Sep 05 2020

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

Ideally, of course, I would take the time to live with Death of a Naturalist for a good long while, absorbing the images, being surprised by new readings, seeing more levels of meaning on re-reading, having some poems shift from mild interest to true favorite, having others fade only to be rediscovered later and seem as fresh as on the first reading. And maybe some of that will happen. I can imagine that I will return to this collection, as I have to his Nobel lecture, Crediting Poetry, or as I do to Philip Levine’s collections (most notably What Work Is). I’ve recently ordered Maria Dahvana Headley’s Beowulf, though it will take some time to arrive in Berlin, and so I may go back to Heaney’s translation, which I remember enjoying back when it was new. And I think I know where my copy of Jan Kochanowski‘s Laments is, a masterpiece of Renaissance Polish writing, which Heaney translated along with Stanislaw Baranczak, and which once upon a time I could more or less manage in Polish with the English alongside.

Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

All of which is to say that back in January when I was writing about Stepping Stones I was not quite right when I said that I was coming to his poetry sideways but definitely right when I said I would be glad to read a full collection of his original works. I followed the Frumious motto in selecting Death of a Naturalist, and as much as I want to keep getting more from this volume, I am also looking forward to his second, Door Into the Dark.

Death of a Naturalist is a short book of short poems: 44 numbered pages, only one poem more than two pages long, most of them fitting on a single page. The collection was published in 1966 when Heaney was 27, and though he writes without referring to a specific time, he draws on the rural Ireland of his childhood, youth and young manhood. As he describes those years in his Nobel lecture, “In the nineteen forties, when I was the eldest child of an ever-growing family in rural Co. Derry, we crowded together in the three rooms of a traditional thatched farmstead and lived a kind of den-life which was more or less emotionally and intellectually proofed against the outside world. It was an intimate, physical, creaturely existence in which the night sounds of the horse in the stable beyond one bedroom wall mingled with the sounds of adult conversation from the kitchen beyond the other.”

And so the poems are, at least in part: intimate, physical, featuring the occasional creature but far from proofed against the outside world; instead starting from that close space and reaching out into a wider world in both time and space. Here’s Heaney announcing himself in the very first poem, “Digging”:

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/05/death-of-a-naturalist-by-seamus-heaney/

Sep 03 2020

Parachutes by Kelly Yang

I am absolutely wrung out after reading Parachutes by Kelly Yang. I cried — which is a given considering the subject matter — a lot — which is not. Ms Yang crams into one book so many of the traumas that I’ve either endured or been adjacent to by virtue of being or having been a young woman, Southeast Asian, an immigrant, a debater, a fashionista, someone who hated the school she was sent away to, someone prejudged and dismissed as being either too rich or too poor, someone people feel safe confiding in. Ms Yang cuts through the protective mental gauze I’ve packed my wounds in with a thousand incisive, almost off-hand lines and moments in her narrative, until I felt as raw as I did each time I originally felt the blow. Yet as painful as the experience of reading Parachutes was, it was also cathartic, to be known and seen so vividly, to be empathized with. “All this,” she was saying, “happened to me and my friends, too. I survived and so did you and we are okay. We are a sisterhood and I have your back. I believe you and I believe in you.”

This powerful book revolves around the experiences of two young women thrown together against their wishes in a California high school. Dani de la Cruz is a Filipina-American scholarship student at American Prep, who helps her single mom with cleaning jobs to make ends meet. She’s a debating champ who’s pinned her hopes on attending an elite competition scouted by Yale. Getting into Yale would change her life, she believes, for the better. So when her debate coach, Mr Connelly, offers her some personal training, she jumps at the chance to learn more at the feet of the main father figure in her life.

Claire Wang is a rich Shanghainese teenager whose rebellious ideas on taking personal responsibility for the content of her exam essays — i.e. she refuses to parrot her tuition teacher’s sentences — land her in hot water. Her parents decide to send her to American Prep, but since neither wants to live in California, have her board with the de la Cruz family. A series of misunderstandings puts Claire and Dani at odds: Claire quickly falls in with the Crazy Rich Asians crowd while Dani’s response to Claire’s rich-girl obliviousness is to passive-aggressively seethe. And then they both start falling for the same boy.

