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Recent reading
May. 7th, 2016 10:39 pmGormenghast by Mervyn Peake (#2 in the Gormenghast trilogy)
I read the first one maybe two years ago, and only now got around to the second one. Funny how these books bypass my usual taste in books, which is that I need to be able to engage with the characters. In this book, what I enjoy is the setting and the language, and it's almost like the characters are just parts of the setting. Sample:
Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other - other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is "child".
It goes on for 500 pages like that, describing places and things and people and goings-on in the sprawling and byzantine castle that is Gormenghast. If I've given the impression that there is no plot, that's not actually true--there is one, it's just that it meanders a bit (to say the least). I see that there are a couple of fics for this, and of course now I have to go and see how people handle the style.
Regnspiran by Sara Lidman (in English as The Rain Bird)
I'm pretty sure Lidman could make the telephone book readable if she tried--her writing style and characterization are so compelling. This is about Linda, who grows up in a village in early-20th-century northern Sweden. Gah, I am so conflicted about Linda. She's awfully manipulative, but OTOH I guess her social options are limited. OTOOH she betrays the first boy she has a relationship with in a rather horrible way. OTOOOH she reads about suffragettes in the newspaper and wishes she could beat up prison guards. Anyway, it is a good book!
I read the first one maybe two years ago, and only now got around to the second one. Funny how these books bypass my usual taste in books, which is that I need to be able to engage with the characters. In this book, what I enjoy is the setting and the language, and it's almost like the characters are just parts of the setting. Sample:
Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other - other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is "child".
It goes on for 500 pages like that, describing places and things and people and goings-on in the sprawling and byzantine castle that is Gormenghast. If I've given the impression that there is no plot, that's not actually true--there is one, it's just that it meanders a bit (to say the least). I see that there are a couple of fics for this, and of course now I have to go and see how people handle the style.
Regnspiran by Sara Lidman (in English as The Rain Bird)
I'm pretty sure Lidman could make the telephone book readable if she tried--her writing style and characterization are so compelling. This is about Linda, who grows up in a village in early-20th-century northern Sweden. Gah, I am so conflicted about Linda. She's awfully manipulative, but OTOH I guess her social options are limited. OTOOH she betrays the first boy she has a relationship with in a rather horrible way. OTOOOH she reads about suffragettes in the newspaper and wishes she could beat up prison guards. Anyway, it is a good book!
