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May. 11th, 2009 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThis weekend I went with a friend to see the Lilac Festival in Rochester. "Oh my gosh," I said, "it's green, it's flowers, look, look how pretty! There is so much green!" "Oh, that's right," said my friend tolerantly, "I keep forgetting you're a city-dweller now. Yes, in places that are not New York City, they have plants! It's very exciting."
I had a good time, but I do have to say it will be nice to have a break from traveling this weekend before I go a-voyaging again over Memorial Day weekend. I have plans to clean my room and take my mom to a souffle-making class and to Star Trek for belated Mother's Day festivities, it will be fun times.
Fittingly, while I was in Rochester, I was reading a book recommended to me by someone with some knowledge of that area. Delia Sherman's The Porcelain Dove involves, among other things:
1. the French Revolution!
2. a sorcerer maid on a fairy quest
3. a vengeance-crazed wizard
4. a mad aristocrat with a tumultuous home life, an ancestral curse, and a bird fetish
5. a multitude of ghosts
6. an intelligent lady who chafes at the restrictions placed upon her sex
What makes the book fairly unique is that it focuses on none of these, choosing instead as its protagonist the sharp-witted, rational, and thoroughly unromantic femme du chambre of a silly, pretty lady who is wrapped up in these complications mostly by the accident of being related or married to them. Berthe Duvet is completely tied up in her mistress, as any good lady's maid ought to be, and for a good portion of the book the magic in her life is so subtle that she can mostly ignore it - but as things start to worsen, she finds herself on the wrong side of both the Revolution and the curse on her mistress' family, and has to cope as best she can with both.
This is a really cool and unusual way to tell this kind of fairy tale, and I love stories of ordinary people who find themselves involved in the fantastic despite themselves, but there are drawbacks. For one thing, it means that sometimes Berthe does not have any idea what is going on with the characters that I found most interesting. A significant portion of the book is also an almost-too-unrelenting slide into misery and despair. I loved Berthe and her narrative voice, though, and even when things got extremely dark, I couldn't look away. (Also, Delia Sherman does a good job with making you feel like you're reading French dialogue, despite writing the whole book in English.)
I do have to mention, however, the literally Magical Negro - a character that I liked as a character, but who was pretty much an unfortunately textbook case. Pompey is a Haitian servant who is brought up in the household from a child. He then turns out to know magic (how or from where, we do not know) and teaches it to the child who will grow up to become the Sorcerer Maid, then disappears from the narrative, having had apparently no other goals in his life than to train her and help her along. This is somewhat subverted, because protagonist Berthe herself cares infinitely more about Pompey than she ever does about the Sorcerer Maid and in fact gets extremely frustrated and angry many times about the quest-narrative's lack of concern for him; however, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that we never do get to hear about his own goals and motivations, other than to become a wise mentor.
I had a good time, but I do have to say it will be nice to have a break from traveling this weekend before I go a-voyaging again over Memorial Day weekend. I have plans to clean my room and take my mom to a souffle-making class and to Star Trek for belated Mother's Day festivities, it will be fun times.
Fittingly, while I was in Rochester, I was reading a book recommended to me by someone with some knowledge of that area. Delia Sherman's The Porcelain Dove involves, among other things:
1. the French Revolution!
2. a sorcerer maid on a fairy quest
3. a vengeance-crazed wizard
4. a mad aristocrat with a tumultuous home life, an ancestral curse, and a bird fetish
5. a multitude of ghosts
6. an intelligent lady who chafes at the restrictions placed upon her sex
What makes the book fairly unique is that it focuses on none of these, choosing instead as its protagonist the sharp-witted, rational, and thoroughly unromantic femme du chambre of a silly, pretty lady who is wrapped up in these complications mostly by the accident of being related or married to them. Berthe Duvet is completely tied up in her mistress, as any good lady's maid ought to be, and for a good portion of the book the magic in her life is so subtle that she can mostly ignore it - but as things start to worsen, she finds herself on the wrong side of both the Revolution and the curse on her mistress' family, and has to cope as best she can with both.
This is a really cool and unusual way to tell this kind of fairy tale, and I love stories of ordinary people who find themselves involved in the fantastic despite themselves, but there are drawbacks. For one thing, it means that sometimes Berthe does not have any idea what is going on with the characters that I found most interesting. A significant portion of the book is also an almost-too-unrelenting slide into misery and despair. I loved Berthe and her narrative voice, though, and even when things got extremely dark, I couldn't look away. (Also, Delia Sherman does a good job with making you feel like you're reading French dialogue, despite writing the whole book in English.)
