A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

The books which were able to break my reading block all shared a compelling, propulsive, page-turning quality, including this one. That is how I came to read what is possibly the single bleakest book I've ever read. It's very very good and I'm glad I read it, but... be warned.

Only Ever Yours is more of a satire/allegory of sexism, misogyny, beauty culture, and the maddeningly contradictory things we tell teenage girls and then judge for failing to do perfectly than a dystopia that could really happen. But consider it on any basis other than "is this a plausible extrapolation of the future," which it clearly isn't supposed to be, and it's horrifyingly realistic on its own terms.

In this horrendous post-apocalyptic world, frieda is a teenage girl being raised with other girls in a nightmarish school which is supposed to teach them to be perfect and beautiful so they can be given to men. It goes to every possible length to brainwash them to ensure that they won't ever rebel, let alone band together to do so, or even be kind to each other. There's no rebellion to overthrow the system, but there are some small and personal ones, in a world where choosing not to be cruel is a rebellion in itself.

The lack of capital letters on the girls' names (boys get them) is probably the least of the relentless detailing of how this society (our society, exaggerated) crushes girls and women, and prods and pushes them to crush themselves and each other. They must maintain a designated weight, but eat in a cafeteria where the Fatgirl Buffet always waits as a public temptation. Audio tapes play all night telling them they're worthless if they're not thin and perfect. They have regular sessions where they're told to critique each others' bodies. Even the flowers (as artificial as everything in this setting) have mirrors in their centers.

In the middle of all this horror is frieda, desperately grasping for love and acceptance, isabel, destroying herself for reasons frieda doesn't understand, and megan, who understands the rules and plays by them as hard as she can. All three of them are heartbreakingly human in a system designed to strip them of humanity.

Here are two excellent short fanfics, both distinctly more cheerful than the novel.

I'm the New Blue-Blood, by atheilen. megan carves out a life for herself after the book.

We All Have Our Favorites, by scioscribe. A very satisfying and even comforting fix-it, though fix-it in the context of the book is still incredibly dark.

Only Ever Yours

This week iknowcommawrite, osprey-archer, and littlerhymes all posted on Malory Towers, one of Enid Blyton's boarding school series. (scioscribe also posted on Enid Blyton and naked tennis.)

Quentin Coldwater is an unhappy, self-absorbed, self-conscious teenager obsessed with a children’s fantasy series set in a magical world called Fillory, which is very clearly meant to evoke Narnia. Then he learns that he has a talent for magic, and is whisked away to a fancy prep school for magicians, Brakebills. At first he thinks his dream has come true. But soon enough, he realizes that he’s still an unhappy, self-absorbed, self-conscious teenager, only now he’s obsessed with real magic.

I read this in preparation for being on a panel on portal fantasy. I had avoided it until then because all I had heard about it was that it was published as a mainstream literary novel rather than as genre fantasy (you can tell because it’s subtitled “a novel,”) was about how fantasy sucks and had the most unlikable protagonist since Thomas Covenant.

All that turned out to be correct. Sort of. But I liked it way more than I expected to, primarily because the “fantasy sucks” and “protagonist is unbearable” elements don’t come in, or at least aren’t major themes, until about the last third of the book. The first two-thirds, which is set in Brakebills, is terrific – distinctly on the cynical side and weighed down by Quentin’s depression and solipsism, but written in absolutely wonderful prose and full of vivid images, funny lines, and a genuine sense of magic.

As I read that part, I couldn’t understand why the book had such a bad reputation among fantasy readers. Sure, it emphasizes that magic is difficult, that magicians are not the most fun people in the world, and that Quentin is using magic to run away from essentially everything else, but it’s also hugely enjoyable to read as fantasy.

I loved the Brakebills section. The prose is to die for. It’s extremely well-structured, with a great use of foreshadowing to create surprising yet beautifully set-up plot twists.

On the con side, the characterization has problems and it isn’t just a lack of likability. Other than Quentin, who is more distinct as he’s seen from the inside, many of the characters are so similar that they blend together. Virtually all of the characters are obsessive, unhappy, self-absorbed, driven, and jaded. The main characters have maybe one or two traits in addition to that set, such as “punk,” “brave,” or “pretentious.”

However, lots of teenagers are unhappy and self-absorbed, so I read the Brakebills part thinking that Quentin and his buddies weren’t that bad and the readers who loathed him probably didn’t remember being a teenager that well.

Then he graduates from Brakebills. Almost immediately, I realized why readers hated him. And soon after, I realized why fantasy readers frequently hate the book. Spoilers ahoy! ( Read more... )

I looked on Goodreads and saw that there are two more books. I attempted to get a sense of what they were like while avoiding spoilers, and was interested to see that the second is partly narrated by the most interesting character in the first book, and that readers seemed to think the third was actually uplifting. It’s not that I require uplift in everything. But I’m not going to read more of the series if it’s all soul-sucking joylessness like the real world and Fillory sections. However, I would definitely read more if it’s more like the Brakebills sections. Also, the moments of uplift in The Magicians were beautiful, so I know Grossman can do that well.

