Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey

Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey, is the latest novel in a series that I’ve been reading for a few years now. With each new volume, the books have declined, which is a shame because the first, Kushiel’s Dart is engaging and clever and compellingly well-told. The plot, however, is quite involved, and this element is where the later books decline in quality. Rather than having the roaming and involved adventure plot of the first book set the stage for more sedate and introspective plots in the later books, each subsequent installment sends the characters to even farther reaches of the world on even more preposterous pretexts. Don’t get me wrong: Carey is an excellent writer, with an impressive ability to describe and map cultures and politics. The later books seem at times to be driven more by that ability than by a believable plot, even for a fantasy novel. This has meant that the affection I hold toward the characters determines my willingness to continue reading.

The introduction of Imriel in the third book of the initial trilogy definitely perked up the storyline. The second trilogy, of which Kushiel’s Justice is the second book, shifts to his narrative voice with less success. The character of Phèdre is so vividly drawn in the first book that it is difficult to read a first-person narrative set in that world without hearing her voice. The character of Imriel is also much more constrained by circumstance than Phèdre. As a result, his choices are more traditional, and can usually be summed up by ‘whether to conform or to resist.’ In resistance, Imriel is guilt-ridden; in conformity, he is sullen. Neither of these modes is particularly appealing in an adult. I can’t say that I would recommend the Imriel books alone; it is only because I have become invested in the fate of the main characters over the course of thousands of pages and several years of my own life that I await the next installment, promised for next year. I have hopes that the third book will rely more on political intrigue and less on haring off around the globe, and therefore be more interesting. Which is to say, ‘more like the first three.’

Despite being very invested in this series, I didn’t at all enjoy The Sundering duology, and can’t recommend it. Unless you like really derivative stuff along the lines of Guy Gavriel Kay‘s Fionavar Tapestry trilogy, in which case, go for it!

Kushiel’s Justice, by Jacqueline Carey

Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje

I wasn’t aware of it until I read Anil’s Ghost, but I have been waiting years for Michael Ondaatje to write another novel. The book is lovely, one where you are somewhat in thrall to the prose once you begin. It’s been long enough since I read The English Patient that I have only vague — but positive — memories of the narrative shimmering behind a veil protecting the reader from the outside world. I have much clearer — and equally positive — memories of Naveen Andrews in the film, but beyond that, I would be hard pressed to point to specifics that made that novel such a beauty.

To a certain degree, the same is true with Anil’s Ghost, despite having only finished it within the past couple of weeks. It is a wonderful book, one of the best I’ve read. The novel is poignant, both direct and concealing, stark and lush. Ondaatje strikes exactly the balance I most enjoy between politics and personal narrative, with the human stories moving through a place and time of incredibly interesting politics. In this sense it is reminiscent of The Farming of Bones, but I wouldn’t call it historical fiction in the same sense. The character, Anil, is of a place and time, and those are revealed through the telling of her story, unfolding in layered detail as the narrative progresses. In Danticat‘s work, the characters are also of a place and time, but it is the story of that place and that time that is being told through them, and any one of them can and do stand for many more.

Thankfully, I won’t have to wait another ten years to be drawn into Ondaatje’s prose: he has a(nother) new novel out this year, Dividadero. I feel another trip to the library coming on.

Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje

Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde

Something Rotten is only the second book I’ve read by Jasper Fforde. The other was The Big Over Easy, which I liked quite a bit (it was one that I picked up from the ‘3 for the price of 2’ table, where I can invariably find two books that I’ve been wanting to get for ages and can’t for the life of me find a third, so I end up rounding it out with one that I’ve never seen before in my life). It wasn’t, however, in the Thursday Next series, so I lacked a bit — well, all, really — of the context and background of Something Rotten.

That being said, it was a fun and easy read. It’s the kind of book that is best enjoyed, at least for me, by giving up on trying to figure it out and just going with the flow. I’m not sure that I could tell you much about it that would help clarify anything related to plot or structure or characters even now after having read it. But I can say that I enjoyed it and it made me laugh out loud once or twice, which is not as easy for a book to accomplish as you might think.

