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Oh, lovely, we're in the romance novel stage of this year's reading and it's only March.
In fairness, it's been March for several eons at this point so, like, there's only so much to do about it.
Hall is such an interesting writer because, on the one hand, he has SUCH range in terms of narrative creativity and, on the other hand, when he's writing romance, he has VERY specific ways of writing character. Not that they're all the same, but that he writes the experience of being in their thoughts in a very specific fashion. And if it work for you, it works.
I'm not going to spend that much time pontificating about the romance or the kink other than to say that Hall is, unsurprisingly, doing something interesting with the way he understands kink, submission, and their function in committed relationships. Some of that is the way he spends time focusing on headspace and otherwise I think it's something of a critique of the facile portrayal of BDSM in, well, otherwise facile narratives. Hall's goal as a writer is usually to upend SOMETHING about the reader's expectations. And/but/also I think this book, while manifestly not fanfiction, draws a lot on fanfiction's commitment to exploring relationship dynamics and playing out the question of how do these two+ people WORK as a couple. I'm not sure if this needs a spoiler tag or if I'm just worried that my dad still reads all my reviews...
In fairness, it's been March for several eons at this point so, like, there's only so much to do about it.
Hall is such an interesting writer because, on the one hand, he has SUCH range in terms of narrative creativity and, on the other hand, when he's writing romance, he has VERY specific ways of writing character. Not that they're all the same, but that he writes the experience of being in their thoughts in a very specific fashion. And if it work for you, it works.
I have this annoying, compulsive need to read Pride and Prejudice stories and then rate them not as books, but as whether they were as good as reading P&P for the first time, which probably means I should have my good reads account confiscated.
Anyway, this was awesome, Kamal is extremely clever and the story itself brings alive both Austen’s novel and Pakistan in a way that is both a reinvention and post-colonial act of reclamation - making British literature more Pakistani rather than the reverse.
AND - nothing throws me out of an Austen retelling faster than the characters in it professing to love Austen and not noticing they’re in an Austen retelling. I honestly don’t think I could trust a guy named Wickham ever and...Alys just does? Yes, I know, suspension of disbelief, but as a person named Elizabeth who encountered P&P and 12, the idea that other people aren’t about one truth universally acknowledged away from reading Austen into everything boggles my mind.
My other kvetch is that, in the retelling, I found that either I or Kamal were relying on the reader’s familiarity with the original so that some of the major scenes felt like they went by too fast because some of the content was from the book I wasn’t actually reading. And while that’s probably better than bringing in Austen’s tone in a book where Kamal does such a good job otherwise setting her own style, it still felt undeveloped at crucial moment.
But I’m so glad I read it and I’m so very glad it exists.
Anyway, this was awesome, Kamal is extremely clever and the story itself brings alive both Austen’s novel and Pakistan in a way that is both a reinvention and post-colonial act of reclamation - making British literature more Pakistani rather than the reverse.
AND - nothing throws me out of an Austen retelling faster than the characters in it professing to love Austen and not noticing they’re in an Austen retelling. I honestly don’t think I could trust a guy named Wickham ever and...Alys just does? Yes, I know, suspension of disbelief, but as a person named Elizabeth who encountered P&P and 12, the idea that other people aren’t about one truth universally acknowledged away from reading Austen into everything boggles my mind.
My other kvetch is that, in the retelling, I found that either I or Kamal were relying on the reader’s familiarity with the original so that some of the major scenes felt like they went by too fast because some of the content was from the book I wasn’t actually reading. And while that’s probably better than bringing in Austen’s tone in a book where Kamal does such a good job otherwise setting her own style, it still felt undeveloped at crucial moment.
But I’m so glad I read it and I’m so very glad it exists.
Random recommendations from Twitter continue to pay off!
This was short and...something between sweet and bittersweet. It was very quiet, but also deeply real in a way that stories about afterwards can be when they're done well.
This was short and...something between sweet and bittersweet. It was very quiet, but also deeply real in a way that stories about afterwards can be when they're done well.
