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May. 11th, 2005 11:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhondacrockettMy friends list has had an explosion of entries recently, which makes me feel like I ought to make one too, except for having nothing to say. Things have been quiet: partly because I've finished my vision chapter and not started research for the next; and partly because I've had two short weeks - I had a hospital appointment at home Thursday a fortnight ago, and then last Thursday I went home to vote in the local elections to try and put a dent in the DUP/Sinn Fein majority (there's a combination you don't see every day *amused*). Not that the latter worked very well, but at least I made my mark.
I've read a lot of books lately. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier, Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin, Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and I've just finished Sunshine by Robin McKinley yesterday. I've also re-read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and Beauty and the Beast whose author I can't remember, which is a novel based on a TV series from waaaay back, with Ron Perlman as a lion/man cross living in the sewers of New York. I picked the latter up in a charity shop; lifted it off the shelf and started reading. I just barely remember the TV show - I know it was on quite late, maybe about 10, 11ish. I suppose I could give you book reviews but I don't know if you'd be interested.
Then again, that's what Lj cuts are for...
*If you are going to read, please be aware that there may be spoilers.
Girl with a Pearl Earring - Quiet, fastidious, repressed Griet is hired by the painter Vermeer to clean his studio. There's a problem: she's immediately and intensely attracted to him. As her relationship with her employer moves from servant to assistant to model, the peace and balance of the Vermeer household starts to crumble around her.
Two words to describe the writing here: reticent and suffocating. The story is told in sparse first-person prose, perfect for Griet who walks a fine line between respectability and her repressed passion. Reading it, you feel the fearful crushing pressure of having to deal regularly with someone with authority over you, to whom you are sexually attracted. Griet is not always a likeable narrator; she can be snobbish, prejudiced and high-handed at times. But then, most of the characters in this aren't always likeable, apart from maybe Maertge, Vermeer's eldest daughter, and Pieter the butcher's son.
I love this book. I love the surface stillness and the unbearable tension beneath, and I identify strongly with Griet's situation. Others, however, may find the prose too spare, bordering on simplistic, the story too slim and slow-moving, the characters too static, especially Griet who is often like a rabbit caught in headlights, and the sex too little - I get bored and impatient with too much sex in my books, so that's a relief for me, but others may feel there's been too big a wind-up with no release at the end.
-----
The Lady and the Unicorn - Parisian artist Nicolas des Innocents is commissioned to provide designs for a grand tapestry for the ambitious, newly-ennobled Jean Le Viste. Nicolas has a unique seduction technique: he tells girls a tale about the purifying qualities of a unicorn's horn. But he didn't count on the women he would meet in the pursuit of his commission: Claude, his employer's headstrong daughter, who is definitely interested in taking him for a lover if she can; Claude's mother Genevieve, whose only wish is to leave her unhappy marriage and become a nun; clever Christine, wife of the weaver who takes on the tapestry, and ambitious to weave herself if she can find a way around the no-women regulations of the guild; and blind Alienor, Christine's daughter, who desperately wants to escape from an arranged marriage to the odious Jacques Le Boeuf.
Narration of The Lady and the Unicorn is split over several different characters, including Nicolas and the women mentioned above, and also Georges the weaver and Philippe the cartoonist who adjusts Nicolas's designs ready for the weaving. The result is an uneven tone, ranging from Nicolas's crude arrogance towards the women he seduces and Claude's brash, bossy attitude, to Alienor's sad thoughtfulness (she reminds me a bit of Griet, but not as uptight or helpless) and Philippe's quiet, observant style. Oh, and there's a lot more sex in this one; Nicolas makes sure of that.
Partly because of all the sex, and partly because the narrators are not all given the same space (I wish Chevalier had given Philippe and Genevieve more to do), I don't think this is as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's still a great, rolicking story which I would read again. The writing tone is more varied and lighter than in Girl, which I was glad to see; I had feared Chevalier was only capable of one style, and though elements of Griet break through here and there, they are minor and are changed by the new context of the Lady's characters. For those who thought that Girl built them up for nothing, Lady brings (most of) the characters' love lifes to a, err... more satisfying conclusion.
