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1476716730
| 9781476716732
| 1476716730
| 3.62
| 88,278
| Oct 03, 2017
| Oct 03, 2017
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really liked it
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Not planning a review
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Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 23, 2018
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Dec 03, 2018
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Nov 27, 2018
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Hardcover
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1683318404
| 9781683318408
| 1683318404
| 3.71
| 223
| Nov 13, 2018
| Nov 13, 2018
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really liked it
| Some have asserted that witchcraft is nothing in the world but an imagining of men who ascribed to spells those natural effects the causes of whic Some have asserted that witchcraft is nothing in the world but an imagining of men who ascribed to spells those natural effects the causes of which are hidden… But such assertions are rejected by the true faith whereby we believe that angels fell from heaven, and that the demons exist, and that by reason of their subtle nature they are able to do many things which we cannot; and those who induce them to do such things are called wizards.The above epigraph of the novel Those Who Go By Night sets the stage nicely. Are we dealing with a story about dabblers in arcane, dark arts, or the Church’s considerable belief in such things? The question of magic lingers throughout the book. Are people actually practicing magic, or are there non-spectral explanations for the bloody events that take place? It is 1324 and one Roger Lacy, erstwhile respected steward of a successful family property, has been down on his luck for quite some time. Having recently discovered and employed particularly valuable papers, Lacy has a new lease on life, and is in a celebratory and grateful mood. Unfortunately for Mister Lacy, his celebration will be as short-lived. Stopping in Saint Mary’s Church to offer up some thanks, he finds darkness rather than light. His body is found the next day, splayed across the altar in a blasphemous manner, and the game is afoot. [image] Arthur Gaddes - image from the Crooked Lane site Every dark cloud has a silver lining. Lacy’s untimely demise has offered Friar Justus, an ambitious inquisitor, the opportunity to drum up some business, maybe add a few notches to his belt. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but maybe an English version? And wherever this proto Joe McCarthy travels accusations are sure to fly like turbo-charged witches, and confessions to whatever suits are sure to be produced handily with the usual toolkit of threats, torture, bribes, and manipulation. Any truths that emerge will be entirely incidental. All of which is terribly inconvenient for the guy whose land is about to be thus embroiled. Henry Burghersh, the Bishop of Lincoln, which includes Bottesford, has a good thing going, and would like to see this unfortunate death handled quickly and discretely. He sends his fixer, Thomas Lester, (Think Ray Donovan with an extra scruple or two) to clean up the mess. The local bigshot, de Bray, is eager for the help, fearing that his holdings may be at risk. But Lacey’s untimely death is not the last, and may not even have been the first. Can Thomas save the day? Will Justus be denied? Thomas is a nice combo of intelligence and military experience. He has a personal quest that is noted in the story but not given a whole lot of ink. Mostly he is just trying to figure out who done it, how, and why, and restore the peace. Friar Justus is pretty much pure evil, straight from the Snidely Whipsnade closet in central casting, complete with arrogance, a fair bit of intelligence and knowledge, a talent for bullying and manipulation, and predictable personal weaknesses. There are several notable females in the mix. Dame Alice Kyteler, (an actual historical character) lately driven out of Ireland, charged with witchcraft, and leaving behind a suspicious number of dead husbands, has taken up residence in a local hut in the woods. Is she merely hiding out from the law, or what might she be getting up to out there? She does have a considerable knowledge of things herbal and chemical. Does her knowledge extend to matters beyond science? Cecily DeBray is a powerful force, the daughter of the master of the house, she does not have much concrete power, but is a force to be reckoned with nonetheless, with a powerful, analytical mind, a knowledge of herbalism and considerable sex appeal. Hunydd is a servant in the deBray household, but there may be more than meets the eye to this appealing maid. Finally Lady deBray is a bit of a nutter. A stunner, she spends maybe too much time in front of a mirror she has been attached to since childhood. She talks to it. We don’t know if she asks if she is the fairest of them all, but it is not out of the realm of possibility. It does seem that a knowledge of herbalism is rather rampant in Bottesford. Maybe the local YMCA had a class? Gaddes has some fun with trade in religious artifacts, a business made for fraudsters. He tosses in a bit of 14th century background color with mentions of rebellions, some of the personalities involved, and dark doings of diverse sorts by people in, or wanting to be in power. There is also info on what several of the Catholic religious orders think of each other. Deliciously catty. There are several priestly types meandering about, Father Elyas, another character with considerable knowledge of things herbal, is deBray’s chaplain. Part of the fun is trying to figure out who is telling the truth, or rather what lies each of the characters is putting forth, and why. There are some lovely pieces to this puzzle. Chapter 17 contains the best scene in the book, Friar Justus and Thomas Lester having a go at questioning Lady Isabella DeBray, with all of them putting on theatrical performances. Just loved that. Also, there are multiple discourses on the legal position of women at the time. As you might imagine, it was not enviable era in which to be of the female persuasion. We do get some details of the awfulness though, and that is definitely educational. You could certainly see how women with any intelligence might be drawn to a practice that would give them some agency. I did enjoy Those Who Go By Night, but had a few issues. It felt to me that the whodunit reveal was a bit too sudden. Of course that may be my dull instrument not picking up the proper cues and figuring them out within a decent time frame, but it did feel a bit out of the blue. There were times when one is offered a sinister smile, or studied look, but the followup explanation was not immediate enough to connect. Finally there is the book title. I’m sorry, but Those Who Go By Night summons all the wrong sort of responses from me. Things like…Don’t we all, at some point? Or, as a person of a certain age, I see a book about someone who wakes frequently to urinate, maybe leading to a Rear Bathroom Window scenario, where a 3am pee-er becomes witness to something unspeakable. Or hordes of vampires with poor bladder control. Maybe a school for bed-wetters, (The Whizzer Academy?) I would have gone with something else. Sorry, but this was too obvious for me to let go. But please do not let my compulsive subservience to jejune impulses detract from the rest of this review. I really did enjoy the book, and I expect you will too, particularly if you enjoy medieval mysteries like The Name of the Rose and Cadfael. So, does Thomas clear up what is going on before the entire town is wiped out? Does Friar Justus get to burn anyone? He really, really wants to. Do the obvious sparks between Thomas and Cecily ignite? Who is the mysterious beauty seen dashing about in the wee hours? What is Hunydd up to? Is there any witchcraft involved in the Bottesford killings? Is Alice a witch or just one tough broad? And when is the next herbalism class? Review first posted – November 30, 2018 Publication date – November 13, 2018 I confess that I received a free copy of the book (an Advanced Uncorrected Proof) from Crooked Lane in return for telling the truth as I know it about my reactions. Now please put that bright orange poker away, pleeeeeeeaaaaaaaasse! =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s GR and FB pages A nice, brief bio of the author on the Crooked Lane site. This is Gaddes’s first book A bit of info on the historical Dame Alice Kyteler ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 19, 2018
