Review: The False Friend
The False Friend by Myla Goldberg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
In February, I read Bee Season for my library discussion group. While it wasn’t a bad read, it wasn’t very memorable.
Which is demonstrated by the fact that in finding this in the catalogue, my thought process went something like, Goldberg, Goldberg, that sounds familiar…but where from?
Didn’t pick up on the connection until I going through the front matter of The False Friend.
Grown up Celia is walking down the street in Chicago when she flashes back to a horrific time in her childhood: the abduction of her best friend/worst enemy Djuna. Suddenly, she pictures the two of them, on that day, walking into the woods—and Djuna disappearing into a hole, not a car. What if she lied?
So Celia goes back home, to confront not just her own memories, but all the girls she knew back then, to confirm what she didn’t do. Tell everyone what had really happened.
After eight years and several books from Goldberg, The False Friend is a stronger novel than Bee Season. There were fewer point of view characters—which is to say, two, and I’m not sure why Huck had his own. Unfortunately, though the strangest premise is used to set up the book (which I like, because if that’s accepted, I don’t have accept it at the end when it doesn’t make sense), Goldberg almost immediately drops into a rundown of Celia’s recent history, rather than the realities of her current life—only to summarize those hours more than a chapter later.
Considering how much of this book is characters reflecting and then maybe discussing events that have been silenced for decades, this is a little problematic, and makes it difficult to really know why this is crucial to Celia now, or even who she is at the beginning and end of the novel.
On the other hand, much of this novel plays to Goldberg’s strengths as an author: the complexity of family relationships, particularly of the stoic type; the mercurial nature of young girls; looking back on the past and trying to make sense of it; coming back to a should-be familiar place and the shock of finding the new. Celia and Djuna’s interpersonal details make sense to me as one never bullied as harshly as Leanne and never popular myself. But Celia’s attempts to reconcile who she thinks herself to be, what she remembers as history, and finding only the vaguest of resemblances to what everyone else is telling her—that rang true.
It’s a similar premise, though much darker, that Marian Keyes’ Rachel’s Holiday, where Rachel confronts her traumas of early childhood to her parent’s benign recollection. Both books use a similar conceit: no one talked about it, so the protagonist hadn’t had anyone to deny the excuses constructed by childish minds looking for reason.
Review: Rachel’s Holiday
Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I waffled between five and four stars for all of ten seconds before deciding on five, simply because of my sheer inability to be rational about this novel.
I fell in love with Rachel, and I have no idea why. If I hadn’t picked this up at a library sale when my impulse control was at it’s lowest, I wouldn’t have it at all. There’s literally nothing about this book, from the cover, to the genre, to the jacket copy to make me think I’d enjoy it, or that it was my kind of book. Because it really isn’t.
In fact, my first thought on opening the book on a whim a year after putting it on my shelf (not an uncommon phenomenon) was “oh, nice typeface. Rachel’s story was convincing and compelling, if only because the reader is so well grounded in her mental state—she’s all over the place emotionally and never seems to notice, but you still get a sense of who she really is under all the drugs. And even knowing that she’s in more trouble than she thinks she is, Rachel’s done a thorough job of hiding from herself, so as bad as it is, you’re almost as shocked as she is when confronted.
Even that wouldn’t be enough to give in five stars in my mental rating system, but when Rachel is forced to remember her early childhood, I abruptly found myself in tears. I haven’t connected so strongly to a character in I don’t know how long. And I don’t know why it’s Rachel, either. If I were anyone in this novel, I’d be Margaret, the ‘brownose’* But for Rachel, I spent much of the second half of the novel in tears for her, and was so proud of her recovery. Bizarre, but this unexpected total empathy is exactly why I read, and I haven’t experienced it for a while.
*I’ve never even heard the term before in this context.
Review: Austenland
Austenland by Shannon Hale
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Okay, so this wasn’t a great work of “Literature”, but it was so much fun!
Can’t remember why, exactly, I checked it out, because quite honestly I’m not a fan of most of the Jane Austen-obsessed women of many contemporary chic-lit romances, but I did just read Hale’s [b:Princess Academy|85990|Princess Academy (Princess Academy, #1)|Shannon Hale|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316729835s/85990.jpg|3299770] which was fantastic, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that she can pull of a contemporary adult romance as well.
Now, I was concerned right at the beginning when the main character says she loved all of Austen’s novels except [b:Northanger Abbey|50398|Northanger Abbey|Jane Austen|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170368862s/50398.jpg|4039699]—but then again, when I think about it, that’s practically a plot point (if you know Austen, and know how these romances tend to work, you may guess what point Hale’s making). As for myself, I can only work up a cackling joy [b:Murder at Mansfield Park|7275444|Murder at Mansfield Park|Lynn Shepherd|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316636953s/7275444.jpg|8429271]. Must. Have.
Anyway.
Jane (the character) is great fun: warm and friendly, semi-aware of her issues but just not quite able to overcome her obsession with fantasy Darcy/Firth. She even got me laughing aloud several times, and finished it in one night. Even if you don’t much like romances, I think you can read this: just pay attention to all the clever parallels Hale pulls over to Austen’s own work. A great homage.
2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,700 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 28 trips to carry that many people.
Review: The Name of the Wind
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-295
Dan says it pretty much exactly how I wish I could.
Update:
There may be spoilers?
I think the best way to respond to this book is by naming as many ways that I thought it could have been improved while reading it.
