Now, does everybody know the story of Jane Eyre? It was first published in 1847 and has been made into a movie no less than 19 separate times, so I’m going to go ahead and spoil everything. Agreed? Yes? Excellent; we proceed.

So, once upon a time there is an orphan named Jane Eyre, who lives with her horrible foster family, the Reeds. And they are thoroughly awful, but at last she is sent to a boarding school, and is finally away from the awful Reeds — except that everyone is starving at the school, and her best (only) friend dies of consumption. Tragedy! But Jane stays at the school — goodness knows that the Reeds don’t want her back — and eventually becomes a teacher there. One day she decides that such a life is not enough, and at the age of eighteen she acquires a job as a governess for Adèle, the ward (and/or love child) of the brooding Mr Edward Rochester. And then Jane and Rochester fall in love, and are going to be married, except — right at the altar — Jane finds out that he actually has a wife already, and that she’s not only alive, but she’s crazy and has been tied up in the attic the whole time. Tragedy!

Jane runs away, therefore, and after nearly dying of exposure on the moors she falls in with a family of siblings, the Riverses, and their housekeeper. They give her a place to live, and eventually, a job as village schoolteacher. And then it turns out that they are actually all cousins. Coincidence! And they are very happy together, especially when Jane inherits a fortune from their mutual uncle — whom none of them have actually ever met — and splits it evenly among the. But then, St John Rivers, her drippy drip of a cousin, wants her to go to India with him as his wife, and Jane can’t do that, as he is a drippy drip (and as she still loves Rochester, deep in her heart). Angst!

And she almost, almost goes off to India with dopey drip St John, but one night she hears Rochester’s voice floating across the moors to her. So she re-runs away, and ends back at Thornfield Hall, Rochester’s residence, only to find that, in the interim, it has burned right down to the ground, and its former inhabitants are gone. After some sleuthing, though, she finds Rochester again: he was severely injured in the fire and is now crippled and blind. Tragedy! But she loves him anyway, and crazy Bertha perished in the fire, and they get married (for real, this time) and live happily ever after. Relief!

There is the plot; and now that you have it out of the way, you will be able to concentrate on the writing itself, which is largely exquisite (and I don’t mean that solely because it is filled with semi-colons, my favourite punctuation mark by far). The writing is both profound and beautiful, and I will give you two examples with which to whet your appetite:

Still indomitable was the reply — ‘I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I may break them, what would be their worth?’ (p 280)

And again:

By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it. I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity. I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapprochable — to hear it thus freely handled — was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure — an unhoped-for relief. Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive. The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to ‘burst’ with boldness and good will into ‘the silent sea’ of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations. (p 329)

Is not that lovely? It is — but even if you don’t think so, read Jane Eyre anyway, so that you can go on to the reward of Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair. You won’t regret either of them.

Four stars.

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Review: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

Some of you may have read Connie Willis’s other time-travel novel, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and may subsequently have the impression that her books are just barrels of smart and witty laughs and giggles. Please allow me to correct this impression: Doomsday Book is smart and full of time-travelling Oxfordians, but humourous it is not. Beautiful, yes. Haunting, yes. Funny? Not so much.

I mean, come on. It’s about the Black Plague.

Our story begins in Oxford in 2054 — long after the great Pandemic that will soon strike us all, but not so long that it’s been forgotten. Time travel exists, but isn’t particularly glamourous; it’s used primarily by historians wishing to do on-site research. Kivrin Engle is one such historian, and she has taught herself Latin masses and cow milking and Middle English in preparation for a two-week research stint in 1320. Her tutor, James Dunwoody, doesn’t want her to go; the drop is being supervised by the incompetent Gilchrist, who hadn’t even sent an unmanned probe to the 14th century before approving Kivrin’s journey.

His worrying has no effect, however. Kivrin is sent back in time, and his own hands are soon full as a mysterious viral epidemic breaks out in Oxford. In the meantime, Kivrin has landed in the correct century, at more or less the correct place, and has been taken in by the family of Sir Guillaume D’Iverie: his wife, mother, and two young daughters.

