Read React Review

Rethinking romance and other fine fiction

Archive for category Reviews

Does Kristan Higgins write romance novels? I’m thinking No.

Sep 1

Posted by Jessica in Genre musings, Reading Reflection | 24 Comments

I read my first Higgins recently, her 2009 release,  Too Good to Be True. I enjoyed it. I quickly read two others, Catch of the Day (2007) and Just One of The Guys (2008). And I’ve started — but haven’t finished (I need a break, for reasons I will explain below) Fools Rush In (2006).

You can hardly find a contemporary writer whose is more embraced by the mainstream romance community than Higgins. By my count, Kristan Higgins now has seven books in print, all with Harlequin. COTD won the RITA for best single title contemporary, as did TGTBT. The Higgins covers all feature romantic couples. Higgins books are reviewed in Romantic Times, on most romance blogs, etc.

But even though this defies all logic, I do not think Higgins writes romance novels. I think she writes women’s fiction.

Higgins novels (please understand this is the shorthand I am going to use for “the 3.5 Higgins novels I have read”) start with a heroine who is unhappily single. They are written from the heroine’s first person point of view. The heroine really wants to find (or, in cases where she has identified him already, get with) her true love, feels she is getting old, and envies her happy-with-spouse-and-children sister or brothers. She then hooks up with the wrong guy or guys — often comically, but sometimes with a fervor that takes her right into TSTL/unsympathetic territory. At the very end, she hooks up with Mr. Right.

And when I say “at the very end”, I mean it. Higgins heroes aren’t around much in her books.  The heroine spends so little time even thinking about the heroes that I don’t even get a sense of who they are through the narrator’s eyes. So, for example, in TGTBT, the hero went into business with his brother, to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina, but the brother stole the money and ran, leaving the hero in debt, and in prison. In COTD, the hero had an early failed marriage and a teenaged daughter. In JOOTG, the hero had a troubled childhood, and, later, a broken engagement. These events are Very Big Deals. But the reader never gets to see, really, how these past events are overcome by the heroes. Higgins heroes have no – or almost no — character arc.

The journey to the HEA is hard to discern from the heroine’s journey toward self-acceptance, whether that means acceptance of her unorthodox or boring career choice, her unfeminine or otherwise unspectacular appearance, or something else. I believe it is this factor that has led so many to read these unquestioningly as romances. But I think it’s the heroine’s journey to self- acceptance that matters. It happens to involves, partly, a romance, but it could have involved anything else — scaling Mount Everest, fighting cancer, defeating negative influences, etc.. For me, a true romance novel convinces the reader that the ONLY way for that heroine’s character to grow was to fall in love, and specifically to fall in love with the hero.

All of the heroines have difficult families which pose the biggest barrier to their self-acceptance. These family relationships are, in my opinion, more central to the books than the romances. Higgins heroines have especially difficult relationships with their sisters. In TGTBT, the heroine’s sister actually stole her fiance. In COTD and FRI, the sister is the “beautiful/perfect” one, while the heroine feels inferior. There’s no sister in JOOTG (as the title implies), but it’s the relationships with the four brothers and the parents that delay the HEA.

One common way to define romance is to use the industry definition from RWA. According to that, first, a romance requires:

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

In my view, there is a difference between the heroine’s search for love and “two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work.” Higgins books are about the former.

Second, a romance requires:

An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

I would say this condition is met, with reservations. As I’ve said, a lot of the Higgins books are about other relationships — the parents, the sisters, the brothers — and these are often going very, very badly. People are left at the altar, cheated on, and some of these marriages end in divorce. So while, as a reader, in feel optimistic about the hero and heroine, there is so much pessimism in the other important relationships, that it is hard to feel optimistic overall about love. This is perhaps more true to life, but less true to the spirit of the genre. I don’t know if “emotional justice” really triumphs in Higgins’ fictional worlds. In this, she reminds me of Jenny Cruisie.

So those are the formal elements of romance. But there is also a set of informal expectations readers have, to which I now turn.

One informal expectation is that contemporary romances which are not inspirational let the reader in on the developing sexual relationship of the h/h, with varying degrees of explicitness. Failing that, the reader is let in the sexual tension which builds in an unconsummated relationship. With Higgins, there is neither sexual explicitness, nor sexual tension. She closes the door on the hero and heroine when they enter the bedroom. Other writers, like Julie James, have done well with the more subtle approach to sexuality, but James excels at sexual tension, which serves just as well.

Again, while it is not a de jure requirement that the hero and heroine stop sleeping with others after they meet, it is uncommon to have, as we do in JOOTG, the heroine sleeping, regularly, with another man, and accepting his marriage proposal, 77% of the way into the book, while the hero is also sleeping with someone else, with whom he has a long term relationship. Again, in TGTBT, the heroine makes out with her former boyfriend toward the end of the book — after she has started sleeping with the hero — and kind of enjoys it. In FRI, again, the heroine is sleeping with another man regularly, well into the book, long after she has met the hero. This is probably more realistic, but less romantic.

Putting all of these things together, I contend that Higgins breaks both formal genre rules and unofficial genre expectations, and she breaks too many, all at once, to count as a romance writer.

So what is she? A women’s fiction writer.

Here is women’s fiction writer Marilyn Brant on the difference between Romance and Chick Lit:

I used to be a book reviewer for Romantic Times, and I read quite a few of both. My way of differentiating between romance and any other genre is that, in romance, there is one hero and one heroine. The protagonists may have had multiple relationships in their past, but neither of them becomes seriously involved with anyone else once they get together. The romance requires a relationship arc, which results in a happy ending, in addition to an individual character-growth arc. For chick lit or light contemporary women’s fiction, the heroine’s romantic interactions are often elements in the novel, and they may even play a major role on occasion. However, the main focus of the story is on her personal journey to greater self-understanding. Whether she ends up with a man or not is irrelevant, but she needs to have learned something from her experiences over the past 300-400 pages and, in my opinion, be in a better place (mentally, spiritually, etc.) than she had been at the beginning of the book.

For romance, the HEA is a necessary condition for everything else. In women’s fiction, while there may well be an HEA, the other elements of the book don’t require it — it’s contingent. Kristan Higgins is a very funny writer, a compelling writer, a writer I feel happy comparing to Jenny Cruise and Susan Elizabeth Phillips in certain respects. When she focuses on the romantic elements of her plots — that first kiss, the HEA — I am riveted. If she decided to write a straight romance, I am pretty sure it would be one of the best romances I ever read. But she hasn’t, in my opinion, written one yet.

Tags: , , , ,

Review: Everything I Ever Wanted, by Jo Goodman

Aug 20

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 13 Comments

This is the book that convinced me I don’t read Jo Goodman solely for the romance, because there was almost no “romance” in this one, yet I still really enjoyed it.