So, as it happened, the day I started this book, I jokingly sent my friends a musical suggestion for what careers we should adopt instead of the rabbinate in the current situation. The song, of course, was The Last Saskatchewan Pirate (Derina Harvey Band’s cover, actually).
So this was certainly appropriate.
What Newitz does in this book is really interesting and, while I see the ways in which the two narratives of ownership and agency intersect, I’m also not precisely sure either one got the full development that would have made me really care. They felt more like vehicles for exploring the world and ideas - the irony of which is much appreciated- and/but without fully resolving into the internally interesting people I wanted them to be.
So this was certainly appropriate.
What Newitz does in this book is really interesting and, while I see the ways in which the two narratives of ownership and agency intersect, I’m also not precisely sure either one got the full development that would have made me really care. They felt more like vehicles for exploring the world and ideas - the irony of which is much appreciated- and/but without fully resolving into the internally interesting people I wanted them to be.
I have, obviously, been investigating Hall’s books completely backwards. Also, I insist (despite an extraordinary amount of evidence to the contrary) that I don’t like contemporary romance.
But I very much like Hall and his approach to romance and his painfully relatable characters and his, along with several other contemporary romance writers, willingness to see romance as a genre uniquely positioned to talk about disability and mental illness. Between the sex, obviously.
And while it’s possible, as with anything, to do it badly and to play into the “I loved them better!” tripe (that was supposed to be trope, but I’ll give autocorrect that one), the authors who do it well really let the internality and focus on feelings that is the hallmark of romance become a reasonable vehicle to explore characters with disability or mental illness without making them either a tragedy or secondary.
But I very much like Hall and his approach to romance and his painfully relatable characters and his, along with several other contemporary romance writers, willingness to see romance as a genre uniquely positioned to talk about disability and mental illness. Between the sex, obviously.
And while it’s possible, as with anything, to do it badly and to play into the “I loved them better!” tripe (that was supposed to be trope, but I’ll give autocorrect that one), the authors who do it well really let the internality and focus on feelings that is the hallmark of romance become a reasonable vehicle to explore characters with disability or mental illness without making them either a tragedy or secondary.
This was ADORABLE and I am very here for the magic and the romance and the “we’re prickly but now we’ll take on the world together” because it is time for fluff and this fit the bill.
Time to find out when the next book comes out.
Time to find out when the next book comes out.
So what Szpara does in this book is complicated and my hat is off to him for taking it on in the first place and part of me thinks it's genius and part of me also thinks that he tries to stick a landing in thin air and, while it works, I don't know if it holds water and wow are my metaphors shot today.
I talk, probably more than I should, about the role that fanfiction has and will continue to play in contemporary genre literature and the more I talk about it, the clearer it at least becomes in my brain. The focus on characters not as archetypes, but as deeply individual people - not the farm boy, but THIS farm boy who is of interest not because of who he will become but because the story has decided to be about his individuality - is something that fanfic has always been good at. So stories that are not about people and their relationships as such - but are about bringing down trillionaires and capitalism - but are centered around the people and who they are as individual have a lens that I think fanfic has gifted the larger genre audience as a way of seeing the world.
Overall, I think this is a good thing.
In Szpara's story, it ALSO collides with the other major preoccupation, which is agency and the capacity to change. Elisha gets to be at the center of that conversation, but it's just as much Alex's question as well and the complexity with which he handles both is awesome and also opens up conversations about redemption and atonement in fiction. Alex, I would argue, isn't redeemed, but he does begin the process of atonement. And the book ends before he finishes the process, but the framework of redemption and reward versus atonement and absolution is not entirely jettisoned and I think that makes an already complicated conversation more difficult and muddies the waters in terms of choice, devotion, and agency. I'm not sure the story needed a triumphant ending - in fact I'm quite sure it ought not have one - but the disconnect between the resolution of the character's plot and the world's plot in terms of "is this good?" is niggling at me. And I can't decide if I'm pleased by where Elisha and Alex ended or frustrated...or frustrated that I'm pleased.