If this was just the story of a rich girl-poor girl love triangle, it would already be pretty entertaining, but it’s also, for better or worse, a book on how hard it is for women to avoid being sexually assaulted and harassed. The tone of Parachutes is almost unbearably oppressive as we start to wonder which of these girls (Claire, Dani or their classmate Ming, to name just three) is the one who’s going to be subjected to the worst of the sexual violence, as they each endure increasing amounts of unwanted attention. In this sense, it is a hard book to read. I spent chapters hoping against hope that none of the girls would be raped, and am only glad that Ms Yang approached every single aspect of sexual trauma with sensitivity and grace.

Ms Yang also did an amazing job in depicting each character as a real person with real flaws and not just a cut-out. I think most people who know me would assume I identified more with Dani, and while we had loads of experiences in common, I was not down with her jealousy. I definitely shared more personality traits with “I have to do my own laundry?” Claire, but overall I felt very much as if each girl had been cleaved from parts of me. Which is why what happens to them hurt so much but was, in the end, doubly cathartic, as they vow to keep trying for justice.

I’d also like to note that I really appreciated that Ms Yang totally avoided the cliche of girl-on-girl betrayal in order to advance social position. It mattered a lot to see the themes of sisterhood affirmed — tho perhaps the lack of backstabbing in this case comes from the clique of likely suspects being Chinese, and less susceptible to American style mean-girl machinations (yeah, I’m looking at you, Dani!)

Parachutes is an amazing book written by one of the most talented authors writing today, IMO. Ms Yang’s debut novel Front Desk was a middle-grade masterpiece, and its sequel Three Keys comes out on the 15th! Is it possible for this novelist to come out with three five-star books in a row? I’ll hopefully find out sooner rather than later!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/03/parachutes-by-kelly-yang/

Sep 02 2020

The Monster Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade #2) by Seth Dickinson

On the one hand, this sequel to The Traitor Baru Cormorant isn’t quite as filthy with forensic accounting as its predecessor in the series was, but it’s still one of those intellectually challenging fantasy novels that I know won’t be for everybody, more’s the pity. Our heroine, the titular monster after her villainous role in the first book, has been spirited off to The Elided Keep in order to be vested in her new powers and responsibilities as Agonist, the newest Cryptarch of the Falcrest Empire. Her patron Itinerant is bursting with pride at her accomplishments even as three other Cryptarchs hate her guts. Hesychast and Durance despise her because they’ve taken the opposite side of Itinerant’s game, but Apparitor has wholly personal reasons for his ire: Baru is coming into this level of the game without a hostage, and that deeply offends Apparitor on many levels (granted, Durance also has personal reasons, but she’s also Team Hesychast, so fuck her. Which isn’t to say that Team Itinerant is much better but at least it doesn’t believe in biological determinism.)

Games and gamesmanship form a very large part of the machinations for power here, with our Cryptarchs even playing an incredibly complicated type of RPG on room-sized maps in order to predict the future using known sociopolitical and economic facts and trends. But when the Imperial Navy, spurred by Baru’s earlier sacrifice of their ships and crews, begins to burn down Cryptarch holdings while seeking to arrest her — all carried out by a “mutinous” admiral hellbent on revenge — Apparitor, Durance and Baru must flee The Elided Keep and execute the next steps in determining the outcome of Itinerant and Hesychast’s ongoing power struggle. Meanwhile, Baru’s once and perhaps still best friend, naval Lieutenant Commander Aminata isiSegu, is finding herself drawn into the game even as the prospects of her ambitions toward captaining her own ship dwindle, subsumed by her growing reputation as the ruthlessly efficient Burner Of Souls.

The Monster Baru Cormorant treads brand new territory in this sequel as our Cryptarchs hunt for the secret of immortality allegedly preserved by the Oriati Mbo people, the last independent nation bordering the Ashen Sea. While there’s a bit of virtuoso economics at play in Baru’s manipulation of the poor Llosydanes, TMBC focuses more on sociopolitics with the occasional, and occasionally nasty, deep dive into medical philosophy. It is, as the kids say, A LOT. And it doesn’t help that most of the characters are freaking geniuses interacting with other freaking geniuses: while this book isn’t quite as textbook-y as TTBC, it is still an intellectual exercise that is not for anyone looking for a little mindless escapism. Which, frankly, is a good thing. Seth Dickinson is critically examining the engines of empire from any number of uncomfortable angles, and quite frankly doing an amazing job of wrapping that into a fantasy tale of exotic locales, intrigue and derring-do.

