Among Others
Feb. 7th, 2011 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishJo Walton, Among Others
A very quiet book. The prose reminded me of, oh, Patricia McKillip, and Zelazny's "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." This is not necessarily a good thing for me, since I bounce right off McKillip every time I try to read her and I had to plow through "24 Views" twice before falling irredeemably in love with it. That didn't so much happen here, though: I noted the... detachment, I guess, but it didn't get in the way of getting pulled in. Maybe it's a difference between third (McKillip), first ("24 Views"), and a very personal journal-style first (Among Others). I dunno.
It's a book about growing up after you've saved the world and defeated the evil witch, and about growing up as a SF geek/fan in the late 70s / early 80s, and about being fifteen.
I liked it a lot, in a quiet way. I enjoyed Mori's voice (believably grown-up for her age except in the ways where it makes sense for her to be quite definitely fifteen), I enjoyed the books littering the landscape, I very much enjoyed the inexplicable nature of the faeries and of magic in general.
I'm not sure what to think about the subtle narratorial (is that a word?) twist that's alluded to a few times and spelled out explicitly in passing towards the end of the book. When Gene Wolfe does things like that it makes you see the whole story in a new light. Here it's, well, subtle, in effect as well as presentation. It illuminates an aspect of Mori's character and how deeply she was affected by events immediately prior to the book. I think I wanted it to mean more, and was disappointed when it didn't. I think that's a failure of my reading, of me projecting what I want and expect, rather than of the book itself. I'll have to see if I feel differently about it on a reread. And the book is very much worth a reread, so there's that.
Speaking of narrators, one note from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky's spoiler-laden FAQ:
Oh, and the potential sequel has a title. Because what else could the sequel to Among Others possibly be called?
A very quiet book. The prose reminded me of, oh, Patricia McKillip, and Zelazny's "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." This is not necessarily a good thing for me, since I bounce right off McKillip every time I try to read her and I had to plow through "24 Views" twice before falling irredeemably in love with it. That didn't so much happen here, though: I noted the... detachment, I guess, but it didn't get in the way of getting pulled in. Maybe it's a difference between third (McKillip), first ("24 Views"), and a very personal journal-style first (Among Others). I dunno.
It's a book about growing up after you've saved the world and defeated the evil witch, and about growing up as a SF geek/fan in the late 70s / early 80s, and about being fifteen.
I liked it a lot, in a quiet way. I enjoyed Mori's voice (believably grown-up for her age except in the ways where it makes sense for her to be quite definitely fifteen), I enjoyed the books littering the landscape, I very much enjoyed the inexplicable nature of the faeries and of magic in general.
I'm not sure what to think about the subtle narratorial (is that a word?) twist that's alluded to a few times and spelled out explicitly in passing towards the end of the book. When Gene Wolfe does things like that it makes you see the whole story in a new light. Here it's, well, subtle, in effect as well as presentation. It illuminates an aspect of Mori's character and how deeply she was affected by events immediately prior to the book. I think I wanted it to mean more, and was disappointed when it didn't. I think that's a failure of my reading, of me projecting what I want and expect, rather than of the book itself. I'll have to see if I feel differently about it on a reread. And the book is very much worth a reread, so there's that.
Speaking of narrators, one note from
papersky's spoiler-laden FAQ:Q. Is she an unreliable narrator then?Which, YES. If you're writing in first, and your narrator is not at least slightly unreliable, then you're doing it wrong. Nobody is that objective, and everybody remembers and interprets events differently, and that's the whole point of writing in first.
A. Everybody is an unreliable narrator.
Oh, and the potential sequel has a title. Because what else could the sequel to Among Others possibly be called?