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Aug. 28th, 2011 12:55 pmChecking in from Brooklyn! NYC public transit is down for the foreseeable future, so we're sitting pretty in our apartment for now, but that's not a terrible hardship as we have in general weathered the storm extremely well with no more inconvenience than a leak or two in the skylight. We didn't even get a power outage excuse to use our candles of last resort -- the only ones we could find at last minute in the local grocery store were saint's candles, so now St. Jude and St. Barbara are sitting judgily in our Jewish-atheist-Baptist kitchen and probably feeling very out of place.
While I'm talking about displaced saints, though, I may as well use that to segue into a booklog of Catherynne M. Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed. I've been meaning to read more of Valente's work since I read and loved The Orphan's Tales in college, but this is the first one I've actually gotten around to, and I think maybe it was the wrong first one to read post-Orphan's Tales. The impression I've gotten of Valente's work from summaries is that most of her books are very different from each other and Habitation of the Blessed did . . . not actually feel all that different from The Orphan's Tales. I mean, to sum up, we have:
- a collection of stealthily and less-stealthily interlocking narratives (four, in this case - Prester John's, his blemmye wife's, a fantastical nursemaid's, and the frame narrative of the Christian expeditionary force that discovers and interpolates them)
- mostly about 'monstrous' creatures with various different wildly imaginative cultural norms going about their lives in a way that shocks and scandalizes the normative dudes who come across them
- with an emphasis on the POWER OF STORIES and pointedly overturning traditional morality and narrative imagery
In this case, the source of the imagery that Valente's playing around with is medieval Christian philosophy and hagiography rather than fairy tales, but the effect (especially to someone who's not super familiar with medieval Christian philosophy and hagiography) is not all that different. And still totally enjoyable; Valente is always incredibly creative, and reading the book felt a bit like diving into a swimming pool of fantastical imagery and seeing what was stuck when I came out, which is a feeling I'm generally a fan of. So basically, if you liked The Orphan's Tales you will probably like this, but it was a bit weirdly deja vu-ish. I am going to read the next book in this series whenever it comes out, but I am also hoping to see more of what she can do.
While I'm talking about displaced saints, though, I may as well use that to segue into a booklog of Catherynne M. Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed. I've been meaning to read more of Valente's work since I read and loved The Orphan's Tales in college, but this is the first one I've actually gotten around to, and I think maybe it was the wrong first one to read post-Orphan's Tales. The impression I've gotten of Valente's work from summaries is that most of her books are very different from each other and Habitation of the Blessed did . . . not actually feel all that different from The Orphan's Tales. I mean, to sum up, we have:
- a collection of stealthily and less-stealthily interlocking narratives (four, in this case - Prester John's, his blemmye wife's, a fantastical nursemaid's, and the frame narrative of the Christian expeditionary force that discovers and interpolates them)
- mostly about 'monstrous' creatures with various different wildly imaginative cultural norms going about their lives in a way that shocks and scandalizes the normative dudes who come across them
- with an emphasis on the POWER OF STORIES and pointedly overturning traditional morality and narrative imagery
In this case, the source of the imagery that Valente's playing around with is medieval Christian philosophy and hagiography rather than fairy tales, but the effect (especially to someone who's not super familiar with medieval Christian philosophy and hagiography) is not all that different. And still totally enjoyable; Valente is always incredibly creative, and reading the book felt a bit like diving into a swimming pool of fantastical imagery and seeing what was stuck when I came out, which is a feeling I'm generally a fan of. So basically, if you liked The Orphan's Tales you will probably like this, but it was a bit weirdly deja vu-ish. I am going to read the next book in this series whenever it comes out, but I am also hoping to see more of what she can do.