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Nov 26, 2018
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Nov 19, 2018
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Hardcover
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0440000785
| 9780440000785
| 0440000785
| 3.54
| 82,879
| Aug 21, 2018
| Aug 21, 2018
|
really liked it
| Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia, with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, how k Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia, with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, how kids can turn into monsters, how they can learn that killing is right and oppression is just, how in one single generation the world can change on its axis into a place that is unrecognizable. Easily, I think, and push out of my chair.Words matter. If your ideal of womanhood tends toward the Stepford-ish, Vox will present an image of paradise. For the rest of us, it offers a dark vision of a possible future in which the lines between religion of the extremist, fundamentalist sort, and government are not just blurred, but erased. (See Taliban, ISIS, or any of many Christian sects that insist that civil law should be based on the Bible, or, recently, SCOTUS) God knows there are plenty of places in the USA where a large number of folks would be just fine with that, as long as it is the proper religion. Well, probably not the majority of the women. Instead of the saying “Children should be seen but not heard,” substitute females of almost any age for children, and you have the core of this dystopian novel. [image] Christina Dalcher - image is from her site Woody Allen’s 1971 film, Bananas, satirized Central American (and American) politics. A deranged leader had let power go to his head and decided to shake things up. From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish. Silence! In addition to that, all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour. Underwear will be worn on the outside so we can check.There are different lunatics in charge in Vox, but the restrictions are just as insane, if much less amusing. Females are allowed only one hundred words per day. (The official language of American women is silence?) And they will have to wear wrist-band counters that keep track. Exceeding the daily quota results in a painful electrical shock. Run off at the mouth and the punishment becomes deadly. Girls at school are given rewards for speaking the fewest words in a day. [image] Image from HuffPo Jean McLellan is a cognitive linguist. She is as shocked as most are by the imposition of outrageous strictures on her, and on all females. Makes it tough not only to do the work for which she was trained, (or, maybe not, as women have been relegated to homemaking, so don’t worry your pretty little head about that whole job thing) but makes it a challenge even to carry on normal human conversations within her family. Her husband, Patrick, is the science advisor to the president, surely a jokey position in a country where science is silenced and faith of a certain sort is given all the bullhorns. But then Jean is approached by representatives of El Presidente. Her professional services are required. It seems the dear leader’s brother had an oopsy while skiing and now has a particularly nasty brain injury, one that impacts his ability to use language. Jean negotiates a deal, and goes to work. Complications ensue, not least is the presence on the research team of the incompetent rectum who stepped up to leadership when the women were kicked out, and someone from her past. Will they be able to use their scientific super powers for the forces of good, or be bested by the forces of evil? [image] Image from MissMuslim.com Yes, it is not a realistic projection of things to come. If millions of women marched in response to the election of Swamp Thing, I seriously doubt that a program like the one presented here would have been instituted as quickly as this one was, or at all. (well, in most states, anyway) The response would, I expect, have been less Lysistrata and more Wonder Woman, with maybe a dose of Medea tossed in. Despite the excesses of the Trump administration, there are limits beyond which people actually would respond, and actively resist. But the point of the novel is not, clearly, to present a real potential future, but to highlight the importance of speech, of language in personal and political freedom, particularly for women. [image] Image from Betanews.com These are notions that merit consideration. Schools in Vox are made to offer AP Religious Studies classes that not only crowd out class time for Biology and History, but omit the comparative element of the study of religions in favor of promoting the religious track favored by those in charge. So, propaganda. This is hardly a huge leap from school systems that insist on teaching that lovely oxymoron, creation science, alongside actual, reality-based, testable science, and pretending equivalence. Similar to the approach of some news providers who seem to think that balance consists of offering equal time to truth-tellers and liars. Linguistics. Language. Call bullshit a rose often enough and weak-minded people will begin to enjoy the scent. (Fake news?) We live in a NewSpeakian world, so looking at the power of language, or words and how they are used and controlled offers considerable insight into the non-science-fiction reality we currently inhabit. It is also of note how those words and notions are so often internalized. (I’d been fighting to keep the weight down ever since my last pregnancy.) It seems the norm, sadly, for those in power to want to silence those who object, whatever their gender. Colin Kaepernick knows, and I remember well the cries of Vietnam war supporters who regarded opposition to that debacle as treason. America, love it or leave it! [image] Image from Yomyomf.com Dalcher offers examples of how language denigrates women in common parlance, without getting all, you know, hormonal about it. Jean’s husband refers to her outings with friends as “hen parties.” Her son, Steven, sees an activist on television protesting the demise of freedom and suggests “She needs to pop a chill pill.” Familiar, no? The religious nuts running this show incorporate anti-gay bias into their new world order as well, making what they consider aberrant behavior a criminal act. (stifling half the population would not be considered aberrant here) Back in the real world, as of 2014 there were still 17 