Miss Eliza's Book Review - Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea

 

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published by: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1968
Format: Hardcover, 422 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

On the island of Gont a young boy nicknamed Sparrowhawk is born with innate magical abilities. Motherless, his Aunt sees his potential and teaches him what she knows of magic and the words of power. When Kargish invaders threaten his small village of Ten Alders he is able to protect it by summoning a fog, concealing it from the enemy. The great mage Ogion who lives on the other side of Gont in Re Albi hears of the young boy's gift and journeys to Ten Alders to bestow the boys true name Ged on him and offer him an apprenticeship. Ged is grateful for all that Ogion does for him but is impatient. In his impatience he releases a shadow from one of Ogion's spell-books and Ogion realizes that he is not the teacher for Ged and he sends him to the island of the wise, Roke, to attend the school for wizardry there. On Roke Ged's power is apparent to all, but he is headstrong and aloof, making enemies easily. One enemy is Jasper who Ged challenges to a duel. The duel will release a shadow creature into the world and almost destroy Ged. Taking months to recover he is a far changed man. He is more circumspect and willingly takes a humble posting in the Ninety Islands once he earns his staff. There he does much good but is still hunted by the shadow. He knows now that it will chase him to the ends of the earth, so perhaps it's time he started chasing it. The battle will go one of two ways, but so it will be. As Ged sees it, this is his burden to bear.

As a kid I of course had heard of Ursula K. Le Guin, not so much because of her Earthsea books, but because of her Catwings series. They were released through Scholastic in the late eighties and seriously, it's about flying cats, there's no way I wouldn't have fallen for these books. They were basically marketed just for me, as evidenced when I laboriously filled out the Scholastic order forms to return to school. But as for delving into Earthsea? It's been something I've always meant to do for years but just never got around to. When the Sci-Fi channel adapted the first two books into a major television event I finally bought myself a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea. And like most books I buy, it just sat on my shelf all alone, until it was joined by the omnibus edition I bought from the Science Fiction Book Club containing the first three books, it was then eventually joined by The Lathe of Heaven for book club, but still the languishing continued. As I have mentioned before a joy of book club, with my group of friends all having similar tastes though vastly different opinions I've been getting around to a lot of these long neglected books. Ender's Game, Middlesex, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Island of Dr. Moreau, Misfortune, Catch-22, The Shadow of the Wind, American Psycho, The Family Fang, The Magicians, and finally, A Wizard of Earthsea, these are ALL books that have been sitting on my shelves for years unread until book club. And once I started A Wizard of Earthsea, it was the work of a moment until I knew I had to read the whole cycle as soon as I could.

What amazed me so much about this book is that you can see how Le Guin's writing influenced everyone from Terry Pratchett to Patrick Rothfuss. This book was written in 1968 and feels like the origin of all origin stories for modern science fiction and fantasy with the young boy's journey into manhood. This prototype is Ged! He can be seen in everyone from Keladry to Harry Potter to Kvothe to Kell. While many of you might be objecting and saying what about Tolkien? What about Lewis? What about White? What about her only choosing "K" protagonists? Yes, you do have a point, but they are the authors that broke the mold, they helped create this fledgling new genre and it was Le Guin who struck this new mold. She built on what they had created and made a blueprint for all the authors that came after. Yes, after accepting this you might start to shake your fist at her that she's the one who brought about the callow youth who needs a good smack down, a trope that sometimes can be too much, but at least here, well, Ged sure does get smacked down. But what happens to us readers who experience this smack down of Ged is that in his growing up we begin to like him. The truth is kids can be bastards. There's a reason none of us had the best of childhoods with bullying and regimented schooling, but we outgrew that. Perhaps that's why we hate Ged so much in the beginning? He reminds us too much of the untested swagger we all possessed about our beliefs. He is perhaps painfully relatable, and that's why he has become a trope. Because we get it. We get the journey because we've been through it ourselves.

