Category: books

(I’ve noticed lately that, by the time my monthly book round-up arrives, sometimes I’ve forgotten everything I was going to say about a particular title.  This is not necessarily a loss to the world, but I figured, time and energy permitting, I could probably stand to do some individual reactions.)

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.

There’s been a certain buzz around Jo Baker’s Longbourn for a few months.  The manuscript was the subject of an international bidding war, and the film rights were sold before the book was even released.  I followed all this with great interest, as I’ve been toying for the last few years about retelling Pride & Prejudice from the servants’ point of view, and obviously I was OUTRAGED (for a whole five minutes) that someone else had had the idea, researched and written it while I was still vaguely wondering if early 19th century servants were generally literate.

By the time of release, the only thing holding me back from buying and reading it was money, ie, there’s an electricity bill due soon, and the ebook is $16 in Australia.  Cue a 50% off code for Kobo (sept50, if you’re wondering, valid with most publishers until the end of September), finally it was in my hot little hands.  Or at least my hot little reader.

The best fan fiction, in my opinion, comes from a place of love and affection for the source material, and Baker clearly has that in spades.  Even when the servants’ perspective casts an unflattering light on beloved characters, it’s eminently fair.  And many of those characters who aren’t especially beloved — Mr Collins, for example — get a sympathetic moment.

(I derive a very small level of amusement, however, from describing Longbourn as fan fiction, as it has apparently been elevated above the usual romantically-oriented — ie, feminine and foolish — type of Austen-related novel.  Longbourn is, like, proper literature?  It’s got war scenes and swearing, that’s how you know it’s not just some girly book.  Man, why do I read mainstream reviews?)

As a derivative work, Baker takes the Bennet family and turns them into flesh and blood.  Literally, as Sarah, the heroine, cleans their menstrual cloths.  It’s a truth generally unacknowledged that Lizzy Bennet would have had body hair, sweaty underclothes, all the bits and pieces which, even today, we prefer to shave away and not talk about.

And as an original novel about Sarah confronting the limitations of a servant’s role and striving to find her own path, Longbourn is compelling and really enjoyable.  I read it in a day because I couldn’t stop.  Sarah’s domestic background inform her perceptions in a vivid and fascinating way, and her hunger to learn and see more — without looking down on those who don’t share her ambitions — is enjoyable.

However.  You knew there’d be a however, right?

There comes a point where Baker’s story clashes with Austen’s.  In fandom terms, she’s got her canon confused, and the result is that the entire Bingley family is mischaracterised.

Mr Bingley, right?  He’s new money.  His father made a fortune in trade, and since they’re described as “a respectable family from the north of England”, it has generally been taken that the Bingley fortune came from fabric.  But Austen doesn’t say precisely how the money was made, only that it was through trade, ie, mercantile operations.

Baker suggests that Bingley Sr was the hands-on owner of a sugar plantation somewhere in the Bahamas, a slave-owner who (it is hinted) fathered Ptolemy Bingley, the charming mixed race Netherfield servant who catches Sarah’s eye.

This … does not work for me.  It doesn’t fit what we know about the Bingleys and their source of wealth, not to mention that it’s rather incongruous to suppose that a man may own a plantation, yet still regard himself as a resident of England, and yet didn’t bother to buy property in his home country.

The Darcys, with their much older fortune, make more sense as plantation and slave-owners, although Darcy Sr is so closely associated with Pemberly that it’s hard to imagine him leaving for years at a time.  If the Darcys have plantations in the Americas, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t, they would be overseen by stewards and agents, not the family itself.

This was just a minor frustration — especially since I wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate change to the book, or Baker’s misunderstanding — except that I was also increasingly unhappy about the author’s treatment of Ptolemy.  He starts out as a charismatic presence, being friendly to Sarah and tantalising her with his knowledge of exotic, faraway places (like London).  He has a wry sense of humour and an appealing cynicism when it comes to his employers, and is generally a well-constructed character.

But then … nothing.  Ptolemy is just a vehicle for Sarah to learn more about the world, and then he disappears, returning now and then to share some piece of information that will advance Sarah’s goals.  His ambitions are unrealised, his presence diminished, and ultimately he becomes a token.

I couldn’t help but contrast Ptolemy’s treatment with that of James, the male protagonist/Sarah’s other love interest.  Much is made of the fact that James is an abolitionist (someone in Sleepy Hollow fandom this week described abolitionism as the historical equivalent of “I’m not a racist, but…“).  Late in the novel, following a long, draining, bloodthirsty sequence covering the experiences of British soldiers in Europe, James comes to the realisation that being a volunteer soldier in the army is exactly like slavery.

