Factling!
Okay, it’s been confirmed that Her Fatness is all caught up on this blog, so I’ll pick up regular posting again at erratic and unpredictable times. Like right now!
I just did a Google search on “the fatling,” because I am very humble (you can tell because I didn’t use any caps). This site is the first result, but I also discovered that, according to the free dictionary by Farlex, the word “fatling” actually means “a young farm animal fattened for killing.” Which is disappointing. I’d always thought I was fattening myself up for a natural death at a ripe old age. Although according to this definition, I will be forever young (yay!) and a farm animal (boo! Or baa…).
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #16: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
I didn’t like The Year of the Flood quite as much as I liked Oryx and Crake, but it’s an excellent second book for Atwood’s Maddadam trilogy (she’s writing the third right now, as she informed CBR and myself on Twitter. Swoon). I do appreciate that rather than a straight sequel, Atwood chose to tell stories that run concurrent with the events of Oryx and Crake. This time there are two POV characters: Toby, a reluctant member of the God’s Gardeners faith/ecoactivist group, and Ren, and exotic dancer who grew up in the same God’s Gardener group that Toby belonged to. The action here takes place largely in the near-future pleeblands, economically depressed communities that buttress North America’s hermetically sealed “compounds” reserved for the rich and their scientific research teams.
Both Crake/Glenn and Snowman/Jimmy from the first novel show up periodically throughout the story, but this one belongs to the women. Atwood expands on the themes of desensitizing sexual commodification she broached in Oryx and Crake by exploring Toby’s victimization at the hands of a sadistic employer and the way the specter of her rape impacts her life. Saddled with a pretty horrific mother who joined the God’s Gardeners to be with her lover, Ren grows into adulthood with a split consciousness—aware of the material excesses of her world, and yet disconnected from the faith that more or less raised her. Atwood handles the idea of sexual victimization gently and with pathos—there are no squicky, highly detailed rape scenes that could be confused with titillation, and Ren chooses to become a trapeze dancer at a high-end sex club and neither she nor Atwood think she has anything to apologize for.
My favorite parts of the book revolve around the God’s Gardeners, which is fleshed out and proves to be a fascinating blend of faith, science, and stewardship plagued as all religions are by human frailty. In particular, I loved Ren’s friendship with the young con artist extraordinaire, Amanda and Toby’s slow evolution from frightened refugee to doubtful believer. The sermons by Adam One (the leader of God’s Gardeners) work on both an earnest and an ironic level, and the attention to detail in the rituals of worship is really impressive.
This book can absolutely be read independently of Oryx and Crake, but considering how great that book is, it would be silly to deny yourself the pleasure of fully immersing in Atwood’s terrifying, beautiful vision of a future we might still have a chance to subvert.
*This is a total aside, but in reading some of the existing criticism on these books, Atwood is unfairly taken to task for the pun-heavy names of products and corporations in this world (i.e. CorpSeCorp, Chickie Nobs, SecretBurgers, etc). Atwood’s puns are no less heavy-handed than any of David Foster Wallace’s, specifically in Infinite Jest (ONANtiad, Les Assassins des Fauteuils Rollents, John “No Relation” Wayne anyone?), which presents a near-future not too far removed from Atwood’s. In this exploration of Atwood’s works, I’m surprised by how much critics seem to do everything in their power to discredit her, but that’s perhaps another post entirely.*
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #15: Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood
I’m going to wax philosophical here. This wasn’t my favorite Atwood book (it was really just a stopgap solution while I waited for The Year of the Flood to arrive at my library), but I so enjoyed the experience of reading it that my lack of enthusiasm for the content didn’t negatively affect my overall view of the book.
In part, it’s just an extension of my lifelong obsession with words. As a kid, I’d read pretty much anything that was within reach. I’ve become a bit more discerning as I’ve gotten older, but in general, the rule still stands that if it can be read, I will read it.