I'm gonna leave it there, cos I'm hungry and need lunch.
I've read a lot of books lately. The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier, Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin, Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and I've just finished Sunshine by Robin McKinley yesterday. I've also re-read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and Beauty and the Beast whose author I can't remember, which is a novel based on a TV series from waaaay back, with Ron Perlman as a lion/man cross living in the sewers of New York. I picked the latter up in a charity shop; lifted it off the shelf and started reading. I just barely remember the TV show - I know it was on quite late, maybe about 10, 11ish. I suppose I could give you book reviews but I don't know if you'd be interested.
Then again, that's what Lj cuts are for...
*If you are going to read, please be aware that there may be spoilers.
Girl with a Pearl Earring - Quiet, fastidious, repressed Griet is hired by the painter Vermeer to clean his studio. There's a problem: she's immediately and intensely attracted to him. As her relationship with her employer moves from servant to assistant to model, the peace and balance of the Vermeer household starts to crumble around her.
Two words to describe the writing here: reticent and suffocating. The story is told in sparse first-person prose, perfect for Griet who walks a fine line between respectability and her repressed passion. Reading it, you feel the fearful crushing pressure of having to deal regularly with someone with authority over you, to whom you are sexually attracted. Griet is not always a likeable narrator; she can be snobbish, prejudiced and high-handed at times. But then, most of the characters in this aren't always likeable, apart from maybe Maertge, Vermeer's eldest daughter, and Pieter the butcher's son.
I love this book. I love the surface stillness and the unbearable tension beneath, and I identify strongly with Griet's situation. Others, however, may find the prose too spare, bordering on simplistic, the story too slim and slow-moving, the characters too static, especially Griet who is often like a rabbit caught in headlights, and the sex too little - I get bored and impatient with too much sex in my books, so that's a relief for me, but others may feel there's been too big a wind-up with no release at the end.
-----
The Lady and the Unicorn - Parisian artist Nicolas des Innocents is commissioned to provide designs for a grand tapestry for the ambitious, newly-ennobled Jean Le Viste. Nicolas has a unique seduction technique: he tells girls a tale about the purifying qualities of a unicorn's horn. But he didn't count on the women he would meet in the pursuit of his commission: Claude, his employer's headstrong daughter, who is definitely interested in taking him for a lover if she can; Claude's mother Genevieve, whose only wish is to leave her unhappy marriage and become a nun; clever Christine, wife of the weaver who takes on the tapestry, and ambitious to weave herself if she can find a way around the no-women regulations of the guild; and blind Alienor, Christine's daughter, who desperately wants to escape from an arranged marriage to the odious Jacques Le Boeuf.
Narration of The Lady and the Unicorn is split over several different characters, including Nicolas and the women mentioned above, and also Georges the weaver and Philippe the cartoonist who adjusts Nicolas's designs ready for the weaving. The result is an uneven tone, ranging from Nicolas's crude arrogance towards the women he seduces and Claude's brash, bossy attitude, to Alienor's sad thoughtfulness (she reminds me a bit of Griet, but not as uptight or helpless) and Philippe's quiet, observant style. Oh, and there's a lot more sex in this one; Nicolas makes sure of that.
Partly because of all the sex, and partly because the narrators are not all given the same space (I wish Chevalier had given Philippe and Genevieve more to do), I don't think this is as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring. It's still a great, rolicking story which I would read again. The writing tone is more varied and lighter than in Girl, which I was glad to see; I had feared Chevalier was only capable of one style, and though elements of Griet break through here and there, they are minor and are changed by the new context of the Lady's characters. For those who thought that Girl built them up for nothing, Lady brings (most of) the characters' love lifes to a, err... more satisfying conclusion.
I'm gonna leave it there, cos I'm hungry and need lunch.
