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Deanna Raybourn | Killers of a Certain Age

by | Dec 26, 2022 | Book Review, Book Thoughts, Mystery

L: Author portrait of Deanna Raybourn; C: Cover of Killers of a Certain Age; R: Bourbon Street, New Orleans

“Killers of a Certain Age is sharp and breezy, dark humored and sometimes desperately funny.

It gives women their voice, their rage, and their utter competence.“

Oh my, I do hope Deanna Raybourn had as much fun writing Killers of a Certain Age (2022) as I did reading it. Focused and witty, Raybourn is utterly in command from the sly, initial author’s note to the final moments and summary remark. Killers is an out-of-the-park home run of a read. [1]

 

THE STORY

As always, I am interested in the how and how well of a tale, not a specific running through of events. But an overview of the story is needed. This from Raybourn’s website:

“Older women often feel invisible, but sometimes that’s their secret weapon.

 

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

 

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.

 

Now to get out alive they have to turn against their own organization, relying on experience and each other to get the job done, knowing that working together is the secret to their survival. They’re about to teach the Board what it really means to be a woman—and a killer—of a certain age.”

“It’s kill or be killed, but they’ve been at this a long time….” (from the cover)

I find thrillers stressful reading and usually avoid them. What drew me to Raybourn’s Killers was representation, pure and simple. (And that cover blurb that promised a witty telling!) I am of that same certain age and rarely do I find crime fiction about older women that isn’t of the cozy variety. Now I enjoy me a go-round with Ms. Marple as well as the next, but give her a fierce eye, strong friends of her own kind, and a reason for a little sex and serious revenge, well now, take my money!

Killers of a Certain Age is sharp and breezy, dark humored and sometimes desperately funny. It gives women their voice, their rage, and their utter competence.

 

CHARACTER, PLOT, & VOICE

I look for characters with heft. The main four women in Killers have solidity; initially a bit too 007 but their eventually revealed backstories flesh them out credibly. Secondary and even minor characters are sketched with sufficient verity. Raybourn tells you how people look with an easy swiftness. There seems to be a future tense cinematic awareness on her part but one can envision one’s own Billie, or Akiko, or Kevin by the way they move, their mannerisms, and the impact of their respective pasts.

The very real notion of what age does to a body, the female body in particular, is not shied away from. I can imagine that there are some who will find these “impossible old bitches” as Billie calls themselves at varous points implausible in terms of their ability to recover quickly enough from various injuries or overextension to save the day, themselves, or each other. That’s the grace of fiction and, in this case, Raybourn’s stylish speed and narrative flash. (Perhaps one can be inspired to higher levels of self care even if covert assassin is not our job title.)

The plot is patterned like a detailed tapestry, every move stitched, every knot tied just so. There is more than one moment that seems incredible, but the flow of the action sweeps you along with a complicit wink. Killers begs to be on the big screen (though I confess I dread that, fearing a glam casting and a male-gazing direction that would ruin all).

And the narrative voice burns with its focus. It is fierce though not always loud—in places it is almost gentle—but the telling is so en pointe, so confident, so almost joyous in its intent that as a reader you feel utterly held and challenged to keep up with the rush of considerable action.

A couple novels of crime & mystery, though utterly different in tone and style, have struck me with a comparable trifecta of well-balanced character, plot, and voice: Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night (1935) and Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael’s Penance (1994). [2, 3] And a few have come near: Laurie King’s Touchstone (2008), Marco Carocari’s Blackout (2021), and Jill Paton Walsh’s A Presumption of Death (2002). [4, 5, 6] And, if I may dare to speak of a book I’ve only just begun, Fiona Erskine’s Phosphate Rocks (2021), looks to be shooting for a spot on my list of best crime books. [7]

Writing Hard, Writing Soft

What drives Killers is its vivid, urgent storytelling. I was with these women the entire way, gripped by the nape as it were, to see what they did, what they decided, and to be frank, how they killed and thought about killing, individually and collectively. This last, the very last—how the women thought about their “job”—while only intermittently mentioned was a bit tricky. Killers is meant to be an entertaining read not a discussion of ethics. In the end I think we want to believe we’d be as honorable.

The Sphinxes they’ve been named. Billie, the first person narrator of the present time chapters, is intellectual and ruthless, a natural leader. The remaining trio, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie, are less defined but they have their moments in terms of personality and the lethal precision of their respective skill sets. There are men, well-delineated and credible, one perhaps a tad idealized, but for the most part Raybourn keeps the focus on the women.

The Sphinxes are superb, meticulous planners but when things go awry—and we know they will—they are immediately inventive and cool under fire. And they trust and respect each other, not simply for their skills but for who they are and how they think and feel.

But there are grace notes to the story as well, moments of tenderness: when Cassandra Halliday, the women’s Museum mentor in their youth, confronts Billie and uses a painting to make her point; when one of the women recalls an old lover with sensual, tender intensity; when the notion of female solidarity is captured by the making sure hotel maids don’t have to clean up after their ‘work’ and the giving of a ginger drop by one of the old timers to a younger.

Writer as Exemplar

With any of the titles cited above I could imagine something different at certain points, usually having to do with a plot point or a certain aspect of a character. My tweaking in Killers would be only a matter of authorial style but it was a useful exercise to imagine how I might have approached a certain scene differently, useful to imagine why Raybourn made the choices she did.

I learned quite a bit from her re: terse visual description via point of view, practical sentence-to-sentence sequencing, and that notion of utterly trusting one’s reader to be a companion in the process. And while my own idiosyncrasy is to read simultaneously as reader and as writer, never did I feel Raybourn’s heavy hand as author. I like to think I heard her laughter though.

There is real work behind Killers’ blithe ferocity and it is truly impressive. They say the best actors are those who make it look easy, who don’t seem to be acting at all. If Killers of a Certain Age does make it to the cinema, Raybourn has given the cast gold to work with.

Author Bio

“New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation Texan with a degree in English and history from UTSA. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including the Edgar, RT Reviewers’ Choice, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, and the Last Laugh. She launched a Victorian mystery series featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter Veronica Speedwell in 2015. This Edgar-nominated series is ongoing. Her first contemporary thriller, Killers of a Certain Age, chronicles the adventures of four female assassins who must band together against the organization that would rather see them dead than let them retire.” (From the author’s Press Kit)

Raybourn on Mastodon, Instagram, and Twitter

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

 

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

Book Thoughts is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are both book reviews and book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, Dec 26). Deanna Raybourn|Killers of a Certain Age. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).
https://jajablonski.com/2022/12/26/deanna-raybourn-killers


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Left: Author Portrait of Deanna Raybourn (From her Press Kit)
    • Center: Cover of Killers of a Certain Age (From Raybourn’s Press Kit)
    • Right:  Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Photo by David Reynolds on Unsplash

SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Raybourn, Deanna. (2022). Killers of a Certain Age. Berkley Books. For a complete listing of Raybourn’s’ books see her website.

[2] Sayers, Dorothy L. (1935). Gaudy Night. This link is to the 2012 Harper Paperbacks edition.

[3] Peters, Ellis. (1996). Brother Cadfael’s Penance. Mysterious Press.