Though it's the success of the magic system that for me makes this book not only so readable by so relatable. Let's look to Harry Potter. I adore Harry Potter but the magic isn't exactly logical. I mean, they just magic food together? Why? And yes, I was just rewatching Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them so this is obviously the first example to pop into my head. I mean, can you make bad food as a wizard? I seriously want to know. They can mend that which is broken, they can kill with the swish and flick of a wrist, but what are the consequences? Where is the balance? Here magic is balanced. As Ogion shows, it is sometimes easier to just let the rain fall on your head than to magic the weather away. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, hence dark magic summoning a dark force. Magic is never just used for it's own ends, it's used only when needed for the betterment of life, for helping to control goats, or making a ship sail true, or maintaining the balance of the universe. Everything is about equilibrium. Nothing should be attempted without knowing the full consequences of those actions. If you think about this the way magic is approached should be the way we approach all things in life. The whole do onto others but with a magical backlash. A Wizard of Earthsea through magic shows us how to properly live with the world around us, and that is indeed magic.

There's one thing I want to talk about though that is a little controversial, and that's the color question. My first real image of Ged was the marketing for the miniseries staring Shawn Ashmore, a whiter white boy you could not get. So imagine my surprise when I realized that everyone in Earthsea is dark skinned. So yes, the miniseries was whitewashed. And the thing is, I just don't get why. Maybe I was just raised right, believing everyone is equal no matter what gender, skin color, or sexual orientation. Therefore changing this makes no sense to me. Especially when this miniseries was made so recently. I applaud this book for making a strong fantasy series outside the trope of the skinny white boy who will pull some magical feat and become king therefore subverting the genre. In fact, I think I would have read this series earlier had I know that it was so progressive. On many levels. But I'm also writing this from a place of privilege. Seriously think about how you picture the characters of a book when you read it. If you're white your just going to assume they are like you because they usually are written as such. But if you're colored, it's rare that you're actually going to see an accurate depiction of those who people your life. Therefore I think this book needs to be talked about more. Look what it did and when it did it. Seriously, admire it.

If this book has a flaw, moving beyond the color question, because that's the reader forcing the issue, also going past Ged being so callow because over the course of the book he does move beyond that, it's that the ending is rather abrupt. We've grown up with Ged, on Gont, on Roke, when he took a lowly possession but did real good, when he negotiated with a dragon and chose the people he cared for over his own chance of survival, so many adventures, and yet the ending is bam, done. For the hundreds of pages leading up to him confronting the shadow and giving it a name we journey the width and breadth of Earthsea, we are on his little boat Lookfar, we have travelled to the very end of the world, and then he just stands there, gives the nameless a name, and bam, over. And yes, I'm sorry for repeatedly saying bam, but the ending is just so abrupt that it felt like a door was slammed in my face. I kept re-reading that section thinking to myself that that couldn't be all. Ged couldn't just solve all that plagued him in an instant. The resolution is too fast to be satisfying, and perhaps that is why I so quickly picked up The Tombs of Atuan. I thought that this story had to go on somehow. But it didn't. That was the end. And while it was the ending that was always in sight, could we perhaps have admired the view before being thrown overboard?

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists

 

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists by Gideon Defoe
Published by: Vintage
Publication Date: January 1st, 2006
Format: Paperback, 176 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

What seems like years ago now, probably because it was, I remember seeing a few of Gideon Defoe's Pirates! books at Half Price Books and thinking they looked rather fun. I promptly forgot about them because do you realize the number of books I look at on a daily basis? It's seriously staggering. But shortly thereafter Lauren Willig mentioned them in passing as being hilarious so this confluence of events led me to order the first two books, handily sold as one volume, and I put it on my bookshelf and promptly forgot about them again. Fast forward to 2012 and Aardman Animation has adapted the first book for the screen. David Tennant, Hugh Grant, Russell Tovey, no wait, not Russell Tovey in the US, grumble, grumble, but once again I thought of the books and again promptly forgot. For some reason all my encounters with Gideon Defoe's work was promptly forgotten until his third book, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, was picked out of the hat for book club in 2016. Not being one to start in the middle of a series I picked up my copy of the first two books, promptly fell in love, ordered the next three books and plundered my way through them all.

