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May. 11th, 2009 11:50 amThis 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.