I’ll request the previous three books from the library, which will allow me to clarify which parts were jokes I just didn’t get and which confused aspects were a result of having read the book out of its sequential order.

Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards, was another book that caught my eye at the bookstore and didn’t pan out for me. I don’t know what I was expecting, really. The plot was as advertised: doctor delivers his own babies, and gives away the one that has Down’s syndrome without telling his wife. From there, though, the novel falls flat. The characters are incredibly two-dimensional, and the standard opportunities for redemption and growth aren’t present.

As trite as it might be, I read novels with singularly depressing plots in order to see the characters dig deep, search their souls, struggle, and rise to the challenge. I don’t really need to read novels with singularly depressing plots wherein characters lash out, bury their anger, wallow in their guilt, take their secrets to their graves, and drink their way through their sad lives. Really, I don’t. I kept reading because I had a desire to know what happened — my Achilles heel when it comes to novels, I just can’t bear to not know the end in the vast majority of books I read. Unfortunately, the part of the story that would have been the most engaging — what each of the characters does with the truth once revealed — was only a minimal and sketchily rendered bit at the end. The rest of the novel is about how the concealment of such a core truth ruins lives and relationships. Which can be the basis of a powerful novel, it’s just not the basis of a novel I wanted to read.

In the end, this novel is a sad story of the type I am trying not to read as much of, perfect for wallowing in the knowledge of how sad the world is and how people’s choices mess them up. If that’s your thing, go to town.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, by Kim Edwards

Unequal Childhoods, by Annette Lareau

I had been interested in reading Unequal Childhoods, by Annette Lareau, for some time when it showed up as a donation to the bookstore where I was volunteering. Education per se is not where my sociological interests lie, but Lareau’s study promised to be more than just another study about how the public education system in the U.S. creates bosses from middle-class kids and worker-drones from working class ones. Indeed, Lareau starts with an acceptance of that understanding and moves forward to consider how expectations and norms of interactions within families differ along class lines and support the sorting project of educational institutions.

I have to say that the data itself was not surprising to me. It may be that, in the years since this work was published, the study’s conclusions have already been integrated into a standard way of understanding the role of family habitus in guiding children’s experiences in education. Or, it could simply be that my own family experience bridges the shift from working class norms of child-rearing (in my parents’ generation) to a more mixed approach that incorporates some middle-class norms (in my own generation). I say a mixed approach, because the conflicts that Lareau notes between the ideals of ‘accomplishment of natural growth’ and ‘concerted cultivation’ become much more than theoretical in actual families. I particularly note the tension between an expectation that children will be respectful — as demonstrated by quickly obeying directives and refraining from whining or arguing — and a desire to encourage their reasoning and verbal participation in family interactions.

This is, indeed, the core of Lareau’s analysis: middle-class habits of child-rearing produce young adults who are well-prepared to forge ahead in the race of global capitalism, while working class habits of child-rearing offer children less stressful and more self-directed experiences of childhood. For those families who don’t believe intergenerational mobility will be likely, we would expect to see the provision of a less stressful childhood prioritized above the molding of children into mini-go-getters. To a certain degree, that is what Lareau reports, and we can certainly see the opposite all around us: when the cultural message is that every child can go to college, and college will move you to the middle class and beyond, parents absorb the message that concerted cultivation is the way to go. Of course, as Lareau mentions only as a small aside, there are only so much space for the elite, and as more people gain access to those practices previously deemed ‘elite,’ the markers will change, as they’ve already done around higher education.

I could go on and on about the implications of this work, but an exploration of the fields of sociology of education, inequality, social justice, and culture is not the purpose here. Of the work itself, I can say it’s thorough, creative, engaging and well-supported. The book is quite readable, as ethnographies generally are (although I am perhaps not the best gauge of which examples of sociological research are accessible to the general public).

Unequal Childhoods, by Annette Lareau