I’ve been listening to Goodman’s Compass Club quartet on audio, read expertly by Jenny Sterlin. The series revolves around four friends who were schoolmates together at Harrow, sworn enemies of the Bishops, a rival group.  As adults, they occasionally work for the British government through their contact, the mysterious Colonel Blackwood, and end up battling the nefarious Society of Bishops. The stories occur contemporaneously, which is great fun for the reader.

Everything I Ever Wanted is the third second book, the story of Matthew Forrester, Earl of Southerton (“South”) and actress India Parr. This book is very much like the second book (All I Ever Needed), in that the hero and heroine are both very good, nearly perfect, people, but the heroine finds herself dependent on some horrifically bad people and is reluctant — mainly to protect the hero, but also due in part to shame and learned helplessness — to reveal exactly who is oppressing her and why.

In both books, the conflict in the first half was mainly waiting for the heroine to Spit. It. Out. In the second half (maybe 1/3), it was external conflict –  getting the heroine’s situation fixed by neutering the villain.

If this make me sound critical, I don’t mean it to — I have now read four books by this author and I considered each one a delight. I love her writing. I feel liked I’ve been whisked back to Regency England more convincingly than most other historical romance authors I read. I also love the dialogue and the intelligence of the heroes and heroines. I guess we all have our fantasies: as I said in my review of All I Ever Needed, mine is living in a world where everybody is this good, smart, this interesting, this witty, and this well-spoken. Sigh.

I happen to also enjoy careful psychology in my romances, and in this book, as in All I Ever Needed, most of the action is really in the thoughts and dialogue of the hero and heroine. I find myself hanging on the edge of my seat to hear what the next move in one of their conversations is. It’s very detailed — some might find it labored — but I love it:

Smiling weakly, she accepted the glass and drank. “He thinks I’m guilty, doesn’t he?”

“It would be truer to say that he is still willing to be convinced otherwise.”

The laughter that bubbled to India’s lips held not a whit of good humor. She glanced at South uneasily.

“There is not very much difference there.”

“There is enough, India. Help me prove where your innocence lies.”

She did not know what to say to that. Had there ever been a time she could lay claim to innocence?

Yes, of course there had, but it was so very long ago that it seemed more often another person’s life. The glass in her hand was cool, and she held it against her temple for a moment, easing the growing ache just behind her eye.

“Is it a megrim?” asked South.

India shook her head and lowered the glass. “Nothing so wicked as that.” She looked up at him and asked frankly, “Why would you want to help me? If you are honest, you know you are only a little less certain of my guilt than the colonel. How can that be enough for you to want to do anything on my behalf?”

He hesitated. It was not merely that he wondered what she was prepared to hear, but that there were those things he was not necessarily prepared to admit. “Quid pro quo,” he said finally.

“What?”

“You may call it quid pro quo.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You extended your trust to me once,” he reminded her. “I would offer the same to you.”

“I see.” Was she disappointed? India didn’t know.

This novel verges into horror at points. The revelations of who has India under his thumb, what he did to her, and why he did it, shocked the heck out of me. I am not sure I have ever read anything darker in a romance novel. Even more interesting, and disturbing, was India’s compassion and defense of her tormentor.  She may have gone beyond the fine line of feminine stoicism and empathy and right into abject victimhood. I would have been happier if she showed more anger, more spark, more interest in her own welfare. Even her acting career seemed not to matter to her.

I said in the beginning that this isn’t much of a romance, and it isn’t. I honestly have no idea how these two fell in love, or when. I don’t think there is a single line of mental lusting, or even internal thoughts about love towards the other person. When they have sex, it’s about as sexy as an ob/gyn exam. India says “You will have me now.” And he does. End of story. I kind of like being let in on the feelings on the h/h when I read romance.  If you really enjoy courtship and sexual tension in your romances, this is not the book for you.

Everything I Ever Wanted worked for me as a compelling story about interesting characters. I look forward to reading the other two books in the series.

Tags: , ,

Review: Whistling in the Dark, by Tamara Allen

Aug 19

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 15 Comments

I purchased this book, which was published by Lethe Press in January 2009 and is available in e and paper editions, in November last year for my “8 Days of Ham/mukah” celebration of m/m romance. I had a hard time reading 8 books in 8 days, let alone reviewing them, and put this one aside. I brought it on a road trip from Maine to the midwest earlier this month, and by the time we got to Niagara Falls, I pretty much didn’t want to get out of the car if it meant I had to stop reading this book, 150,000 gallons of water per second be damned.

If you are sick of historical romance referring only to 1810-1820 London, and only to the upper classes, sick of m/m romance referring only to erotic romance, sick of lengthy, explicit sex scenes wedged into your historical romance in places they don’t belong, sick of authors telegraphing every interesting, potentially conflict-creating aspect of a character on the first page (i.e. Character development for idiots with attention deficits), then you will enjoy this breath of fresh air.

Here’s the blurb:

New York, 1919. His career as a concert pianist ended by a war injury, Sutton Albright returns to college, only to be expelled after an affair with a teacher. Unable to face his family, he heads to New York with no plans and little money–only a desire to call his life his own.

Jack Bailey’s life has changed as well. After losing his parents in the influenza epidemic, he hopes to save their beloved novelty shop–now his–by advertising on the radio, barely more than a novelty, itself.

Sutton lands work in Jack’s corner of the city and the two conclude they couldn’t be less suited for friendship. But when Sutton loses his job, Jack gives him a place to stay. Sutton returns to the piano to play for Jack and finds the intervening months have healed him. The program promises to rescue Jack’s business and Sutton’s career…but success brings its own risks for two men falling in love.

This blurb does what blurbs are supposed to do, but it doesn’t communicate at all how slowly the story unfolds or how richly the setting is developed. When the book begins, Sutton is being awakened by a pounding on his mice infested 41st street hotel room’s door. He’s kicked out, and ends up, after wandering around a public park on a rainy night, in jail for the night. The next morning, down to his last nickel, he nurses the past dregs of his diner coffee, practically begging the waitress for work. We know he’s low, but we don’t know why. We know he comes from money, that his heart was broken back home, and that he’s just returned from the war.

As we come to know him, we find that Sutton is kind, even tempered, sensible, and infused with the optimism of a young man who has lived a life of privilege. And he’s transparent. As Jack says, “How you feel always shines right out.” Sutton’s struggle is figuring out how to be a good man, a good son, a good lover, in a world completely changed by both political and personal events. He wants to make the right decisions, but how? He thinks:

It would be so much easier if life provided sheet music to help him make sense of its dynamics–or even a few notations for finding the most harmonious chords. But life refused to oblige. He could only improvise.

When Sutton is sent on an errand to Bailey’s Emporium next door, he meets a whole new cast of characters. There’s Ox, a good hearted brute, and Harry, the accountant/manager, and others. Jack is the owner of the shop, which he inherited from his parents. Jack also fought in the war, and unlike Sutton;s physical injuries, his are psychological. Jack is irrepressible, a live wire, impulsive, cynical in some ways but boyishly eager in others, an enthusiastic party boy, with a darkness inside caused by the loss of his parents, his hard scrabble life since then, and his war wounds.