[4] King, Laurie R. (2008). Touchstone. Bantam.

[5] Carocari, Marco. (2021). Blackout. Level Best Books.

[6] Walsh, Jill Paton. (2002). A Presumption of Death. St. Martins.

[7] Erskine, Fiona. (2021). Phosphate Rocks. Sandstone Press.

 

Becky Chambers | The Monk & Robot Series

by | Aug 16, 2022 | Book Thoughts, Science Fiction

Left: Cover for A Psalm for the WIld Built; Center: Becky Chambers Portrait; Right: Cover of A Prayer for the Crown Sky

“This story would be enjoyed, I think, by travelers, gardeners, utopianists, urban planners, makers of good meals, sociologists, and people who visualize strongly when they read.”

I have yet to entirely sort my emotional sensibilities about Becky Chambers’ recent Monk and Robot novella diptych. They are themselves works about sorting so perhaps that is fitting. The first is titled A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the second A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. [1] [2]

While there is an organic quality to the pair—Prayer needs Psalm to work—each book contains its own small narrative necessities. And there is a gentleness to them. Not surprisingly, then, Chambers’ books have been described by some as hopepunk. Hopepunk is a “subgenre that has emerged … which finds its narrative motivation in the idea of optimism—embodied in acts of love, kindness, and respect for one another—as resistance.” (From Merriam-Webster) [3]

 

THE STORY

First, the story overviews from Chambers’ website:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot. [4]

 

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a tea monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages of the little moon they call home. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. [5]

THE TELLING

From a writerly perspective, Chambers does some interesting things. The first book is straightforward narrative, a chronology of events, where we see a young person by name of Sibling Dex make a decision to change their life doings then, as we watch that happen, we are introduced to the intricacy of Panga’s one main urban locale, The City, and the post-Transition, rewilded beauty of the land and villages away from this urban center.

When Dex meets a stranger named Splendid Speckled Mosscap a sort of confrontation ensues, not between Dex and Mosscap but between the assignments each have set for themselves. Life-altering assignments they are but now, with an unexpected companion, they must make other decisions, ones they had not anticipated.

The second book begins with the same episodic structure but the scenes are more freestanding. Dex and Mosscap are still traveling together, the point of it to explore a question Panga’s robot denizens have about the human denizens. There are stop-offs. They explore. They meet people, make and receive delicious meals, engage in a little on-page flirting and off-page sex, and struggle though some good conversations. But in the course of these single adventures the sociology and philosophy of this splendidly crafted place Chambers has invented become the focus. It’s not that the plot loses its way—it doesn’t—it just doesn’t seem or want to matter as much.

HARD SCIENCE SOFTLY, softly

Wooden mannequin hand hold white tulip

From the perspective of world crafting or world building, Chambers is utterly first rate. Old-timey science fictioneers believe the science has to be hard, that is, “characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic” and usually a lot of machinery. [6] The science grounding here is indeed hard but framed within the context of long time passing.

Writing about Book 1, NPR’s Amal El-Mohtar describes that time: “Centuries ago, robots woke to sentience and went on strike, and the humans who made them as laboring tools decided to respect their newfound agency and release them. The robots chose to vanish into the wilderness in order to learn about a world beyond the bounds of human design.” [7]

Psalm shows us the humans’ world, much of it rewilded, its culture intensely social, interpersonally aware, and technologically kind. When a robot named after a mushroom enters, the solitary young human, a tea monk of whom we have become fond, finds themselves pushed to sort further beyond what they don’t perhaps realize is their unsorted complacency.

By the time we are well into Book 2 the nature of hard science has softened. Mosscap faces an existential dilemma: should it adhere to the robot’s technological theology that sees mechanical breakdown as inevitable and part of the natural evolution where new robots are reproduced from the parts of the old. Dex, meanwhile, struggles with the positivist notion that one must responsibly progress when their companion’s present tense philosophy suggests simply being is sufficient.

CONNECTIONS BELOVED

Ursula K. Le Guin by Marian Wood KolischAnn Leckie Author PhotoR.B. Lemberg author portrait

The language I’ve used in the previous section makes Chamber’s storytelling sound rigid and analytical. It is not that at all. If anything, the writing and the telling, in addition to being lush and richly descriptive, are almost tender.

I’ve seen her work referred to as “comfort reading.” Certainly comfort can be taken—I could see her as a tea monk mostly easily—but it’s her optimism that gives ease and provides solace.

In that way she is very much in the storytelling tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin (L), Ann Leckie (C), and R.B. Lemberg (R). [8] Her style of telling is unique but one hears echoes.

Nasrullah Mambrol captures the core of Le Guin’s work:

“When Ursula K. Le Guin . . . has Geny Ai state in The Left Hand of Darkness that ‘truth is a matter of the imagination,’ she is indirectly summarizing the essential focus of her fiction: explorations of the ambiguous nature of truth through imaginative means. Few other contemporary authors have described this process with the force and clarity of Le Guin. Her subject is always humankind and, by extension, the human environment, since humanity cannot survive in a vacuum; her technique is descriptive, and her mode is metaphoric. The worlds Le Guin creates are authentic in a profoundly moral sense as her characters come to experience truth in falsehood, return in separation, unity in variety.” [9]

In assessing Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy Liz Borke captures the author’s gist:

“Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books—the trilogy which comprises Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, and Ancillary Mercy—have a significant amount of thematic depth. On the surface, this trilogy offers fairly straightforward space opera adventure: but underneath are a set of nested, interlocking conversations about justice and empire, identity and complicity. How one sees oneself versus how one is seen by others: when is a person a tool and when is a tool a person? The trilogy is one long argument on negotiating personhood and the appropriate uses of power; on civilisation and the other; and on who gets to draw which lines, and how.” [10]

American science fiction editor, and critic Gary K. Wolfe, says this about Lemberg’s The Four Profound Weaves:

“…it’s apparent from the outset that their novel is the work of a poet. The prose is lyrical, evocative, and precise, and it soars when it needs to, without ever yielding to coloratura dramatics. That’s not the only thing appealing, and even refreshing, about this remarkable novel. For one thing, Lemberg demonstrates how it’s possible to construct an evocative and expansive setting without the need for hundreds of pages of ardu­ous, stone-by-stone worldbuilding, and how, by doing this, the setting becomes a function of the tale, rather than the other way around.” [11]

What Chambers shares with these authors is power of vision, intense storytelling art, and a stunningly deep heart and love of person-, plant-, and animal-kind. She, like them, pours all three into her writing. The style of each is singularly theirs: Le Guin, intelligent and muscularly crafted; Leckie, complex and psychologically confident; Lemberg, lyrical and spare; and Chambers, detailed, playful, and easy, yet meticulously scribed.

One feels held by Chambers.

Tea pot & two filled cups of tea on wooden trayIn exploring the craft, the story, and the impact of Chambers’ Monk and Robot books, I don’t want to overlook their pure whimsy and joyfulness. Panga is a lovely little place. The trees, the riverways, the little bugs and great animals; the sheer exuberance of living things is a delight to experience, story and characters aside. 