If you can comment without major spoilers, I’d be interested to hear what those of you who’ve read further books thought of them.

The Magicians: A Novel

A paper collection of the first 20 chapters of the webcomic, which is also available for free online.

An oddball, inventive steampunkish fantasy set in a bizarre boarding school, combining tropes from… well, basically everything ever, but most prominently the English boarding school story and world mythology.

A rather peculiar girl, Antimony Carver, who grew up in a hospital where she hung out with all the psychopomps who came to escort the spirits of the dead, is sent to a boarding school in which students build robots and bring the Minotaur to class to do a presentation on himself, counsel ghosts on the best methods of terrifying unsuspecting students, and have romances end tragically when one of them turns into a bird.

Somewhat surreal and often funny, this reminds me a bit of the earlier volumes of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. At first I had a hard time with the art, especially the bizarrely angled heads, but it improves as it goes along. By the end of the volume, I liked it a lot, and the characters and story as well. I’m having a hard time describing this, but I enjoyed it and will read the rest online rather than wait for the next volume to come out in print.

Thanks to the multiple people who recommended this.

Gunnerkrigg Court

Please reminisce, fondly or not, about any of these, or other books read in childhood, especially if they seem to have, deservedly or undeservedly, vanished from the shelves. I'd love to hear about non-US, non-British books, too.

[Poll #1720139]

Sponsored by erinlin.

A while back, I picked up a YA novel called Madapple because, based solely on the title, I thought it might be re-telling the story of the Garden of Eden in a modern American high school. It turned out to be about something else entirely, and I thought I would have liked my imaginary book better. Fallen doesn’t exactly retell Eden, but it does place reincarnations or descendants of Lucifer, etc, in a modern American high school. It is surprisingly boring. I still like my imaginary book better.

In a prologue in 1854, an emo guy mopes around and woefully tells a girl that they can never ever be together, apparently because every time they reincarnate and kiss, he or she or both of them explode or something, it’s not made clear. They kiss. Then they explode. Or something.

Cut to modern USA. Teenage Luce (short for Lucifer Lucinda) has been diagnosed as psychotic because she sees menacing shadows. Then she kisses a guy. He bursts into flames and dies, and she’s sent to Hell a reform boarding school, Sword & Cross, where many people have names like Gabbe (Gabriel, I assume) and Diante (Dante.) There she sees a hot guy, Daniel Grigori, to whom she is instantly drawn and who seems strangely familiar.

Over the next 100 pages, he flips her off, ignores her, tells her to go away, and tells her to stop stalking him. Then a statue of an angel almost falls on both of them. Meanwhile, another boy, Cam, actually interacts a bit with her, and gives her the highly symbolic gift of a bit of serpent snake skin. At this point I am rooting for Cam, insofar as I’m rooting for anyone, on the basis that Cam and Luce have had an actual conversation.

For the next 100 pages, Luce stares at Daniel, who ignores her, and flirts with Cam, who gives her a guitar pick. She is still menaced by shadows no one else can see. Then the school bursts into flames, and shadows apparently rescue Luce but kill the boy she was with. This apparently prompts Daniel to start flirting with her, or possibly that was coincidental. I’m still rooting for Cam, though clearly he is not The One and is possibly Sat-am, again because there has been actual interaction.

For the next 100 pages, Cam and Daniel flirt with Luce. Cam displays superhuman strength, and Daniel the ability to scare off the shadows which he denies that he can see. Then a girl, Gabbe, superhumanly beats up Cam, and Daniel FINALLY decides to tell Luce what’s going on. Sort of. He informs her that he is immortal, and every seventeen years, he meets Luce, and they fall in love, and somehow that kills her, whether or not they kiss. But this time, they kissed and she did not drop dead. Woo-hoo! Not sure why he doesn’t think it just hasn’t happened YET. Inexplicably, Luce does not question him further.

The school librarian (Sophia, wisdom) confirms that they’re both damned. Inexplicably, Luce does not question her further.

Then Luce remembers! ”You’re an angel,” she repeated slowly, surprised to see Daniel close his eyes and moan in pleasure, almost as if they were kissing. “I’m in love with an angel.”

In the last twenty pages, stuff finally starts to happen. There is a revelation I wasn’t expecting. Unfortunately, it’s a supremely stupid one. The climax and ending tip over from slow and dull into hilariously ridiculous, but it’s too little, too late. Though I did like the random introduction of a helpful Vietnam vet with a private plane with which to ferry around a winged angel.

Fallen

This is the vampire—excuse me, vampyre finishing school book.

Zoey Redbird has normal teenage problems – her stepfather is in a whackadoo Christian cult, her boyfriend is not too bright and drinks a lot, and she fears geometry – until she’s marked by a vampyre. Excuse me, Marked.

Wham! Next thing she knows, she’s attending vampyre boarding school. This point was a little unclear, but apparently the Mark doesn’t turn you into a vampyre, but is given to you after you’ve already spontaneously mutated in order to warn you to get yourself to vampyre academy. Once there, you become a fledgling trained in the ways of vampyres. But there’s a catch: about ten percent of all fledglings have their bodies reject the Change, and drop dead before graduation.