Do I need to tell you that things go wrong? Things go very wrong — wrong like there-goes-half-of-Europe wrong. The middle ages are brutal, but not as brutal as the plague that swept through them. [Aside: did you know that people still fall ill from bubonic plague? No joke. It's no picnic, I'm sure, but it's easily taken care of with antibiotics and such now. Still, can you imagine? "Uh, boss, I can't come in to work today ... yeah, I'm a bit sick ... bubonic plague, actually ... no, I'm serious, I have the plague ... hello? hello?" End of aside.]

A great strength of Doomsday Book is Willis’s research, which must have been extensive and meticulous. The passages set in the middle ages are exquisitely realized. The filth and grit and vibrancy of the “contemps” are all there, and the picture that is painted of the way people actually lived is much more vivid and real than anything I’ve ever encountered in a history book, or even in much historical fiction. This works especially because the facts and facets of medieval life are inextricably grounded in the lives of the characters — and history is about people, and stories, after all.

Of course, one of the great facets of medieval life was the Black Death, which swept through Europe first in the sixth century, and then in the fourteenth and for several centuries thereafter. It doesn’t give away too much to tell you that plague happens in Doomsday Book, and that it’s horrible. Have you ever really thought about what it’s like when plague buboes burst? You will.

That being said, Doomsday Book is tragic but not entirely hopeless. The ending is bleak but strangely satisfying. You know, triumph of the human spirit, blah de blah de blah. It’s pretty great.

Four and a half stars.

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Review: Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

Over the last year or two my brother and I have both chewed our way through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series like a couple of termites through wood. But I finished reading the last one quite a few months ago — perhaps close to a year, in fact — and I’ve been hesitant to pick them up again. Sometimes it’s hard to re-read a book; you’re not sure how much you remember, or whether that remembrance will spoil it for you, or whether any of the jokes will be funny the second time around.

I am happy to report that Terry Pratchett is still excellent the second time through — and, presumably, the third, fourth, and nth time as well.

A Hat Full of Sky is the second Discworld to feature Tiffany Aching, a “big wee young hag”. She’s a young witch of some considerable power, and she has a good relationship with the Nac Mac Feegle, tiny Pictsies (not pixies, thank you very much: these fairies are red-haired, kilt-wearing, covered with blue tattoos, and will fight anything — including themselves — at a drop of a hat) who  lives in the Chalk country and makes cheese. Of course, she’s also been the kelda (queen) of a Nac Mac Feegle clan, which makes things rather … interesting. In A Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany leaves the Chalk to apprentice with Miss Level, another witch.

There’s trouble, of course. There always is. Tiffany is followed from the Chalk by a hiver, a semi-sentient being that feeds off the power of others — takes them over, in fact. Tiffany must find a way to get rid of the hiver, as well as come into her own power as a witch (or a hag, to the Nac Mac Feegle). These things are not very easy, although perhaps for different reasons than you’d imagine.

One thing that I like about Pratchett’s writing is that, among the qualities of intelligent insight, interestingness, and humour, he always has at least two out of three going, and usually all of them. Certain books run heavily to one or two of them, and A Hat Full of Sky — like most of the witch books, actually — runs heavily to insight. Here’s something from toward the beginning:

The trouble with Tiffany was her Third Thoughts*. They thought: She lives by herself. Who lit the fire? A bubbling pot needs stirring from time to time. Who stirred it? And someone lit the candles. Who?

*First Thoughts are the everyday thoughts. Everyone has those. Second Thoughts are the thoughts you think about the way you think. People who enjoy thinking have those. Third Thoughts are thoughts that watch the world and think all by themselves. They’re rare, and often troublesome. Listening to them is part of witchcraft. (p 71)

And something from toward the end:

What she wanted to say was: ‘Where I come from, Annagramma, they have the Sheepdog Trials. Shephers travel there from all over the show off their dogs. And there’re silver crooks and belts with silver buckles and prizes of all kinds, Annagramma, but do you know what the big prize was? No, you wouldn’t. Oh, there were judges, but they didn’t count, not for the big prize. There is — There was a little old lady who was always at the front of the crowd, leaning on the hurdles with her pipe ion her mouth with the two finest sheepdogs ever pupped sitting at her feet. Their names were Thunder and Lightning and they moved so fast they set the air on fire and their coats outshone the sun, but she never, ever put them in the Trials. She knew more about sheep than even sheep knew. And what every young shepherd wanted, really wanted, wasn’t some silly cup or belt but to see her take her pipe out of her mouth as he left the arena and quietly say “That’ll do” because that meant he was a real shepherd and all the other shepherds would knew it too. And if you’d told him he had to challenge her, he’d cuss at you and stap his foot and tell you he’d sooner spit the sun dark. How could he ever win? She was shepherding. It was the whole of her life. What you took away from her you’d take away from yourself. You don’t understand that, do you? But it’s the heart and soul and centre of it! The soul . . . and . . . centre!’ (pp 329-30)

Of course, the book has its fair share of funny as well, particularly when the narration is dealing with the Nac Mac Feegle — who are awfully feisty, stupid, and irascible, but also thoroughly inventive and loyal. And aren’t tiny blue drunks always good for a laugh? I assure you, they always are. But the humour is not limited to the Pictsies; as with most Pratchett, there are numerous authorial asides that make me giggle. Consider this footnote from page 176:

*The hermit elephant of Howondaland has a very thin hide, except on its head, and young ones will often move into a small mud hut while the owners are out. It is far too shy to harm anyone, but most people quit their huts pretty soon after an elephant moves in. For one thing, it lifts the hut off the ground and carries it away on its back across the veldt, settling it down over any patch of nice grass that it finds. This makes housework very unpredictable. Nevertheless, and entire village of hermit elephants moving across the plains is one of the finest sights on the continent.

It’s the last sentence that really makes that paragraph, I think. And it’s the last chapter that really makes this book — but of course, I will not spoil that for you. You will simply have to read it for yourselves.

4.5 stars.

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Review: A Hat Full of Sky, by Terry Pratchett

One of the problems with reading an entire series back-to-back is that you start to see all the little things that the author — and his editor — didn’t. Like how minor characters sometimes mysteriously change the spelling or their names between books. And their genders. And their entire characterizations. Or how the main character’s father mysteriously starts calling his son Wilfred instead of Willard — his actual name — in book five.

Dang it, Robert Asprin, were you even reading this stuff as you wrote it? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

*mutter mutter*

These books are clunky. They’re repetitive. They’re slow, and generally take about half the book just to start getting to the action. There are some serious problems with the writing. It’s full of “As you know, Bob” dialogue. The prose sucks on all sorts of levels — and yet I can’t stop reading them. The trouble is that even though these books are kind of terrible, they’re also … really kind of fun. They amuse me.

Taken in smaller doses, Robert Asprin’s (and sometimes Peter J. Heck’s) Phule series is good summer reading, light space opera that doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. The series follows the (mis)adventures of mega-millionaire Willard Phule, more often known as Captain Jester of the Space Legion. After ordering a peace conference strafed, Phule/Jester is reassigned to command of an Omega Company: a dumping ground for losers and misfits below even the Legion’s usual lax standards. Unsurprisingly, Our Plucky Hero ™ — and his butler — turn the ragtag troops into something rather more disciplined and much more amusing, punning all the while.

The characters are stereotypical — the tiny-but-feisty woman, the Italian small-time thief, the inscrutable oriental, the gentle giant — but, if anything, that only adds to the appeal of the series. Why wrestle with complex characterization when it’s already all laid out for you? Exactly. And the situations are predictable enough that you don’t worry too hard about them: Phule’s company gets in trouble; Phule gets them out; Phule gets in trouble; Phule’s company gets him out, etc. At the same time, though, they’re zany enough to keep you guessing.

Plus, there’s an entire denomination that worships Elvis.

In short, this series is terribly written, excellent brain candy. Three stars?

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Just Phuling Around

Once upon a time, when I was in grade eight, my English teacher made the class read a book called Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen. To this day, I think that it’s the only book that I’ve actually expressed a desire to burn. I thought that it was terrible — a very babyish book for grade eights, and poorly written to boot. I thoroughly loathed Hatchet, but eventually we got through it, and I was able to put it from my mind.