One memory I will keep, and one key reason I will reread these books many times, is the food and many kinds of teas. One can see the delicious beauty, smell the mystery of combined ingredients and seasonings, and revel in the shared delight that is its making and sharing. The meals are intermittent but so worth the waiting for.

This story would be enjoyed, I think, by travelers, gardeners, utopianists, urban planners, makers of good meals, sociologists, and people who visualize strongly when they read. Reading it to children might be fun too, though the philosophizing language and concepts would need to be translated for the simpler understanding of the very young.

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

 

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, August 16). Becky Chambers | The Monk & Robot Series. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).
https://jajablonski.com/2022/08/16/becky-chambers/


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Becky Chambers. Author photo. From her website
    • Covers of A Psalm for the Wild-Built & A Prayer for the Crown Shy from Tordotcom

Wooden mannequin hand holding ivory-colored tulip. Photo by Trollinho on Unsplash

Ursula K. Le Guin. Author photo by Marian Wood Kolisch. Copyyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch

Ann Leckie. Author photo. From Leckie’s website

R.B. Lemberg. Author photo. From Lemberg’s website

Tea pot & two tea cups on wooden tray. Photo by Alisher Sharip on Unsplash

SOURCES & NOTES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Chambers, Becky. (2021). A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Tordotcom.
For a complete listing of Chambers’ books see her website, Other Scribbles.

[2] Chambers, Becky. (2021). A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. Tordotcom.

[3] Definition from Merriam-Webster. (Note: An article I did not cite from but is especially good re: hope and Becky Chambers is Kehe, Jason. (2021, Sept 16). “Is Becky Chambers the Ultimate Hope for Science Fiction?” Backchannel (column), Wired.)

[4] Description from Chambers website.

[5] Description from Chambers website.

[6] Definition from the Wikepedia entry for “Hard science fiction.”

[7] El-Mohtar, Amal. (2021, July 18). “A Monk and a Robot Meet in a Forest . . . And Talk Philosophy in the New Novel.” Book Reviews. NPR.

[8] See the websites of Ursula K. Le Guin, Ann Leckie, and R.B. Lemberg for their book info.

[9] Mambrol, Nasrullah. (2019, Jan 2). “Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Novels.” Literariness.org.

[10] Bourke, Liz. (2016, Jan 19). “The Politics of Justice: Identity and Empire in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Trilogy.” Tor.com.

[11] Wolfe, Gary K. (2020, Sept 29). “Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg.” Locus Magazine.

H.G. Parry | The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by | Jun 8, 2022 | Book Thoughts

Cover of The Unlikely Escape of Urish Heep, author photo of H.G. Parry, Map of London, fountain pen

“It tickled me that while I knew a certain thing had to happen, because that’s the trope or literary tradition Parry was representing, how she twists the representation into a unique thing is what makes it her story—which is precisely how literature works.”

H.G. Parry’s The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep (2019) is a delightful, splendid, maddening, curious, detailed, remarkable, tantalizing, intriguing, distancing, overexcited, cheering, and rewarding book. Pieces of it turned up in my dreams immediately after I finished reading it. This only happens if something—person, place, thing, or event—has done something unequivocal to me and my imagination. [1]

The dream pieces were partial images, those I recall seeing as I read but, as within Heep, disappeared and reappeared sporadically. There were a lot of words flying about, differently sized and mostly in serif font. (I think the cover of the book may have had something to do with that.) And there was a quality of light to most of the dreams which was unexpected, a kind of hovering glow of gold satin.

It is an unusual book.

THE STORY

First, the description of the story from Parry’s website:

For his entire life, Charley Sutherland had concealed a magical ability he can’t quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob—a young lawyer with a normal house, normal fiancée, and an utterly normal life—hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his life’s duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other. But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world . . . and for once, it isn’t Charley’s doing. There’s someone else who shares his powers. It’s up to Charley and a reluctant Rob to stop them, before these characters tear apart the fabric of reality. [2]

The Difficulty of fiction

Getting into the book was an odd experience. Reading fiction is hard for me, magical realism even more so. My academic training had a goodly component of literary analysis. I did a large piece of research that involved heavy duty content analysis. Then I went on to teach writing and literary analysis for a time, and after that did and taught book and database indexing which requires that one objectify text in order to label its contents for intellectual access.

As a reader, I find it exceedingly difficult to turn off these various aspects of my mind that run at full tilt most of the day. This means reading is never simply that. Add to that fun, I am a long-time writer. The bulk of my career was professional writing with the occasional self-expressing poetry or fictional correspondences as private entertainment. For the last five or six years I have been writing fiction: magical realism, speculative fiction, and academic mystery. [3]

What is so fun about Parry’s book is that none of this mattered while at the same time it thrummed below like a bagpipe’s drone all the while I read. 

And none of this is needed to enjoy The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. It’s a fulsome, fat book that reads fast and fun and goes on and on.

 

IMPRESSIONS

Some thoughts on the book.

Heep takes a little time to get going. Older brother Rob is a bit of a pill in terms of personality. He has the arrogant know-it-all ways of an older sibling and Charley is a bit whiny at first to my tastes. Frankly, I found them both annoying but decided to give Parry benefit of the doubt. Also, analytical-me could see she was doing something. Who, what, and how these brothers are matters.

Parry has her own interesting take on their creation:

Charley because he’s seen mostly through other people’s eyes, so it was difficult to sift through that and see who he really is inside his own head; Rob because he’s so reluctant to get involved with anything outside the norm that he risked missing out on most of the plot! [4]

Once the actual adventuring begins the story takes off. Millie Radcliffe-Dix—a girl detective of Parry’s invention who is a bit of a mix of Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking—provides a strong, to my mind stronger, counterpoint to Charley than his brother. When Millie is on stage things seem more coherent. Then again, that is her role and the literary notion of role is central to the characters (those real and those read-in) to the plot, and to the larger tale Parry is creating.

 

Portrait of SHerlock Holmes by Sidney Paget

Sherlock Homes by Sidney Paget

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (based on sketch by her sister Cassandra)

Photo portrait of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (From the National Library of Wales)

Characters and creatures begin to appear, seemingly at random at first: Uriah Heep (from David Copperfield) running around Charley’s English Department and a most fiercesome and real Hound of the Baskervilles (from Conan Doyle’s book of the same name) attacking the brothers at Charley’s home. Then their authors start popping up and other authors, or their representations (there are multiple versions of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy, each manifesting a certain, different trait of the man as Austen wrote him). Dickens’ Dorian Gray is quite the devious charmer who both moves the plot onward while providing a seething uncertainty beneath the action.

There are coexisting universes, not unlike the mundane reality of a reader and the imagined reality created by the book she is reading. The shifting between the two is puzzling at first—I found myself wishing the book’s editing had been slightly tighter here as the imagery was a bit overwhelming (for me, that is). But the increasing overlap of space, places, and imagination becomes a necessary element of the plot and the story.

It’s difficult to describe further as it might compromise a reader coming fresh to this delightful book. I can say the ending was charming while also satisfying. Somewhere I read that Parry has been asked about writing a sequel and I don’t see how she could without simply repeating herself.  A sequel would simply rerun the tropes and story types she has broken apart this once and so successfully. There were some minor characters, some needed for the plot, some for a kind of comic sensibility, that I’d have edited out, but they do work. (I suspect that’s my English professor persona having a small fit.)