The conflict between Sutton and Jack is nothing new: Jack is afraid of commitment, and doesn’t believe, deep down, that he deserves unconditional love. This is typical of his view on life:

“A fellow can’t have everything.” Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets to ward away the chill. “Win something you want and you can be sure the next day you’ll lose something you have. It’s getting so I don’t want to wish for anything else.”

The fact that Sutton is the son of a wealthy industrialist only gives external validation to Jack’s lack of a sense of self-worth. Sutton’s issues have more to do with finding his place in the world after his dreams of becoming a concert pianist were dashed by the war. Jack and Sutton begin an affair, and Allen effectively communicates the intense sexual attraction between them, without opening the bedroom door to the reader.

Often readers who like gay male romance will say they appreciate not having to worry about gender politics in their romance reading, and I never understood that until I read this book. Sutton comes to see that finding a lasting love, a life partner, is the key to his happiness. He really is sort of content to bask in the unpredictable fireworks show that is Jack, to help Jack achieve his dreams, to support him in his recovery from the war, to just be a lover in the truest sense of the word, almost as an avocation. I think if Sutton had been a woman, this might have troubled me. But I found it very moving in a male character.

Here’s how that kind of love looks to Jack:

Jack hadn’t thought of love as a promise before–a promise that, even when the world was falling down around him, would stay kept. But without Sutton saying a word, he knew that there would be comfort when he couldn’t sleep tonight. And tomorrow and the day after, there would be a home to go to, even if it was no more than a pair of arms around him and a head tucked close to his in the darkness.

On the other hand, these guys don’t have heart to hearts. They communicate like men often do — wordlessly, saying more by what they don’t say. I hate romances, whether m/f or m/m, when a very masculine male character starts saying things at the end that would never come out of that guy’s mouth. Dr. Phil talk. Oprah talk. Not just flowery talk, but depth psychology talk that suggests a level of self-analysis that is totally foreign to these  live-in-the-moment men.

One thing I noticed was that the tone tended to be very similar from page one to page last, or maybe I mean the pacing felt very regimented. I think I may have been looking for more drama in the dramatic scenes, even if the characters themselves tended to shy away from it.

But this was an incredibly sweet, romantic story, made even better by the fascinating cast of characters Allen develops, including Jack’s ramshackle “family” and his slick night owl friends. From diners to jazz clubs, to back alley fisticuffs, to impromptu bicycle rides to the dump, to makeshift concerts in the crowded curio shop staffed by a live alligator, to heavies trying to control the neighborhood, I was fully immersed in this world and glad to be there.

All proceeds from the sale of this book go to leukemia research.

Tags: ,

Romance Roots: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (part 2)

Aug 18

Posted by Jessica in Reading Reflection, Romance Roots | 14 Comments

(Part 1 here)

This post assumes you have read it. Here’s a cheat summary if not.

Did I enjoy Dracula? The first four chapters, when Harker is visiting Count Dracula on business in Transylvania, were terrific. Gothic, tense, absorbing. When Harker cuts himself shaving, when he looks out the window and sees Dracula scaling the castle wall like an insect … that’s great stuff. Then I noticed that Harker started doing things that were unintelligent, like breaking into locked rooms that his scary host has told him to avoid, but, remembering that as a 21st century reader I know what all of Dracula’s odd behaviors signify, while Harker doesn’t, I tried to be charitable. Another great scene is when the ship carrying Dracula, the Demeter, arrives in the midst of a great storm (the Gothic flourishes are so fun) on the English shore, with the crew is disappeared and the dead captain, clutching a crucifix, tied to the wheel. There’s a lot of great story telling here.

The novel is an epistolary one, meaning it is written as a series of letters, and sometimes news clippings (more on this below). I guess the book was originally conceived as a play with one of Stoker’s good friends as Dracula.  The effect is to mute the action, because as a reader you are never “there” when the good stuff is going down. It has already happened. I guess the fact that the letters are written from the point of view of characters who only know part of an unfolding series of events might enhance the suspense, but I found most of the vampire slayers so incompetent that it didn’t work that way for me. Surprisingly, there isn’t all that much action, perhaps because had the story been staged, complicated action sequences would have been too difficult to enact. There is talking. A LOT of talking. I would guess the ratio of talking about what to do to actually doing it is 10 to 1.

I did enjoy the book, although I was always reading it through the lens of all the other vampire stories I consumed first: Stephen King, Ann Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampire romances, etc., and a lot of the time I was thinking about how this version was similar to and different from those others, as well as about big picture themes like gender and sexuality, science versus superstition, etc.

There is so, so much to say about this book. But here are a few things I wanted to talk about:

0. Writing

These people are obsessed with writing things down. I know it’s an epistolary novel, but still! They even write about writing. This journal entry from Mina is typical:

There may be a solemn duty, and if it come we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing. Then we shall be ready for other eyes if required.

Yes, because the typewriter is just the thing to foil the undead!

Also from ch 14:

I am so glad I have typewritten out my own journal, so that, in case he asks about Lucy, I can hand it to him.

I am sure there’s a lot to be said about the power of the written word, about publicity and privacy, about writing as exorcism, as therapy, etc. But my super intelligent reaction was “WTF”?

1. About Mina

She is strong and smart, but she’s also got that masochistic streak — and not the fun kind. After nearly being killed in a traumatic encounter with Dracula, she says:

“And oh, my God, my God, pity me! He placed his reeking lips upon my throat!” Her husband groaned again. She clasped his hand harder, and looked at him pityingly, as if he were the injured one, and went on.

She also gets kicked out of the Scooby Gang after their first meeting. It’s like Stoker changes his mind mid stream. At the end of Mina’s Journal in chapter 18 we get this muddled logic from Van Helsing:

Ah, that wonderful Madam Mina! She has man’s brain, a brain that a man should have were he much gifted, and a woman’s heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me, when He made that so good combination. Friend John, up to now fortune has made that woman of help to us, after tonight she must not have to do with this so terrible affair. It is not good that she run a risk so great. We men are determined, nay, are we not pledged, to destroy this monster? But it is no part for a woman. Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors and hereafter she may suffer, both in waking,from her nerves, and in sleep,from her dreams. And, besides, she is young woman and not so long married, there may be other things to think of some time, if not now. You tell me she has wrote all, then she must consult with us, but tomorrow she say goodbye to this work, and we go alone.

2. TSTL

So what kind of a brains do Van Helsing and his crew posess? Hmmm…. well, Mina starts exhibiting the same symptoms Lucy had, and Dracula lives thisclose, yet nobody thinks for a second that Dracula has gotten to Mina. Is it because of her “man’s brain”? They notice she is tired, and send her to bed. Over and over. Finally, Renfield enlightens them, they arm themselves and rush to Mina’s room, where they have this exchange:

Outside the Harkers’ door we paused. Art and Quincey held back, and the latter said, “Should we disturb her?”

