(no subject)

[skygiants]

I made matzoh ball soup (from a box, because it was late and I was lazy) the other night.

Hot soup was a delicious and tasty meal for a cold Tuesday night, but I think the actual reason that I had a craving for matzoh ball soup on that particular night was because I had just finished reading Jo Walton's Half a Crown, the conclusion to her series of books set in an AU fascist-leaning post-WWII England. The book includes a scene of a Jewish family celebrating a Passover seder through the eyes of a young British debutante: "It isn't that they sacrifice babies," she says, "and they're clean enough to put us all to shame. But their customs are very peculiar, and all their prayers are in Hebrew, and they wear robes and have strange rituals in their houses in the evening. I'm not surprised that people get nervous about them and wonder what they're up to. I felt nervous myself."

As far as I'm concerned it's the best-done scene in the book.

(One year when I was fourteen or fifteen we went to celebrate Passover with my great-grandmother, who lived in Nottingham at that time but was born in Czechoslovakia at the turn of the nineteenth century. Over and over again she warned us not to let the neighbors see us carrying the matzoh and other seder implements to her house - just in case.)

I don't know. I grew up, as I think I have said here before, in an area that was packed with Jews of all varieties, Orthodox and Conservative and reform and secular; my high school was around sixty percent Jewish, and we got all the Jewish holidays off, and the Saturday morning organic chemistry classes didn't factor into our transcript grade-wise because it wouldn't be fair to the kids who couldn't attend for religious reasons. Every year, the local Borders puts up an enormous cheesy tinsel menorah on the side of the building.

And more and more, I realize how incredibly privileged I have been and how much it has affected my life and my sense of self to grow up where I did. I can't remember ever feeling strange or different for being Jewish when I was growing up, and it's hard to think of myself as othered at all, even now. But as I get older, I learn some of the things I missed - the woman who said "that's what happens when Jews stand under the Christmas tree" when my baby brother was hit by a falling bough; the au pair who wondered in all innocence, when I came home from a winter vacation with a burn from standing too close to the radiator, whether Jews branded their children. (I am writing seriously about these stories now, but in the interests of full disclosure you should really know that when my brother and I talk about them, we're invariably cracking up; it feels so absurd to us that it becomes hilarious.)

And I think, every so often, it's good to be reminded that just because I don't often think of myself as othered, as standing out, as being different - the people who hear me talking about going home for Yom Kippur, or making matzoh ball soup for myself for dinner, won't necessarily agree.

- and after that long digression, my thoughts about the book itself!

I did not actually like this one as much as I have the earlier ones - I didn't find Elvira as compelling in her own story as either Lucy or Viola, and I could not believe the ending. (It's not that I don't believe in a happy ending! It's just . . . QUEEN EX MACHINA seems a bit silly! What I really wanted was more about Jacobson's sneaky political efforts to encourage the right protest marches, because I loved that, and I loved Jacobson RIDICULOUSLY, and I found all that a much more believable way of effecting change. And I was totally predicting Betsy was going to do something brave and awesome, and so I was disappointed when she did not. Also, I don't think we ever got to know Jack enough for his death to be the emotional cost that this book needed.)

I think it's also, though, that - well, I mean, I've read the Holocaust books, it is hard to avoid them. I know the story of the climate of fear and people coming in the night to take you away. Jo Walton still does an amazing job capturing all the little ridiculous details about this world, and what do you wear to a Fascist rally anyways?, and that's the best thing about the book and the series overall - and this one is absolutely worth the read. But I was much more interested in the buildup to this state - that sort of time period where things were looking bleaker and bleaker, but you didn't know what would happen and how bad things would get - than the point where the worst was pretty much already happening.

I suspect most people like Farthing best, but Ha'Penny is still my favorite.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I agree that the ending was unnecessarily and unjustifiably abrupt. Here comes the queen! She'll save the day! It's over!

I want to know what happens next. Are there still Fascist sympathizers in England? What happens to Hitler? How does England's personality shift in the aftermath of the Normanby years? I really think there's another novel left in that universe that investigates the post-post-war cultural moves. Done right, the hypothetical next novel could fix some of the very real concerns I share with you about Half a Crown.