All in all, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep is a book I will want to periodically reread, which I don’t often do unless something about the book took joyous hold of my imagination.

The personal book

I know I am not the only person who felt this but it seemed Parry wrote this book just for me, the one-time academic and academic librarian, the double English major, the been-reading-since-I was-three person. I got to use all my skills and training in cahoots with someone whose skills and training are enough above mine to make reading Heep a sort of game. Could I anticipate a certain next part of the story? Yes! Did I see the occasional inside literary joke? Yes! Did I know the ending because of what I know about how literature, criticism, and storytelling work? Yes.

But even better, not yes.

I knew what was going to happen pretty much all the way through because a close reading of the characters—the literary persons that exist or appear throughout the story and the characters that made the story itself—meant only certain things could happen. So although I knew X would happen or a certain person would do or be something/someone, it didn’t happen quite as I thought it might. I felt genuine childlike glee every time it happened as though Parry and I were playing a game of badminton tapping the birdie back and forth. I got to be Charley (!) who early on explains what reading is for him:

And while I am reading, the new words I’m taking in will connect to others I’ve already taken in . . . . They make a map, or a pattern, or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely. And then, at once, they’ll connect. They’ll meet and explode. Of course. That’s the entire point! That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense. And it’s beautiful. It’s a moment of pure joy, the kind that brings pleasure like pain. (pg. 26)

 

A page later Charley says,

That part is the magic, in that it’s a step further than most people’s reading or analysis goes. It all feels one and the same to me, but that’s where the line crosses from the accepted to the extraordinary. (pg. 27)

But for all that my lit crit and writing background had me primed, Parry often caught me off guard, often in the most wonderful ways. I won’t spoil anyone’s reading with specifics (and there are many opportunities for this). It tickled me that while I knew a certain thing had to happen, because that’s the trope or literary tradition Parry was representing, how she twists the representation into a unique thing is what makes it her story—which is precisely how literature works.

And why writing fiction is so hard! Writers are told to “be original” while also being told that, fundamentally, there are only seven types of stories. [4] So how does one manage? How does one make a type fresh?

In Parry’s case, it was a matter of taking that other adage—write what you know—and converting it to write how you know. About half way through Heep one of the character-people tries to explain something to Rob by saying “If you were in a certain kind of book . . . .” Parry, the writer with a PhD in English Literature, does a version of this. It’s as if she instead asked herself If I were a certain kind of book . . . .

In a 2019 interview, when asked what research did for this book she said “I cheated with this, because I deliberately wrote a book about everything I love and so I knew a lot already.” [5]

It must have been quite freeing to simply cut loose in a way that both honored the breadth and depth of English Literature as a formal field of study while also, in effect, kicking all the formal requirements of literary criticism and analysis right in the teeth.

Lady of Challot by Hunt shows woman standing in center of elbaorte room looking out an arched window
WOman weaving cloth on loom surrounded by suitors

Left: The Lady of Shallot by William Holman Hunt

Right: Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse

The fun I had with Heep has made my years in academe and lit crit so worth it! Witty, heartfelt, & just plain delightful. Parry is not simply a story teller, she is a story weaver: Ariadne unwinding her skein; The Lady of Shallot embroidering images seen in her mirror; Penelope weaving and unraveling her father-in-law’s shroud. She plays, deeply plays, and we and our imaginations are the better for it in so many ways.

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read. Sometimes I will write more formally, sometimes off the cuff, sometimes almost intimately. I write about what I feel like writing about. A book might have come out a month ago, a few decades ago, or a few centuries ago. I read as I please and when thoughts about the experience come to mind sufficiently, I write them here.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, June 8). H.G. Parry | The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2022/06/08/parry-uriah-heep/


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget. Via  Wikipedia.

Portrait of Jane Austen, from the memoir by J. E. Austen-Leigh (1798-1874). Via Wikipedia.

Charles Dickens. From the National Library of Wales. Via Wikipedia.

The Lady of Shallot by William Homan Hunt. Via Wikipedia.

Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1911-1912). Via Wikipedia

 

SOURCES & NOTES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Parry, H. G. (2019). The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.  Redhook.

[2] H.G. Parry’s webpage for The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.

[3] See this section of my website for a rundown of my works done and in progress.

[4] The Quillery. (2019, July 30). “Interview with H.G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.” The Quillery website.

[5] Booker, Christopher. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Bloomsbury Continuum. (This link is to the 2019 edition.)

[6] The Quillery. (2019, July 30). “Interview with H.G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.” The Quillery website.

Marco Carocari | Blackout

by | Jan 6, 2022 | Book Thoughts

Cover of Blackout, blurred image of new World Trade Center, portrait of author Marco Carocari

“Having taken an end of year writing break I picked up ‘Blackout,’ read the first scene, and literally had to set the book down again. The setting so vivid; the energy an exquisite blend of melancholy and intensity; and a man so real and so briefly on the stage before me.”

It always strikes me when a book I hadn’t thought would strike me does. Especially when it is something I might not typically read. I love me a well-done mystery (not cozy though, thank you) but crime thrillers just don’t do it for me. Nor do roller coasters, horror movies, or watching a car accident happen before my eyes (which has happened three times, once somewhat gruesomely). I guess you could say I don’t do adrenaline very well.

And in some ways I don’t do reading very well. It’s extremely difficult for me to lose myself in a book. My entire professional life involved reading and analyzing text. Twice—once after finishing my master’s written comps exam in English then again after completing my doctoral comps—I was unable to read for pleasure for nearly eight months. Add to that years of book and database indexing where the sole purpose was to dissect content into its informational parts and labels; and years of teaching writing where my job was to help students work out how to express their ideas in clear, correct, focused prose.

White male nude in profile from waist up with tatoos on back Outdoor shot of old neon hotel sign. Roy's Motel. At base of sign are 3 small house-shapes and an old car. Black and white view out of the door of an old RV trailer. View is a desert with a beat-up metal chair in foreground, wooden fence midground, and sagebrush hills with sky and clouds above in background

Photography by Marco Carocari

So why did I immediately preorder Marco Carocari’s Blackout? [1]

The cover art, for one. Having been an assistant manager in a bookstore I tend to be immune to (or perhaps bored by is the better phrase) the often generic, repetitive designs. But the art by Mark Gutkowski, with its Art Deco echo, the NYC then-and-now silhouettes, and the colors—khaki, midnight blue, and rainbow flashing—caught my own artist’s eye and sensibility. Second, author Carocari is also a photographer whose work manifests technical rigor, intense focus, and artistic intimacy. [2] My own approach as a writer is to relentlessly visualize. If I can’t see a scene, can’t see the people moving about, I simply cannot write it.

THE STORY

Here is the overview of Blackout from Carocari’s website:

“Strait-laced forty-something Franco picked the wrong night to get freaky. A hook-up with a hot guy on his Manhattan rooftop, and a joint he’s unaware is laced, leaves him dazed. And —if memory serves him— the sole witness to a murder across the street.

