News, essays and notes on writing
I have to admit being disappointed in Geoff Ryman’s The Warrior Who Carried Life. Unlike much of his later work, especially The King’s Last Song, I very much felt The Warrior Who Carried Life demonstrated a writer finding their way in their art.
Emily Tesh’s World Fantasy Award-winning Greenhollow Duology, which begins with Silver in the Wood, is a gorgeously told novella which digs deep into legends of the fae. Her writing is reminiscent of both Guy Gavriel Kay and Robert Holdstock, and I very much found myself hearing echoes of Holdstock’s Mythago Wood series.
Thought it might be time to do a general update for my readers. I’m not very good at that, I’m afraid, so apologies. Often just feels sort of intrusive on my part, the concept that I should just blurt out to the world what I’m up to, but I suppose that’s more…
For me, Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer-winning pastoral ponderings were a complete miss. Overall the writing swung from pretentious to dull, her musings entirely self-absorbed, and clearly her modern attempt to emulate Thoreau’s Walden Pond.
Vassanji’s novel, The Book of Secrets, which was the recipient of the first Giller Prize, is a complex saga revolving around a diary kept by an Assistant District Commissioner in the fictitious town of Kikono, situated near the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, set around the time of WWI.
I received notification of this remarkable book through a group of archeologists specializing in Scandinavian history, specifically Viking. Their praise of Neil Price’s work did not disappoint.
As usual, I’m flitting back and forth between projects, especially now it’s again summer. Mostly my time is taken up with the vegetable and perennial gardens, or just enjoying the bucolic nature of this village, and our home.
The Green Road, by Anne Enright, is an introspective, remarkable, often poignant story about the four siblings of the Madigan family, and their mercurial, often tempestuous, aging mother, Rosaleen.
It would be a stretch of the truth to say Guy Gavriel Kay is anything but an accomplished story-teller. He crafts his work with elegance, passion, and detail. You would think with that praise I would rate his work higher than I do, for certainly there is much here to engage the reader.
There is no disputing the literary skill of Michael Ondaatje. His works have been captivating readers for decades. However, it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect every work any artist creates to be extraordinary. And such is the case, in my opinion, with In the Skin of a Lion.
It is important to begin this review with the fact I’m Caucasian, first generation Italian, third generation Irish, born in Canada, live a life which many would call privileged, but would do so without understanding of family background, struggle, trauma. I do understand being a victim. But I do not have an understanding of residential school trauma.
Apparently I really am not a fan of anything Annie Proulx writes. I found The Shipping News lacking in real understanding of, and research into, life in Newfoundland, Brokeback Mountain infuriatingly misrepresentative of gay life and understanding, and I’ve found the same true in Barkskins.
If a person were to write only two books in their lifetime of the calibre of Harper Lee’s small canon, then they would have achieved something very great indeed.