The problem with ereaders is that it’s really hard to throw a book when it annoys you.  I mean, you can, but instead of a satisfying bang, you just get bits of plastic flying everywhere.  I assume.  I did not actually throw my book, I just facepalmed a bit.

Now, I had really liked James up to this point, and the refreshing way his attitude to the ~love triangle~ was to go, “Well, if Sarah loves Ptolemy, I’ll be sad, I guess, but it’s her decision, and it won’t kill me.”  Yes!  More of that sort of common sense in my fiction, please!  Less of the spurious comparisons to slavery!

With all this, the revelation that Wickham is an actualfax child sex predator was almost by the by.  (But I don’t agree with that characterisation, either.  Underage heiresses aren’t exactly equivalent to pre-pubescent maids.)

Now, I really enjoyed Longbourn.  I cried at the end, and they were tears of “I love this book and the end is so good and I am a happy reader!”  But what has stayed with me since I read it is the mishandling of the race/slavery issues.  I think it’s valuable and important to look at the social issues that form the context of Austen’s novels, but this was badly done.

And I wonder, aside from Mansfield Park, and I do love the revisionist adaptation of 1999, which of Austen’s novels have space for a slavery narrative?  Three centuries from now, will people look back at contemporary novels and wonder why none of the characters think about the sweatshops that made their clothes and electronics?  I don’t fault Baker for trying, and I don’t for a second believe she intended for a tokenistic exploration of slavery and racism, but that was the result, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. 

(I’m kinda hesitant to call my book posts “reviews”.  That suggests a level of detachment and professionalism that I can’t really guarantee.  Sometimes I just want to feelsplode all over the internet.  Hence “response”.)

I have no qualms at all in admitting that my creative writing background is in fan fiction.  Been writing fic since I was 12, been participating in the community since I was 16.  It’s a useful way to learn valuable skills (with the general exception of worldbuilding, unfortunately).  Not only is the internet chockers with guides to How To Write Fic But Good, but if you break the rules, people will tell you about it.  Nicely, most of the time.

Most of fan fiction’s rules can be broken, and at least someone out there will find the result entertaining.  The exception, in my experience, is this:

Never, ever, ever put author’s notes in the middle of the story.

That’s a common rookie mistake, and except in parodies of bad fic, I’ve never seen it executed well.  It’s the kind of thing that has me backspacing right out of a story.  (In this age of downloading longer fics in epub or Kindle format, it’s jarring enough to hit the otherwise acceptable end-or-beginning-of-chapter-notes.)

Until I read Losers in Space, I had never seen the mid-story author’s note appear in published fiction.  And I’ve still never seen it executed well.

Losers in Space is a YA science fiction novel set in the 22nd century, when famine, war and social divisions (and, apparently, any culture that’s not American) has been replaced by a system where work is optional, the UN provides everyone with a comfortable upper middle class income, and a tiny minority have the opportunity to become “eenies” — people whose talent or fame entitles them to much greater wealth and privilege.

The catch is, it’s not hereditary.  On reaching adulthood, the children of eenies have to demonstrate that they’re entitled to enjoy the lifestyle of their parents:  through talent, through academic achievement, or by becoming really, really famous.

As the book opens, a group of wannabes — picture the Hilton sisters, a few lesser British royals and maybe some washed up K-pop stars — set out to become famous by stowing away on a ship to Mars.  Sure, they’ll be in trouble when they’re caught, but they’ll be sooooooo famous.

The problem is, one of them is a sociopath.

Sounds pretty great, right?

In the foreword  author Barnes makes a big deal out of this being hard SF.  But he doesn’t want lots of exposition-heavy dialogue or infodumps, so he’s going to explain the sciencey stuff and some of the social background via … author’s notes shoved into the story.  They’re labelled as “notes for the interested”, and he claims it’s possible to skip them if you’re not interested.

I don’t have a science brain, so yes, I skipped over the impenetrably mathematical or scientific notes.  Problem is, there was also a lot of significant worldbuilding stuff in the notes.  And the characters still had a lot of conversations revolving entirely around technobabble, while much of the social context was limited to the notes.

I honestly can’t believe an editor let this happen!  I wanted to get out my red pen and start correcting it, or maybe cut up the book and rearrange it so it worked better.  It was just straight up bad.  I feel like the worldbuilding should have been incorporated into the story, and most of the science notes could have been removed completely.  Maybe posted on the author’s website for interested readers. It got so that I resented every page I had to flick past.

I was also unconvinced by a lot of aspects of the worldbuilding, which was fairly heavy on the cliche. It was interesting, but not necessarily plausible.

What kept me reading were the plot and the characters, which were equal parts interesting and frustrating.  Needless to say, the stowaway plan goes terribly wrong, and the teens have to fend for themselves, discovering new reserves of intelligence and competence, whilst also dealing with the sociopath in their midst.