“We must,” said Van Helsing grimly. “If the door be locked, I shall break it in.”

“May it not frighten her terribly? It is unusual to break into a lady’s room!”

*headdesk*

3. My favorite scene

Of course, it’s when they do break in and find Mina with the Count:

His right hand gripped her by the back of the neck, forcing her face down on his bosom. Her white night-dress was smeared with blood, and a thin stream trickled down the man’s bare chest which was shown by his torn-open dress. The attitude of the two had a terrible resemblance to a child forcing a kitten’s nose into a saucer of milk to compel it to drink. As we burst into the room, the Count turned his face, and the hellish look that I had heard described seemed to leap into it. His eyes flamed red with devilish passion.

How many dissertations were launched by this tableau? So many overlapping metaphors and allusions. Mina as mother giving her blood. As suckling babe. Sex kitten.

Dracula even sounds downright Biblical when he says:

And you, their best beloved one, are now to me, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, kin of my kin, my bountiful wine-press for a while, and shall be later on my companion and my helper.

4. The menages

Dracula escapes  (of course) and then there’s this weird moment between Mina, her husband, Jonathan, and Van Helsing:

Then she raised her head proudly, and held out one hand to Van Helsing who took it in his, and after stooping and kissing it reverently, held it fast. The other hand was locked in that of her husband, who held his other arm thrown round her protectingly.

Mina has already shared her literal marriage bed with Dracula. So how many people is she married to, exactly?

And that isn’t even the first suggestion of a threesome in this book. There was this exchange earlier, when Van Helsing was transfusing Lucy. He mentioned Holmwood’s notion that exchanging blood makes Lucy his bride:

Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had made her truly his bride… If so… Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist, and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church’s law, though no wits, all gone – even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife, am bigamist.

Everyone says Dracula is a book about transgressing boundaries — geographic, gendered, sexual, bodily, material and spiritual. So why not have three — or 4 –  people in a marriage?

5. Bloodsucking = sex, blood = semen.

I always knew that there were these linkages, but I never realized how darned obvious they would be. Then again, perhaps they are obvious to me because I am a 21st century reader. For example, this one from Mina, after her episode with the Count in her bedroom:

When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound, so that I must either suffocate or swallow some of the – Oh my God, my God! What have I done?”

What? Some of the WHAT? I am dying to find out what she meant, because I have NO IDEA. ! ;)

And when Van Helsing says not to tell Arthur that other men have given their blood to Lucy, it’s because he might get jealous (chapter 10)

No man knows, till he experiences it, what it is to feel his own life-blood drawn away into the veins of the woman he loves.

6. The gang rape of Lucy

But all of this pales (heh) in comparison to the top scene for the kind of deep analyses favored by a certain type of highly educated literary critic   — the stabbing of Lucy. Lucy had been beautiful, the perfect chaste, virtuous woman, with no fewer than three suitors. But somehow — and it was never clear to me in reading the text — she was susceptible to Dracula. She had to have invited him in at least once, naughty girl. Or maybe she thought he was a homeless person in need?

Eventually, after multiple fuckings blood suckings, she is turned, and starts killing infants. This makes sense. If the perfect woman is maternal, then the opposite of the perfect woman is a baby killer. I loved it that Lucy went around killing babies and trying to seduce everyone. Terrifying stuff.

The more evil she is, the more beautiful and the more alluring. Or is that the reverse? From Chapter 16:

She still advanced, however, and with a languorous, voluptuous grace, said, “Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones, something of the tinkling of glass when struck, which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another.

In other words, they are all getting off. Together.

As horrible as it is to the men, several of whom are in love with her, and one of whom — Arthur — is engaged to her, they must go to her grave and kill her. Here’s how it is described:

Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercybearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it.

Whew. I need a cigarette. How about you?

7. Dracula as alpha male

Ian Holt, a Dracula authority and coauthor of a sequel, has written that:

There have been many schools of thought on why Dracula and vampires hold such sway on the masses. In my opinion, the root is that Dracula represents freedom. Dracula is not bound by the rule of law or man’s self-imposed morality. He has the strength of ten men. His powers over the human mind allow him his pick of women. These are all powerful fantasies to many an adolescent boy.

For women, Dracula represents the ultimate alpha-male. Wealth, power, will and strength define him. He exists on a higher plane than human men, appealing to the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” mentality.

Holt here assumes that female readers place themselves in female character positions in the novel. We know better than that. But does Dracula represent the alpha male? Is this a romance, with Dracula trying — but failing — to find his soul mate? I know that’s how the 1992 film adaptation by Francis Ford Coppola understood him, but I don’t see it in the book at all. While I find a lot of sex in this book (assuming a depth reading) I don’t see much romance. I was never sure what motivated Dracula, exactly (he’s upset that his former glories are former. He wants control and power, but over what, and why? Or maybe I am not supposed to ask why someone would want control and power), but it’s not love.

It is easier for me to connect Dracula with the alphhole heroes of the past in romance than with the vampire heroes of today’s romance novel. The obsession with consent and coercion, with moral and sexual purity, with control of women, was there in Old Skool romance.

Consider these passages:

With a mocking smile, he placed one hand upon my shoulder and, holding me tight, bared my throat with the other, saying as he did so, `First, a little refreshment to reward my exertions. You may as well be quiet. It is not the first time, or the second, that your veins have appeased my thirst!’

And Mina, confused about her complicity:

I was bewildered, and strangely enough, I did not want to hinder him. (chapter 21)

Women engaging in sex against their will, or their better judgment, impossibly alluring men, the attempt to find happiness with the average Joe, all of that is echoed in some ways in older romance novels I have read. And not just older ones: the idea that female sexuality is dangerous, fraught, powerful, debilitating, and in some way bad for women (and men), is still with us in many a romance novel today.

But, to get superficial for a minute, Dracula was not good looking, a prerequisite for a romance novel hero. Here is Harker’s description when he first meets him:

His face was a strong, a very strong, aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils, with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth. These protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale, and at the tops extremely pointed. The chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor.

Except for the strength and vitality, and the “cruel-looking” mouth, there’s little here to compare to romance heroes of today or yore. But Dracula is the strongest, the most free, the most alluring and intense. And that’s who the hero is in most romance novels.

There’s so much more that could be said about this book. For example, I was very interested in Van Helsing as physician/researcher, and of course in Dr. Seward and his patient in the asylum, Renfield. I think I am going to use Renfield as a case study the next time I give a hospital talk on waxing and waning decisional capacity! But this is long enough.

Have you read Dracula? What did you think?

