rachelmanija]

That is an excellent life decision and I endorse it.

[rachelmanija]

Hahaha. Great advice on the Cave novel.

[ironed_orchid]

I feel like the novel and that album work through a lot of the same themes, and i know which one I prefer.

[davidgillon]

Oh my god, I've just realised there's a Banks novel I haven't read. Actually there's a couple, but The Steep Approach to Garbadale is one I did mean to read. I've never yet found a Banks novel I wasn't glad to have read. There are also several of those I will gladly never read again, but thankfully he got over his need for a once-a-book gross-out scene relatively quickly, and Steep Approach is a later novel, so probably worth the try. The Business is perhaps my favourite Banks, and if it's anything like as good then I say fling.

I'd take a chance on the Noor Inayat Khan book, the source material should forgive a lot of potential writerly sins.

I have a feeling I bounced badly off Lords of Discipline when I was younger, and I would read anything at that age.

[rachelmanija]

I was not glad to have read The Wasp Factory or Song of Stone, though oddly I love Complicity which is also incredibly dark/gross. I've never read The Business; what's it about?

[davidgillon]

I'm with you on The Wasp Factory to a degree, that's one I'll probably never re-read, Song of Stone I'm mixed on, I liked it a lot, but the ending was fairly horrible. Agree on Complicity.

The Business is about a 30-something go-getting exec in the eponymous Business, which has been big for a long time - as in once technically owning the Roman Empire. She was effectively adopted by a senior exec from a dirt poor background and schooled for the role, and is on the point of breaking through to the highest levels, which will put her on the global rich list. The Business swore off temporal power after the Roman Empire thing, but is now debating reversing that as a seat at the UN and a currency to call their own would be useful. She's neck deep in that as one option for acquiring said UN seat is marrying her off to the king of a Himalayan kingdom, then she accidentally stumbles onto something which may be a plot by one of the senior execs, which sends her on a travelogue around their various Bond-villainish lairs. Nothing horrible, but someone caught up in something which may have no good endings. If I had to come up with comparisons, think Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon without the dual track narrative and less techno-geekery, with a touch of the film of Len Deighton's Billion Dollar Brain.

[rachelmanija]

Banks has the coolest plots.

[muccamukk]

The Tiger Claw is immensely depressing. I don't have any other opinions about the books.

[rachelmanija]

Good to know. Kill it is.

[muccamukk]

My dad recced it to me, and I was like "This is literally about being tortured to death by nazis!" and he was like "yes but it's really well written!" "That doesn't make it less horrifying!"

Reading back to my review at the time, it was also pretty didactic, apparently.

[gool_duck]

Bank's Steep Approach to Garbadale feels like The Crow Road over again, only I liked it less. So if you have read The Crow Road, I feel like you don't need this one as well.

[kore]

....wait, isn't it Fuck/Marry/Kill(Cliff)?

[luzula]

I remember enjoying A Fugue in Time! And judging from other comments, I should put more of her books on my list of books to check out...