Reading is really the only form of entertainment I can think of that still manages to be legally available for free to pretty much the entire population of America. If you’ve got an address, you can get a library card, and if you don’t, you can still hang out in the library all day. You can go hang out in a bookstore and read for hours without ever buying anything. No electricity is required to read a book, although a good light source helps, and I am so happy that I chose to be a reader.
I’m also happy that I’ve been binging on Margaret Atwood. I had counted her among my favorite writers for years, based solely on having read The Handmaid’s Tale at age fourteen and The Blind Assassin a few years ago. Cat’s Eye is her semi-autobiographical novel, based loosely on her childhood as the daughter of an Ontario entomologist and her destructive friendships with other girls at her school. While I was annoyed by Atwood’s choice to make protagonist Elaine Risley a painter rather than a writer (seriously, writers, reading about writing isn’t more boring than reading about painting or sculpting or what have you, and aren’t you supposed to write what you know anyway?), her description of female friendship and the cruelty that women inflict on one another from an early age is spot on.
The back and forth narrative between Elaine as a middle-aged woman attending a retrospective of her artwork and her coming of age in a Toronto suburb is very Atwoodian, with both threads finally converging toward the end. In many ways, this is the bleakest of Atwood’s works I’ve read to date, because the lack of any speculative fiction angle denies the reader the hope for redemption that always accompanies tales of humanity’s demise. For Elaine Risler, the only comfort to be had is cold, the knowledge that she has overcome her childhood rival, Cordelia, but at a great cost.
The story itself is unremarkable—the protagonist is abused, and then turns the abuse back on her tormentors—but what Atwood captures brilliantly is the emotional limbo of being a woman, the aching sadness of knowing how much you’ve been hurt by other women, and how much they’ve hurt you, and having no idea what to do about it. Elaine is an extremely passive narrator, and yet that is the book’s strength—Elaine is on a journey she didn’t particularly want to take where her life simply happens as she drifts by, and it’s still compelling every step of the way.
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #14: Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
I’m a huge fan of Margaret Atwood, despite the fact that I’ve only read The Handmaid’s Tale and The Blind Assassin. It’s rare to come across a writer who can build worlds and characters equally well, and her lyrical writing style is absolutely gorgeous. Every time I read one of Atwood’s novels, I am deeply affected, and Oryx and Crake is no exception.
Set in the post-apocalyptic near future, narrator Snowman eases the reader into the new normal—salvaging for food, water, and shelter in the absence of other humans, with only the strange, alien Children of Crake for company. In flashbacks, Snowman recalls how the world came to be in its present state, going back to his childhood as “Jimmy,” his close friendship with scientific wunderkind Crake, and their mutual obsession with a young girl they once spotted on a kiddie porn website. Atwood does a really admirable job of extrapolating the online entertainment and technology of the early aughts (when the book was written) into a nasty, amoral web of consumer exploitation that consumes the entirety of North America (and, we are to understand, the world at large).
I ripped through this book in about four hours total. It’s a really compelling read, and Atwood manages to keep the tension in both the past and present storylines ratcheted up high throughout, and Snowman’s overall arc is very well done. He changes gradually and without self-awareness, whichis very refreshing. I also really liked Atwood’s handling of a male protagonist, since I’ve only read her female protagonists. Her voice is believable as a man’s, but is also a unique take on the male perspective. I’m really looking forward to reading Atwood’s 2009 followup, The Year of the Flood, as soon as I can get my hands on it.
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #10 #11 #12 #13: The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman/John Ney Reiber
My Vertigo tarot deck recently reminded me that I’d been meaning to read The Books of Magic for quite some time (due to some BoM artwork on the cards, my tarot isn’t actually psychic or anything). I’m only four volumes in, and apparently my local library doesn’t have the fifth book. I’m really on the fence about continuing with the series. It hasn’t held up anywhere near the standard of Gaiman’s Sandman series, either in story or artwork, and I’m not willing to spend money on the next book in the series.