The only thing I didn’t really care for here was Tain Shir, who reminded me of the actor George Bluth would hire in Arrested Development whenever he wanted to teach his kids a lesson. I liked her background, but honestly think her stalking of Baru is a bit silly and self-indulgent, when she’s meant to be serious and sinister. Or perhaps Mr Dickinson is showing us how people who take themselves that seriously always wind up looking like absolute asses? I presume we’ll find out in the final book of the trilogy, which I’m very much looking forward to reading now that it’s out, wheeeeeee!

Also, to all procrastinators including my husband, OPEN YOUR DAMN MAIL. (This is definitely a theme of the book and not a complete tangent, I swear.)

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/02/the-monster-baru-cormorant-the-masquerade-2-by-seth-dickinson/

Sep 01 2020

A Closed And Common Orbit (Wayfarers #2) by Becky Chambers

Happy September, readers! We’re starting off the month with a slate of great books, including this one.

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My only complaint about A Closed And Common Orbit is that it didn’t reunite us with the crew of the Wayfarer who featured so endearingly in the first novel of the series, A Long Way To A Small Angry Planet. ALWtaSAP was a sheer marvel of a book, devoid of a chosen-one narrative while still providing an engrossing story revolving around a wonderful ensemble cast set in a multi-species universe. I placed a hold on ACaCO as soon as I was done with the first because I so badly wanted to keep following that crew around the universe. So it was a little bit of a disappointment to learn that only one of them shows up in these pages, and only as the subject of a letter never sent.

Once I got over that, it was an absolute delight to plunge back into Becky Chambers’ thoughtful, large-hearted writing. This second Wayfarers novel revolves around Pepper, a gearhead ally of our beloved ship, and Sidra, a sentient Artificial Intelligence housed in a synthetic humanoid body crafted well enough to fool anyone into thinking she’s an actual human. This is, unfortunately, highly illegal, and Sidra has to fly under the radar while she adjusts to her new life, slowly coming to terms with her body even as she misses the connectivity of being part of a ship. Pepper provides her with a place to stay and a job, and you slowly discover why over the course of her flashback chapters.

This was one of the most deeply felt explorations of Artificial Intelligence and sentience I’ve ever read, going beyond the simple, sensationalist ideas of sex and slaughter to really consider what love means, how people fit into societies, and how everyone is programmed, after a fashion. Ms Chambers is smart to juxtapose Sidra and Pepper’s stories, teasing out the similarities and differences for greater impact in making her case for the personhood of sufficiently advanced AI. She also beautifully encapsulates the human experience in several simple but searingly to-the-point paragraphs, marking her, in my opinion, as one of the greatest philosophical minds working in science fiction today.

Even so, I admit that I could not rate this novel as highly as ALWtoSAP simply because this book, while just as beautifully written, lacked the laugh out loud humor of its predecessor. And that’s fine, because it’s a sensitive exploration of two women struggling to find themselves, and that isn’t the kind of thing that easily lends itself to rip-snorting laughter. I’m just worried that between this book and To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Ms Chambers might be sacrificing a lightness of wit for a cloyingness of sincerity. I suppose I’ll have to read the next one to check on her trajectory!

Doug read this the year it was nominated for a Hugo. You can find his thoughts on ACaCO here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/09/01/a-closed-and-common-orbit-wayfarers-2-by-becky-chambers/

Aug 31 2020

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

Richard Brautigan might be that garrulous guy at the bar telling stories of things he’s done and seen, or things that people he knows have done and seen. The book goes down easy; I read it in less than an afternoon. Individually the tales don’t go on for too long, there’s usually something amusing along the way or at the end, and sometimes they’re even poetic. Up to a certain age, or above a certain blood-alcohol level, they may even seem profound.

Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan

But more than half a century after publication, Trout Fishing has aged very badly. In Brautigan’s telling, anyone who isn’t white and male and heterosexual is just an object. The way he writes very casually about a “Negro whore” or a “three-hundred pound squaw” (whose 15-year-old daughters the author wants to lay) shows how little these people count in Brautigan’s experience and what he thinks they are good for. In the time depicted by Trout Fishing, Brautigan was married to Virginia Dionne Alder; they had a daughter together. He never mentions either of them by name; they are always “my woman” and “the baby.” The only time Virginia speaks in the book that I remember is to tell Brautigan that her diaphragm won’t work if they have sex in the hot springs so he should be sure to pull out.

It’s not just a matter of exposing America’s sordid underbelly by documenting his own degradation and that of the people around him. I doubt that hard times were so unknown in 1967, and right now America’s gold-plated underbelly is squatting in the White House communicating straight from the id to a mass audience, so there’s nothing presently gained by the book in that regard either.

Life among the winos, life of barely getting by and throwing your trash down an outhouse hole, life in San Francisco’s shabby quarters (as they were then, they’re probably unaffordable now), life skittering from job to job in the Pacific Northwest, these all figure in Brautigan’s sketches. There’s a bleak humor in a fair number of them, and some surrealism in many, particularly in his varied use of the book’s title. At times it seems that Trout Fishing in America might be the name of a person, while at others it’s a disembodied force, and at still others it’s hard to parse just what it might be. Probably the best of the surreal pieces is “The Cleveland Wrecking Yard” where Brautigan visits an impossible junkyard that has a special deal going on selling a used trout stream

“We’re selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we’ve got left. A man came in here this morning and bought 563 feet. He’s going to give it to his niece for a birthday present,” the salesman said.
“We’re selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers, grass and ferns we’re also selling extra. The insects we’re giving away free with a minimum purchase of ten feet of stream.”
“How much are you selling the stream for?” I asked
“Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot,” he said. “That’s for the first hundred feet. After that it’s five dollars a foot.” (p. 104) …

“Stacked over against the wall were the waterfalls. There were about a dozen of them, ranging from a drop of a few feet to a drop of ten or fifteen feet.
“There was one waterfall that was over sixty feet long. There were tags on the pieces of the big falls describing the correct order for putting the falls back together again.
“The waterfalls all had price tags on them. There were more expensive than the stream. The waterfalls were selling for $19.00 a foot.” (p. 106)

Sometimes the garrulous guy at the bar comes up with a good one.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/31/trout-fishing-in-america-by-richard-brautigan/

Aug 29 2020

Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus

I read Buffalo Soldier back in May when I was recovering from acute appendicitis, and it did exactly what I needed: took me far away, into imaginary lands where people had thrilling adventures full of reversals and narrow escapes. The circumstances of my reading mean that I have not retained details as well as I would like, and that I will not be able to write about it as well as it deserves.

Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus

Broaddus gives readers a steampunk world in which Jamaica is a major power in the Western hemisphere, the United States of Albion run into the Tejas border somewhere around the Sabine River, and many things are not what they seem. His protagonist is Desmond Coke, a former espionage agent for Jamaica who is fleeing his former superiors to give a chance of freedom to an extraordinary boy, Lij Tafari. Everyone wants to get their hands on Lij, not just the ones who know his origin but possibly even more those who don’t. What does he want? That’s just one of the mysteries of Buffalo Soldier.

One of the advantages of transporting steampunk to Tejas is that the author can use the stock characters and settings of nineteenth-century America while adding as many twists as they like. Broaddus does it with relish. There are card games, plush frontier hotels, local potentates, fast-talking dames with a past, and more. It’s fast-paced and good fun, with Coke and Lij constantly trying to catch a break and get a breather, and usually not quite succeeding.

Like Huck Finn, they light out for the territory. Do they succeed? That would be telling.