Anyway, adding this to the list of "gay critiques of 50 shades I never knew I needed" and also appreciating the way in which Szpara is adding to the genre conversation.
I talk, probably more than I should, about the role that fanfiction has and will continue to play in contemporary genre literature and the more I talk about it, the clearer it at least becomes in my brain. The focus on characters not as archetypes, but as deeply individual people - not the farm boy, but THIS farm boy who is of interest not because of who he will become but because the story has decided to be about his individuality - is something that fanfic has always been good at. So stories that are not about people and their relationships as such - but are about bringing down trillionaires and capitalism - but are centered around the people and who they are as individual have a lens that I think fanfic has gifted the larger genre audience as a way of seeing the world.
Overall, I think this is a good thing.
In Szpara's story, it ALSO collides with the other major preoccupation, which is agency and the capacity to change. Elisha gets to be at the center of that conversation, but it's just as much Alex's question as well and the complexity with which he handles both is awesome and also opens up conversations about redemption and atonement in fiction.
Anyway, adding this to the list of "gay critiques of 50 shades I never knew I needed" and also appreciating the way in which Szpara is adding to the genre conversation.
I feel entirely unable to review this, having read it before and apparently did not bother.
Peter Wimsey is the ancestor of so many of my favorite overly intelligent, short, occasionally annoying, also I love them male characters that it's quite nice to return to these books after having gotten to know so many of his literary progeny better.
Peter Wimsey is the ancestor of so many of my favorite overly intelligent, short, occasionally annoying, also I love them male characters that it's quite nice to return to these books after having gotten to know so many of his literary progeny better.
Oh, Peter.
Also, it took me long enough to remember the mystery twist in this one. I remembered the one in Strong Poison on the first page, but I forgot this one.
In part, because this book is less focused on the murder than the previous Peter/Harriet book (a pattern that, of necessity and fortunately, continues).
This is where the murder mystery begins to be a way for the characters to talk about who they are and what they want.
A pattern that reaches its apex in the utterly perfect Gaudy Night.
Also, it took me long enough to remember the mystery twist in this one. I remembered the one in Strong Poison on the first page, but I forgot this one.
In part, because this book is less focused on the murder than the previous Peter/Harriet book (a pattern that, of necessity and fortunately, continues).
This is where the murder mystery begins to be a way for the characters to talk about who they are and what they want.
A pattern that reaches its apex in the utterly perfect Gaudy Night.
Ugh, okay, so obviously I love this one because it's such an amazing payoff for the buildup.
Let's not talk about that though.
What's so interesting about returning to this story over 10 (probably longer) years since first reading it is my relationship to the scholarship and the women scholars who populate it - the questions of love, of honesty, of intellectual rigor, of - God help us all - work/life balance, of the role of women and the way we are obligated to present ourselves.
And some of it is clearly of its time and some of this debate is so obviously timeless. And the background of Oxford as a way of Harriet working out what SHE needs and what balance looks like and what she wants and the very idea of partnership.
There is so much here, to the point that while it is ostensibly a mystery novel, what Sayers has done here is written an extraordinary book about being human and honesty and just lightly wrapped a mystery around it.
It delights me to no end.
Let's not talk about that though.
What's so interesting about returning to this story over 10 (probably longer) years since first reading it is my relationship to the scholarship and the women scholars who populate it - the questions of love, of honesty, of intellectual rigor, of - God help us all - work/life balance, of the role of women and the way we are obligated to present ourselves.
And some of it is clearly of its time and some of this debate is so obviously timeless. And the background of Oxford as a way of Harriet working out what SHE needs and what balance looks like and what she wants and the very idea of partnership.
There is so much here, to the point that while it is ostensibly a mystery novel, what Sayers has done here is written an extraordinary book about being human and honesty and just lightly wrapped a mystery around it.
It delights me to no end.