 

Except, the cops can’t find a crime scene or a body, and Franco’s perforated recollections and conflicting testimony leave the detectives unimpressed. When days later the mutilated body of a philanthropic millionaire is discovered, he’s not only shocked to learn he knew him, but with Franco’s fingerprints all over the crime scene, he quickly graduates from unreliable witness to prime suspect.

 

Unsettled, and confronted with forty year old memories, when Franco’s father was murdered in front of him during Manhattan’s infamous blackout, a shocking revelation finally unmasks the man who pulled the trigger that night. And painting Franco the perfect suspect. With a target on his back and time running out, the truth will set Franco free, or earn him a toe tag at the morgue…”
Power, Precision, and Place

I don’t know why it took me this long to read Blackout—the book came out in March 2021. I am myself writing just now (a character-driven academic mystery as well as an involved speculative SF thing simmering alongside) and am one of those writers who dare not read certain other things when writing. I had a feeling Carocari’s book was one of them.

This is a compliment (I think) that I flinch at the potential power or influence of another’s work. Fiona Erskine’s Phosphate Rocks is sitting within my line of sight as I type this, also unread beyond the first few pages—those read thrice but no more than that, though her time is soon. [3] It’s a kind of respect in my universe to not want to read certain books until the moment is right.

Reader, this was such a moment. Having taken an end of year writing break I picked up Blackout, read the first scene, and literally had to set the book down again. The setting so vivid; the energy an exquisite blend of melancholy and intensity; and a man so real and so briefly on the stage before me. I was immediately caught by what I tweet-commented as the “quick, dark, graceful writing.”

And precise . . . which didn’t surprise me given the quality of Carocari’s photographic eye.

I’ve only been to New York City once and as a well-grown adult and even then for only two days. With the exception of similarly brief visits to London in the early 80s and San Francisco in the 90s, I’d never felt so immediately at home as I did in NYC. Reading Blackout gave me that same sense of familiarity and, in a way, of coming home. He didn’t have to world build for me. I was there! Sights, smells (the smells!), the pitch dark of the 1977 blackout, even the concrete beneath my feet.

HANGING TEN

Ocean wavesWhen I was a kid someone told me that waves always come in sevens with the last, seventh wave being the largest. I can remember sitting on the sandy edge of a small lake when summer-swimming with family, sitting and counting the waves as they came in. Maybe the theory doesn’t work in small lakes. I can only recall watching and watching as the rippled lines all looked the same as they hit the shore.

That image came to mind when reading Blackout, though here the waves did increase. I had this wonderful sense of being aboard a small boat or surfboard atop as each wave of the narrative pushed forward, rushing towards the shore with increasing intensity. Writer-Me noted “Oh, this is what they mean by a thriller.” Reader-Me just hung on surfer-like, for the ride.

Music is powerful element in Blackout and adds to the crescendo effect. Main character Franco DiMaso works at a club as one of his three jobs. There’s a lot of dancing and a lot of throbbing beats that surround the Franco and his friends. Although set in 2016, the musical vibe carried me back to when I was nineteen and first really fell in love; when I met my boyfriend’s gay friends who were the first out gay men I’d ever met; when I came into being in a way. The music of the Blackout’s characters and the deep sensibility that their music was the book’s own soundtrack gave me that sweet time back again. (Carocari includes a playlist at the end of the book and I have to say I wanted to hug him for that!)

The personable and the real

Ursula K. Le Guin. An older Caucasion woman with short white hair, face with creases, wearing glasses, stands at a podium. She is smiling genially.Invariably I read books on multiple levels, some of which have little to do with what the book is literally about in terms of plot or genre. That happened reading Carocari where I jumped both.

Blackout is as far away from speculative science fiction as you can get. Composing my thoughts for this post I was rather surprised, then, that two books insisted on resonating alongside: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. [4, 5] Here are short descriptions for each:

The Dispossessed (1974): “This novel is about the radically different societies on two close planets. On Urras, there are multiple states, each with their own government. On Anarres, there is no government or economic system. Shevek, a physicist on Anarres, wants to break the rules of his world and travel to Urras, not only to speak with other physicists who understand and are excited by his theories, but to promote friendship between the two planets. . . . ‘ The Dispossessed’ is a novel of anarchy and individualism, of utopias and paradise.” (From Bookrags; link below)

 

The Left Hand of Darkness (1969): “The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai’s mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates a barrier of understanding for Ai.” (From Wikipedia; link below)

I say just now I was rather surprised, more like baffled. My goal of getting this essay posted earlier this week was put on pause while I let the matter marinate. Finally what surfaced had little to do with the plots or genres of the three books and everything to do with two critical notions: the especial connections people make with each other and the authenticity of persons.

I mentioned that crime thrillers aren’t my jam. Blackout almost went on my did-not-finish­ book stack at the moment Franco has to identify a body in a morgue. My reaction was pretty much the same as his and I wasn’t sure I could go on, much as I wanted to find out what happened. What kept me going was what kept Franco going: the anchor he finds in the tight, eclectic circle of his friends. Shevek and Ai, the central characters in Le Guin’s two books are similarly grounded and literally saved, emotionally and physically, by core friendships.

In all three books the friendships have been nurtured over time, challenged by events, and in the end, solidified into what is colloquially referred to these days as found family. I kept expecting Franco’s friends to offload him for his stubborn and occasionally flakey behavior but they never do. Shevek, who comes close to suicide through a combination of intellectual pride and loneliness, is saved by a long ago friend who has conquered his own pride and who offers the salve of love and friendship. Ai’s inability to see beyond his default male template of sex and gender nearly derails his mission as Envoy, a mission saved by the sacrifice of a person Ai later realizes was his only and dearest friend.

Franco, Shevek, and Ai, all male in this instance, are in the end fundamentally and authentically themselves, respectively gay, cis-but-sexually-open, and cis. This I think is the doorway connecting the three books in my mind; not the gender/sexuality specifically, but the solidity of the respective identities and how Carocari and Le Guin write them as normative.

My voice has always been my own so to read a story with a very strong voice is deeply satisfying to me, no matter what the voice. Though the thriller aspect of this book will not stay with me I think, in terms of representation this is a book that I will cherish. I am not any of the people in it and though not gay specifically, I am other. Aside from the story, aside from the writing, I felt seen in a way I rarely experience in daily life. These people, Franco and his friends, were my people. There aren’t too many books that give me that.

Postscript: I deliberately did not read any reviews of Blackout or interviews with Carocari prior to reading his book. Finding out now that he is not native-born or raised American and managed to capture NYC as he did is some kind of wonderful. A tip of the cap to you, sir.

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, Jan 6). Marco Carocari | Blackout. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2022/01/06/carocari_blackout


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Cover of Marco Carocari’s book, Blackout. From Amazon.
    • World Trade Center, NY. Photo by Lukas Blaskevicius on Unsplash. Modified & retinted.
    • Marco Carocari. Author photograph. From Mr. Carocari’s photography website About page.

Ocean waves. Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

Photography by Marco Carocari: Man in profile with tatoos; Roy’s Motel; View of desert from RV trailer door. All used by permission.