states in which laws against certain sorts of sex by consenting adults were still on the books, so this is not even a small stretch. The chastity movement in the book is based on real-world insanity as well. There was …a late 19th-century/early 20th-century movement in America called the Cult of Domesticity, “The idea was to go back to Biblical roles, to separate men and women,” [Dalcher] says, explaining that women were expected to conform in four ways; piety, purity, submission and domesticity. She adds that there is a modern version of the Cult of Domesticity active in the US right now; the True Woman movement, part of a larger religious campaign called Revive Our Hearts. - From the Bookseller interviewVox is very much in line with the current boom in feminist dystopia novels and with those of the past as well. What pops to mind are The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, wonderfully realized in the Hulu series, Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God, Hillary Jordan’s When She Woke, and, of course, Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives. There are plenty more, but these are the ones I have read. [image] image from Wikimedia Dalcher brings to her novel a background in science. She is a theoretical linguist, with a strong concern with how language affects development. What would women become after a few generations of bearing the yoke of silence? Is it ok to train your daughters to become, essentially, pets that double as sexual vessels? Dalcher’s love of things Italian is given a voice here, as Jean’s parents are living in Italy, where Jean has spent considerable time, and a major character is Italian. The story moves along at a nice pace, making this a pretty fast read. It is engaging and stress-inducing, in a good way. But I found the resolution even more unlikely than the underlying notion. If tight plotting is your thing, you will probably be disappointed. But then this is not, IMHO, about the action-adventure element, as entertaining as that is. It is a warning about the cost of silence, and how not speaking up now can shut you up later, to the detriment, not only of yourself, but of generations to come. [image] Image from HappyGeek.com Before the craziness becomes implemented policy, Jean is warned by her erstwhile bff, a prescient activist, about the coming madness, particularly the massive importance of voting, and participating in political action like calling one’s representatives, or showing up for marches. ”Think about what you need to do to stay free,” she says. It’s good advice. Use your words. Review first posted – June 1 ,2018 Publication – August 21, 2018 Berkley provided an advance review copy, but shhhhh, don’t tell anyone. =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter, Instagram, and FB pages Other work by the author -----The Things I Learned About Swans -----Company Man There are scads more on her site Interview -----May 11, 2018 - Bookseller Excerpt -----from Time magazine Other -----Language Log – on the truth about the difference between how many words men and women speak per day - An Invented Statistic Returns ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 25, 2018
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May 11, 2018
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May 14, 2018
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Hardcover
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0316556343
| 9780316556347
| 0316556343
| 4.23
| 1,126,089
| Apr 10, 2018
| Apr 10, 2018
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it was amazing
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Men, can’t live with ‘em, can’t turn ‘em all into swine. What do you mean turn them into swine? From her earliest application of her new found transf Men, can’t live with ‘em, can’t turn ‘em all into swine. What do you mean turn them into swine? From her earliest application of her new found transformative skills it is suggested that what Circe turns her unfortunate guests into has more to do with their innermost nature than Circe’s selection of a target form. (The strength of those flowers lay in their sap, which could transform any creature to its truest self.) Clearly her sty residents had an oinky predisposition. And I am sure that there are many who had started the transformation long before landing on her island. Whaddya call the large sty Circe filled with erstwhile men? A good start. Ok. You had to know this would be part of the deal for this review. So, now that I have gotten it out of my system, (it is out, right?) we can proceed. When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.It was a word that Barbara Bush might have had in mind when she described Geraldine Ferraro, her husband’s opponent for the Vice Presidency, in 1984. “"I can't say it, but it rhymes with 'rich,'" she said, later insisting that the word in question did not begin with a “b,” but a “w.” Sure, whatever. But in this case, I suppose both might apply. Circe is indeed the first witch in western literature. And many a sailing crew might have had unkind things to say about her. [image] Madeline Miller - image from The Times Our primary introduction to Circe (which we pronounce as Sir-Sea, and even Miller goes along with this, so people don’t throw things at her. But for how it might be pronounced in Greek, you know, the proper way, you might check out this link. Put that down, there will be no throwing of things in this review!) was that wondrous classic of Western literature, The Odyssey. Given how many times this and its companion volume, The Iliad, have been reworked through the ages, it is no surprise that there have been many variations on the stories they told. Circe’s story has seen its share of re-imaginings as well. But Miller tries to stick fairly close to the Homeric version. Be warned, though, some license was taken, and other sources inspired the work as well. But it is from Homer that we get the primary association we have with her name, the magical transmutation of men into pigs. [image] George Romney's 1782 portrait of Emma Hamilton as Circe - image from wikipedia We follow the life of our Ur-witch from birth to whatever. She did not start out with much by way of godly powers. Her mother, Perse, daughter of the sea-god Oceanos, was a nymph, and her father was Helios, the sun god. Despite the lofty position of Pop’s place in things, Circe was just a nymph, on the low end of the godly powers scale. This did not help in the family to which she had been born. Not one of her parents’ favorites, she was blessed with neither power nor beauty, had a very ungod-like human-level voice, and her sibs were not exactly the nicest. Kinda tough to keep up when daddy is the actual bloody sun. Years pass, and one day she comes across a mortal fisherman. He seems pretty nice, someone she can talk to. She’d like to take it to the next stage, so she lays low, listens in on family gatherings, and picks up intel on substances that might be used to effect powerful and advantageous changes. She asks her grandmother, Tethys, (very Lannisterish wife AND SISTER to Oceanos) to transform him into a god for her, but Granny throws her out, alarmed when her granddaughter mentions this pharmakos stuff she had been looking into. Left to her own devices she tries this out on her bf, making him into his truest self. It does not end the way she’d hoped. (Pearls before you-know-what.) Not the last bad experience she would have with a man. [image] Levy’s 1889 Circe - image from wikipedia Her relationships with men are actually not all