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jazzfishJennifer Stevenson, Trash Sex Magic
Picked this up on a whim in Seattle, on the strength of blurbs by Ellen Kushner and Gene Wolfe. I don't think I've been this underwhelmed by a random read in a long time.
The contents are pretty much as labeled: the main characters are a mother and daughter who live in a trailer on the banks of a river in Illinois, and can more or less seduce men just by looking at them thanks to the spirit of the big tree across the road. (I'm vastly oversimplifying.) The worldbuilding's top-notch, and it's nice to see the world from the perspective of (non-urban) poverty. Stevenson never explains the magic, which is as it should be: even the Somershoe women don't fully understand it, or see all its effects. And the book's meditations on sex and its power make for some interesting thinking at the very least.
Shame about how it falls apart as a story. The plot doesn't so much arc as take a direct path from "problem" to "obvious and telegraphed resolution." Writerly advice tends to tell you that plot's a result of characters having problems. Trash Sex Magic proves that this ain't exactly so: the characters have to make choices regarding their problems and then act on those choices. And no one in this book does anything, at all. Everything major that happens is a result of forces outside their control. I kept waiting for someone to do something, anything, about the situation. Instead they spent a great deal of time yelling at each other. Which is a pretty accurate depiction of their lives, okay, but it makes for a painfully uncompelling tale.
I wanted so badly to like this book, too. But the ending... I've not seen so many dei ex machinae (well, ex arboribus), well, ever. Writing "literary fiction" is not a license to dispense with the mechanics of plot, any more than writing SF is a license to dispense with character.
Picked this up on a whim in Seattle, on the strength of blurbs by Ellen Kushner and Gene Wolfe. I don't think I've been this underwhelmed by a random read in a long time.
The contents are pretty much as labeled: the main characters are a mother and daughter who live in a trailer on the banks of a river in Illinois, and can more or less seduce men just by looking at them thanks to the spirit of the big tree across the road. (I'm vastly oversimplifying.) The worldbuilding's top-notch, and it's nice to see the world from the perspective of (non-urban) poverty. Stevenson never explains the magic, which is as it should be: even the Somershoe women don't fully understand it, or see all its effects. And the book's meditations on sex and its power make for some interesting thinking at the very least.
Shame about how it falls apart as a story. The plot doesn't so much arc as take a direct path from "problem" to "obvious and telegraphed resolution." Writerly advice tends to tell you that plot's a result of characters having problems. Trash Sex Magic proves that this ain't exactly so: the characters have to make choices regarding their problems and then act on those choices. And no one in this book does anything, at all. Everything major that happens is a result of forces outside their control. I kept waiting for someone to do something, anything, about the situation. Instead they spent a great deal of time yelling at each other. Which is a pretty accurate depiction of their lives, okay, but it makes for a painfully uncompelling tale.
I wanted so badly to like this book, too. But the ending... I've not seen so many dei ex machinae (well, ex arboribus), well, ever. Writing "literary fiction" is not a license to dispense with the mechanics of plot, any more than writing SF is a license to dispense with character.
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Date: 2010-09-21 04:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-21 01:30 pm (UTC)