(no subject)

[skygiants]

During osprey_archer's visit last month she left me several books, including Naomi Mitchison's Travel Light -- only my second Mitchison Experience, and my first, To the Chapel Perilous, is a book I've not been able to shut up about since I got my hands on it a few years back, so it certainly won't be my last.

Travel Light is a very different book, short and lucid and deeply unpredictable from one section to the next -- I thought I had a grasp on what sort of story it was and kept finding myself wrong at each new turn. It starts out as a sort of Norse fairy tale, with heroine, Halla, being rescued by her nurse from the threat of Murder By Evil Stepmother as a baby. Thereafter the nurse rapid succession turns into a bear, discovers that it's highly inconvenient to raise a human baby as a bear, and gives Halla to a dragon to raise instead. Halla spends her formative years with the dragons, learning to love treasure and hate heroes and understand the sociopolitics of the realm through dragon eyes in a way that feels very much like a satire on what I assume were major sociopolitical and socioeconomical debates of 1952 in ways that are fascinating but probably warped through my particular 2022-lenses.

After a further series of upheavals and a significant encounter with Odin, she's painfully launched out of this particular genre and into an entirely different one, accompanying a group of earnest Christian pilgrims on a journey to Constantinople to lodge a plea against their evil local governor. The pilgrims are deeply anxious for their families back home, deeply unprepared to navigate Byzantine religious politics, and fully convinced that Halla is a saint who's been sent to assist them through their difficult times, even though Halla is not any more prepared for Constantinople than the pilgrims are; it's not the world she grew up in, and she's been moving lightly through time, as well as space.

If Halla has a long-running tie that persists through the whole book, it's Steinvor, the jaunty Valkyrie who occasionally pops up to try and convince Halla that she belongs among the Valkyries despite Halla's distaste for heroes -- in fact, the first time they meet, she tries to carry Halla off -- but also amiably rescues her from several of the traps in which she finds herself throughout her travels. (In a certain kind of book, Steinvor would absolutely be the endgame love interest; in this book I'm not saying she isn't.)

It's a very strange little book, often very funny, often very sad; impermanence and transience is the theme, on both big and little scales, and the losses and gains that come with that. I liked it a lot and, as with To the Chapel Perilous, would love to read more about the specific topics that Mitchison was in dialogue with while writing it.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

Isn't it an odd little book? Every time I thought I'd figured it out, it wriggled out of my grasp like a fish.

I went into the book expecting something much more lighthearted than it is - as you say, it's often a very sad story, countries and centuries slipping easily away, and yet the personal tragedies somehow no less devastating for the fact that they are so small in the grand scheme of things.

...Also YES Steinvor is absolutely the love interest of the book. I mean she isn't, no one is really, it's not that kind of book; but also Steinvor is!

[skygiants]

Funnily enough we had the opposite expectations! Something about the way I'd seen this book written up had led me to think of it as a very sparse/poetic, solitary story, with Halla wandering around and experiencing the lonely beauty of nature, so the fact that it was quite funny and Halla spent most of it forming important bonds (even if those bonds were always impermanent) was a pleasant surprise although of course that made the book no less sad overall.

[ceitfianna]

I read Travel Light and found it an intriguing but didn't know the other book, so will add it to my list.

[skygiants]

I really liked To the Chapel Perilous, it's an extremely fascinating Arthurian take!

[troisoiseaux]

Ooh, it looks like my library has this one-- I'll put it on my list.

[skygiants]

Looking forward to your thoughts if you read it!

[oracne]

Mitchison is SO AMAZING. I gave away my copy of this book fairly recently, only because I realized I wanted more people to read it.

[skygiants]

It's really very pleasant to be embarking on a Mitchison Quest at this time in my life because she wrote so many things -- I know I won't come to the end any time soon and they'll all be interesting on one way or another!

[chestnut_pod]

Do you think it's saying anything to or about Orlando? Or is that me being Guy Who Has Only Read Orlando?

[skygiants]

hmmmm that's an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me, but now you mention it even if it's not intentional I'd quite like to see someone put them in conversation -- there's something about the way Halla slipstreams through roles and positions as girl || wolf || dragon || saint before wriggling out of them that feels like a definite parallel to Orlando's more explicitly gendered liminality.

[asakiyume]

Due to my excruciatingly poor memory, I can't remember what osprey_archer wrote about this without going back and looking; I only remember that it was intriguing and Not Like What You've Written Here, which strengthens my perception (similarly strengthened by her review, I recall) that it's a mercurial book that colors up differently depending on who reads it. Now I'm MORE intrigued.

[skygiants]

It definitely is and does -- and osprey_archer and I both had quite different impressions off it going in, too, I think, based on what we'd read about it beforehand. Hard to pin down!

[regshoe]

It is a strange book! I like it a lot, but I do not think I understand it—I should probably re-read it at some point.

I like the idea of Steinvor as the endgame love interest! I do kind of ship her and Halla, but I think I would be annoyed by it as a canon pairing...

[skygiants]

Yeah, I also don't feel like I understand it! I've got to read it again sometime with a sense of the Full Themes and also I think probably I need someone who knows more about the period to talk about the things she's commenting on in specific, because it's clearly something.

lol, part of what I meant about Steinvor being written as love interest to me I think is the way that her role fits into the kind YA love interest role I saw a lot growing up, where the teen heroine's endgame boyfriend is a guy who tells her what her destiny is and she's like 'no!' but then he keeps showing up and annoying her but getting her out of Situations until eventually she realizes he was right about her destiny and they belong together ... you know the trope I mean, anyway it's a model of Romance that's quite common and often irritating but one can't deny that Steinvor does hit the plot beats!

[bookblather]

I read this book after it came up in This Is How You Lose the Time War (read it if you haven't, I love it so much) and I really enjoyed it but I still am not sure what it's about, really. I'm going to keep rereading it, I think.

[skygiants]

I have read This Is How You Lose The Time War but I completely forgot this book was referenced! Remind me how it came up?

[mneme]

Oh, interesting! I love To the Chapel Perilous, odd context and all, and this looks fascinating!

[skygiants]

I'm very excited to keep adding to my Mitchison repertoire!

[larryhammer]

I bumbled about with this one, too, and have been meaning to reread it for years. Not that I've a clue where it's shelved ATM ...

[skygiants]

That is always of course the problem -- I can't find my copy of To the Chapel Perilous, which is vastly frustrating given how tricky it was to get hold of to begin with.

[larryhammer]

I have a sinking feeling that it maaaaay have gotten culled, during one of our rounds of looking to free up more book space ...

[luzula]

May I shamelessly promote my Yuletide fic from 2020? It also doesn't quite have Steinvor as the love interest, but it doesn't not, either.

[regshoe]

I can certainly recommend this fic! :D