bad. Daddy is singularly unfeeling, and can be pretty dim for such a bright bulb, and her brothers are far less than wonderful, but there is some good in her sibling connections as well. She has a warm interaction with a titan, Prometheus, which is a net positive. Later, she has an interesting relationship with Hermes, who is not to be trusted, but who offers some helpful guidance. And then there are the mortals, Daedalus (the master artist, the Michelangelo, the Leonardo da Vinci of his era), Jason, of Argonaut fame, Odysseus, who you may have heard of, and more. There were dark encounters as well, and thus the whole turning-men-into-pigs thing. [image] Brewer's 1892 Circe and Her Swine - image from Wikipedia Miller has had a passion for the classics since she was eight, when her mother read her the Iliad and began taking her to Egyptian and Greek exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It made her a nerdy classmate but was a boon when she got to college and was able to find peers who shared her love of the ancient tales. It was this passion that led her to write her first novel, The Song of Achilles, a reimagining of Achilles relationship with his lover, Patroclus, a delight of a book, a Times bestseller, and winner of the Orange prize. It took her ten years to write her first novel, about seven for this one and the gestation period for number three remains to be seen. She is weighing whether to base it on Shakespeare’s The Tempest or Virgil’s Aeneid. If past is portent, it will be the latter, and should be ready by about 2025. [image] Ulysses and Circe, Angelica Kauffmann, 1786. - image from Miller’s site The central, driving force in the story is Circe becoming her fullest possible self. (I suppose one might say she made a silk purse from a sow’s ear. I wouldn’t, but some might.) This is the story of a woman finding her power and, as part of that, finding her voice. She starts out really unable to say what she thinks and by the end of the book, she’s able to live life on her terms and say what she thinks and what she feels. - from the Bookriot interviewMost gods are awful sorts, vain, selfish, greedy, careless of the harm they do to others. Circe actually has better inclinations. For instance, when Prometheus is being tortured by the titans for the crime of giving fire to humans, Circe alone is kind to him, bringing him nectar, and talking with him when no one else offers him anything but anger and scorn. She is curious about mortals, and asks him about them, going so far as to cut herself to experience a bit of humanity. [image] Carracci's c. 1590 Ulysses and Circe in the Farnese Palace - image from Wikipedia Livestock comes in for some attention outside the sty. Turns out Circe’s father has a thing for a well-turned fetlock, so maybe she comes by her affinity for animals of all sorts, albeit in a very different way, quite naturally. Her island is rich with diverse fauna, including some close companions most of us would flee. An early version of Doctor Doolittle? Scholars have debated whether Circe’s pet lions are supposed to be transformed men, or merely tamed beasts. In my novel, I chose to make them actual animals, because I wanted to honor Circe’s connection to Eastern and Anatolian goddesses like Cybele. Such goddesses also had power over fierce animals, and are known by the title Potnia Theron, Mistress of the Beasts.Not be confused with The Beastmaster [image] Circe and Odysseus. Allessandro Allori, 1560 - image from Miller’s site While she has her darker side (she does change her nymph love-rival Scylla into a beast of epic proportions, which gets her sent to her room, or in this case, island, and there is that pig thing again) she is also a welcoming hostess on her isle of exile, Aiaia. (Which sounds to me like the palindromic beginning of a lament, Aiaiaiaiaiaiaia, which might feel a bit more familiar with a minor transformation, to oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy-oy). I mean, she runs a pretty nifty BnB, with free-roaming wild animals, of both the barnyard and terrifying sort, a steady flow of wayward nymphs sent there by desperate parents in hopes that Circe might transform them into less troublesome progeny, a table with a seemingly bottomless supply of food and drink. And she is more than willing to offer special services to world-class mortals, among others. I mean, after that little misunderstanding with Odysseus about his men, (Pigs? What pigs? What could you possibly mean? Oh, you mean those pigs. Oopsy. How careless of me.) she not only invites everyone to stay for a prolonged vacay, but shacks up with the peripatetic one, offers him instructions on reaching the underworld, suggests ways to get past Scylla and Charybdis, and probably packs bag lunches for him and his crew. She is not all bad. [image] Barker's 1889 Circe - image from Wikipedia Circe struggles with the mortals-vs-immortals tension. Her mortal voice makes her less frightening to the short-lived ones, allowing her to establish actual relationships with them that a more boombox-voice-level deity might not be able to manage. Of course, it is still quite limiting that even the youngest of her mortal love interests would wither and die while she remained the same age pretty much forever. Knowing that you will see any man you love die is a definite limiting factor. Yet, she manages. She certainly recognizes what a psycho crew the immortals are, even her immediate family, and respects that mortals who gain fame do so by the sweat of their brow or extreme cunning, (even if it is to dark purpose) not their questionable godly DNA. Reinforcing this is her front row seat to the real-housewives tension between the erstwhile global rulers, the Titans, and the relatively new champions of everything there is, the Olympians. I mean, perpetual torture, thunderbolts, ongoing seditious plots, the nurturing of monsters, wholesale slaughter of mortals? She knows a thing or two, because she’s seen a thing or two. My thoughts about [Circe as caregiver] really start with the gods, who in Greek myth are horrendous creatures. Selfish, totally invested only in their own desires, and unable to really care for anyone but themselves. Circe has this impulse from the beginning to care for other people. She has this initial encounter with Prometheus where she comes across another god who seems to understand that and also who triggers that impulse in her. I wanted to write about what it’s like when you to want to try to be a good person, but you have absolutely no models for that. How do you construct a moral view coming from a completely immoral family? - from Bookriot interview[image] Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus – by John William Waterhouse – 1891 - image from Wikimedia Of course, there is a pretty straight line between the sort of MCP hogwash Circe had to endure in the wayback and recent events that have been getting so much attention of late “I wasn’t trying to write Circe’s story in a modern way… I was just trying to be true to her experience in the ancient world.”There are plenty of classical connections peppered throughout Circe’s tale. Jason and Medea (niece) pop by for a spell. She is summoned to assist in the birthing of the minotaur (nephew) to her seriously nasty sister. She is part of Scylla’s origin story, interacts with Prometheus (cousin), gives shit to Athena, even heads into the briny deep to take a meeting with a huge sea creature (no, not the Kraaken). Hangs with Penelope (her bf’s wife) and Telemachus (bf’s son), and spends a lot of time with Hermes. She definitely