Tags: ,

Romance Roots: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (part 1)

Aug 18

Posted by Jessica in Reading Reflection, Reviews, Romance Roots | 15 Comments

An interview with my spouse, Stephen M. Miller, Ph.D., F.R. Hist. S.. He’s a historian specializing in the British Empire (the “F.R. Hist S.” is the Royal Historical Society to which Stephen was elected a couple of years ago. I swear he doesn’t normally use it, although he may or may not have asked me to shout it during intimate moments).

Before we start, he wants me to say that he has absolutely no expert knowledge of Victorian fiction and is being dragooned into this. Also, we’re assuming you have read it. If your recollection is rusty, here’s a character list.

In this interview, we talk history. In my next post (coming later today), I talk Dracula as fiction and relate it to romance.

Jessica: Is this an imperial novel? What about the theory that Dracula represents the Other in that political sense?

Stephen: Well, I would say yes and no. There were lots of improvements in transportation in late Victorian Britain, among them the introduction of electric trains in the London underground system in the early 1890s. Railroad expansion is occurring rapidly throughout Britain and most of the continent.  Remember when they are trying to catch up with Dracula, he says there are three ways they can go after him, land, sea, and railroad?  That was a bit odd because Eastern Europe was well behind the north and the west in linking its cities via rail.  But of course there were some lines, and Stoker mentions the Orient Express whose service was about ten-fifteen years old when he wrote the book.  These improvements made it easier not just for Britain to go out to the rest of the world and subdue large tracts of it but it also made it easier  for the rest of the world to come to Great Britain, and that was a  very scary notion, albeit it opened up exciting possibilities as well. All in all, the world seems smaller, and thanks to improvements in communication (telegraph, submarine cables), it got smaller still.  Technology — like electricity, lighting, use of gas — would have been on people’s minds at the time, but there was little of that in the book.

But I think Stoker uses these advances as a device to set up the book, and then kind of leaves it.

Although there are some references to empire, and it’s written in an era in which empire would have been in the minds of the British public, it is not, in my opinion, an overt book about the empire. To read it that way assumes a level of subtlety in Stoker’s writing which in my opinion he doesn’t possess. One of the things Stoker often does is repeat for emphasis any point he is trying to make. If he is trying to say something, the reader knows it.

So, for example, to speak of Eastern Europe … they only meet one Jew in the book. If it’s about Eastern Europeans, there are few if any references to them in London, but there would have been many recent immigrants about. Although there are references to gypsies in Dracula, and references to Slovaks, there’s very little about their culture. If someone was really interested in the Other coming, they would talk more about that. So to me, it is more of a setting.  This is not Joseph Conrad or even Haggard writing about setting, for example, in which the setting takes precedence regardless of the author’s intent.  This is Stoker re-telling a well known tale, and the road to Transylvania was well-worn before 1897.

There are a few references to India, which suggests that Stoker had some knowledge about the empire. There are no references to Africa. In late Victorian Britain, the British army was engaged on the average in two to three wars a year. Most of those were fought along India’s frontiers and in Africa. Some of the other big events going on would be the French threatening British interests in Egypt, which would bring Britain to war in the Sudan against an Islamic theocracy (again). Stoker was writing at a time when Islam would have been feared, yet there is no mention in the book. The British public held certain beliefs about the followers of Islam, most of which today we would consider prejudicial and inaccurate. Yet war and religion do not appear in the book.

J: Yeah, why don’t they get a priest? Why are no characters going to church? Wouldn’t the church have been important to Londoners at that time?

S: Those are good questions. There is no doubt that the Church of England’s influence over British society is in decline, but it is still a force, especially among the respectibility-seeking middle class.

J:  I found it really interesting that the person in the book who seemed the most religious was the one who worshiped Dracula, Renfield. He has the ecstasies, blind unselfish devotion, all the hallmarks of a kind of intense religious experience. While Van Helsing and the gang use religious artifacts like the host, they do so in a very detached, scientific way, almost draining all the spirituality out of them.

What do you make of Van Helsing’s nationality, by the way? Van Helsing is the one who realizes that natural science alone will not defeat the enemy. He is open to supernatural possibilities.

S: That is a mystery to me. The British viewed the continent as very different, but the border is pretty open. The British elite travel throughout Europe. Many speak French, German. The British and German royal families are closely connected. From the 1870s especially (until the buildup of the German navy around the time Stoker is writing), there is a strong interest in all things German and much sympathy.

J: Does Van Helsing have to be from the Continent to recognize what Dracula is? Is Stoker trying to say the British are of such pure mind they can’t even contemplate a Dracula?

S: Maybe*, but the problem with that theory is Morris, an American, doesn’t recognize Dracula. Stoker praises Quincy Morris for his “American” traits, like his spirit. So perhaps he is trying to say that Dracula represents the old Europe. They do talk about a few of the old battles that Dracula participated in. Oddly, those were battles in which Dracula fought Muslims, so in that way he would be viewed as a protector against Islam. So we don’t want to read too much into this … because in my view it doesn’t all cohere on this level of analysis.

*You have to hear how he says this. It sounds like “maaaaaaaaaay -bee and he’s always looking down when he says it. I have been married to this man for almost 15 years. “Maybe” is his way of saying “God you are clueless.”

J: How about economics?

S: The Great Depression (not what most people in the US think of, but one that affected industrial Europe from 1873-1896) was coming to an end. It had been caused by excess capital and led to a decline in interest rates, causing investors to look for new sources overseas, rather than investing at home. Economically, though, things in Britain were fairly good at the time. That said, the landed class are not as wealthy as they once were. The reason to include the elite character — Arthur Holmwood (later Lord Godalming) — is not so much for his money, but for what he represents. In a way it’s like a throwback — the Christian gentleman. Arthur has to help them, by bankrolling the vampire hunt, but his title is just important, as is his moral fiber. He’s the one who ends up freeing Lucy’s soul.

In 1897 London, it would have made more sense to have an industrialist, a banker or merchant in that role, but in this book money is portrayed as kind of negative.  Dracula pursues and talks about money in away Stoker seems to criticize, to find ungentlemanly.  There is no Dickensian condemnation of utilitarian middle class virtues, but more of a praising of the virtues of the upper class.

J: So when we look at the Scooby Gang: in Harker and Seward he has science, in Van Helsing, a kind of spiritual openness, in Arthur, a pure knight of Old England, and in Morris, a fresh fighting innovative spirit from the New World. Now what about Mina? Is she a kind of ideal in Stoker’s view?

S: Maybe, but Mina is much too strong a character to represent the ideal Victorian woman, She would have to be seen as a new ideal, an ideal for a very small educated class of women, that ten years later will be the ones that take to the streets to fight for the vote. She’s almost like a Florence Nightingale. I don’t think of that as an ideal for Victorian women.

J: I think we disagree about Mina, but thanks a bunch! You are the sweetiest.

S: Wait don’t you want to hear about what I have to say about guns and why all the men know how to use them though none are in the army?

J:  NO!

