lory_enterenchanted's Reviews (582)

I decided it was a good time to reread Jane Austen, in conjunction with the 2025 celebrations of 250 years since her birth.

I'm going through my hardcover illustrated editions, some of which I have never properly read. Sense and Sensibility is a Heritage Press edition with lovely typography and strange, blocky illustrations by Helen Sewell. Though not pretty, I find them quite appropriate to this book, which is full of unpleasant characters and painful situations. It's basically protracted agony for Elinor throughout, from two fronts: dealing with her sister's emotional self-indulgence in her affair with Willoughby, while concealing her own pain at being unable to marry her true love, Edward. To add another twist to the screw, Elinor is taunted by Edward's heartless fiancée, Lucy.

After her jilting and a psychologically induced illness, Marianne learns a lesson about selfishness, and everything sorts itself appropriately, if a bit suddenly, in the end. It is altogether a book about being selfish (Marianne and Willoughby) and selfless (Elinor and Edward). The latter is rewarded, but so is the former (in the person of Lucy and Robert). Selflessness in fact has to be its own reward, the sense that one has done the right thing. Selfishness will win the day on a material level, something we can see happening everywhere at the moment.

I find it most interesting to see how Austen works out such a moral situation through characters representing the kind of people she would have known herself, their inner nature revealed through outer actions and conversations of the most banal kind. I think it's her genius to point toward that moral-spiritual aspect of ordinary life, bringing down what was once the stuff of gods and heroes into the context of her middle-class genteel world. 

Something about this book does not allow me to enjoy it as much as some others, though. I don't truly warm to the characters that are supposed to be sympathetic, and there is no relief from the tension and sadness, other than laughing at the unpleasant characters is about the only way.  It's a book that takes a dim view of most of human nature, with just a few points of light. 

I enjoyed the little stories (amazingly accomplished coming from a character who's supposed to be a photographer, not a writer), but if they were supposed to have some deeper meaning in connection with the frame story, I did not get it. I think that relationship could have been stronger and led more clearly to the final reveal.

Dreamy, fable-like stories set in an "empire that never was" yet manage to make wry commentary on humans as they always have been and always will be. 

Since I saw the movie first, I can’t help seeing those actors as the characters…

I saw rave reviews of this but it was written in a cutesy manner that would have made me want to throw up when I was 18. Plus, in the early chapters at least, too much speculation. “Bede must have done and thought this and that” — no he mustn’t. 

Like all time travel paradox stories, A Tale of Time City does not bear thinking about too hard. But like all DWJ books, it’s a wild imaginative ride with some thought-provoking ideas, humor, excitement, and a clear moral compass that is not preachy.

I think Ursula Le Guin dies well to point this out in her introduction: that DWJ's books are characterized by “intelligent truthfulness“ and “moral honesty”. That may not sound glamorous, but for a fantasy writer, they are very important qualities to have. They mean that when a writer starts putting inner realities into images, showing us the endless realm of possibilities at work in our creative spirit, we are in safe hands. We won’t be deceived or misled, but shown truth in the way humans absorb it best: in stories, in pictures that move and transform. 

The story here is about a girl who has been ripped out of ordinary life, as many children were during the evacuation of London in WWII; but she is then further disoriented by being kidnapped by a boy about her age and taken to Time City, a futuristic place outside of time altogether. It's all because a proud, immature person wants to save his world, which is on the edge of destruction. Instead of asking for help, he takes impulsive actions based on partial or misunderstood information ... something that happens all too often in our own everyday world.

Here, though, that dilemma is given a fictional setting that allows for Jones's imagination to really fly. Since Time City is outside of time, she gets to create a future history for our earth and all kinds of inventions. Some of the inventions are fun and wish-fulfilling (exemplified by the infamous Butter-Pie, but also including a belt with a button to press for low-gravity function, helpful android servants, and time-travel portals) while others are darker and more disturbing -- such as when the child protagonists visit an era in history known as the "Mind Wars". There are scenes that would have given me nightmares as a child if I'd really given myself a chance to think about them.

But these dangers are not dwelt on, as the pace of the story hurtles quite rapidly and there are lots of distractions, from bickering between the children to a ZZZ tutor, ??? Jones mixes science fiction and fantasy tropes with abandon, We get a glimpse of the legendary and ceremonial side of Time City. 

That lively mix seems to be what keeps the girl, Vivian, from being overly despondent at her situation. She gets caught up herself in the quest to save Time City, which increasingly becomes incompatible with her original longing to simply return home, and the mistakes pile up into a royal tangle. Many elements come together in a great crisis, to be rearranged or re-sorted and settle into a new reality. That's a common pattern in DWJ's books, and yet it seldom seems repetitive or tiresome. It's always a fresh instance of the true potential of "comedy" - a story that brings us through chaos and back into wholeness.

What is the moral obligation of living outside history, with a greater awareness than its inhabitants possess? Is it possible to help and not merely to meddle or exploit? That is the intriguing question the book raises, but I find it isn't given time or space to be worked in a really satisfying way. Much of the story involves touring Time City or racing around through history, not to mention eating butter-pies. 

I think this was my favorite of the three—I’ve really grown to love these characters and will miss them. Nice to end on a hopeful note after some quite grim bombings. The human ties that can transcend the horrors of war really came through. 

A clear basic outline of what is involved in offering spiritual direction. 

Marvelously drawn characters, vivid scenes of Hone Front life. 

A painless way to learn a bit more about the real Maria von Trapp, with some likeable  fictional characters thrown in, though their story lacked the emotional weight of the true one. The writing was competent, not ver distinguished or original, but the author did a good job of incorporating facts into a fictional context. It was sad and somewhat disturbing to learn that the family wasn’t so happy as portrayed, but show business requires sch illusions.