I see that Broaddus has written an Arthurian trilogy set in the rougher streets of Indianapolis and a different steampunk tale called Pimp My Airship. I want to read them all. And maybe by the time I am done Broaddus will have more about Jamaica and Albion and Tejas.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/29/buffalo-soldier-by-maurice-broaddus/

Aug 28 2020

The ChildThat Books Built by Francis Spufford

The Child That Books Built, Francis Spufford’s second book, published six years after his first, raises a publishing question that I have long been interested in, but one that I suspect does not have any firm answer. How does an editor spot someone whose first book or two are strong but who is likely to grow and write even better books? There is a lot to be said in favor of The Child That Books Built — it’s concise, clear about what its aims, features a structure that works on more than one level, and so forth — but Red Plenty and Golden Hill the other two Spufford books that I have read (out of four that have followed) are simply extraordinary. Red Plenty isn’t quite like anything else at all; it tackles an enormous historical and philosophical question, and demonstrates its answers at the intersection of fiction and non-fiction, breathing humanity and urgency into something that at first sounds terribly dull. Golden Hill brings to life old New York, not long after its change from New Amsterdam, and shows just who liked it better that way.

The Child that Books Built by Francis Spufford

Is it possible to see those later books in Spufford’s earlier work, as he sees his grown self emerging from the books he read as a child? Certainly some of the aspects are there, as he gives the book a clear overall shape, one that serves his theses so that literary form and content work together. The breezy, conversational style is there, too, although in Red Plenty he was not afraid of echoing some of the Soviet rhetoric he was investigating, and Golden Hill gave a feel of colonial-era speech, even if it was tuned to a modern ear. While Spufford is in some ways the author that this book built, he has grown beyond it as surely as the child he depicts in four different stages grows past previous favorites.

Did an editor spot that possibility right away, or in the six-year gap between the first two? I don’t know; I suppose it would be possible to ask. Can that sort of thing be done more generally? Some writers announce themselves so forcefully with their first book that their chosen area immediately takes notice. Somewhere between several and numerous authors have, for example, won the Hugo award with their debut novels. Walter M. Miller, Jr. with A Canticle for Leibowitz, Frank Herbert with Dune, William Gibson with Neuromancer, or more recently Anne Leckie with Ancillary Justice or this year’s winner Arkady Martine with A Memory Called Empire. The first three are landmarks in the field, but whose authors took very different paths. Miller never published another novel; Herbert published many more, though his bibliography is very much Dune and everything else; Gibson continues to enjoy a visionary career. With Leckie and Martine it’s probably too soon to tell.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/28/the-child-that-books-built-by-francis-spufford/

Aug 27 2020

Black Wings Beating (Skybound #1) by Alex London

I’m really starting to question whether I should accept Netgalley invites for YA Fantasy from now on. The murder mysteries they’ve invited me to read have all been solid but too much of the YA has been middling to terrible. And yes, that includes Alex London’s Black Wings Beating, which at least has the advantages of being a) queer-friendly and b) based on Central Asian history, which has yet to be done to death in the genre. Up till the book’s somewhat redemptive ending, however, this unfortunately came very close to being one of those Everyone Sucks Here books that I could only finish by virtue of looking forward to writing an eviscerating review.

The main trouble with BWB is that the main trifecta of characters — Brysen, Kylee and Nyall, and don’t think I didn’t cringe my way through reading those names in a low-fantasy Asian steppe setting — are everything wrong with the central Harry Potter troika amped to 11. Brysen is incompetent and pathetic; Kylee is constantly squashing herself down in order to prop him up, and Nyall just seems to be around in order to pester Kylee to date him. I’m pretty sure Mr London didn’t do this on purpose as a meta-commentary on that other series tho it would certainly have been amusing if he had. Unfortunately, this book is entirely earnest, without a lick of satire in it. And don’t get me started on the allusion to vampiric practices, ugggggggh.

Anyway, Brysen and Kylee are twins who live in the Six Villages, which randomly goes from being a remote backwater for most of the book to a strategic holding in the end (more on the world-building in a bit.) After their abusive father dies, they inherit his debts, forcing Kylee to work her ass off at the falconry business she hates in order to save her family from prison or worse. Her brother, who took the brunt of their dad’s abuse while still wanting desperately to impress him, spends most of his time slacking off or focusing on his own bird, Shara, or more recently spending time with Dymian, the exiled aristocrat they hired to help train their birds. When Dymian makes the mistake of accruing too many gambling debts to one of the local kyrgs, Brysen decides to take up the challenge that killed his dad in order to save his lover: to capture the monstrous ghost eagle and bring it back as payment for Dymian’s debts.

