Breaking quite a dry spell, I read Nalo Hopkinson‘s Brown Girl in the Ring this past week. I did enjoy this book more than The Salt Roads, likely because it was more plot-driven. I didn’t love it; I would have liked to see more character development, and a thickening of the story. I enjoyed it as a quick read, however, I can imagine also enjoying a slower, deeper version of the same story.

I also found myself skimming through the more gory sections of the book, but this is probably a complaint peculiar to me and something that wouldn’t phase most readers my age. Call me a kook, but I’ve discovered that I just don’t enjoy blood, guts, and other kinds of gore. I can deal with violence that serves a narrative, and anything over my finely balanced measure of what counts as ‘serving the story’ will generally put me off a piece. I don’t like being scared gratuitously, and I don’t read books or watch films in the horror genre for that reason (my father could tell you about the time I started to watch Dr. Giggles with some friends, in an effort to defeat my fear of horror with sheer campiness, and how it backfired horribly and I called him to drive across town and follow me back home — I had the other car with me — so that I didn’t risk getting killed by a maniacal physician in the mile or so I had to travel…did I mention, in my car. Yeah. And, I was, like, 20 or something at this point. Not, you know, 12. The end. Postscript: just locating the Wikipedia entry has caused me to start to be totally jumpy in my cozy back room with three sides of windows. Definitely a night to keep my trusty Maglite near at hand. You can start laughing any time now…). Tangentially, this is the main issue I’m currently having with Heroes: I can’t stand the blood of the serial killing, and besides freaking me out, it seems completely unnecessary (both unnecessary to write the story that way, and unnecessary to show every single gruesome death on screen: we know what he does, our brains can slot in the first gory scene when necessary, thankyouverymuch). All the other issues I have with Heroes will have to wait for another time, as they really have no connection to the issues I had with Brown Girl in the Ring whatsoever. Also, the ways in which my struggle to stay engaged with Heroes is strikingly similar to the ambivalence that led me to stop watching Twin Peaks midway through the 2nd season (although, of course, I’ve since seen them all; on laserdisc, even)? Not relevant either.

Truthfully, I didn’t have many issues with Brown Girl in the Ring. It was ok. I didn’t love it, but it was entertaining and it was a nice break from continuing to work my way through Snow. Which I plan to finish and write about at some point.