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Jun. 5th, 2009 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsBut damn, Octavia Butler's Clay's Ark is dark. I mean, I have read a lot of her stuff and I am generally pretty good at coping with Butlerian bleakness! And I am really glad I read it, because it was amazing and fascinating. But wow.
It's harder, because I think this book combines exceptional hopelessness with some of her most sympathetic characters. The 'past' storyline of the novel follows Eli, a man who has been infected with an alien organism that alters his body, strengthens all his physical drives, and forces on him an uncontrollable compulsion to pass the disease along as much as he can through infection and procreation. Because of the physical changes, he essentially can't die, and he has to infect others or he will go insane. Within these compulsions, he has to try and hold onto his humanity as best he can. In the 'present' storyline, which takes place simultaneously, there is already a small community of the infected, doing their very best to hold themselves in check, only infect a limited number of people and keep the community completely isolated so as not to create a pandemic. Blake and his two sixteen-year-old daughters - one of whom has leukemia - were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are therefore about to join that limited number of people.
What Butler does amazingly well, again, is unrelentingly show a situation where a return to what we would consider normal humanity is impossible. The only choice is adaptation to what would have been unthinkable previously. This is always a question that I think is really, really fascinating, and also hits a particular terror kink of mine - when people are slowly losing their humanity, and are aware that they are losing their humanity but unable to stop it, and augh! It's the awareness of it that gets me. It takes a lot for a book to really scare me. Stephen King doesn't manage it most of the time. This did.
(ETA: I should add, however, that once again the LULZ of Twilight saved the day and staved off at least some of the grimness, because guys, the Cullens are totally clayarks! The strength, the speed, the dramatic leaps off high buildings, the irresistible compulsions, the magic babies . . . the clayarks even have the sparkle! Well, okay, profuse unnatural sweating, but it probably creates the same effect.)
I finished the book last night before going to sleep; I woke up this morning, looked out at the gray rainy sky, and thought, "Gosh, today I really feel like getting out of bed and going about life is essentially a losing proposition. I wonder why that is!
OH YEAH."
I think - I think next I will be reading something cheery. Just possibly.
In the meantime, though, tell me I'm not alone! What was the last book that really scared you?
It's harder, because I think this book combines exceptional hopelessness with some of her most sympathetic characters. The 'past' storyline of the novel follows Eli, a man who has been infected with an alien organism that alters his body, strengthens all his physical drives, and forces on him an uncontrollable compulsion to pass the disease along as much as he can through infection and procreation. Because of the physical changes, he essentially can't die, and he has to infect others or he will go insane. Within these compulsions, he has to try and hold onto his humanity as best he can. In the 'present' storyline, which takes place simultaneously, there is already a small community of the infected, doing their very best to hold themselves in check, only infect a limited number of people and keep the community completely isolated so as not to create a pandemic. Blake and his two sixteen-year-old daughters - one of whom has leukemia - were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and are therefore about to join that limited number of people.
What Butler does amazingly well, again, is unrelentingly show a situation where a return to what we would consider normal humanity is impossible. The only choice is adaptation to what would have been unthinkable previously. This is always a question that I think is really, really fascinating, and also hits a particular terror kink of mine - when people are slowly losing their humanity, and are aware that they are losing their humanity but unable to stop it, and augh! It's the awareness of it that gets me. It takes a lot for a book to really scare me. Stephen King doesn't manage it most of the time. This did.
(ETA: I should add, however, that once again the LULZ of Twilight saved the day and staved off at least some of the grimness, because guys, the Cullens are totally clayarks! The strength, the speed, the dramatic leaps off high buildings, the irresistible compulsions, the magic babies . . . the clayarks even have the sparkle! Well, okay, profuse unnatural sweating, but it probably creates the same effect.)
I finished the book last night before going to sleep; I woke up this morning, looked out at the gray rainy sky, and thought, "Gosh, today I really feel like getting out of bed and going about life is essentially a losing proposition. I wonder why that is!
OH YEAH."
I think - I think next I will be reading something cheery. Just possibly.
In the meantime, though, tell me I'm not alone! What was the last book that really scared you?
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Date: 2009-06-05 04:01 pm (UTC)*coughTheMasterandMargarita*cough*
(Okay, it's not entirely cheery, there are dark parts, but it is full of life and exceedingly happy and awesome.)
Ah, some parts of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Volume I, The Pox Party genuinely made me want to vomit, actually. It was an amazing book, but it inspired both anger and fear to a great extent.
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Date: 2009-06-05 04:17 pm (UTC)And yeah, Octavian Nothing is also an extremely dark book - although I love the characters and the descriptions and the dialogue so much that, aside from its genuine amazingness, I actually found it really enjoyable to read as well. Which helped to balance the grimness, for me.
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Date: 2009-06-05 04:42 pm (UTC). . .Actually, I kind of want to suggest a really short quick children's book. Have you read The Higher Power of Lucky" It was in the news a couple years ago for stupid reasons. It is a cute and happy slice-of-life book that takes place in the desert in the middle of nowhere and is about a little girl and her French foster mother and is just really sweet.
It helped to balance the grimness to a certain extent to me, too, and the grimness made it a more amazing book rather than taking from it - I'm just fairly sensitive about that sort of thing. ^^;
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Date: 2009-06-05 04:56 pm (UTC)Oh, absolutely - I love how the book does not flinch from looking at everything that was going down at that time period. It definitely contributes to making it so incredible.
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Date: 2009-06-05 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 05:16 pm (UTC)Which is also, as far as I know, one of the best works in the graphic novel format.
Based on the first volume, his 20th Century Boys may also pull off the "creep me the hell out while I am completely invested in and admire the work like almost nothing else" thing.
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Date: 2009-06-05 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 05:25 pm (UTC)Besides, it's a manga that genuinely takes place in Germany. As in, the Europeans look European and the Japanese lead looks Japanese and there's all this fallout from the reunification of Germany and he actually does things like address the status of the Turkish immigrant population and it's just awesome.
(Also notable is the fact that the anime is basically identical to the manga, just with movement, color and sound. Which in this case, is perfect.)
But 20th Century Boys looks like it's going to be awesome too. In fact, I am planning to do some gushing about Urasawa on my journal soon.
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Date: 2009-06-05 05:40 pm (UTC)I will look forward to reading your gushing! :D
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Date: 2009-06-05 05:45 pm (UTC)I hope I will deliver well!
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Date: 2009-06-05 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 10:16 pm (UTC)(I mean, An Experiment in Love scared me, and . . . that one did not even have ghosts . . .)
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Date: 2009-06-05 10:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-07 03:43 pm (UTC)Not something I've read recently, but I was just thinking about Knock Three Times (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Knock-Three-Wordsworth-Childrens-Classics/dp/1853261327) the other day and getting freaked out about it. I read it when I was wee but I still think it would scare the shit out of me if I reread it now. The embarrassing thing is that it is scary because it is about an evil pumpkin. /o\
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Date: 2009-06-07 11:06 pm (UTC)EVIL PUMPKINS ARE SCARY. They are so orange and also they have scary faces. D:
(Also the things that were scary when one was small are often the scariest still . . . I often wish to rewatch the Yellow Submarine movie, which used to terrify me as a small thing, but I am kind of still too scared to!)