Photo of author Ursula K. Le Guin © 2014 by Jack Liu. See Le Guin’s Publicity Photos page.

SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Carocari, Marco. (2021). Blackout. Level Best Books. His author website is here.

[2] Carocari, Marco. Mr. Carocari’s photography website.

[3] Erskine, Fiona. (2021). Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects. Sandstone Press. ISBN: 9781913207526

[4] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1974). The Dispossessed. Avon Books. (Bookshop link is to the Harper Voyager 1994 edition.) The Bookrags quotation above can be found here.

[5] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1969). The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books. (Bookshop link is to the Ace Books 1987 edition.) The Wikipedia quotation above can be found here.

Glenda Norquay | Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s

by | Dec 6, 2021 | Book Thoughts

Norquay Book, Map of RLS Treasure Island, Portrait of Glenda Norquay

“Her removal of RLS from the biographical context allows her to position him
in relation to his social and literary peers as simply that,
peers, which in turn lets her discuss those peers on their own merits.”

It’s been a while since I’ve motored my way through a scholarly text for the fun of it. As an academic (educator and librarian) in the humanities and social sciences I’ve taught literary criticism, research methods, and professional and academic writing. And I’ve indexed a goodly number of scholarly books and unnumbered scholarly articles. So this is something of a busman’s holiday.

A disclaimer, however: My thoughts in this essay are not so much a book review as a book response. I like to converse with and around the books I read. The book in question is Glenda Norquay’s Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: The Author Incorporated (Anthem Press, 2020). [1] And a second disclaimer is necessary. I am by no means a Stevenson scholar; I am a dilettante at best. I came across the gent perhaps two years ago while looking for a quotation to use as a chapter epigraph for a mystery novel I am writing. That led me to his letters, then his essays, then to a run of biographies about the man. I’ve yet to read much of his fiction.

Here is a section of the summary of Norquay’s book provided by her publisher, Anthem Press:

‘Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s’ focuses on an author characterised by geographical and aesthetic mobility, and on those who worked with him or wrote for him at a period of key changes in transatlantic publishing. Stevenson’s situation in the 1890s, living in Samoa, publishing in Britain and the United States, is both highly specific but also representative of a new literary mobility. Drawing on a range of resources, from archival material, correspondence, biographies, essays and fiction, the book examines the operations of transatlantic literary networks during a period of key changes in transatlantic publishing.
To investigate Stevenson and the geographies of his literary networks during the last years of his life and after his death, the book presents a series of critical case studies profiling figures who worked with Stevenson, negotiated his publications on both sides of the Atlantic, wrote for him or were inspired by him. Each chapter focuses on a figure involved in the production or afterlife of Stevenson’s late fiction. . . . The book deploys the concept of ‘literary prosthetics’ to frame its analysis of gatekeepers, tastemakers, agents, collaborators and authorial surrogates in the transatlantic production of Stevenson’s writing. . . . [and] contributes to knowledge of transatlantic publishing and literary cultures in the 1890s and to Stevenson studies but its focus on the specifics of Stevenson’s ‘case’ provides a point of entry into larger considerations of literary communities, nineteenth-century mobility drivers of literary production and the nature of the authorial function. [2]

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson. He smiles gnetly, his eyes hsow light amusement.Reading Literary Networks (as I shall refer to Norquay’s book) was a bit like reading two books at once. Scholarly writing can be pedantic and weighty but I didn’t see that here. Norquay’s Introduction is necessarily dense but she outlines her theoretical approach straightforwardly in graceful prose. It is here she lays the groundwork of the book re: geography and the history of publishing in Stevenson’s time.

That is how I started reading it, as groundwork, but as I neared the end of the section, the notion of literary networks became personalized. As she proceeds into the book proper, taking as the focus in each succeeding chapter a single influential person in Stevenson’s life, or group of persons in the case of his family, Norquay’s take on things assumes an increasing momentum and power. This is a work of concision and insight.

Stevenson is presented as a person outstanding, not a creature enmeshed in his biography as is often the case. He is himself, a man in transition at a time of transition. Norquay’s removal of Stevenson from the biographical context—she is keenly aware of this well-trod territory and how it has the tendency to make biographies of Stevenson narratively redundant—allows her to position him in relation to his social and literary peers as simply that, peers, which in turn lets her discuss those peers on their own merits. She gives Stevenson a larger space within his own time. Literally larger, in the geographic sense and chronologically in relation to his literary contemporaries. Norquay’s conceptions lets us view Stevenson as responding, if only instinctively, to the transitional nature of that era’s publishing approach, to the changing notions about intellectual ownership, and to the traditional, idealized creative process of the author.

For all that Literary Networks is not a deliberate biography, the chapter case studies on Lemuel Bangs, Charles Baxter, Sidney Colvin, Stevenson’s immediate family and friend-collaborators, Arthur Quiller-Couch, and finally, Ricard Le Gallienne act to mirror Stevenson, reflecting who and how Stevenson was in a way more singular than mere biography might achieve.

THE NOTION OF TRANSITION

Literary Networks provides me with a welcome and unexpected context. My personal interest is in the creative process as a topic and in and of itself. I always land on the transitional moments: the twelfth-century Renaissance, the period of incunabula leading in to the age of the printing press, the so-called Industrial Revolution (especially in the United States), and the rise of the internet in its publicly accessible mode. Such liminal moments fascinate me and charge my creative approach. [3]

Transition, in its dual meaning as change and progression, operates on a personal level for Stevenson. His friendships and relationships, the really critical ones, have a creative and imaginative intimacy to them. He is a willing collaborator (if a sloppy businessman). As time progresses, as his social environment changes, he matures as a writer in terms of craft but, more intriguing to me, in terms of his imagination. That, I confess, more than the specifics of the matters of international publication and copyright are what stayed with me after reading.*

* Though I must hasten to clarify: As a student of writing history I find Norquay’s analysis of the transitions in the publishing industry, the subsequent contrasting approaches to the development of a reading community, and the notion of the popular versus literary value of Stevenson’s work to be virtually a separate, and most valuable, addition to my scholarly library.

Transitioning to Self

Until Stevenson took up permanent residence in Samoa, his nomadic ways—fueled by medical necessity in most instances though by personal and emotional necessity as well—were regarded by his personal and literary friends as a quirk. His travels fueled his writerly imagination and a reading public’s romantic notion of him. His time in Samoa changed him, however, much to the consternation of those who sought to publish on his behalf and, as Norquay considers, who might use their connection with Stevenson to personally or professionally profit on their own behalf.

Always complex psychologically, Stevenson’s engagement with Samoan politics, his responsibilities as literal and local clan patriarch, and an increasing sensibility that he was finally his own man, led him to write what he pleased or perhaps more accurately, write about matters closest to his heart: a broken relationship with a father and rich relationships with strong women.