Since Brysen is an incompetent asshole, Kylee has to sneak after him to try to keep him alive on his hunt. But Nyall, who’s been after her to go out with him for years despite zero encouragement from her (but tons from her brother, which is so fucking gross, I can’t even. The level of disrespect towards women’s choices here is off the charts,) goes after her, and things go poorly even before all three find themselves playthings of greater powers heading towards all-out religious war.

So there are some interesting bits: I enjoyed the falconry and the war kites, even as I thought raptor combat — from pits to sky — sounded extremely unlikely. And wtf is a war barrow? But the religious conflicts were original, even though the story of Anon’s initial step to becoming a rebel warlord made very little sense. The local potentate didn’t have personal guards, for real? For the most part tho, the world-building and especially the falconry felt decently thought out, enough so that I bought into the setting despite the occasional glaring error in continuity/sense. I just really disliked the three main characters and their dynamics, and while the ending points to a slightly better way forward for them, I don’t trust this author to continue this series in such a way as to not provoke as much huffing and eye rolling on my end as I displayed throughout reading this installment.

Anyway, the last book in the trilogy comes out next week for people who enjoyed this far, far more than I did.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/27/black-wings-beating-skybound-1-by-alex-london/

Aug 26 2020

The Monogram Murders (New Hercule Poirot Mysteries #1) by Sophie Hannah

I’ve probably already nattered on obnoxiously about the fact that I inhaled every published book in Dame Agatha Christie’s oeuvre the year I was thirteen, but that was a seminal event in my life, solidifying my reading habits and eventual, oddly specialized, career path. Two years ago, I was given the opportunity to review the third of Sophie Hannah’s estate-authorized New Hercule Poirot mysteries, The Mystery Of Three Quarters, for work and found it a pleasant exercise, even as I found myself baffled by the need for a new supporting cast. Reading this first in the series confirmed for me that I should have started here in order to better get to know Fee Spring and “Mister” Edward Catchpool (and I’m sure it’s historically accurate that he’s called a “Mister” throughout but it amuses me nonetheless that he’s never addressed as detective or constable or somesuch.)

The Monogram Murders introduces Catchpool as Hercule Poirot’s latest unwitting, tho certainly not unwilling, assistant. The two meet as fellow lodgers at Mrs Blanche Unsworth’s frilly, feminine boarding house: Catchpool lives there out of necessity, but Poirot’s stay stems from a desire for slightly different surroundings from his own nearby London home. Catchpool is a mediocre Scotland Yard detective with, as the story opens, a passion for cruciverbalism and an aversion to corpses. He’s called in to investigate the discovery of three dead bodies, each found in a separate room of the Bloxham Hotel, all murdered and arranged in the same way, with a monogrammed cuff link placed inside each closed mouth.

Meanwhile, Poirot is on the hunt for a woman named Jennie after a startling interview earlier in the day at his favorite haunt, Pleasant’s Coffee House. Jennie, a middle aged ladies’ maid with a guilty conscience, told him that she feared for her life before abruptly fleeing the premises. Unable to track her down that evening, Poirot returns to his lodgings and learns about the murders at the Bloxham. Immediately seeing a connection, he insinuates himself into Catchpool’s investigations. The two are soon interviewing witnesses and marvelously exercising little grey cells in their pursuit of the truth.

And what a convoluted truth it is! I rather liked the way it was presented, all English mannerisms and critique of same gilding layer upon layer of story like the most delightful intellectual cake, but the overall effect felt a bit fluffy whereas Dame Christie’s writing was usually far more dense. Had I been told Dame Christie wrote this, I would have put it squarely in the entertaining but slight category of her works: that anyone else managed to pull this off at all is a tribute to their talents. Ms Hannah has done well to write an elaborate plot and clothe it convincingly in the trappings of a Poirot mystery (tho I did think our favorite Belgian used far more French phrases than he might have in the canon oeuvre.) TMM certainly isn’t a patch on Dame Christie at her finest but it’s a fun homage for when you don’t want to reread a mystery but do want an excursion back to Poirot’s world. I’ve already requested the next book in this series from my local library and am definitely looking forward to reading some more fresh new adventures with Poirot and co., especially with the latest book coming out in mere weeks!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2020/08/26/the-monogram-murders-new-hercule-poirot-mysteries-1-by-sophie-hannah/

Aug 25 2020

American Royals (American Royals #1) by Katharine McGee

What a stunningly awful book.