S: O.K.  Now you have to read Graham Greene’s The Human Factor.

J: Er — I have to wash the cat.

S: You promised!

J: *sigh*

Marriage, compromise, you know the drill.

Part 2 here.

Tags: ,

Review: Compromised, by Kate Noble

Aug 12

Posted by Jessica in Reviews | 15 Comments

This is going to be a pretty critical review. You should know that most other people really liked this book, and this author:

Other reviews:

Book Smugglers, 8 out of 10

Gossamer Obsessions, high B

TGTBTU, LauraD, B

TGTBTU, Shannon C., A-

TGTBTU, Lawson, B

Amazon.com, 4 stars with 17 reviews

Goodreads, 3.7 out of 5, 117 ratings, 32 reviews

All About Romance, more on my wavelength with a C+

I had heard good things about this historical romance author and decided to read her debut, Compromised (Berkely Sensation, March 2008). Since Compromised, Noble has published Revealed (a RITA finalist this year) and Summer of You (her website with excerpts and purchasing info is here).

It’s 1829 and the Alton sisters return to London with their ambassador father and stepmother after years abroad. They will have their Season, finally, but the family’s hopes are pinned on Evangeline, demure and lovely, rather than Gail, tall, assertive, and bookish. Gail, not interested in gowns, balls or betrothals, rides out one morning and ends up in a lake after a horse crash with Maximillian, Viscount Fontaine. They clash: he’s overbearing, she’s impulsive, and each blames the other for the mishap.

They meet again during the girls’ debut ball, when Max is caught kissing Evangeline in the conservatory. Max is under pressure from his father — with whom he has a very strained relationship — to find a wife within three months or be disinherited. He ends up betrothed to Evangeline … but there’s that prickly sister to deal with.

The author is going, tone-wise, for very light and humorous, kind of Julia Quinn lite. The Alton family dynamics I think were supposed to be reminiscent of Austen’s Bennets (the beautiful, sweet sister, the brash sister, the scheming mother figure, the slightly out of touch but loving father figure), but the portrayal of the parents veered from comical to menacing and back. By the end of the book, the loving father had become stern and implacable, and the untrustworthy stepmother had somehow become the sisters’ ally and friend. This woman, who was obsessed with “good Ton” for the entire book, turns around at the end and says “gossip isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on” when the author needs a deus ex machina to help the girls escape to get married in Scotland.

I found the characterization of the hero wholly uninspired. He was so generic I can’t tell you a thing about him. I felt like the author threw in every cliched hero description and they didn’t gel: sometimes he was “steely”, sometimes he sported a “lopsided grin”, etc.. He wasn’t quite a rake, wasn’t quite troubled, wasn’t quite suave or sexy. He was not very bright, and not able to control his own life at any point in the story. He was just … there, kind of like a ghost of heroes past, leaving a wan impression on me as a reader.

I have become comfortable as a historical romance reader with a certain world I identify as “Regency”. I know it bears little resemblance to the real Regency England, but I have certain genre expectations. Some of these are that the heroine doesn’t call a strange man by his first name, say things like “bullshit”, sneak into the home and enter the bedroom of a man engaged to her sister, grab the reins of a stampeding horse, etc., etc. And a man doesn’t call a lady he has just met “Brat”. I found those things very distracting.

The writing wasn’t to my liking either. Just for fun, I did a Kindle search of the word “obviously”, and I got SEVEN pages of Kindle results. Some characters liked it so much they used it twice in one sentence!

And there are exchanges like this:

[Max:] “what do you mean, you finally received “a really good kiss’?”
Gail rolled her eyes. “I was so hoping you missed that.”

Or this:

[Gail:] “Where do I stand with you, Max? Where the hell do I stand with you?”

Putting aside that neither is the sort of thing I would expect to come out of a Regency heroine’s mouth, I don’t feel that the same person would say both those things. Sometimes, Gail sounded very YA, as in the first quotation, and other times, very contemporary, as in the second. It didn’t work for me.

Compromised just didn’t stand out from the pack for me. There are so many authors I want to read, and so many backlists I have to conquer. Unless a later book by this author gets rave reviews, I think I’ll be moving on.

Tags: ,

Review: True Blood and Philosophy

Jul 31

Posted by Jessica in NEAR Reviews, Reviews, Sookie Stackhouse, Vampires | 4 Comments

There are now two series dedicated to philosophy and popular culture. The original, Popular Culture and Philosophy series (Open Court) began with Seinfeld and Philosophy in 2000 and is now on volume #52, Manga and Philosophy.  One of my very first publications was a review of Seinfeld and Philosophy, and I contributed to the 4th volume in that series, Buffy and Philosophy.

The newer series, Philosophy and Popular Culture (Blackwell) launched in 2007 with 24 and Philosophy. True Blood and Philosophy, which I received gratis as an examination copy, is the 20th volume in the series.

Within the philosophical community, there is some debate about the value of these books. And by “debate”, I mean that some critics see these books in the same way an evangelical Christian sees a darkened sky and oceans turning to blood. For two examples, check out this post, or this one.

My own feeling is that the discipline is in pretty bad shape if two lightweight and fun book series can destroy its credibility. The trick with these books, especially for the cynical professional philosopher, is to go in with the right expectations. As Blackwell puts it:

Our goal with the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series is to get philosophy out of the ivory tower by publishing books about smart popular culture for serious fans. With each volume in this series we seek to teach philosophy using the themes, characters, and ideas from your favorite TV shows, comic books, movies, music, games, and more.

Few if any of the essays in these books constitute philosophical research. The best of them of make contributions to the academic study of popular culture. But many don’t even do that: they are content to connect up a Philosophy 101 concept or problem (free will, personhood, the social contract, the problem of identity, etc.) with an aspect of popular culture in order to help readers (fans and students) understand philosophy in light of a pop culture phenomenon with which they are familiar.

If you read these volumes with the same expectations you would have for an issue of peer reviewed academic journal, you aren’t being fair.  I suppose some critics object to using examples from popular culture to teach philosophy (and by “teach”, I mean both in formal settings like classrooms, and the kind of self-teaching average fans might do when they pick up such books at Borders). That may be because they think popular culture is harmful (we should all be reading Proust instead), or because they don’t think using popular culture to teach philosophy works.

I have no comment on the former, but for the latter I will need to see some argument. What I know, after being in the front of a philosophy classroom for 12 years, is that starting from a place where students feel knowledgeable and comfortable can work very well to introduce them to a subject they have likely never directly encountered, a subject which in the absence of direct knowledge, signifies for many students obsolescence and irrelevance … if it signifies anything at all.

So what I look for first in such books is accurate philosophy. It is not easy to teach philosophy in the bite sizes necessitated by these short essays, and brevity can distort. Connecting philosophy up to popular culture also requires knowledge of and sensitivity towards the material. In reading this series, if I get something really insightful about the pop culture object of reflection  — something that could be developed and published in a peer reviewed popular culture studies journal –  I am delighted. And if I learn something about philosophy, or am made to see philosophical connections where I hadn’t, I consider it an unexpected bonus. A final requirement is restraint in the use of puns.