I do have to mention, however, the literally Magical Negro - a character that I liked as a character, but who was pretty much an unfortunately textbook case. Pompey is a Haitian servant who is brought up in the household from a child. He then turns out to know magic (how or from where, we do not know) and teaches it to the child who will grow up to become the Sorcerer Maid, then disappears from the narrative, having had apparently no other goals in his life than to train her and help her along. This is somewhat subverted, because protagonist Berthe herself cares infinitely more about Pompey than she ever does about the Sorcerer Maid and in fact gets extremely frustrated and angry many times about the quest-narrative's lack of concern for him; however, it still doesn't mitigate the fact that we never do get to hear about his own goals and motivations, other than to become a wise mentor.
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Date: 2009-05-11 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 04:55 pm (UTC)mmm, lilacs!
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Date: 2009-05-11 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 04:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 07:06 pm (UTC)If I ever have a place of my own, I'm probably going to try to grow lilacs.
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Date: 2009-05-11 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 05:50 pm (UTC)*consoles self with newly planted garden, huzzah*
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Date: 2009-05-11 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 06:32 pm (UTC)Boston has a lot of green space around, at least. It's not like the countryside, but it's not like most of NYC either; it's less segregated into parks, kind of thing. (The downside is that we don't have any parks as epic as a few of yours, of course.) So I'm not pining for spring! Although I am mildly pining for countryside; I really need to grab a backpack of books and a notebook and sturdy shoes and run off to the mountains some weekend when the weather's nice.
And yes! Feather and I bought flowers on Saturday afternoon and planted them Saturday evening, and crossed our fingers all Saturday night that the rain we got that night wouldn't wash them away, which it didn't. And they are PRETTY and I have Hopes for my strawberry plants to give us tastiness and and and yes. :D
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Date: 2009-05-11 06:36 pm (UTC)- okay perhaps not every day.)
It is true! Boston is somewhat less tall and steely than NYC. Admittedly very few places are as tall and steely as NYC . . . (our parks are indeed truly epic, though! And also good for picnicing. Just ask Sandry. :D) I am picturing you hoisting on your shoes and taking a walking stick and marching out into the hills, by the way.
Oooh! That does indeed sound lovely.
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Date: 2009-05-11 07:27 pm (UTC)Most of our parks are good for picnicking! But they have fewer lilacs. :( Though I'd expect most to have some, as they're very much a New England Thing. (Used to be, at least in Vermont, that every house would have a lilac planted by the front door as a sign of welcome or somesuch. So you can tell by where a big old lilac is growing that a house quite possibly used to be there, even if it's in the middle of a newer house's front yard now.) When I come visit in June, weather allowing, let us picnic! :D :D It's been an age since I've really been in an NYC park; my last several visits have been in big crowds or cold weather or both.
And that is precisely what I am picturing doing. :D Not precisely what I will literally do, because I don't own a walking stick and it'd be rather a long walk anyway -- although quite doable by public transit, at least if one only demands woods and small hills -- but in my brain! In my brain, this icon is me, only more badass. *solemn*
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Date: 2009-05-11 07:58 pm (UTC)I do not think I ever knew that lilacs were a New England Thing! The things you learn. (I did not know that lilac was symbolic, either . . . although I should not be surprised. Anyway, that is kind of awesome.) This is yet another plan I approve of highly! Une pique-nique, bien sur. And hopefully June weather will be lovely, to make up for all the sulkiness we've been having lately. *knocks wood*
Funnily enough, that icon is nearly identical to what I was picturing also! :D There is no reason why you cannot be that badass in your Setting Out A-Journeying.
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Date: 2009-05-11 10:24 pm (UTC)I went the first year I lived in Rochester, and now I've adopted the same approach that I used for the cherry blossoms in DC...that is, get the heck out of Dodge, be bitter whenever I realize that my usual routes have to change because of blockages or traffic closures, and then go see them after the festival is done, right before they croak. This year, however, I was in Kalamazoo and soon am heading out on the Great Journey to the West Coast, and am missing almost all of the madness. I would have considered a walk, but WOE, I have a nasty sinus problem thanks to Kalamazoo, and it is not to be.
However, am noting the book, and will see if I find it for cheaps at Powell's.
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Date: 2009-05-12 12:25 am (UTC)Heh - that is fair! I have never had a citywide flower-festival to be bitter about, or I might feel the same way. Great journey to the West Coast should be fun, though! And alas for the sinus problem, for those truly do suck. D:
(Powell's! \o/)
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Date: 2009-05-11 10:54 pm (UTC)Read her YA series. Is good. Or Through a Brazen Mirror, it has a gay king and the Famous Flower of Servingmen.
I'm considering starting the Uglies/Pretties/Specials series because she says so. She's also co-founder of the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which is all about the borders and collaborations between things. Art and media, technology and craft, nifty stuff like that.
Remind me to talk to you about my weird Leverage/mythology crossover idea.
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Date: 2009-05-12 12:27 am (UTC). . . intriguing. *grins*
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Date: 2009-05-12 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 12:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 12:48 am (UTC)