octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

This is a short story set immediately after the wonderful novel The Magpie Lord, and while it's enjoyable enough to read it's also very slight. There's really not even a passing resemblance to plot, and plot was one of the novel's greatest strengths so that was a bit of a disappointment. More than anything, it's essentially a series of short conversations that recap past events, and allow the characters a little emotional space to begin to process what's just happened to them. And that's a valuable and interesting thing to read, it really is... but without a sustained plot arc, it doesn't really feel to me like a fully rounded short story, I think. 

 This was really a lot of fun! Super enjoyable. It reminds me a bit of Widdershins, which I also read recently and really liked. (I don't know why I seem to enjoy romances more when they're historical and mixed with magic, but I do.) Anyway, the mix of witchcraft, revenge, an old creepy house, and a bunch of magpies is a wonderful combination, and the two main protagonists are both likeable, decent people. I also enjoyed the main supporting character Merrick, and I'm hoping Stephen's off-page partner Esther gets the same treatment in future books because she sounds like she could be really interesting.

In many ways, though, I found myself reminded of Terry Pratchett. The argument that the magic used to get rid of the powerful Vaudrey family was both absolutely evil and something that should have been done sooner could have come straight out of the mouth of Granny Weatherwax, who certainly would not have stood by and let that monstrous pair inflict constant suffering on the ordinary people around them. Treating people as things indeed... Pratchett's one of my favourite authors, so I hope to see more in this vein from Charles, because I'll definitely be reading more of this series. 

 Three and a half stars, rounding up to four. Most of those stars are for the experience of separation and change, and my appreciation for the ideas and the effects rather than the emotion, I think. Which is not to say that this isn't an emotive text, but it's a text so concerned with the loss of Miami to climate change and sea level rise, a text so interwoven with the existence and experience of that city, that it's hard for me to appreciate the slow ongoing loss in the same way the author does. I live on the other side of the world; if a text like this were to centre itself around one of the cities that I love, no doubt I'd be more affected. Which is an utterly biased reaction, I know, but we love the things that we love, and it's hard to love something that you've never experienced yourself. I daresay if I'd ever lived in Miami, if I'd ever even visited it, I'd find its loss easier to picture. As it is, I have an intellectual appreciation of what's likely to happen there, but it's not a happening that hits me in the guts, as it were. That, of course, is one of the great problems of climate change: convincing people that they should care about the effects they can't see, occurring to people they don't know and in places far from them.

It's a fantastic idea for a book though - almost a mourning of future events, and a catalogue of coming change. And because the author's experience of Miami is so tied-up in language, the bilingual approach taken here is a really interesting one. There are translations at the back for readers like me, who are unfamiliar with Spanish, but the poems are an ever-changing mix of two languages, and my reading experience included having to flip back and forth between text and translation. That's dislocating, but it's dislocating in a very specific way, one which underlines the tension between what-is and what-will-be-(lost). It's a really effective use of language, I think. And that comment above, about the problem of empathy? I don't know if it's intended, but that effect of dislocation is so present for non-Spanish speaking readers, for non-Miami dwellers, that it's a sharp little stab reminding of the ethics of empathy, and how those same readers should make the effort to empathise more fully. 

 The lines between autobiography and memoir are sometimes very blurred for me, but this is one of those books that is very clearly memoir. Vast swathes of Li's life are left out here, but then she's not telling her life story, really. She's telling the story of food in her life, and the place of food here is essentially that of metaphor and emotion, linking aspects of her family experiences to her increasing exploration of her own identity. That identity, part of a Chinese immigrant family in the US, simultaneously part of both cultures and not entirely belonging to either, changes over time as Li becomes more interested in her Chinese roots. 

That in itself isn't a particularly original story. It's one that many people live every day, but what makes this book so interesting is the sustained focus on food as a lens by which identity can be examined. (There are a handful of recipes included, scattered at the end of most chapters, and if my vegetarian self, who shares Li's childhood hatred of bok choy, isn't going to be making many of these for myself, I'm still a person who enjoys cooking and enjoys seeing how other people do it.) Li uses food to illustrate everything from the competition between first and second wives to festival celebrations, and for many of the memories collected here, food is the means of bringing together relationships that are often very strained indeed. There's a wonderful line: "Writing memoir involves observing people making you suffer and, usually much later, discovering what it is they've suffered that makes them insist you suffer too" (p. 219). As present as the relationship between daughter and mother and grandmother is here, the primary conflict is between Li and her father, and the slow uncovering of understanding that develops is perhaps more unidirectional than one would like, but is still immensely sympathetic to read. 

 I've been reading this series in order, but I'd only made my way through the first twenty or so when I skipped ahead to this. (I'm doing an October reading challenge where one of the tasks is a book with a Halloween cover, and it's surprisingly difficult to find one!) I was surprised to see how much time had passed - not for the kids, they're still roughly the same ages they always are. But there was mention here of a cell phone being dropped into a character's pocket, and that jarred me a bit. It was really the only hint that this book wasn't written in the same time period as the originals, but it's still kind of weird, seeing such a contemporary reference!

Anyway, it's a fun little story about a haunted farm. I thought I had things figured out on page twelve, but The Pumpkin Head Mystery had a little more complexity to it than some of the other Boxcar mysteries I've read, and there were a number of plausible suspects. The book ended, it must be said, on a very forgiving note. I'm not sure that I would have been as understanding as the farm owners! 

 Finally, a contemporary romance that I can fully get behind! I don't say that as denigration to the genre... I'm not a big romance reader, so I've been actively trying to read more to become more familiar with it. Basically, I've been randomly picking romances and giving them a shot, and while I've had some success finding likeable historical romances, I've been less happy in my contemporary lucky-dips. This, however, I loved. I admit, I'm a total fanfiction reader and I suppose a lot of the romance fiction I read is on AO3 and I love that, so perhaps it's not true that I don't read a lot of romance. Anyway, solidly set in fandom as this is (and it's clearly a very thin skewering of Game of Thrones) it's right up my alley. It does skirt a little too close to RPF in places - I don't care for RPF, and it's obvious which actor the hero is supposed to be - but I think it stays far enough away to have clear differentiation between the actor and the protagonist here. 

More importantly for my romance tastes, the two protagonists are both likeable, decent people who have solid friendships outside of the main pairing. They have storylines of their own that are independent of the romance, and being with each other gives them the support needed to negotiate their own very real personal challenges. For me, all these things are absolutely necessary ingredients for a likeable romance novel. The result is all just good-natured and heartwarming and while it's not a funny book there's an undercurrent of humour (especially in the fanfic fragments, which are hilarious because they're so recognisable) that's also very appealing. 

Apparently there's a sequel, about two of the supporting characters. I will be reading it.