had a life, many even, particularly for someone who was ostracized to live on an island. For Circe, I would say the Odyssey was my primary touch-stone in the sense that that’s where I started building the character. I take character clues directly from Homer’s text, both large and small. I mentioned her mortal-like voice. The lions. The pigs. And then when I get to the Odysseus episode in the book, I follow Homer obviously very closely… - from the BookRiot interview[image] "Circea", #38 in Boccaccio's c. 1365 De Claris Mulieribus, a catalogue of famous women, from a 1474 edition - image from wikipedia In terms of sources, I used texts from all over the ancient world and a few from the more modern world as well. For Circe herself, I drew inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Vergil’s Aeneid, the lost epic Telegony (which survives only in summary) and myths of the Anatolian goddess Cybele. For other characters, I was inspired by the Iliad, of course, the tragedies (specifically the Oresteia, Medea and Philoctetes), Vergil’s Aeneid again, Tennyson’s Ulysses and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Alert readers may note a few small pieces of Shakespeare’s Ulysses in my Odysseus! - from Refinery29 interview[image] Circe – by Lorenzo Garbieri - image From Maicar Greek Mythology Link Madeline Miller’s Circe is not a lovelorn, lonely heart desperate for connection in her isolation, but a multi-faceted character (not actually a human being, though), with inner seams of the dark and light sort, with family issues that might seem familiar in feel, if not in external content, with sins on her soul, but a desire to do good, and with a curiosity about the world. She may not have been the brightest light in the house of Helios, but she glowed with an inner strength, a capacity for mercy, an appreciation for genius, beauty and talent, and a fondness for pork. This is the epic story of a life lived to the fullest. Circe is an explorer, a lover, a destroyer, and can be a very angry goddess. This transformative figure is our doorway to a very accessible look at the Greek tales which lie at the root of so much of our culture. If you have a decent grounding in western mythology this will offer a delightful refresher. If you do not, it can offer a delightful introduction, and will no doubt spark a desire to root about for more. Madeline Miller may not have a wand with special powers, or transmogrifying potions at her command, but she demonstrates here a power to transform mere readers into fans. Circe is a fabulous read! You will go hog wild for it. Can you pass the hot dogs? That’s All Folks [image] The Sorceress Circe, oil painting by Dosso Dossi, c. 1530; in the Borghese Gallery, RomeSCALA/Art Resource, New York – image from Britannica Review first posted – 4/27/2018 Publication date – 4/10/2018 December 2018 - Circe wins the 2018 Goodreads Choice Award for favorite Fantasy novel of the year ==========In the summer of 2019 GR reduced the allowable review size by 25%, from 20,000 to 15,000 characters. And then in 2021 GR banned the inclusion of external links in comments. (I used to put the overage there) As a result of these two new restrictions, I have been forced to truncate the review available on Goodreads. To see the entirety, including EXTRA STUFF and all the links, please head on over to my site, Coot's Reviews. No size restrictions there. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Apr 11, 2018
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Apr 23, 2018
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Apr 22, 2018
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Hardcover
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0062694057
| 9780062694058
| 0062694057
| 3.60
| 27,448
| Nov 14, 2017
| Nov 14, 2017
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really liked it
| In the beginning was the word In the beginning was the wordCedar Hawk Songmaker, 26, is writing a journal to her unborn child, very much hoping there will be a world left in which he or she can read it. This is a real concern, as the world appears to be going haywire. Plants and creatures, including people, are not breeding true. Giving birth, itself, has become a dodgy proposition. And who knows what will emerge? The story follows Cedar, who had been adopted as an infant by white liberal city folks, through connecting with her Native American biological mother’s family, attempting to see her pregnancy through to term, and attempting to maintain her safety and freedom in a world where danger and attempts at intrusive control dominate. [image] Louise Erdrich - image from The Daily Beast In the beginning was the title. Caren Wilton, in a 2006 interview with Erdrich for a New Zealand site, Noted, reports Erdrich saying she started with a title taken from a sign she had seen in an empty field: The Future Home of the Living God. It was to be a diversion from the more historical novels she is known for. She had a somewhat different focus in this early vision of the book. Actually, it's about the postal system, says Erdrich...Perhaps I look dubious, because she starts to laugh. "It really is, I'm not making that up. I love the intricacies of the postal system. In the book, the US postal system decides to leave the government, and they make a compact with the National Guard so that the mail continues to be delivered."At some point she opted to write something else. Her next adult book was The Plague of Doves. She got a bit of a prod to return to this one in 2016. According to CTV News, Louise Erdrich, speaking at a HarperCollins dinner, recalled how Trump's win drove her to take another look at a novel she had set aside years earlier, "Future Home of the Living God." The book…tells of a society in which women's rights and democracy itself are endangered,among other things. It is not clear how much of the book she had already written prior to this, and what changes she made to what she had already done. Dystopian visions abound these days. It is impossible, in considering this novel, not to summon to mind The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s (and television’s) concerns about human fertility, risky science, a planet rebelling against the outrages of a waste-based society, and women being restored to a subservient place in the culture with extreme prejudice. Is the dramatic decline in fertility in both Atwood’s and Erdrich’s books nature objecting to what homo sapiens has done to its home world? Is it a specific natural reaction to scientific overreach, an experiment or project gone terribly wrong? Among other reasons, the meanderings here give voice to the notion that heightened intelligence is not a particularly good quality to have in a species looking to stick around for a long time. Maybe being the brightest bulb as a species means burning out the fastest. Motherhood is an obvious stream here. Beginning with the opening epigraph (noted at the top of the review), from Hildegaard of Bingen, manifesting with a plethora of characters named Mary, and including an internet-based Big Brother sort named Mother. Cedar is connecting with her birth mother after 26 years of separation. Is Cedar more from her adoptive parents or more from Mary Potts, her bio-mom? There is a parallel theme that looks at God and religion. Cedar is a convert to Catholicism, in fact even reads nerd-level religious journals, and engages in an ongoing internal dialogue about the meaning of what she sees in the more universal sense. A Native American saint, Kateri (like Cedar, an [adoptee]…who converted