Writing to his beloved cousin Bob Stevenson three months before his own death Stevenson muses on the notion of family, his own, over previous centuries. He says

What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of character and capacity that began with our grandfather! But as I go on in life, day by day. . . I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing, the commonest things are a burthen. . . . The prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic–or maenadic–foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit can reconcile me.” [4]

Here is a man who lived his entire life expecting death at any moment, who conformed then fought conformity, who turned away from the “polite face of life” to find his own face. Such an intensely personal and intimate life journey playing out over two oceans and multiple letters. And, it seems to me, within Literary Networks. It is a powerful work of scholarship to be sure. It seems, though, anyone taking on Stevenson takes him on his own terms. In discussing the development of her book, Norquay says she initially thought it would be

“. . . primarily text-based. Talking about ‘St. Ives’ . . . about ‘Weir of Hermiston’ . . . . but in a way it’s become more about the characters around Stevenson and their very different perceptions of Stevenson as an author and their very different engagements with him . . . .” [5]

Novelist and critic (and one of Norquay’s case study subjects), Arthur Quiller-Couch, describing him as their lodestar, reflects a perpetual present tense quality of Stevenson, a kind of enmeshment, where he is continues to be viewed through a personalized, present-tense lens by family, friends, and colleagues.

Norquay, by using the different frame of geography and literary mobility, frees Stevenson from the focused, limiting role of lodestar. His influence, she shows us, is more far-reaching in the spaces of authoring and publishing and long after his fiction had gone out of literary fashion.

REFLECTIONS

JA Jablonski Portrait - middle aged female presenting Caucasion person with short white hair and glasses wearing a royal blue kimono-style jacket over a white Oxford shirtMy tendency as a reader is invariably trinary, with my focus on the pragmatic, the associative, and that which I call the originative flux. As a pragmatic reader I take the story or text as is looking at or for the narrative who, what, when, why, and how. Problematic, sloppy, or casual writing annoys and distracts. If fiction, I wish to be taken, persuaded, challenged, entertained; if nonfiction I want to be informed, accurately and insightfully. And I want the writing done with grace, style, and some measure of verbal power.

As an associative reader I invariably, and involuntarily, associate what I am reading with whatever the reading might trigger, be that something else by the same author, or a different author, or a movie, or an image, or a comment from social media, a costume, a dream . . . whatever the text calls to mind. It is a combination of Rabbit Hole Syndrome and a kind of spontaneous and unpremeditated mind mapping. It can be massively distracting and intensely pleasurable.

The reading experience of originative flux, a mode that, like the muse does not always materialize, is something of a constant. My curiosity about the origination and the flux of creation is deep and voracious. I cannot but crave knowing the mind behind the making. Not the person, necessarily, though that may happen along the way. (I try to avoid parasocial interactions with creative others, not always successfully.)

Norquay captures me on all three levels. One of the delights in reading Norquay’s book is seeing a mind work in such a large way. Literary Networks is a work that manifests considerable scholarly range yet Norquay wears that mantle lightly. It enhances my personal experience as a reader. That her writing style is easy—in that it flows, is crafted yet not overwrought, is intellectually accessible while challenging—heightens my enjoyment. I delight in seeing an idea well-formulated and explained in the same way I find joy in seeing a perfectly executed double play in baseball or hearing the perfect balance of polyphonic music. I very much look forward to reading her other work.

 

Glenda Norquay - middle aged Caucasion women with chin-length ash blonde hair wearing an oatmeal-colored cardigan over red print shirtAuthor Info. Glenda Norquay is Professor Emerita in Scottish Literary Studies at the Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research focus is twofold: Scottish writing, specifically women’s fiction, the nineteenth-century and contemporary novel; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s fiction, criticism and publishing history.

In addition to the book I am considering here, Norquay has two other books on Stevenson: a monograph, RLS: Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading: The Reader as Vagabond, and R.L. Stevenson on Fiction: An Anthology of Literary and Critical Essays. She is currently editing his unfinished novel, St. Ives: Being The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England for the New Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson.

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

 ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.  

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Dec 6). Glenda Norquay’ | Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/12/06/glenda-norquay/


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Cover of Glenda Norquay’s book, Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: An Author Incorporated. From publisher website (Anthem Press).
    • “Stevenson’s map of Treasure Island.” From Wikipedia, listed as in the Public Domain.
    • Glenda Norquay, author portrait. From Professor Norquay’s Liverpool John Moores University profile.

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson by Henry Walter Barnett, 1893. Modified using the Picas art photo filter. Original image is in the public domain.

Portrait of J.A. Jablonski by Mike De Sisti. Used by permission.

Portrait of Glenda Norquay. From Professor Norquay’s profile for The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Edinburgh.

SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Norquay, Glenda. (2020). Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: The Author Incorporated. Anthem Press. 

[2] About this Book. (n.d.) Anthem Press.

[3] Works on historical transitions that I especially like:

[4] Letter to Bob Stevenson, 9 September 1894. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol 8, January 1893-December 1894. Letter #2782. Yale University Press, 1995, pg. 362).

[5] Norquay, Glenda. (2020, Nov 16). Robert Louis Stevenson Inc. | Prof. Glenda Norquay | LJMU English. YouTube video. Runtime: 15:14. Description: “Norquay discusses her new book about the transatlantic publishing networks of Robert Louis Stevenson and his literary circle.” The quotation above begins at timestamp 2:45.

Ursula Vernon | Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew

by | Oct 25, 2021 | Book Thoughts

Nurk cover, photo of Ursula Vernon, self-drawn portrait of Vernon with some of her characters

“She intrigued me and I wanted to know more
about this person – only to find she is quite the
person, possessing a full range of wit,
talent, curiosity, and humor.“

 

My childhood reading was almost entirely of the magical or historical sort.  The Oz books by L. Frank Baum were a mainstay as was a wonderfully old copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology. Narnia, Middle Earth, Pern, Earthsea . . . all came much later.  For me the universe of imagination was filled with early 20th-century and ancient classic mythologies.  Too young to hear the sly wit and irony within Baum’s writing or see the androgynous, sexualized undertones of Neill’s illustrations, and too unknowing about adult ways to think Zeus’ carrying off of nymphs or Circe’s entrapment of Odysseus and his men to be anything but an adventure story, I was fortunate to grow up truly innocent of heart.

Gustave Doré drawinf of Dante Alighieri in the Gloomy WoodNow, as Dante put it at the beginning of his Divine Comedy, “midway through the course my life”, when the “dark wood” is the complexity of adulthood and the onslaught of 21st century information age, it is less easy to retain one’s innocence or find it in storytelling. Angst, personal and global horrors, war, and violence in all manner of relationships, individual, collective, political, and whatnot, fill our many-formatted screens, our reading matter, and our lives. We bewail the loss of innocence yet so often do nothing to foster its existence.

So I was surprised and delighted to come across artist/writer/illustrator Ursula Vernon. This Wikipedia link refers to her as a creator of web comics and children’s books. I first came upon her as none of these things. I’d read a quote of hers somewhere which impressed me with its casual, tossed-off tone and fiercely tender insight, and which, I am embarrassed to say, I cannot now recall. She intrigued me and I wanted to know more about this person—only to find she is quite the person, possessing a full range of wit, talent, curiosity, and humor.