Until now.

My family was en vacances the other week, and we stayed at a beach house type of place, which contained (as beach houses are wont to do) a rather esoteric collection of books left for vacationers to read. There were some kids’ books, some Barbara Kingsolver, a trashy Judy Blume novel, and — of all things — Roget’s Thesaurus. There were a handful of Babysitters’ Club books, which I reread with great relish.

Also, there was a copy of Hatchet, which I picked up and started to read. I wanted to see whether my old opinion of it stood up, or whether my original reaction was just pre-teen emotional… ness.

The verdict? As in any story, it’s probably better to show rather than to tell. Here is an excerpt from pages 2-3:

The thinking started.

Always it started with a single word.

Divorce.

It was an ugly word, he thought. A tearing, ugly word that meant fights and yelling, lawyers — God, he thought, how he hated lawyers who sat with their comfortable smiles and tried to explain to him in legal terms how all that he lived in was coming apart — and the breaking and shattering of all the solid things. His home, his life — all the solid things. Divorce. A breaking word, and ugly breaking word.

Divorce.

Secrets.

No, not secrets so much as just the Secret. What he knew and had not told anybody, what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce, what he knew, what he knew — the Secret.

Divorce.

The Secret.

Brian felt his eyes beginning to burn and knew there would be tears. He had cried for a time, but that was gone now. He didn’t cry now. Instead his eyes burned and tears came, the seeping tears that burned, but he didn’t cry. He wiped his eyes with a finger and looked at the pilot out of the corner of his eye to make sure he hadn’t noticed the burning and tears.

This is a Newberry Honor Book, people.

Aaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

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We Meet Again, My Old Nemesis

I was severely sceptical of this book when it first came out, for three main reasons: because of all the hoopla, because it was written by two authors, and because I thought that the title was, besides being unwieldy, extremely dumb — all of which give me the willies. But I finally cracked, and I bought a copy and read it, and I have to admit that it charmed me utterly.

For those of you still under the rock that I just left, TGLAPPPS is an epistolary novel set in England and Guernsey, just after the second world war. Juliet Ashton is a writer who has just published a collection of humourous newspaper columns written during the war, Izzy Bickerstaff Goes to War, and who is relieved to finally be discarding the Izzy pseudonym. While touring the country and flailing around looking for something new to write about, she receives a letter from a Guernsey man who found her name and address in a second-hand book he adores. This spawns further correspondence with other Guernsey residents, a trip to said island, and an eventual happy ending for all and sundry.

Hooray!

As some readers have already pointed out, the story does derail about midway through the novel. What starts as an exploration of life on Guernsey during the Nazi occupation, and some great talk about books and their value, shifts into a fairly straightforward love story. Which is unexpected, but … still fine? It makes the overall narrative path seem perhaps a bit ill-thought-out, but the love story is just as charming as the occupied Guernsey stuff, and so I am satisfied.

This may be a feature of the dual-author situation that I mentioned. Mary-Ann Schaffer wrote the bulk of the story before falling seriously ill; it was finished and edited by her niece, Annie Barrows, an author in her own right. Although I obviously was not privy to their writing process, I might speculate that the mid-process author-switch had a significant impact on the way that the story unfolds. Or, heck, I don’t know, maybe Schaffer and Barrows just got tired of their first storyline. Doesn’t really matter.

The great strength of this novel is the writing and characterization. Everyone’s so English and clever and likable, and they’re always dashing off charming notes and letters to one another — makes me want to sit down with some stationery and have a go at it. The Guernsey islanders are well-rounded without being caricatures (well, except perhaps for Miss Adelaide Addison), and Juliet herself is absolutely sweet. TGLAPPS is a charming novel and excellent reading for summer.

4 stars.