to Catholicism as a teen) has been sighted. Where do we come from and where are we going, as individuals, and as a species? The notion, noted in the largest of the review-opening quotes, persists throughout, and is indistinguishable from the meandering thoughts on God and the nature of existence This is not a typical Louise Erdrich novel, at least not judging by her most recent work, anyway. The story-telling is much more linear. No major time jumps to speak of, and the action remains focused on Cedar’s experiences. Also, while she is fond of magical realism, this has a more science-fictiony sheath within which to consider existential questions than the magical realism historical work she usually favors. It is definitely fun, in a dark way, when extinct creatures again roam the earth as humanity is de-volving. Don’t think too hard about how those beasties might have come to be, how they might have been raised to adulthood. Devolution is happening. Don’t sweat the details. Cedar is a mostly sympathetic character, so one can relate to her struggle, as one could to Atwood’s heroine. Enough of the details of this world make sense to keep us in the story. Things like Native Americans looking at an opportunity to reclaim ancient land, and religious extremists using their organizational skills to take over and institute an autocratic theocracy (a redundancy, and probably a Mike Pence wet dream) make sense, particularly given the 20th and 21st century experience of failing states across the world. The details of societal devolution are fascinating. I had one gripe in particular, a character who I felt was given short shrift. A man, who had been helping many women escape the authorities, gives up some information under torture, as I expect most of us would, is then seen as an enemy instead of another victim, and is turned away. Hmmm. This is not comparable to her recent masterpiece-level novels, The Round House, LaRose, The Night Watchman, and The Sentence, but, overall, Future Home of the Living God a pretty good read. You can take my word for it. Review first Posted – 12/1/2017 Published - 11/14/2017 =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store. Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed -----2021 - The Sentence -----2020 - The Night Watchman -----2016 - LaRose -----2010 - Shadow Tag -----2012 - The Round House -----2008 - The Plague of Doves -----2005 - The Painted Drum Interviews -----Paris Review – Winter 2010 - Louise Erdrich, The Art of Fiction No. 208 by Lisa Halliday -----Noted – April 2006 my link text - Caren Wilton Other -----Alchetron - Louise Erdrich - a nice history of Erdrich and her work ----- Flowers for Socrates - November 2016 - Word Cloud: Windigo - this blog entry intersperses poems by Erdrich with bits of her history. A snippet of one in particular caught my interest, given her fondness for the surreal, from Advice to Myself Accept new forms of life -----December 28, 2018 - A Woman’s Rights - a collection of articles that look at the nation-wide right-wing attack on abortion rights. Serious stuff, worth checking out ...more |
Notes are private!
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Nov 05, 2017
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Nov 11, 2017
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Nov 13, 2017
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Hardcover
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1565126297
| 9781565126299
| 1565126297
| 3.68
| 29,369
| Oct 04, 2011
| Oct 04, 2011
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really liked it
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**spoiler alert** Hillary Jordan has raised a red flag about how the powers of American religious extremism might change our world. Set in the not-too
**spoiler alert** Hillary Jordan has raised a red flag about how the powers of American religious extremism might change our world. Set in the not-too-distant future, When She Woke (WSW) is an update of The Scarlet Letter (TSL), accompanied by a healthy dollop of The Handmaid’s Tale (THT). [image] Hillary Jordan- image from her site - photo by Mark Erwin In a theocratic USA, Hannah Payne is punished for having an abortion by having her entire body turned red. In this new America many crimes are punishable by melachroming, or coloring a person’s entire body, a much larger version of the scarlet “A” that Hester Prynne was forced to wear. The result of this is an entire class of people who are socially cast out for being “melachromes.” Which makes one think of Russell Banks’ recent look at ostracism in The Lost Memory of Skin.” Hannah is a sympathetic character, but one filled with contradictions. Having been raised in a strict religious household she always did as she was told and did not look beyond the confines of her environmental box. But once she comes to a sense of her sexual/romantic needs and desires, she breaks out in a big way, sleeping with the charismatic, megachurch reverend hottie. Hannah manages to find someone willing to help her and has an abortion, for which she is sentenced, among other things, to 16 years with red skin, and the resulting public shunning. While this book is focused on social commentary, it is hardly cold and removed. Hannah journeys from ignorance and passivity to strength and control of her own decisions. References to The Scarlet Letter permeate the tale. I have listed a bunch at the bottom of this review, but they include spoiler material. Suffice it to say, for now, that references to TSL are many. There are some that might slip one’s notice, and I am certain that I missed a fair number, but short of sitting down with a copy of TSL and going through both books side by side, I will make do with what I spotted. Jordan says that she was not looking to mimic TSL, but to riff on it. In fact the initial notion for the novel came from a family conversation about drug abuse. An uncle suggested that drugs should be made legal, but should turn users bright blue. The stigmatization notion stuck, if not necessarily the drug idea. I have not read or seen an interview in which Jordan talks about the influence of The Handmaid’s Tale, but there are plenty of obvious connections there as well. A widespread fertility crisis of uncertain provenance, here called “the scourge,” has made procreation problematic. As with THT, a terrorist attack provides the justification for a theocratic national takeover. An underground group, the Novembrists, serves a role similar to that of the Mayday Movement in Margaret Atwood’s work. There are more, but you get the idea. (just a maybe here, but the Octobrists in Russia were not a revolutionary group but one that wanted to restore a constitutional monarchy. I wondered if Jordan had them in mind, as her band of merry rebels professes a narrow interest and not a revolutionary one. I seriously doubt she was referring to the indie band) “We are feminists, not revolutionaries,” one of them says, as if feminism were not revolutionary. The story is fluid, and keeps one involved, even though it is clear that this is more than just a this-happened-then-that-happened novel. One can relate to Hannah as someone who is abused by the system, and we can root for her as her recognition of the massive hypocrisy all around her grows, and she struggles, not only to grow as a person, but to fight back, to survive and maybe thrive despite her encumbrances. That works, but only to a point. I felt that Hannah’s journey took too much of a detour in the final sections of the book. Not enough to kill the book for me, but enough to