On most these counts, True Blood and Philosophy succeeds. It is divided into five sections, with three essays each: one on ethics, one on politics, one on sexuality and gender, one on the supernatural and divine, and one on metaphysics. The list price, $17.95 for a softcover, may be prohibitive for some readers, but Amazon has it new for $12.21 and there’s a Kindle edition for $9.99. As is typical for such collections, the contributors range in their connection to the discipline of philosophy, from tenured associate professors in the field to an undergraduate student (the latter being the daughter of one of the editors). There are also contributions from academics trained in art history, public policy, English, and political science. A few contributors hail from non-academic life: editors, contractors, and human resources specialists.

An initial concern I had about this volume was that at most two seasons of the TV show True Blood would have been aired before it went to press. Knowing that the book series on which it is based, Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries, is now in its 10th installment, and that the show, which has great ratings, will likely continue into several more seasons, I questioned the rush to get this out. My concern was alleviated to some extent by two factors (1) most of the contributors seem to have read the books, and often make reference to them in the essays (so, a big spoiler warning for fans), and (2) the essays deal more with world itself, not on detailed character examinations or plot. Since most of the world building is complete in the first two books/seasons, it mostly works.

The volume focuses very heavily on vampires. Those looking for more on the shapeshifters, weres or fairies that populate Charlaine Harris’s world will be disappointed. Perhaps a casualty of taking their cue more from the show than the series, there is also less focus on Sookie than I would have liked. The books are written in the first person, and Sookie is a very complex and interesting character. Most of Sookie is lost in Alan Ball’s vision, which is extremely androcentric.  One essay,”I am Sookie. Hear Me Roar: Sookie Stackhouse and Feminist Ambivalence”, by Lillian E. Craton and Kathryn E. Jonell, reflects on the difficulties of feminist alliance (many of Sookie’s enemies are women), complicated by the different social locations women inhabit, some of which may place them (Tara) at a disadvantage relative to their white middle class sisters (i.e. Sookie), the double edged sword of female sexuality — both empowering and dangerous for women (Maryann, whom the authors see as the ultimate victim of female sexuality), and Sookie’s struggles to maintain her independence and autonomy while dating and working for men who have the potential to overpower her. On this last:

Sookie’s conflicted emotions about workplace relationships and her ongoing attraction to vampires complicate the potential of True Blood and the Southern Vampire Mysteries as feminist social commentary. Sookie’s biggest challenge doesn’t seem to be fighting oppression, but sorting out her own desires.

This essay raises several important issues, any one of which could constitute the subject of an independent investigation, and it is too bad the editors didn’t make room that that approach. It’s also compromised, in my view, by trying to cover both the television show and the books, which differ markedly in their treatment of these issues. Alan Ball’s version of  the character of Tara, for example, as a constantly victimized, ineffectually perpetually angry, shortsighted (to the point of stupidity) black woman is nearly unrecognizable to readers of the novels, who know Tara as a white woman with a level head who overcame a horrendous childhood (and, yes, who makes mistakes). The same goes for Maryann. And while the Sookie of the TV show is just a plucky gal with telepathic abilities, in the novels, Sookie is an incredibly astute, complex character, who recognizes that she is disadvantaged by her gender, her “disability”, and her economic status.

Some of the essays are very straightforward explications of basic philosophical concepts. For example, the first essay, “To Turn or Not To Turn”, by Christopher Robichaud, explicates the concept of informed consent using the example of Bill turning Jessica into a vampire (“vampires need explicit, informed, noncoercive consent before they’re permitted to turn the living into the undead”), while “Pets, Cattle and Higher Life forms on True Blood”, by Ariadne Blayde and George A. Dunn, is effective at exploring moral ranking among kinds of being (“The assumption that human beings occupy the highest rung on the great ladder of being ins challenged in True Blood by the existence of a species that seems to be superior to us in every way, possibly even in their kinship with the divine.”). “Signed in Blood: Rights and the Vampire-Human Social Contract”,  by Joseph J. Foy and “Honey, If We Can’t Kill People, What’s the Point Of Being a Vampire: Can Vampires Be Good Citizens?” by William M. Curtis, both consider what it would take for vampires to have rights and function as full citizens. Are vampires just another unique subculture claiming its rights, which our liberal democracy should accommodate, and what would that require (would a “life sentence” for a criminal vampire be cruel and unusual punishment?). The question of “what is natural” and how we define it, so important to debates over sexuality and new reproductive technologies, is addressed by Andrew Terjesen and Jenny Terjesen in “Are Vampires Unnatural”. Patricia Brace and Robert Arp explore connections between the social and moral status of vampires and and gays in “Coming Out of the Coffin and Coming out of the Closet”. Finally, criteria of personal identity are explored by Sarah Grubb’s “Vampires, Werewolves, and Shapeshifters: The more they change, the more they stay the same”.

A standout, especially for readers who know something about vampire mythology, is Bruce A. McClelland’s “Un-True Blood: The Politics of Artificiality.” McClelland, who has published a book on vampires and their slayers, situates True Blood within the evolving vampire lore. He wonders whether

the attempt to bring vampires into the human world  by encouraging them to consume TruBlood represents a drive to ensnare them in our same dependencies and lack of freedom that characterize our society, one that many would characterize as lacking belief, trust, or a deep link to nature.

Another very interesting essay is Fred Curry’s “Keeping Secrets from Sookie”, which explores the epistemological questions raised by Sookie’s telepathy, such as “whether anyone could possess any kind of knowledge that even the most powerful telepath couldn’t learn using her powers?”.

There is quite a bit of overlap in the essays, especially on the moral status of vampires, and their connections to other marginalized subgroups. This overlap was made even more manifest by the choice of the same quotations (Eric and Sookie’s discussion about whether humans are to antelopes and as vampires are to lions, for example) and sources (No fewer than three essays discuss Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like to be a bat?”). Many of the essays rely on a pseudo documentary about vampires, from the first season’s DVD. something many readers will not have seen. And some of the essays, in trying to keep a light tone, go a bit too far, for example Brace and Arp’s final exhortation that:

coming out of the coffin or the closet these days requires courage. Let’s hope, pray, and act so that in the future anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, religions or race, whether living or dead, can find acceptance along with basic human and civil rights in Bon Temps and your hometown, too.

I wish the editors had waited a couple of years to publish this volume. Perhaps a few more seasons of True Blood would have drawn more essays on other aspects of the narrative, such as Sookie’s problematic conception of her telepathy as disability, fascinating communities like the werepanthers of Hotshot or the weres of Shreveport, the complex relationship of Southern identities to various forms of Christianity, to name just a few.