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Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

This is a book that you’re either going to love or loathe, because it is absolutely crazy. C-R-A-Z-Y. Crazy.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was written by Amos Tutuola, a 20th-century Nigerian author. Tutuola was very briefly educated under the British system (Nigeria then being a colony) but led a largely unremarkable life until, at the age of twenty-six, he wrote his first novel, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, in the space of a few days. It was published some decades later and followed quickly by My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

The guy who wrote the forward to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts comments that Tutuola’s writing is “original and highly imaginative … a beginning of a new type of Afro-English literature … distinct from the correct but rather stiff essays that some more highly educated Africans produce.” Er, yes. If by “a new type of Afro-English literature” we mean that Tutola’s writing is completely batty, I agree completely. And while I’m not really in a position to judge his influence or importance in the wider literary scope, I can tell you that My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a great read.

Consider, if you will, the chapter titles alone:

1. The Meaning of “Bad” and “Good”
2. In the Bush of Ghosts
3. The Smelling-Ghost
4. My Life in the 7th Town of Ghosts
5. My Life with Cows
6. A Cola Saved Me
7. At a Ghost Mother’s Birthday Function
8. My First Wedding Day in the Bush of Ghosts
9. On my Way to the 9th Town of Ghosts
10. River-Ghosts. Gala-day under the River.

Those are the first ten; there are about thirty in all, each more wacky than the last. And, I ask you, how can we not be charmed by the above? “My Life with Cows” — !

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts tells the story of a young Yoruba boy who, while escaping from a slave raid, finds himself in the bush, where the ghosts are.  He then spends the rest of the novel wandering more-or-less aimlessly through the Bush, while crazy things happen. He marries a ghostess. He’s transformed into a cow. He’s kept in a jar and worshipped. He sees a television-handed ghostess. He meets his dead cousin, who has set up a Methodist church and school in a ghost town. He runs from a “flash-eyed mother” who is covered with millions of baby heads. I can’t even explain it. You’ll just have to find it and read it for yourself.

Here’s an excerpt from the first chapter:

In those days of unknown year, because I was too young to keep the number of the year in my mind till this time, so there were many kinds of African wars and some of them are as follows: general wars, tribal wars, burglary wars and the slave wars which were very common in every town and village and particularly in famous markets and on main roads of big towns at any time in the day or night. These slave-wars were causing dead luck to both old and young of those days, because if one is captured he or she would be sold into slavery for foreigners who would carry him or her to unknown destinations to be killed for the buyer’s god or to be working for him.

But as my mother was a petty trader who was going here and there, so one morning she went to a market which was about three miles away from our town, she left two slices of cooked yam for us (my brother and myself) as she was usually doing. When it was twelve o’clock p.m. cocks began to crow continuously, then my brother and myself entered into our mother’s room in which she kept the two sliced or cut yams safely for us, so that it might not be poisoned by the two wives who hated us, then my brother took one of the yams and I took the other one and began to eat it at the same time. But as we were eating the yam inside out mother’s room, these two wives who hated us heard information before us that the war was nearly breaking into the town, so both of them and their daughters ran away from the town without informing us or taking us along with themselves and all of them knew already that our mother was out of the town.

Even as we were very young to know the meaning of “bad” and “good” both of us were dancing to the noises of the enemies’ guns which were reverberating into the room in which we were eating the yam as the big trees and many hills with deep holes on them entirely surrounded the town and they changed the fearful noises of the enemies’ guns to a lofty one for us, and we were dancing for these lofty noises of the enemies’ guns. (pp 18-19)

So! My friends, this is wacky. It is what most of us would probably call ungrammatical, but there’s a certain rhythm to it as well. I found that it took me about the first chapter to get into the prose — at first I spent too much time noticing errors and trying to figure out what was going on — but when I was able to relax into the story I was swept away and it was all very enjoyable. Albeit nuts.

4 stars.

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Review: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, by Amos Tutuola

Until it all changes, that is.

The war plays havoc in Boston — rumours are adrift, smallpox is marching toward the city, the British navy is massing in the harbour, and nobody knows which side will win. Octavian’s master and all his household remove to the country for a Pox Party; they will innoculate themselves against the coming plague, and dance the war away.

Until that all changes, too.