Vernon describes herself on her deviantART page as a “painter and a children’s book author.” She is very much more than that—human, sarcastic, fierce, whimsical, funny—but this post is not intended as an hagiographic advertisement. You can discover her for yourself via her website (and blog), Red Wombat Studio and Twitter (damn, she can be wickedly funny!).

 

Vernon writes under that surname (children’s books, the stunning webcomic Digger [1] and for adults as T. Kingfisher. The managing editor of M Parker Editing, Michelle Parker, has this insightful take on Vernon:

“The thing I love best about @UrsulaV‘s reworked fairy tales is how she reframes them using incredibly relatable POV characters as the lens, allowing readers to engage w/even the most absurd of stories. She is so good at bringing a deeply human element to the fantastical.” [2]

Here, I just want to natter on a bit about a book she published in 2008. It’s called Nurk. [3] It took me all of an hour to read and left me all hug-myself-happy and charmed. A book that can do that simple thing is a good book indeed. Happy and charmed: a neat little pair of emotions with which to begin any day.

 

1879 illustration of King John's Anger after Signing Magna ChartaI’ve read many children’s books and, as I began this post noting, many notable works of imaginative fiction. And I am a rather angry reader as a rule. That is, it doesn’t take much for a book to lose my interest or respect. As a former English teacher and theater major, and long-time information professional and educator (specializing in text analysis and classification) and an online librarian (specializing in research methods and building critical thinking skills), I cannot help but see the cracks in the scenery, the clunking of labored prose, the behind the scenes machinations of the making of a story.

I’ve been known to throw a book to the wall (violently) when something about it irks me on any one of many levels. It takes a really good writer to get past my wall of critical defenses. (And I am not saying this is the right way to read. I would love to be able to lose myself in any book I pick up, but me being me, it just isn’t possible.)

 

So . . . Nurk.

“Nurk is a quiet homebody of a shrew. But when a mysterious plea for help arrives in the mail, he invokes the spirit of his fearless warrior-shrew grandmother, Surka, and sets off to find the sender.” [from Vernon’s page on Nurk]
Cover of Nurk shows main character rowing a snail shell boatImmediately upon reading the first page, my hackles twitched.  I could hear hobbit and hitchhiker’s guide and all manner of many coy literary allusions. But something Vernon does, and does very well, managed to deflect my inner critic. She has the ability to make it all look and feel quite effortless.

 

Of course, the book seems to say, of course you are going to think of Bilbo Baggins when you read of a tiny little homebody shrew who loves all manner of food and comforts and whose legendary grandmother, the hero Surka, echoes Bilbo’s mother, Belladonna Took, “the ‘remarkable’ ninth child, and eldest daughter, of the Old Took and his wife Adamanta.” Stories about heroes, even those about tiny hobbits or even tinier shrews, should echo each other. That sensibility of the hero as a historic constant is why we love these stories in the first place. 

What Vernon does is reduce the Great Hero Drama to the matter-of-fact, wee universe of shrews, dragonflies, and mushrooms. And does so in a way that rekindles the emotions of what it is to be heroic via very small and simple actions. Nurk, unlike Mr. Baggins, has suffered tragedy, and his existence as a small mammal in a large world of predators makes timidity a logical act of self preservation. Yet within this timid heart is an heroic longing to do something grand. And this grand act begins as the momentous decision to return a mis-delivered letter.

 

I cannot tell much more of the tale without giving it way altogether, so I will let you explore it yourself. But I can say much about Vernon’s writing style, which is simultaneously simplistic in presentation and slightly tilted. Her humor is sly and modern.  On the one hand there is a kind of knowing wink towards the reader about these little funny creatures and their small worries and greater fears, while at the same time there is a genuine affection for them all, even the villainous mole. There is a breezy flow to her storytelling. And although one pretty much knows all will be be well, it’s not a given. What tickled me is that I found I really was in suspense about not just how it would end, but how it all would play out. I haven’t read a “kid’s book” that had me actually caring about “things” since I was, well, a kid! 

The illustrations are a delight as well. Inked in black on a flat white background, the line of her art is strong and easy in appearance. Whimsy abounds while cutesy is avoided (though cute isn’t). The creatures in this world are familiar and, in the case of the dragonflies, also very much not. Vernon’s sense of humor in relation to the representation of animals manifests the absurd blended with the deeply funny, even tender. And all are terrifically and confidently executed. You can get a sense of her overall approach on her Selected Artwork page here.

It must needs be mentioned that while Vernon refers to herself as a children’s book author and illustrator, she is a great deal more. Her genre is not herself. She is, in all the best ways, an Explorer who adventures out into imagined places and reports like a proper anthropologist. 

WikiFUR writes this about her:

“Ursula’s work uses a range of styles, sometimes realistic, sometimes humorous and cute. One of her recurring themes is Gearworld, a world that juxtaposes the organic and the inorganic. Gearworld is a recurring theme in the work of Ursula Vernon. It is typified by eroded concrete, iron, gears, and the melding of organic and inorganic – Steam pipe tree, for instance, or fish that live in glass tubes bolted to the walls. Gearworld is vast and changeable – the normal rules of the world do not apply consistently, or in some cases at all. It is inhabited by a range of peoples, some fantastic, others mundane, all of whom remain to be explored.”

 

In addition to several other books (see her website for more on these), Vernon has done two other things worth mentioning.  First, she and her partner Kevin  host a weekly podcast titled Kevin and Ursula Eat Cheap. Each week they review a range of pre-packaged foods and then rate them. Archives and updates to the show are available here.

Second, she posted a very important piece on her blog about the sexual harassment that took place in 2013 at a Con she does not name. Titled “On Con Sexual Harassment – Being An Ally Is Freaky As Hell“, she reported on something that happened and what she tried to do about it and what the folks running the Con did in positive response. Her post set off an extended conversation in many venues. I thank her and laud her for what she did and that she made it all public.

 “Keeping it real” is a corny cliche, but this is just what Vernon does. She reminds me of another Ursula who was noted for her realness and her bravery and deep imagination in writing, in opining, and in world-making: Ursula K. Le Guin. Their respective works are, in many ways, quite different, but in their quality of imagination and excellence of expression and execution, they are very much alike.  

 

 

NOTE: This essay is a modified version of one I originally published on my blog Dante’s Wardrobe.

 

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

 ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as a book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read. 

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Oct 25). Ursula Vernon | Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/10/25/vernon-nurk/


IMAGE CREDITS

Cover of Nurk by Ursula Vernon. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Portrait of Ursula Vernon. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Self-drawn portrait of Ursula Vernon with characters. From Vernon’s website, Red Wombat Studio.

Dante Alighieri. In a Gloomy Wood. Artist: Gustave Doré. From the From OldBooks.org.

[King] John’s Anger after Signing Magna Charta. From Charlotte M. Yonge’s Young Folks’ History of ENgland (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1879, pg. 101). Posted at ClipART ETC of the Florida Center for Instructional Technology.


SOURCES

[1] Vernon, Ursula. (2003-2011). Digger. Web comic version. Print version from Sofawolf Press.

[2] Parker, M. (aka Chelle). (2021, Nov 16). Twitter post.

[3] Vernon, Ursula. (2008). Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew. Harcourt Children’s Books.