Overall, though, this is a fun book for fans of the show with no philosophical background, and a good resource for teaching our vampire-loving students some basic concepts in philosophy. The brevity of each essay left me with more questions than answers, but that’s what good philosophy teaching does.

Tags: ,

Review: Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Jul 29

Posted by Jessica in Reviews, Vampires | 17 Comments

Sunshine, a fantasy by Robin McKinley published in 2003 and reissued in 2008, won the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature (McKinley’s acceptance remarks here). I regret very much reading the screed against readers which the author posted on her blog. I’m sure we all feel that way at times about the people we deal with, but I think it says something when you let those kinds of comments stand as a public statement of your relationship with your audience. As a reader who just discovered McKinley and went to her website to find out more about her and her books, I felt insulted, slightly pissed, and deflated. I am not sure that’s what I would be going for with my author website.

But I will leave off that distressing discovery, surprising and interesting as it is, and talk about Sunshine, which was also surprising and interesting, but in a good way. I listened to Sunshine, which is written in the first person. First person often works quite well on audio, and the performer did a great job with it. Sample here.

I finished this book last week, but have had a hard time starting the review. And then I read this blurb by Neil Gaiman and figured out why:

A gripping, funny, page-turning pretty much perfect work of magical literature that exists more or less at the unlikely crossroads of Chocolat, Interview With a Vampire, Misery and the tale of Beauty and the Beast. It’s not quite SF, and it’s not really horror, and only kind of a love story, and it’s all three while still being solidly Fantastique.

Sunshine is the story of Rae — nicknamed Sunshine — a twenty something baker, content with her life working in her step-father’s cafe, where her boyfriend Mel is one of the cooks. She has the usual family issues, including a very strained relationship with her mother, and when she decides to head out one day to the lake to get away, Rae ends up being captured by vampires and brought to an abandoned mansion. The Others are known to exist in Rae’s world, where wars have decimated cities, and they include witches and demons, but vampires are the most feared and hated.

When Rae discovers she has been captured to provide a yummy temptation for Constantine, a vampire who is also a prisoner, she is sure this is the end. But Rae relearns some sorcery her grandmother had taught her as a child, and she and Con are able to escape. She learns that her father, whom her mother left and who has never been in her life, is (or was? We never know for sure.) a powerful sorcerer. Rae and Con now have a kind of bond, which develops as they realize they have to battle the vampire who held them captive if they ever hope to return to some semblance of a normal life.

In the meantime, The SOF — Special Other forces, a kind of CIA dedicated to the eradication and/or neutralization of Others — are interested in the events at the lake mansion, and in Rae’s mystical powers. Sensing an alliance with SOF is not in her — and certainly not in Con’s — interest, Rae has to finesse her relationship with them, while also keeping her family in the dark. She is confused about her growing relationship with Con, a creature she is supposed to revile, but who grows on her in unexpected ways.

Well, not entirely unexpected. The author mentioned Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an inspiration, and when a book has a female protagonist who has unexpected powers to fight the bad vamps alongside the one good vamp, who may or may not become her boyfriend, all the while keeping her concerned mother and regular human friends in the dark and keeping her normal human life afloat … well…

And yet, it feels worlds away from Buffy. For one thing, this is not a funny book (with all due respect to Gaiman). And Rae is not very likable.  She’s extremely egocentric, not just in that she’s most concerned for her own welfare, but in that she really doesn’t even think about much that doesn’t directly relate to herself. She isn’t funny or sharp or that insightful. So when you are in this book, you have to be willing to be deep inside the head of a very ordinary person. A person who is probably much more like you, the reader, than most protagonists.

For another, very little happens in this book. There’s the gangbusters kidnapping and escape in the opening chapters, which for my money was the best part of the book. But the next big action is the climax. There are several hundred pages in between of just sort of being with Rae in her world, as she copes with the events out on the lake, tries and fails to go back entirely to her old life, and eventually becomes a new, better and stronger person. But she knows herself, and I really liked that about her:

One of the things you need to understand is that I’m not a brave person. I don’t put up with being messed around, and I don’t suffer fools gladly. The short version of that is that I’m a bitch. Trust me, I can produce character references. But that’s something else. I’m not brave. Mel is brave. His oldest friend told me some stories about him once I could barely stand to listen to, about dispatch riding during the Wars, and Mel’d been pissed off when he found out, although he hadn’t denied they happened. Mom is brave: she left my dad with no money, no job, no prospects—her own parents had dumped her when she married my dad, and her younger sisters didn’t find her again till she resurfaced years later at Charlie’s—and a six-year-old daughter. Charlie is brave: he started a coffeehouse by talking his bank into giving him a loan on his house back in the days when you only saw rats, cockroaches, derelicts, and Charlie himself on the streets of Old Town.

I’m not brave. I make cinnamon rolls. I read a lot. My idea of excitement is Mel popping a wheelie driving away from a stoplight with me on pillion.

Another really great thing about this book is the way the Others and magic are described. The vampires are really really awful — including Con. They look terrifying, smell bad, move in ghastly ways. In this, McKinley keeps much closer to older vampire mythology than the latest heartthrob vamps. But I especially loved the way in which Rae’s growing sense of her own magical powers is described. For once, the magic felt to me, not like a Hollywood special effect, but truly magical:

I watched the wiggling bark. It occurred to me that this was new. I’d been seeing into shadows, but merely what was there, as if there was a rather erratic light on it. This was something else. Which gave me something I could bear to think about, so I thought about it. A few more minutes passed and it seemed to me it was as if I was watching the tree breathing. I found a leaf in shadow, and looked at it for a while; it twinkled, as if with tiny starbursts, but rather than thinking ugh—weird, I kept watching, till there seemed to be a pattern. I thought, it’s as if I’m watching its pores opening and closing. I looked down at my hands. The shadows between the fingers gleamed like a banked fire. The tiny shadows laid by the veins on the backs of them were a tiny, flickering dark green edged with a tinier, even more flickering red. The daylight part of the veins looked as it always did. In the shadow places I could see the blood moving.

I was sitting in sunlight, not shade. I automatically chose sun if there was any sun to be had. I remembered the sun on my back the first morning at the lake, like the arm of a friend. I closed my eyes.

Sunshine feels very much like the first book in a series. So little happens in its pages, compared to similar books in the subgenre, that it’s a shock when it ends as abruptly as it does. As a reader, I have had almost no contact with anyone besides Rae. I wanted to know more about her boyfriend Mel, her stepfather, her mother — who is virtually nonexistent — her powerful father and his family — also nonexistent.

I am on the fence about this. Part of me feels like the book is half baked, that some of these things really should have been explored to make the story complete. We don’t even get to know much about Constantine, and nothing about whether his odd alliance with Rae will become an intimate friendship, a romance, or something else. The other part of me just enjoyed the wonderful writing and marveled at how fresh this author could make an oft-told story feel.

Tags: ,