I honestly can’t put my finger on what it was about the plot that bugged me, on account of how it was continually being interrupted by author’s notes.  The pacing occasionally lagged, but mostly I think the problem was that the characters never completely gelled for me.

For example, at the very beginning, as we’re introduced to our characters, the narrator gives a quick summary of their personalities: morose social climber, whiny self-pitier, desperately socially awkward, creepy pervert, sociopath, etc.  But many of these traits are quickly forgotten.  A couple of characters have really pleasing arcs as they evolve from the unlikable people they were into productive members of society, but most of them, as soon as they begin to interact with the heroine, show hardly any sign of their introductory traits.  They seem to be completely different people.  And while the heroine marvels several times that she never appreciated her peers before, the turnaround is unconvincing.

I also had a lot of trouble with the hero, because I couldn’t quite shake the first impression of him as a creepy pervert who essentially makes fanvids from pornography and always has a camera on the girls.

Meanwhile, the villain is supposed to be a charming sociopath, except at no point is he actually charming.  I’ve had some dealings with sociopaths in my life, and generally they sneak up on you.  I mean, one of the key aspects of sociopathy is the ability to pass for a normal person, leaving trails of people in your wake wondering if they’re the ones who are crazy.  Derlock (…I KNOW) doesn’t do that.  He’s just straight up evil.

It’s a compelling kind of straight up evil, though, and part of the reason I kept reading was to see him get his comeuppance.  SPOILERS:  (highlight to reveal, and I apologise if this doesn’t work for you!) He doesn’t.  He gets away with everything until the epilogue, in which it’s briefly mentioned that the heroine had him killed.  

One curious thing about this book is that it has a bunch of reviews on GoodReads praising it for breaking out of the YA dystopian SF mould.  It’s true that Losers in Space is a bit different from the recent run of YA SF, but … not dystopian?  This is a world where a crime is the intellectual property of the criminal, meaning that a rapist or murderer will be exonerated if he can demonstrate sufficient media interest in his “work”.  There’s a scene where the girls explain this law to the boys, who have never heard of it.  The girls, on the other hand, had a special class about it, because it puts them all at risk.

Suffice to say, a lot of the “thank heavens it’s not dystopian” reviews are coming from blokes.

It’s details like that — a literal rape culture — that kept me reading, because I was continually seeing the seeds of a much better book between the lines.  Genetically engineered animal with human intelligence?  GREAT!  He’s a pink elephant named Fwuffy with a phonetically-rendered speech impediment?  UM.

So, yes, it’s all a bit mixed.  ON THE OTHER HAND, I couldn’t put it down (except when I hit an author’s note), and I’ve just had 1200 words worth of thoughts about it.

Other stuff

• This future is not white.  One character is described as a “pink-headed Caucasian throwback”, from which we can assume that he’s the only white kid in the group.  The heroine was genetically engineered for very dark skin. 
• Nevertheless, of the nine people depicted on the cover, four are white, and the central girl, presumably the heroine, has light brown skin.
• Hey, I like to keep track of these things.
• Very few of the characters have mothers in their lives.  This seems to be a future where fathers get custody.  The heroine’s mother essentially abandoned her for reasons which aren’t fully explained.  But remember, not a dystopia.
• The heroine’s father is an actor who has made his name as a leading man.  Most of his movies seem to be remakes of early to mid 20th century films, which are quoted several times.  It’s a nifty trick for creating a body of pop culture that’s familiar to the audience, or so I thought when I Arthur C. Clarke did it in 2010.  I was also eleven at the time.

I heard, via the blogosphere, that BookDepository will cease to sell ebooks on 30 June.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” said I, because the final books in Anne Digby’s Trebizon series are only available in ebook form, and the easiest place to buy them is BookDepository.

I have to admit that I’d become rather lax about reading the series, because you can only read so many boarding school novels in a row before you explode.  And, frankly, the longer the series goes on, the less I enjoy it.

The first book was literally inspirational.  I read it for the first time earlier this year, and promptly went looking for a contemporary Australian boarding school series.  And when it turned out that didn’t exist, I started writing it.  (Other people do that too, right?)

Somewhere around the fourth book, though, the Enid Blyton In The ’80s vibe started to take second place to a rather dull story about the main character’s tennis career, the supporting characters became broader, and the overall plots became less plausible.  So I took a break, and figured, well, obviously BookDepository really appreciates the AU$2.50 I was spending on these books, why would they ditch them?

Bah.  Now I shall have to find another dealer source.

ETA:  Panic averted!  The books are now available through the Kindle store.  Which is less ideal, because I already have half the series in ePub form, and the price has gone up to $3.99.  But I guess it’s better than a kick in the head.  Right?