Firstly, this book is, in essence, structured through a frame narrative: We are introduced to an innkeeper, Kote, and several local villagers. They aren’t important (although two show up at the very, very end so you need to keep track anyway). Mysterious bad things show up that the incredulous locals do not believe in, but Kote goes out and slaughters the not-demons anyway, because he knows better. Unfortunately for Kote, a famed storyteller (or something) shows up and announces he knows of Kote’s secret past as Kvothe, the Hero who is so Heroic most people don’t believe he really existed, despite the fact that his heroics took place not even five years ago.
Don’t ask me.
So Kvothe gives in to the storyteller and agrees to tell his story. For some reason this skinny guy with no particular prowess or even equivalent intellectual power still outmaneuvers the hero. Well, the reason is otherwise we wouldn’t have the story, short of it being written entirely in first person. Turns out Kvothe was born a genius–a proper genius, not just smart, but literally brilliant–into some kind of travelling entertainment troupe. His parents loved him and he ended up with a tutor in magic who is put on a bus and as yet not heard from again. He gets a lot of page time for such an abrupt dismissal, but there you are. Then the parents and the rest of the troupe are murdered by the Chandrian, which is ostensibly Kvothe’s driving motive. Except the 11-year-old Kvothe instead runs away to the forest for a year, then to the city for three more.
At which point we reach a major theme of the novel which is, if you aren’t poor like Kvothe, you can never have any idea what it means to be poor like Kvothe. Though since this is a fiction book, I rather expect it to teach me what it means to be that poor, rather than simply insisting I don’t know what it’s like. Especially since Kvothe doesn’t particularly seem to suffer from being poor. Seriously, he’s an urchin in an urban medieval-type city, that should be awful.
Anyway, Kvothe finally decides not be be desperately poor anymore and goes to the magic school, where he is just so brilliant they let him, even though they have absolutely no reason too: no money, no recommendation. He’s just That Good. And he makes friends with a few other guys who are kinda at the bottom rung as well (maybe: they all get names and a bit of page-space, but not much and I kept forgetting who they were). And then he antagonizes the queen (king?) bee of the school, Ambrose, whose father is uber-rich and powerful and crushes anyone who doesn’t like his son because he has nothing better to do? Kvothe is supposed to be astute and good with people and a super genius–I have no idea why he couldn’t not be stupid about this or stand up to him in any other way: suffice to stay it’s a stupid conflict that really doesn’t match anything else and comes up too fast and lasts too long.
At this point the novel goes on: Kvothe is an incredible, transformative musician, great at magic of both types (I’m not sure what the difference is), builds perfect devices that even when illegal or ill-advised are still allowed, meets girls whole love him for no good reason and goes places and does things none of which made much impression. Go read Dan’s article again, he does a much better job overall. I’m just bored remembering it.
So how could this have worked?
1) It would have been awesome if Kote the badass innkeeper was 50-60 years old rather than his mid-twenties. For one thing, it would have been a lot more impressive, and make his world-weary ennui far more understandable and even heartbreaking. (Rothfuss handles his prose skillfully, if not his subject matter).
2) What if young Kvothe hadn’t been born a genius? A good third of his problematic characterization would have been solved right there!
2.5) Young Kvothe’s storyline would be far more effective it had taken place over, say, a minimum of twenty years. Again, because he’s not a genius, his school takes longer and he has to undergo actual struggle to learn proper magic–he could have still had a unusual flair for creative spellcasting or something that makes his work Better Than Yours, but he wouldn’t be infuriatingly precocious and get away with all that he does. He might have actually learned and grown while on the streets of the city, rather than unaccountably simply deciding he doesn’t want to be a street rat anymore. His school years (because it would have taken years) would mean he’d have to actually figure out how the system worked and how the master’s related to each other and what the back stories of the school and characters are before he could a) figure out how to manipulate it all to his advantage and b) without simply being told just because. Also, again: he’d have to expend actual effort.
3) There wouldn’t be the slightly skeevy romantic relationships. Kvothe isn’t supposed to know how to deal with women (although after living such a distrustful life on the streets during such a crucial point in his development, how does he know how to deal with people at all?), and yet, he’s got at least three who ‘admire’ him. There’s Denna, who’s his One True Love, which we know because he meets her first, at which point there’s nothing at all to indicate that they have chemistry, and they never do, but he finds her sexually exciting: very Nice Guy syndrome, no one else could treat her as well, they have conversations! etc. There’s the blonde (?) girl who’s a money-lender, who breaks her own lending rules for him just ’cause. And then there’s the psychologically damaged girl who lives under the school and for some reason will only trust Kvothe, because he plays the best music. But I can’t forget the one Ambrose is lusting after, but who has to look to Kvothe for protection because, despite being presented as perfectly competent (other than later setting herself on fire) won’t stand up to Ambrose’s father. She’s the damsel in distress. It’s exceedingly depressing.
Conclusion: If Kvothe wasn’t a genius the story would have had to take much longer and time-wise wouldn’t be so compressed. Old Kote would be old and a lot more impressive. And he wouldn’t be such a Stu that while reading I wouldn’t be twitching right out of my chair, which is so terribly undignified.
I have NO IDEA why I liked this book. None. But the prose was pretty. So the pacing must have been pretty good too, since never got so much of Kvothe that I couldn’t finish, which by any normal laws of the universe, shouldn’t have happened.