The Books of Magic follows Tim Hunter, a bespectacled young boy who lives with his negligent father. His mother died in a car accident years before, and the accident appears to have been caused by his father, who drinks and watches television to avoid dealing with life. One day, Tim is visited by a mysterious foursome—John Constantine, the Stranger, Dr. Occult, and Mr. E—who tell him that he has a lot of magical potential. They take him on a journey through time, space, and magical history, ostensibly to allow him to choose an ordinary life or a life of magic, though of course he chose a life of magic by agreeing to the tour. The first volume’s artwork is beautiful, but the story is labyrinthine and slight when all is said and done.
The second volume, Bindings, sees John Ney Reiber taking over for Gaiman in the story department, and the difference is clear. This is easily the worst of the series so far, involving a convoluted paternity dispute as an excuse to spend time with Death, Gaiman’s most famous creation. It doesn’t help that in both the first and second volumes, Tim is as petulant and whiny as Order of the Phoenix-era Harry Potter—and I’m not just saying that because both boys have spectacles and pet owls. He’s still unpleasant in the other collections, but in these two, he’s pretty unbearable.
Summonings, the third volume, is a marked improvement, with the introduction of Molly, Tim’s once and future love interest, a steampunk villain, and a charming succubus named Leah. Things take a turn for the confusing in Reckonings, the fourth volume, wherein an adult Tim’s dealings with a cynical demon named Barbatos have consequences that reach back through space and time to affect present-day Tim and Molly.
Tim doesn’t appear to actually be going through any magical training, forced to muddle through and learn by trial and error, which is actually an interesting concept. Unfortunately, the series’ heavy-handed moralizing and confusing timeline haven’t really paid off for me. I’m invested just enough to be curious about how everything ultimately hangs together, but it looks like the collected volumes don’t actually include the conclusion of the story. If I happen to find a cheap copy of the next volume, I’ll probably read on, but otherwise I’m sure I’ll manage not knowing what Tim Hunter’s future holds.
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #9: The Martians by Kim Stanley Robinson
As a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson’s excellent Mars trilogy, which chronicles man’s colonization of Mars in painstaking detail, I had been meaning to read The Martians for quite some time. I read two of the short stories in the collection a while ago, but found myself put off by the fact that one of them (“Maya and Desmond”) didn’t fit into the chronology of the original trilogy.
This time, I read the collection from the beginning, and realized after the first story (“Michel in Antarctica”) that deviations from the canon chronology are the point of this collection. Sort of. Certain stories fit in seamlessly with what we know about the Martian colonists and their descendants (my favorite, “Jackie on Zo,” for example), while others imagine wildly different outcomes of the Earth’s space program or events from the previous books, and still others push far into the Martian future. Robinson paints a lovely series of vignettes that illustrate the range of possibilities he had with his previous characters, and manages to enhance and enrich the original books even further.
Robinson effectively creates an emotional and temporal throughline in this collection by checking in with new character Roger Claybourne every few stories and tells the tale of his political, emotional, and romantic evolution throughout his artificially extended lifetime (Note: everyone on Mars has an artificially extended lifetime.) The tales range from silly to bittersweet to topographical (I admit to skimming those stories; I’ve never been a big fan of reading about landscapes), and only become self-indulgent toward the end, where Robinson has included a list of music he listened to while writing about Mars, a bunch of poems, and a short story about the day he finished his novel (Red Mars, presumably, although the chapter is called “Purple Mars.)
This is definitely a book for those who have already read Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. Out of context, I’m not sure how much impact the stories would have, since prior knowledge of characters’ personalities and relationships are often vital. In some ways, it’s just fan fiction from the author of the source material, but it’s such a delight to spend just a little more time with the Martians, that doesn’t really matter.
The Fatling’s #CBR4 Review #8 Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling
I’ve read a few books by female comedians over the years, and Mindy Kaling’s is by far my favorite. It’s breezy and fun, assertive without feeling hyperdefensive, and a fascinating look at Kaling’s path to becoming a writer for The Office.