The thing is, I've always had a soft spot for pirates. This started quite young with my parents reading Irene Haas's The Maggie B. to me. A young girl wishes for a boat to travel the world in with her little brother. I wanted a boat just like it for myself. A pirate ship in miniature with flora and fauna and the coziest rooms you could ever imagine that weathered all storms. As I grew up there were Lego pirate ships and Playmobil pirate ships that actually floated helmed by my Star Wars figures. There were hideouts down by the railway tracks and in my back yard with hammocks, just like on a real pirate ship. There were other books too like Peter Pan and The Princess Bride, and tons of movies from The Goonies to Muppet Treasure Island to Hook. Finally there was Pirates of the Caribbean, opening night at Point Cinema on the UltraScreen with my girlfriends. Some were there to see Johnny Depp, some to see Orlando Bloom, and some to see an anvil three stories tall. I was there for the pirates!

But these Pirates! by Gideon Defoe, they are a breed apart. They are the love children of Blackadder and the briny deep, with historical cameos thrown in just as much as historical accuracy is thrown out. With this lovability that makes you just want to take them home give them a big feast predominately of ham and tell them a good bedtime story before tucking them in for the night. Gideon Defoe's writing combines the wit and love of footnotes of Terry Pratchett with the absurdity of Monty Python. Yet it's so uniquely his own that while I can draw comparisons all day it will never do justice to a series of books that need to be read for their hats and their love of ham. And I'm not joking that once you start you won't be able to stop until you've read them all. From Darwin and Bobo, the "man-panzee," to Ahab and what hunting the great white whale does to the Pirate Captain's sanity, to Wagner trying to blacken the name of Communism, to beekeeping on St. Helena where Napoleon causes quite a ruckus, to Byron and the Pirate Captain forming a true bromance while the Pirate Captain tries to woo Mary Godwin away from Shelley, you will just pillage your way through Defoe's prose.

Yet what makes this series really unique is that, aside from them being kind of hopeless as pirates, is that the characters names aren't really names, instead being character descriptions. There's the Pirate Captain and his faithful number two, the pirate with a scarf, there's the pirate in green, the pirate with rickets, the albino pirate, Jennifer, and every one's least favorite pirate, the pirate in red. While this could be viewed as just a humorous joke at the readers expense, I mean, think how many times we as readers when faced with a new story with oodles of characters has picked up on a character trait to remember them all by? Instead I don't think it's about readers and the inability to remember names, instead I think it's a clever conceit. While yes, there is a bit of poking fun at stereotypes, I think it actually goes beyond this and is making the character archetypes. The Pirate Captain is THE DEFINITIVE pirate captain. He's the only one that matters, suck it Black Bellamy! Just like the pirate with a scarf is the perfect number two, and the pirate in red is the perfect red shirt for us to hate on. These are the lovable essence of all the pirates we wanted to sail the high seas with as a kid and therefore we gleefully go with them wherever that may be. Even if there might be ghosts. And we all know how scared pirates are of ghosts!

In fact I think that the film by Aardman Animation, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, is doing a disservice to the books. While these pirates are true characters by making them cartoonishly animated it has turned them into caricatures. This movie has lessened them. In the books they are larger than life fiendish friends, on the screen they are a kind of boring movie. Which is really odd when you consider that Gideon Defoe wrote the screenplay. When I think back to when I first saw the movie, it in no way made me want to rush out and read the books, which is such a shame. Think of all those people out in the world who are judging these books based on that movie? The movie has far more "presence" and it's overshadowing these lovely, sweet, and comical adventures. When reading the books I thought how much they reminded me of the TV series Galavant. There's an absurdity and a gallantry and a sense of humor that makes it similar to The Pirates! Plus done as live action, there's a basis in reality with having actors like the brilliant Timothy Omundson bring the characters to life. This humor works best with the dichotomy of the absurd versus the real. Which leads me into my next point, when is there going to be a live action movie with Timothy Omundson as the Pirate Captain?