This is obviously not going to happen to Zoey, though, because she is extremely special. How is she special? Let me count the ways:

1. Her crescent moon Mark, which is normally just an outline on fledglings, is filled in.
2. The vampyre Goddess Nyx came to her in a vision and told her she had some sort of important mission.
3. Her personal advisor is the headmistress.
4. She craves blood, which normally doesn’t happen till much later.
5. Her wise Cherokee grandmother imparted special Cherokee wisdom to her.
6. She sees ghosts (or possibly zombies).
7. A very few full vampyres can control ONE of the five elements. Zoey, though still a fledgling, can control all five!

Though I mock, I actually quite enjoyed this. It’s kind of terrible and trashy, but the fun kind of terrible and trashy.

For all her specialness, Zoey is a likable character with a sense of humor that’s often actually funny. The academy is a fun setting, with its classes in Vampyre Sociology 101, cat companions, snobbish blood-sucking sororities, and secret rituals in the dead of night. The pace seems fast even though objectively not a whole ton of a lot happens, and though I never feared for any of the major characters, the Casts do a good job of making the possibility of sudden death hang over the characters’ heads. And despite the obligatory presence of a predictably boring male love interest, Erik Night (!), it’s overall very female-centric.

The novel is told in first person, and one of its main strengths is that, with some lapses, it really does read like a teenager wrote it: casual, teenage-cynical alternating with teenage-earnest, simultaneously frank and judgmental about sex. And one of its main weaknesses is that it REALLY reads like a teenager wrote it, complete with bad sentence structure, pointless rambling, etc. It also has a lot of teenage-plausible casual offensiveness – I winced, for instance, every time she called something “retarded.” However, that isn’t just Zoey being in character. There’s also the wise old magical Indian grandmother, not to mention the sympathetic gay guy who isn’t weird and femme like those other gay guys. Etc. That being said, that sort of thing is kept to a relatively low murmur, and there’s clearly an effort, however hamhanded, made at being inclusive.

What really made me want to read more, though, were the hints at the end that all was not as it seemed, and that some standard plot and character tropes might not go in the way I was expecting. Though I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I tore through this and will check the library for the sequel.

View on Amazon: Marked (House of Night, Book 1)

This is probably the best YA fantasy I've read all year: complex, compulsively readable, beautifully plotted, emotionally intense, and intelligent. I highly recommend it.

It begins somewhat uninspiringly, in the usual medievaloid vaguely-English landscape, with a village girl with a talent. That is Sadima, who can communicate with animals but must keep her talent a secret since magicians are, apparently, all frauds, and one of them was involved in the death of her mother.

Her story alternates with another one which is seemingly unconnected: in a time when magic is easily available to the wealthy, a rich man's despised son is packed off to the wizard's academy. Without any onstage gore or theatrical sadism, this is the single darkest portrayal of the fantasy standard, the school of magic, that I've ever encountered.

A great deal of the pleasure of reading this book involves slowly piecing together the connections between the two stories. One of the most important ones, not made clear within the book itself until about a third of the way in, is given away on the cover; I suggest that you read the book without reading the inside or back cover first.

Though it ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, I found it to be a very satisfying read on its own, and the structure of the first book is so cleverly and carefully thought-out that I would be very surprised if the subsequent books were disappointing.

Massive spoilers, only read if you've already read the book. Spoilery comments welcome; don't read those if you haven't read the book. ( Read more... )

While doing rewrites on my memoir, I looked up some bibliographies of boarding school books to refresh my memory on ones I read as a child.

It's scary how many I read: Enid Blyton's St. Clare's and Malory Towers series, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's Chalet School series, which was set in Switzerland and was full of local color, and many more. It is my theory that the popularity of Harry Potter has less to do with fantasy than with the introduction of the traditional British boarding school story to an American audience. They're wish-fullfillment fantasies in which the wish was that school was fun.

Boarding school books for girls have uniformly female casts, and so offer girls the chance to occupy every school story archetype: the brave one, the sensible one, the dreamy artist, the bully, the hero, the dummy, the actress, the jock, the horse-crazy girl, the shrinking violet, the snob. Competitive sports play major roles, and performing arts a slightly smaller one. Midnight feasts are frequent.

Macho girls, who may go by male names like Bill, often become best friends with very femme and timid girls with names like Mary-Anne, and fantasize together about never marrying and living together in a small cottage, where Mary Anne can keep house and Bill can break horses. In light of this, I enjoyed seeing the title, which was apparently translated from Phyllis Matthewman's original Swedish, The Queerness of Rusty.

Other sample titles: The Turbulence of Tony, Jill's Jolliest School, The Darling of the School, The Chums of Study Ten, Miss Prosser's Passion, 'Play Up, Buffs!', So this Is School!, and Gay from China at the Chalet School.

http://home.swipnet.se/flickbok/collect.htm