I picked it up thinking I’d enjoy the thought experiment: what if George Washington had accepted the title of King after wresting American independence away from Britain? According to Katharine McGee, this would have dampened the global thirst for revolution, accelerated the abolition of slavery, and paved the way for racial and sexual equality. Interesting, if not outright worthy ideas all, but then they come up against the perfectly ludicrous reality Ms McGee sets up for herself in telling an incredibly stupid story of young people acting rashly while infatuated. Honestly, I felt sometimes that she only researched enough to make this sound plausible, then ignored anything that didn’t fit the dramz of it all. Infuriating.

Crown Princess Beatrice is set to be American’s first female monarch, since her grandfather rewrote the laws of succession such that the firstborn will inherit the throne regardless of gender. Pausing the summary here to point out the glaring error in causation/correlation here: male primogeniture, which still gave us loads of European queens, is super not the same as reserving the throne for only men. Presenting America as uniquely misogynistic while being racially and sexually diverse is a weirdly self-serving straight white lady take. Anyway, Beatrice is the perfect princess, poised, pretty and responsible. Tho still in her very early 20s, she’s tasked with auditioning husbands from the short list her parents have made for her from America’s most eligible gentry bachelors. But she’s in love with her hot bodyguard, Connor, and oh my God did I roll my eyes at the very idea that the Crown Princess of anywhere would ever be left alone with one young dude for the ridiculous amount of time they were given.

Her younger siblings, 18 year-old twins Samantha and Jefferson, are a handful. According to Samantha, her little brother Jefferson gets away with everything because he’s a dude while she’s just the spare, but Samantha is stupid and awful, so there’s no taking her at her word for anything. She meets Teddy — one of Bea’s eligible suitors — at her sister’s party, drags him into a closet to make out with her, then once Bea chooses Teddy for her betrothed, decides she’s in love with him. Bitch, please. Her best friend Nina has been passively in love with Jeff for years but hates all the media attention that comes with his lifestyle, so when they start dating, freaks out completely at something she’s been exposed to since she was a girl. Daphne, Jeff’s social climbing ex, is determined to get back together with him despite having secretly (the following is not a spoiler because, as with nearly every other plot point in this book, it was obvious af) fucked his “best friend” Ethan the Cardboard Cutout, who we’re told “sees her” and “knows her” despite having all the depth of a cereal box.

It’s so dumb, y’all. Everyone makes terrible choices against their own self-interests because they’re absolute idiots. Comparing this to Gossip Girl is an insult to Cecily van Ziegesaar’s excellent novels, tho maybe the TV show was this vapid, idk, I couldn’t watch more than 20 minutes before having to turn it off every. single. time (which is weird because I honestly enjoy the four very talented main actors.) And like, not only is this not how monarchy works, this is also a bizarrely wistful argument for monarchy versus our present system of representative democracy. I get it, democracy is hard work and it’s tough not to be bitter at our present system, but that a royalist like myself feels so vehemently against the systems on display in this book should tell you something about how out of touch it is with how monarchies work in the real world. It felt less like a modern consideration of political systems and more like a fantasy of paternalism, replete with not-like-other-girls and other-girls-hate-me-because-I’m-awesome characters, all of whom I wanted to punch in the face*. I understand the desire to have Daddy use his wisdom to fix the world for you but it’s childish to want magical solutions to practical problems, and certainly not the kind of thinking you want to promote in a novel ostensibly aimed at young adults.

Tl;dr this was dumb and I’m sorry I read it.

*Daphne wasn’t so bad, but it sucked that she was set up as the villain of the piece when it’s really the patriarchal system that forces her to social climb that’s to blame. Also, it was annoying af that her ambition was colored as evil whereas Teddy’s extremely similar motivations were somehow heroic. God, this book sucked.

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