skygiants | (no subject)

It's always a strange experience reading books that talk directly to the girl I was at fifteen, because I remember quite a lot about that girl and there are many ways in which I don't like her much now. Jo Walton's new book Among Others is very much a book that talks directly to that girl, and I think it's honestly pretty brilliant, and there are a number of people I want to give it to. But I also think I'm glad I didn't have it at fifteen; I wouldn't have had any objectivity then. I don't think the book really is saying that the only genuine way to connect with anyone is through sff books, that the only people worth talking to about anything are people who can talk about books - but Mori, the protagonist, believes it, and at fifteen I probably believed it too. At fifteen I also didn't see anything wrong with the way Janet thinks about Christina sometimes in Tam Lin - it's like that.

I'm getting ahead of myself though. Okay, so the book is about Welsh twins called Morganna and Morwenna, who live with their evil mother and occasionally have matter-of-fact interactions with mysterious creatures they call fairies. Except that's wrong, because for most of the book there's only one twin, the other having been killed in an event that involved the fairies and their mother. The remaining twin has gotten away from their mother, but that's gotten her stuck with the father and relatives she's never met, who send her off to boarding school, where she does well in everything except math and makes herself odd enough that the other, boring girls will be afraid of her, and reads books, because as long as she has books everything's bearable. Some of them she's borrowed from her father, who might not be of much practical use but at the very least reads SF and that's something.

The book is Mori's journal, and Mori's mostly interested in talking about books, but of course you can find out a lot from what someone says about books. Sometimes she talks about the fairies and sometimes she talks about her family and the whole thing sort of starts to take shape into a plot that might be about grief and about growing up into an independent person and about finding the people you want to connect with. And also sort of about fairies and about responsible ways to use power and about how not to grow up to be a wicked witch. Ish.

Mori's growing up about twenty years before me, and I was never much on hard SF, so I probably only knew about a quarter or a third of the books that she's reading and mostly wasn't having the same reaction to them - okay, well, I was to the Anne McCaffrey (oh, Mori, someday you will look back at that and facepalm so hard) but definitely not the Heinlein. And Mori is much more isolated than I was, and needs the books more - I might not have always had someone to talk specifically about the fantasy books I was reading with when I was younger, and I wanted that desperately when I didn't have it, but I always had someone. But all the same, if you were at all that kid, you'll recognize this, and this book will have something to say to you.

If you weren't that kid, though - if this doesn't really sound familiar - I wouldn't recommend this; I think it would actually be profoundly alienating. Because I don't think Mori has quite yet gotten around to recognizing that people who don't have the same inner life she does may still very well have an inner life. There are hints that she's on the way to figuring out that's not true, but she's not there yet.

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I identify with this post! I don't think I identified with Mori as much as you did but it did take my younger self a little while to realise that people with inner lives that weren't 98% about books also had inner lives. And coming to understand this has been one of the best, rewarding things for me about growing up -- realising that what makes books interesting to me is in people, that real people are actually genuinely more interesting than books. (I still like books as much if not more than people, but that's because most books are less difficult than people, and also it is relatively rare that you get the same level of understanding of what people are about from meeting them that most any book will give you when you read it. If that makes any sense!)

Yes, this, exactly! It makes perfect sense. I mean, it's still a struggle in myself often, to remind myself that the real world and real people are as interesting or more as the people in books, because as you say it is so much easier to connect with someone on a page when they're nice and laid out for you, and you don't have to struggle with presenting yourself to them at the same time as you're trying to figure them out. But things that are harder are obviously not less worthwhile - in fact the opposite. (Sometimes I look at someone I have trouble dealing with in real life, and think but I think I would like you in a book!, and that does make it easier to like them in person. Maybe that's a messed-up way of dealing with people, but oh well.)