[skygiants]

Yes! I mean, "everything will be okay because WE LOVE OUR QUEEN" is a great way to end a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, but this series not so much. (Not to mention - hey, England might be getting slightly better, but the rest of the world still sucks!)

- you know, you are absolutely right. Another novel could fix a lot of the issues with the abruptness of the happy ending and balance out that unierse a bit. Although it would be difficult to center another book around Inspector Carmichael, I suppose, considering.

[skygiants]

ALSO the other very tiny thing that bothered me far more than it should have: she mentions Viola Larkin on the same page that she talks about Unity Mitford! The Larkins are supposed to be the AUverse Mitfords, you cannot have them both! :O (She may actually have talked about the Mitfords even in the last book, but it bothers me anyways.)

[wickedtrue.livejournal.com]

Damn it, Becca. *adds yet more books to the list*

I'm stealing all your books once we're settled. Yes, all of them. Then, you'll be forced to come to Boston and steal them back! :O!

[skygiants]

:O!!! THE HORROR! *LIVES IN FEAR*

(In other words: Yesss more excuses to come stalk Apartment O'Awesome in Boston! \o/)

[kenovay.livejournal.com]

This is not entirely related to your post, but I keep thinking about it: I was at a family dinner recently, with my lovely, tolerant, middle class extended family, and the conversation turned to a Jewish developer that my uncle was working for (he's a... I like to call him an 'executive builder', since he's extremely high up in his building firm but he is still, basically, a builder) and the conversation was very, very discomforting. (Not, I must add, in any hateful way, but more in a "hahahaha, he's a Jew and he's also a bit tight and don't Jews have weird customs" kind of way.)

I can't really remember the details now, because I tried not to pay attention, so this is only a vague anecdote, but I think there is genuinely a vein of anti-Semitism, in a very polite and middle-class way, that runs deep through English society of my parents' generation and just... doesn't get challenged. I hope that because it's quite an unspoken thing, it hasn't been passed on in the same way to my generation.

Anyway, blah blah. It sounds like an interesting series of books!

[skygiants]

*nods* Yeah, I think you are right, and - well, it was interesting being in England over Passover that time. Again, because of where I grew up, I'd never been somewhere where one just could not get the kind of food you have to eat over Passover before. I'm sure it's partly because the Jewish communities in England (afaik, I could be wrong!) really aren't so prominent - they absolutely exist, but you don't hear much about them, whereas in America we are a pretty vocal minority.

And it is definitely a really interesting series of books, and overall I would highly recommend; what makes it work so well is that it reads to me as being very rooted in English-ness, as opposed to being just another zomgfascism narrative.

[kenovay.livejournal.com]

You can get the stuff you need, but you need to be in, like, North London. :) The Jewish communities aren't so prominent, definitely, and mostly because there really aren't so many over here - I think it's definitely a demographic thing. Also, it's a thing that's sort of... hidden. Like, Disraeli? Not that many people just casually know that we've had a Jewish PM. Or Siegfried Sassoon, he was half-Jewish, and that's not really something that they tell us at GCSE, which is when most people brush up against the war poets (in contrast, Owen's homosexuality is much more widely known). It's not, like, a massive conspiracy of anti-Semitism, I think, more just a sort of lack of familiarity.

Ack, I'm just stringing thoughts together, really. Sorry, someday I will make a coherent comment about this. :)

It was also interesting when I had a friend to stay who keeps kosher: my Mum found it really difficult, and one of the things that she said about why she found it difficult is because offering and accepting food is such a massive part of hospitality, and if you have someone who literally can't accept most of the food you offer, it becomes very difficult to make them welcome in the same way, if that makes sense? And again, with the lack of familiarity: she wasn't at allsure about what on earth kosher was, which makes it difficult to figure out what to offer a guest.

[(Anonymous)]

at the turn of the nineteenth century

Don't you mean 20th century? Unless your great-grandmother was really born in 1800, that is!

19th century = 1800s
20th century = 1900s
21st century = 2000s

[skygiants]

Since the alternatives are either admitting I screwed up, or confessing that I am actually a ninety-year-old man pretending to be a twentysomething girl on the internet . . WHY YES, you are absolutely correct. *grins*