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Jennifer duBois's Cartwheel

 

Cartwheel by Jennifer DuBois

Published by: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication Date: September 24th, 2013
Format: Paperback, 416 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Lily Hayes didn't know that deciding to do a semester abroad in Argentina would be the end of the life she knew. Lily thought it would take her out of her comfort zone, give her a greater view of the world. Instead she's in a prison cell accused of murdering her roommate Katy. As her family comes to her aid, the life Lily really lead in Buenos Aires starts to take shape. The drugs, the men, the conflicts with her host family and her roommate. Everything starts to take shape proving Lily's guilt, which the media devours like a hungry animal. DNA, timelines, secrets, lies, can Lily actually return to the life she had or will her life ever be tainted by what happened to Katy and that cartwheel she did while being interrogated?

When this book was drawn out of the hat at book club (yes, we do trust the caprice of fate for our next reading selection) I was actually intrigued. Despite being another book fictionalizing actual events, the second in a row for book club, I thought that this book could give me something I've been craving, closure. Cartwheel is based on the Amanda Knox trial. Loosely based. Though it should be noted, hitting all the important details of the case from bar owners to feces. Oddly in my family the Amanda Knox trial is a source of contention. Why would this be? Well, my father and I both strongly believe in Amanda's guilt. Everything I've heard and seen makes me certain of this fact. It doesn't mean this is true, this is what I believe to be true. My mother strongly disagrees with my father and I having such a blanket statement of her guilt. So anytime the subject comes up my mother gets exasperated with us for condemning this innocent young girl (innocent my ass is what I usually reply with.) Therefore, subject on contention.

I was hoping that Cartwheel would give me some kind of closure so that I could move on and get to a stage where I didn't feel the need to bring up the Knox case and keep the strife alive. Because dammit, she's guilty and if this book could give me this proof, even ersatz proof, then I could quite literally close the book on all this. But this is just what made me seethe with rage at Jennifer duBois. Life doesn't give us clear cut answers, that's why we turn to books. Life is easier in books. You have a question, you get an answer. Straight forward and easy, hence why many people would rather live in books. She had the chance to write a what-if answer, an ending. An ending that we will probably never get in real life and she blew it. There was no ending, there was no conclusion. To you, Jennifer duBois, I say fuck you.

Yet the ending, or lack thereof, isn't the only gripe I have with this book, not by a long shot. Having a book with multiple narrators is tricky. There has to be balance and variety to keep the book's forward momentum. A bad narrator is the kiss of death, the reader will just check right out of the book. Cartwheel suffers because the book is hard to get into because the narration of Lily's father is mind numbingly dull. Logistics about being there for Lily, money worries, lawyers blah blah blah. I don't care about police policies or the legal system, get to the murder, get to the juicy bits, don't drag the opening to breaking point so that the average reader will just toss the book aside. If I didn't have the hard and fast rule that I finish what I start, and I definitely finish what's for book club, well, this book would have been flung out a window shortly into starting it.

The only bearable narrator was Lily herself. She gave you the first person, though unreliable, narration that was needed. Seeing things through her eyes made the story temporarily work. Where the book really failed is that once the arrest happens we abandon Lily and her thoughts. She's just a person in a box. We get no insight, no revelations. The "ending" sneaks up on us and it's muddled and ill conceived and what really happened!?! We lose Lily's voice and then everything falls apart and there's no more pages. WTF!?! Really, just give us the whatever ending? It's like Jennifer duBois got to the end and threw up her hands and just gave up. Could she really not make up an ending? Isn't that what writers do? I invested time and energy in this book, I deserve closure!