I don’t want to give too much away, because this is a book full of twists and turns, and it’s so beautifully written that I’d want all of you to just go out and read it, anyway. Here are four passages to whet your appetite. The first begins a day out in the country:

Shortly after two o’clock on June 3rd, 1769, Venus descended into the plane of the ecliptic and came between the Earth and sun. It is with awe that I treat of the event — so minute, so silent here upon the Earth — but there — one can scarce imagine the roaring of that vast orb through those frigid depths, tumbling, flung through the plane of our orbit; the glaring heat, the searing glare of Sol — and the gargantuan prodigality of that body, consuming its own substance ceaselessly while planets whirled like houris, veiled and ecstatic around the thrown of some blast-turbaned, light-drunken king. (96)

The second is the most elegant way I’ve ever read of telling someone to do what she tells him to do:

“Mademoiselle, you are delightfully scurrilous.”

“This is no banter, sir. This is no game.” I could hear the fury in her voice. “This is no jest, no frolic, no badinage. I was a princess, once; I am a princess still. Royal blood will mix only with other royal blood. Otherwise, it demeans the line. Tell me what nation you offer me, what alliance, what regal house — or leave.”

Still in a tone of play, he said, “My lady, you know what scepter I offer, and what orbs.”

There was a stunned silence. And then she replied, “Then, sir, look out at the privy. There is my throne. Reach inside, sir, and you shall find the wedding feast. Eat well, My Lord. Eat abundantly.” (107)

This passage comes during the preparations for the Pox Party:

A harpsichord was rented for the festivities. We placed it in one of the experimental chambers and hauled the philosophic machines against the wall so there should be space for dancing. The day before the party, one of the grooms was employed to wax the floor.

He wore a slipper on one foot and a brush on the other. They required him to dance there alone for three hours.

I passed and watched.

In the silence, he skated.

The afternoon sun was cast across the floor. Where the bowing and leaping should soon commence, there the old man slid and spun by himself, his arms fluttering, making pretty courtesies to chairs; pausing for a pas de Basque; his heels thumping; executing secret glissades in beeswax.

Silence and sunlight were his partners. (188)

And after Octavian does some very exciting things, and then has time to repose:

The times, the seasons, the signs may have been mythical; but the sufferings were not. I lay in the dark with the breathing of men around me and knew that then, at that selfsame moment, where dawn groped across the sea, my brethren lay bound in ships, one  body atop another, smelling of their green wounds and fæces; I knew in dark houses, there was torture, arms held down, firebrands approacing the soft skin of the belly or arm; and still — there is screaming in the night; there is flight; mothers sob for children they shall not see again; girls feel the weight of men atop them; men cry for their wives; boys dangle dead in the barn; and we smoke their sorrow contentedly; and we eat their sorrow; and we wear their sorrow; and wonder how it came so cheap. (326)

This was the book that had me incoherently tweeting about wanting to lick prose. It’s gorgeous and difficult and poignant, and I think it will stay with me for a very long time.

5 stars. (Nay, 5.5! Nay 6 even would I grant unto this book!)

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Review: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I, by M. T. Anderson

This is not your childhood’s Judy Blume.

Summer Sisters begins with a phone call, as someone named Vix (Vix?) finds out that someone named Caitlin is going to marry someone named Bru (Bru?). Then Vix runs to the bathroom to puke, and then BAM! It’s flashback time.

It keeps being flashback time for about the next forty chapters, as the readers meet Caitlin Mayhew Somers, and Victoria Leonard, and then it’s all cottaging on Martha’s Vineyard, and having le sex, and growing up and going to college, and boo hoo I am poor, and Caity is a right self-centered slattern, and oh yeah, more sex. I have to warn tell you, it’s pretty explicit. Sensitive readers: be aware. (A lot of it is kinda squicky, too — movie stars making out with 15-year-olds, people sleeping with each other’s fiancés the night before the wedding, etc. Even if you don’t accept moral indictions against extra-marital sex, there are still things that just aren’t ethical. But perhaps I digress?)

That being said, this seems like the type of novel something like Firefly Lane was trying to be. The two books have a lot of the same elements: two friends from different backgrounds thrown together as pre-teens, the story taking place largely in the 1970s-90s, the narrative mostly flashbacks, etc. Summer Sisters pulls it off, though — it’s the sort of book that you should be able to dismiss as trash, but can’t, quite. As with all Judy Blume, there are some Big Issues that get touched on / worked through, and though it’s definitely summer reading, it’s not brainless by any means.