Kaling also owns her femininity, which is refreshing, since many female comedy memoirists seem to classify it as a burden or annoyance. There are the obligatory chapters chronicling Kaling’s obligatory struggle with body image, weight loss, and self-esteem, but she delves in deep rather than tossing them off with a sentence or two.
As a married person, I found a lot of Kaling’s grandstanding about marriage and constant proclamations that she wants to get married to be sort of irritating, but maybe it resonates more with single people. It just struck me as odd for her to spend so much time dealing with that topic.
On the other hand, I was delighted every time Kaling’s contempt for Office co-star Rainn Wilson bubbled to the surface. I have no idea why there’s so much ill will between the two of them, but it sounds like there might be an entire book to be written about their really twisted relationship.
In general, I usually think comedians’ memoirs don’t come off particularly well. Those who are prominent stand-up or sitcom writers aren’t great prose writers, and as a result, the books they produce feel choppy and thrown together. This is still the case with Mindy Kaling, but her tone and the jokes she writes elevate it above the run-of-the-mill comedians bio.
The Fatling’s #CBR4 Review #5 The Shooting Party by Isabel Colgate
This book was 100% awful. At only 197 pages, I assumed it would be a breeze to read, only to find myself mired in a swamp of pronouns without antecedents, two-dimensional characters not even a mother could love, and the dullest plot known to man. I’m pretty sure it took me three weeks to finish because I could never find any sort of emotional hook to keep me interested.
Isabel Colgate’s The Shooting Party takes place at a shooting party (I know, you’re shocked) on a country estate in Oxfordshire, England during the height of the Edwardian era. Since my husband and I host a weekly podcast covering Downton Abbey, I figured reading this book might give me more insight into the time period.
Nope. The only insight I got was that Julian Fellowes definitely read this book before writing Gosford Park and Downton Abbey and thought, “Hmmmm, what an interesting time period. I bet I could make all these plot points suck a lot less!”
The titular party is hosted by Sir Randolph, a crotchety old Baronet who sees his agrarian way of life slowly slipping away, and his wife Minnie, a card shark who loves gambling and a well-executed meal. Their guests include Lionel Stephens, a dopey intellectual who is in love with the sensitive, intelligent Olivia, who is married to some guy named Bob Lillburn, who’s sort of the Bluto in this scenario. There’s also Aline Hartlip, a social climber famous for her affairs, and her husband, Gilbert, who is widely known as one of Britain’s finest shooters. Sir Randolph and Minnie’s grandchildren are also in attendance, Marcus, a student, Cicely, a flirt, Osbert, a mentally-deficient duck-owner, and Violet, a spoiled brat.
There are other people involved—a maid and footman who are romantically linked, an animal-rights activist, the head gamekeeper and his son, and a poacher who’s been hired as a beater for the festivities, but they, too, are rendered dull as paint by Colgate’s indifferent, spare prose. I never got the feeling that Colgate cared much for any of these characters, and without anyone to root for, this book is like a newspaper account of a country shoot that goes on for far too long. There’s all the usual noise about the class system and the whisperings of WWI, but it never adds up to a story worth telling.
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #7: Trickster’s Queen by Tamora Pierce
Tamora Pierce does a lovely job here of tying up her Trickster duet. Duchess Winnamine Balitang, recently widowed, returns to Rajmuat from exile in Tanair with her children Petranne and Elsren, and her stepdaughters Saraiyu and Dovasary. Also with them is the clever Aly Homewood, charged by the raka god Kyprioth to keep the children alive through the winter, and now promoted from lowly maid to the household’s spymaster. The household is filled with conspirators working to bring about the overthrow of the luarin regents who rule the Copper Isles
The former crow Nawat has been courting Aly all through the winter, but feels that she doesn’t respect him as a man, and so leaves the capital city to assist in raka revolts on some of the far-flung islands. Aly works tirelessly with her network of spies to weaken the regents, Prince Rubiyanan and Princess Imajane, with rumor and destabilization of their own spy network.