make me wish Jordan had not wandered so far afield with her characters as to challenge our willingness to suspend disbelief. So be prepared. This is primarily, IMHO, a political novel, and as such there are some contemporary allusions to go along with the classical lit references. The prison in which Hannah is detained is in Crawford, TX. Maybe all the brush has been cleared by now. In a fundamentalist half-way house for released prisoners the residents are referred to as Walkers, which certainly reminded me of a certain Texas Ranger. Congress has passed a Freedom From Information Act, and “Enlightenment” at a half-way house includes forcing the women to watch gory presentations on abortion, including talks by people whose parents had tried to abort them, and damaged them instead. These reflect the view that many of us share, that there is much to fear from the darker and dimmer elements of the religious right. Could it happen here? You betcha! It does not take a lot of imagination to believe that those who, at recent (2011) Republican debates, clearly favored allowing the uninsured to die, who applauded the execution policies prevalent in Texas, who believe that all the unemployed are personally responsible for their own lack of work, who would love nothing more than to construct a death-dealing electrified fence on our southern border, and who favor the murder of abortion providers, would be more than happy to dust off their white sheets and mark for life any who do not adhere to their peculiar philosophy. There are underground railroad references aplenty as well, which nicely connects the new slavery to the old. One gripe I had with the book was that Jordan sometimes felt it necessary to take the reader by the hand and explain her imagery to us. One theme of the story is boxes, limitations. Here is Jordan going too far [There is spoiler material in the quote. You have been warned]: “I could write a book on the subject.” One by one. She conjured all the boxes she’d been put into: The good girl box and the good Christian box. The confines of her sewing room above the garage. The Mistress box, played out in the boxes of all those indistinguishable hotel rooms. The sweltering room in apartment 122. The jail cell, the interrogation room, the witness box at her trial. The bad daughter and fallen woman boxes. Her red body in the mirrored cell on the Chrome ward, a box within a box within a box. The enlightenment room, Mrs Henley’s parlor. The locked rooms at the safe house and at Stanton’s. The wooden crate. And now, for the second time, the trunk of a car…In another scene, one character is washing another’s hair, pouring water over the cleanee’s head. Jordan felt it necessary to refer to this as a strange form of baptism. Duh-uh. Do you have to spell that out? There are other times when this is done. It strikes me as a miss by the editor, but who knows? Still, a pet peeve for me Overall, this is a pretty good read, with an engaging primary character, a bit of action, and a lot of social consciousness. It might be of particular relevance for younger sorts who might not have read The Scarlet Letter or The Handmaid’s Tale. One of the nice things about books that so overtly reference prior work is that they present us with an opportunity to brush up our knowledge of the classics. [image] [image] [image] [image] [image] =============================EXTRA STUFF Links to Jordan’s personal, FB, Instagram, and Twitter pages My review of Jordan's 2008 novel, Mudbound I presume that closer study will unearth more such refs, but this is what came to the surface for me. There were too many to put them all into the body of the review, but I can contain them no more than Executive Officer Kane on the good ship Nostromo could contain what was inside him. The Scarlet Letter references I found The primary characters’ names share the same initials of their tSL counterparts; Hannah Payne – Hester Prynne – Aidan Dale is Arthur Dimmesdale The red of Hannah’s skin is a public sign of her crime as Hester’s scarlet letter “A” was hers Hester is impregnated by a charismatic reverend – ditto for Hannah Hannah and Hester both refuse to divulge the men responsible for their conditions Just as Hester was made to endure three hours of public shaming on a scaffold, Hannah must endure a month in what is, to her, solitary confinement—in a section of the novel titled, ”The Scaffold”—but which is, to the world, the fodder of reality television, as her cell is under video surveillance, and streaming, twenty-four-seven, a more modern form of public humiliation. One can imagine which network that would be on. Hester was a seamstress – ditto Hannah Just as Hester embroidered a stunning “A” for her clothing, so Hannah uses her skill as a seamstress to create beauty in an object meant to induce shame. Both acts incur jealousy and disapproval. A life-affirming rosebush outside a prison gate plays the same role here that it did in the earlier work. The hypocrisy of the powers that be in WSW match those of the early American version Both Hannah and Hester grow from naïve young ladies to strong, self-directed women Both Hannah and Hester question their religious beliefs As for The Handmaid’s Tale In addition to the parallels noted in the text of the review, In THT, the heroine gains the friendship of someone whose knowledge and attitude help her come to some new realizations. In WSW, Kayla serves that role. A theocratic death squad called The Fist might correlate with The Eyes in THT. They both travel in a large vans and do the leaders’ dirty work. Stretching a bit, The Fist might also echo The Black Hand, a Serbian terrorist organization that, like The Fist, organized into cells of three to five members. Unlike The Fist, The Black Hand helped start WW I by assassinating the archduke. Who knows, maybe The Fist was responsible for nuking LA in this one. Others There is a nod to Oliver Twist, another person victimized by a hypocritical society. When Hannah is being released from her month of solitary, she is crudely propositioned by a brutish guard named Billy Sikes, recalling Fagin’s thuggish enforcer. The meager portions provided at Hannah’s halfway house had me wondering if someone would be elected to ask for more. Aidan’s alias for trysts with Hannah is Edward Ferrars, a character from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. Aidan refers to his wife, Alyssa, as his Elinor, the woman Edward Ferrars rejects in order to honor a promise he made to another young lady, in this case, Hannah. There is a love scene in the dark that made me think of Beauty and the Beast, but I am not completely confident of that The Novembrist members all use noms-de-guerre taken from famous historical Americans The so-called Sanctity of Life or SOL laws make one think of a more widespread meaning for those three letters. Other Items -----December 28, 2018 - A Woman’s Rights - a collection of articles that look at the nation-wide right-wing attack on abortion rights. Serious stuff, worth checking out ...more |
Notes are private!
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not set
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Oct 24, 2011
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Jul 20, 2011
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Hardcover
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4.14
| 2,113,634
| 1985
| Apr 1998
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it was amazing
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None
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Notes are private!