One thing that personally surprised me is the way that it touched on AIDS. Now, I wasn’t surprised that a book would talk about AIDS — far from it — but it was strange to me in the way that it was talked about. Two peripheral characters (who exist offscreen) die of “the disease”, as it’s styled, and everyone’s freaking it out and the token neurotic character starts covering toilet seats with toilet paper just in case … and it occured to me that I’ve never actually known a world without AIDS in it, and that I’ve never experienced that sort of new-disease freak-out (SARS doesn’t count, surely?) that occured in North America in the late 1980s. Isn’t it strange, sometimes, to think of the things that have always existed for you? TV and computers. Compact discs. AIDS.

Blah, blah, blah, me. Summer Sisters was a basically entertaining novel, and would make excellent beach reading.

3.5 stars.

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Review: Summer Sisters, by Judy Blume

The rest of the book — the innards, I mean — is pretty good as well, although with all Heinlein it reads as terribly dated. Starman Jones was first published in 1953, which is not so much the issue; there are many books much older than that that read as period pieces and don’t feel stale. But Heinlein was a  science fiction writer, of course, and the future he wrote is not the one that we’ve ended up with.

There are two basic things whose importance he never seemed to anticipate: computers and women. Granted, it would be difficult to anticipate the way that computers would shape our lives, writing in the early 1950s. And maybe it would be hard to anticipate how women’s social/political/etc. roles would expand during the next handful of decades. But in any case, Heinlein’s fiction — Starman Jones being no exception — tends to come across to me as impossibly passé. I still enjoy it, quite a bit, but it doesn’t feel real.

There are no female starship pilots in Heinlein novels. There are no female soldiers, or doctors, or politicians, or anything really. If there’s a woman on a ship, you can bet that she’s either a passenger or a secretary. Most of his novels are as near to all-male as it’s possible to get without including at least some women as window dressing and/or spacemen’s main squeezes. Starman Jones is no exception and is full of snippets like this:

Once when Ellie had fought him to a draw Max said, “You know, Ellie, you play this game awfully well — for a girl.”

“Thank you too much.”

“No, I mean it. I suppose girls are probably as intelligent as men, but most of them don’t act like it. I think it’s because they don’t have to. If a girl is pretty, she doesn’t have to think. Of course, if she can’t get by on her looks, then –” (210)

Charming, no? Of course, she turns out to be her planet’s 3D chess champion, and whips him soundly before marrying the other man, but still. It’s in there.

There are other gems of the time, too. Like this:

“Aye aye, Captain.” Kelly sat down at the console, Max took the Captain’s seat, feeling self-conscious. He wished that he had learned to smoke a pipe — it looked right to have the Captain sit back, relaxed and smoking his pipe, while the ship maneuvered.” (236-7)

Yup. Smoking his pipe on his spaceship. Like Popeye.

Walther abruptly changed the subject. “That phenomenal trick of memory you do — computing without tables or reference books. Can you do it all the time?”

“Uh? Why, yes.”

“Do you know all the tables? Or just some of them?”

“I know all the standard tables and manuals that are what an astrogator calls his ‘working tools.’” Max started to tell about his uncle, Walther interrupted gently,

“If you please, sir. I’m glad to hear it. I’m very glad to hear it. Because the only such books in this ship are the ones in your head.” (229)

Books! Imagine! The computers in this novel seem to essentially function as giant calculators, into which digits are punched by techs reading out of manuals. Nothing is digital; everything is “on tape” or on microfiche or on paper. It’s wacky.

Aside from the twitch-enducing future-historical anomalies, Starman Jones is a pretty enjoyable book. It’s not the best that Heinlein’s written, but it’s definitely passable. The plot is unremarkable — kid from the sticks sneaks aboard starship, has adventures, becomes Captain — but doesn’t feel formulaic. If you’re interested in science fiction, especially in the stuff coming out of its golden age, you may well enjoy Starman Jones.

3 stars.

Post from: She Reads Books

Review: Starman Jones, by Robert A. Heinlein