In fact, here's how the book should have ended. Tie everything together and make it interesting. Eduardo the lawyer and his weird wife, make them no longer peripheral, make his crazy wife's return a ploy to distract him from his work because she's being paid to help the case for Lily. Just an idea, because, really, what other purpose do these two characters have otherwise? But what I think would have solved all my issues with wasted opportunities would have been if we had one final narrator at the end, and that narrator was Katy. To get the truth from her point of view, to have her speak from "beyond the grave" and tell us what really happened. Why can't writers just get it right sometimes? Because getting it wrong, well, it hurts us all.

Miss Eliza's Book Review - Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers

 

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: August 30th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 355 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

The Rapture has happened. Or at least an event that looks so much like the rapture that it makes no difference, except to those who are offended by the choices made as to those taken. How could they take the idolaters and not the true believers? Yet one thing is certain, with so many people now gone, everyones life has changed. Kevin Garvey's wife has left him to go and be a part of the new cult The Guilty Remnant, where she keeps silent and smokes all day while accusing her fellow citizens with her mere presence. Their daughter Jill has sunk into sex and drugs with her sexy new friend Aimee who walks around the Garvey house in almost nothing. Their son has joined another cult, the Healing Hug Movement, that seems to put a lot of stock into their holy leader, Wayne. Yet Nora Durst is the one suffering most, as she lost her husband and her children. While the town gathers to mourn those who have left, each of these people will continue on their own painful journey while the world seems to be in limbo, allowing grief to rule the day years later. Yet their journeys will cross, and in those brief moments, maybe they can try to move on.

The concept of this book is genius, the execution is another thing. Instead of finding the humor in his topic, Perrotta seems to have thought the book was an excuse to wallow in a midlife crisis and dwell overly long on grief. Add to that characters that are so shallow they verge on being less then one dimensional, especially the women, whose only way to deal with grief or their emotional traumas is to do something to their hair. Because obviously, all women are superficial and only skin deep. Whereas the male lead, Kevin Garvey, is living, in my opinion, Perrotta's dream life. His family has all deserted him, he has his daughter's hot friend living in the house, obviously every woman wants him because he has power as the mayor, and therefore his life is good. If Perrotta had been skewering this perception of male wish fulfilment, that might have been something, but it appears to be in earnest.

That's the whole problem in the book. It's earnest. Instead of lampooning weird end of days cults and the new mentality of the human race, we get people who have been given an excuse to wallow in their grief. Hundreds of pages of shallow wallowing. Because nothing is ever analysed, it just is. Nora Durst lost her family, so here's a hundred pages of her riding a bike and not thinking about the tragedy. Jill ditches school and does some tame drugs, oh, now that's a totally revolutionary way for a teenager to revolt now isn't it? This book is so shallow that if I were to throw it into the deep end of a pool it would come out without even moisture on it.

The Guilty Remnant and Holy Wayne with his Healing Hug Movement seemed to have potential, but instead it's basically Jim Jones and his "Kool-Aid" at work. Though there is no analysis of the parallels, no plugging into the zeitgeist that makes such organizations form. Everything is just surface. If you actually want humor and Jim Jones, go read Armistead Maupin's third Tales of the City book, Further Tales of the City. In fact, thinking of Maupin has now made me sadder, because there is a true comedic American writer and I'm sure given the same basic plot of this book he could have written a satire that pierced the American way of life while also tackling grief.

Needless to say this will be the first and last book by Perrotta that I ever read. He is mostly known for the book the classic Reese Witherspoon movie Election is based on, a fact that he himself is mighty proud of in his Q&A at the end of the book. Well Mr. Perrotta, you shouldn't be that full of yourself. You wrote a superficial little novel that reads as a pathetic roman a clef of yourself. I've seen into you and you are a trifling writer of meagre and bland talents and you have wasted my time with a book that was unable to deliver on it's premise. Also, just as a final note, if you only "rapture" up a small number of the population of the earth, there really can't be that many people missing from one small town in New Jersey now can there? Just saying, basic math!