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not set
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not set
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Jan 05, 2011
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Paperback
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0061711527
| 9780061711527
| 0061711527
| 3.67
| 16,142
| Jan 25, 2011
| Jan 25, 2011
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it was amazing
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Once upon a time it was considered attractive for women to have some actual flesh on them; small boys wore pink dresses while little girls wore blue;
Once upon a time it was considered attractive for women to have some actual flesh on them; small boys wore pink dresses while little girls wore blue; childrens television shows were not designed specifically to sell toy lines, and manufacturers did not push pink-colored merchandise for a vast range of products to enhance their bottom lines. Pre-teen girls were not encouraged to dress like streetwalkers and bump and grind like exotic dancers. Surely girls were never presented with a global range of options and encouragement to pursue their dreams, career-wise that is, unfettered by domestic and sexual expectations. But the environment today is different in type, comprehensiveness and degree from the world of our mothers. [image] Peggy Orenstein - image from Barb - photo by Michael Todd When my youngest was a wee lass, she was fond of presenting herself to anyone who would attend, resplendent in a T-shirt that sported a bevy of Disney heroines, and demand of her audience, “Who’s your favorite princess?” I still had visions back then of her playing hardball on a mostly boys team, and build on her utter fearlessness on the monkey bars to work up to a bit of serious climbing some day. I viewed her princess fixation as a passing phase. Yes, her favorite color was pink, and it is only recently, well into teen years, (when this was written) 0that her favored palette has broadened. (Whew!) But my daughter was hardly alone in her predilections. She (and her parental units) had been deluged with a marketing environment that has forced little girls into a pink mindset like a prince trying to stuff an evil-stepsister foot into a tiny glass slipper. So what’s the deal with all the pink that is engulfing today’s young girls? Peggy Orenstein, parent to a budding princess of her own, took notice, did some investigation and came up seeing red. Cinderella Ate My Daughter tells what she found. She covers a wide swath. Orenstein wonders what is actually wrong with the Cinderella image. Nothing at all if your goal is to be valued solely for your looks and to be rescued from a poor existence by a handsome and wealthy guy. There can be no higher value in a princess than materialism. She also notes that princesses are not exactly the girl-bonding sort. There is very little room on a throne. Hardly a recipe for winning friends and influencing people. Self realization has been replaced by self-marketing. One subject that permeates is the impact of corporate marketing. From a Disney exec’s multi-billion dollar eureka moment, when he came up with the notion of selling princess clothing and sundries to a huge girl market, to the sexualized dolls and gear of the late 20th and early 21st century, to the “pinking” of everything, top-down product pushing has had a major impact on the world. Do we really need pink soccer balls? Pink baseball caps? Casey Stengel is spinning in his grave. The reason for this silliness is nothing less than the profit motive. If you can sell more product by differentiating into multiple versions, it is nothing less than the American way. Orenstein talks with a marketing exec who credits “the pink factor” with increasing sales. But the downside to advanced marketing prowess and relentless market segmentation is actual long run harm. Pink is associated with all things girly-girl. And that carries baggage. A fixation on pink makes it that much tougher for girls to be all they can be if who they are falls outside the extant confines of what it means to be a girl. Ostracism for being different is quite real. And having primed girls to define themselves by the things they buy, the market now offers them more and more sexualized products. Bratz sashayed onto the market as a sort of slut-Barbie, to be followed by others from that sort of stable. Whereas dolls were once a sign of innocence, many of them have become something much darker. Don’t be fooled by products flogged as “sassy.” Take a look in your magic mirror and see that “sassy” translates to “sexy.” Orenstein looks also at where nature and nurture diverge, reporting on some very surprising studies. Can the brain be changed by one’s environment? Is gender preference for types of toys nature or nurture? Are children maturing faster today than they have in the past? There is also a wonderful discussion of the Brothers Grimm. And you will be surprised to hear of the impact one former president had on things girlish. As with the BP disaster, the impact of all this gender stereotyping and sexual hyping will be emerging for many years to come. For our young girls, it might be better not to be in the pink if it means increasing sexualization of childhood and decreasing social, educational, recreational and career options due to having to survive in an ofF-red monoculture. When short term financial gain is all, and long term consequences are merely corporate externalities, not only are our girls harmed, but our nation suffers. What talents, what potential progress might be stifled by a culture that steers girls into a curved cattle chute that dissuades difference? Such a culture does less to empower and more to make young women handmaids to the bottom line. Perhaps in some future column or later edition of the book, I would like to see more on sociobiology. We need a baseline. If girls are being moved away from some natural state, what can science tell us about what the parameters of that natural state might be? What behaviors are inherited from our cave-dwelling or pre-agricultural days? But that is a quibble. This is an outstanding, if alarming, overview of just how the world is conspiring against our girls, covering many areas of interest, from neuroplasticity to changing views on weight, from the impact of Barbie and American Girl dolls to girls in on-line culture. Cinderella Ate my Daughter is a compelling read, but it is not a pretty picture. ==============================EXTRA STUFF Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages 2/4/11 I came across a really good review of this in the NY Times. I am so jealous. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/boo... And I hear that Cinderella will be making its well-deserved way onto the NYT bestseller list 'ere long. 9/14/11 I received this alarming bit this morning, a serious eye-roller. What are these people thinking! 3/30/12 - Puberty Before Age 10: A New ‘Normal’?, by Elizabeth Weil - A fascinating article on early development in girls 12/2/12 I just came across this excellent GR review by my pal Cathy 3/29/13 This report on sexualization of girls from American Psychological Association is chilling stuff 4/2/13 This seemed the best review in which to place this link. My son posted it on his FB page. From Womens Press, Losing my religion for equality…by Jimmy Carter 5/29/13 Just in case you do not get down to comment #64, GR friend Caroline, has alerted us all to a wonderful piece on CNN's Opinion page, by David M. Perry, For strong daughters, stop with the sex stereotypes. I would add even for those who might not be so strong. Many beasts remain to be slain. 6/13/13 GR, and actual, friend Cathy turned up this item about some more wonderfulness. If you find yourself in Berlin this summer and feel a need for some serious eye-rolling, you might want to check out this exhibit, Barbie’s Dream House? 2/28/14 A different Disney princess song - enjoy 4/5/14 An interesting piece from Slate on the innateness of gender-based toy selection 7/14/14 - I came across an article about a wonderful project, looking at what might have happened were Disney princesses living in the real world, dark but fun 8/12/16 - An interesting NY Times article on one of the downsides of an excess focus on appearance - For Teenage Girls, Swimsuit Season Never Ends - by Lisa Damour PS - My who’s your favorite princess child is now (2023) running marathons on the other coast and wherever they are held, managing medical trials for a new drug, studying for a Masters degree and is soon to be married, to an accomplished cancer researcher, which is much better than a prince. ...more |
Notes are private!
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Sep 29, 2010
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Oct 03, 2010
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Sep 29, 2010
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Hardcover
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