The book spends far more time below stairs with the servants/conspirators than the first volume, fleshing out leaders of the rebellion like Ulasim and Fesgao. Aly’s frequent field trips to the palace with the noble family she serves are tense and gratifying, particularly her careful spy’s dance with Taybur Sibigat, head of the King’s Guard and special defender of the nation’s boy king, Dunevon. The addition of Lady Nuritin, the late Duke Mequen’s imperious aunt, is a welcome one, as is the depiction of the Balitang’s place among the luarin nobles in Rajmuat.
The one element that doesn’t quite work is Aly’s darklings—tiny black balls of special matter deus ex machina‘d into her lap by a family friend from Tortall who happens to be visiting in the Copper Isles. The darklings are sentient and magical, able to spy and report back to Aly via her constant darkling companion, Trick. Magic and intervention from the gods are a given in this universe, but it would have been more interesting to see Aly bring down the government with only her wits and command of spycraft.
Pierce doesn’t pull any punches. Numerous beloved characters perish in their fight for freedom and innocents die merely because they got in the way of someone powerful. She’s also very canny about sex and birth control, treating both subjects very matter-of-factly and without any moral teeth-gnashing. There is a happy ending, and I only regret that there are no more books detailing the further adventures of Aly.
Question: Does anyone know which characters the girls pictured on the covers of Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen are supposed to be?
TheFatling’s #CBR4 Review #6: A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard
This was an incredibly tough read. For some reason, when I pulled A Stolen Life off the shelf at my local library, I subconsciously classified this book with other ghostwritten celebrity memoirs—easy, People magazine four-star review stuff over which I could maintain a certain superior aloofness.
Wrong. Dead wrong. I’m ashamed to admit I equated this remarkable book with its trivial, lightweight peers.
Jaycee Dugard did not employ a ghostwriter in order to tell her story, and her tale of years of abuse at the hands of the despicable Phillip and Nancy Garrido is made all the more powerful because of it. Her prose is clear, direct, and free of pretention, all of which work together to bring the horror and eventual redemption of her “stolen life” into stark relief.
I spent the majority of the volume’s 273 pages on the verge of tears, immediately plunged into the fascinating mind of a woman who has managed to emerge from her ordeal free of hatred. I have to confess that if I had been kidnapped at 11, routinely raped, forced to bear two children in captivity and then live in a perversion of a nuclear family with my rapist and his equally culpable wife, I can’t imagine not seething with rage and hate twenty-four hours a day. But Dugard recounts the terrible events in her life with grace, helpfully taking frequent “reflection” breaks, which provide a breather for author and reader both.
I wanted to read this book because I read Room last year, and author Emma Donahue cited Dugard’s case as an inspiration for that novel. I’ve spoken with people who disagreed with Donahue’s choice to tell her story from the perspective of the captive woman’s five-year-old son, but after reading A Stolen Life, I not only agree with her decision regarding narration, I’m grateful that she spared her readers the harrowing inner voice of a person who understands exactly what is happening to her and her child.
I’m not at all sorry to have read this book, but I would caution others that it does contain unflinching, graphic descriptions of rape, and is emotionally draining even for the most hardened reader of true-life accounts. Oddly, the details that most affected me were among the most mundane—Dugard’s mentions of which television shows and music she enjoyed during her captivity. For some reason, the idea that this girl, only two years older than me, was also watching 7th Heaven and singing along to Jason Mrasz under these circumstances just broke my heart. There’s something about this false dichotomy—that she could still be a spectator for so much of what the rest of us were looking at, while simultaneously being totally and utterly cut off from the entire world—that I found especially sickening.
In an excerpt from a journal she kept after her daughters were born, Dugard states that she hopes to one day be a best-selling writer. Although I’m sure she wishes the circumstances were different, I was so moved by the fact that she has already been able to achieve one of her goals, and hopeful that she’ll be able to achieve so many more in the future. Dugard’s book and her life are remarkable testaments to a remarkable woman, and I genuinely hope that she and her children are able to move on as much as possible to live happy, fulfilled lives away from public scrutiny.
