Eve's Alexandria

I Read It, So You Don't Have To (several years too late)

I didn't plan it this way, but apparently this is turning into the season of snarky posts about books I've really disliked this year. Well, on to round two: The Historian (2005), by Elizabeth Kostova.

The Historian was published to a cacophony of hype. I recall it sounding quite good at the time, though not (apparently) good enough to break it out of the chains of my TBR shelves, where it had languished from 2006 until this spring. In April, I picked it up to take with me on Reading Week. Reading Week is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an annual holiday with a group of friends, for which we hire a big self-catering house (in the Peak District, this year) for a week and sit around reading books, talking about books, and drinking wine. It seemed like a good start: a chunky historical-supernatural potboiler about Dracula to ease me into the week.

Any normal person probably would have given up the ghost after the deeply annoying prologue - on which more below - or else after not one but two people in that house in the Peak District glanced at the cover of my book, grimaced with recognition, and said, "Oh, that," in tones of loathing. Two people with really quite dissimilar tastes in books had tried it, judged it, and found it wanting.

I could have stopped there. I should have.

But no, I soldiered on. Thanks to my obsessive-compulsive inability to ever give up on a book once I've started it (how could you abandon a book half-read? what if it suddenly turns sublime in the last chapter and changes your life?), I dragged myself through all 700 tedious, laboured pages, all the while gritting my teeth and sighing loudly and generally getting on everyone's nerves.

As noted above, the book gets off to a deeply uninspiring start, in an irritatingly mannered "Note to the Reader", wherein the narrator/'compiler' of the book meditates on the meaning of the events it recounts. So far, so cod-academic, and then we reach this gem, on the 15th-century milieu of a certain Dracula:

The more distant history within this story I have researched as carefully as I would any academic text. The glimpses of religious and territorial conflict between an Islamic East and a Judeo-Christian West will be painfully familiar to a modern reader.

Wait. Wait. Did you really just suggest that the 'West' in the time of Vlad III (1431-76) was in any meaningful sense "Judaeo-Christian"?

This is so utterly, utterly historically ignorant I barely know where to begin.

What, exactly, is 'the West' in this formulation? England, a country whose Jewish communities were expelled in 1290, and not allowed to return to until the 1650s? France, in which Jews were banned from living between 1394 and the early 17th century? Austria, where they were exiled in the 15th century? Shall I carry on, or just point Kostova to this handy map - on wikipedia! that's about as mainstream as information gets! - of how 'the West' treated Jews in this period and later? And that's not even going near the pogroms, the rafts of anti-Semitic legislation, the forced conversions, or the church- and state-endorsed extortion and theft.

Let's be clear, here. This ludicrously anachronistic, morally bankrupt piece of American jargon is a wilful erasure of centuries of massacres, torture, and institutionalised oppression, essentially because the author seems unable or unwilling to believe that - Dracula aside - anyone could give those evil Muslim Ottomans a run for their money in the uncivilised brutality stakes. After all, the Ottoman empire, as one character tells us, was "such a strange mixture of aesthetic refinement and barbaric tactics" (it's like Said never wrote Orientalism...). The reason Dracula is so evil is that he spent his formative years as a hostage at the Ottoman court, where he learned how to impale people (why he would bother going all the way to Edirne for that, since impaling was a punishment used in the 'Judaeo-Christian West' as well, I've no idea). Never mind that Ottoman law had a protected place for religious minorities, or that tens of thousands of Jews fled to the Ottoman empire after 1492 to escape the Spanish Inquisition. The Empire was by no means a place without suffering for Jews, but it was arguably a more stable one for them than the European alternative in this period. But no, no, none of that's important: just remember, 'West' good, 'East' bad.

The other part of the passage from the prologue quoted above - the bit about research, which clearly was not done - lets me segue from the offensive, to the simply vexing. Let's talk about one area where I can fairly quickly judge Kostova's research: the novel's image of Oxford, where a part of the action (well, 'action' - this is not a fast-moving book) is set.

Things get off to a poor start when the narrator gets off a bus on Broad Street (which one? the only bus that drops off on Broad Street is the open-topped tourist one), from where the Radcliffe Camera can apparently be seen. No, it can't; the Sheldonian Theatre can, though, so perhaps Kostova got her round buildings confused. The characters then enter a college on Broad Street which was apparently "endowed by Edward III, in the thirteenth century". Since Edward III wasn't even born until 1312, I find this unlikely. His dad Edward II founded a college in the 13th century, but that was Oriel, which is some way from Broad St (and definitely not "across the way" from the Radcliffe Camera, either). Hertford was founded right at the end of the 13th century (but not by any of the Edwards), and part of it is at the edge of Broad St and has a view of the Camera, so perhaps this is what she means, but by now I can pretty much guarantee I've already put more thought and research into this than Kostova did.

Nor do we have to nitpick Kostova's sense of history or her sense of place - although both are rather central to what the novel appears to be trying to do. Her shaky grasp of her own characters is enough. Take the present-day narrator's father, who is initially described by his daughter as unheathily buttoned-up:

Looking at him in his neat tweed jacket and turtleneck, I felt he had denied himself every adventure in life except diplomacy, which consumed him. He would have been happier living a little, I thought; with him, everything was so serious.

Thirty pages later, and we're being told he's basically the opposite of this:

My father's love of freedom was contagious, and I liked the way he loosened his shirt collar and tie when we headed off for a new place.

So first he never relaxes, then he relaxes with a predictable regularity. Apparently Kostova doesn't even care enough about her main characters to maintain any sort of consistency or logic (continuity, in film terms) in the way they're portrayed.

Luckily, I didn't care either, before too long. Because the central issue with The Historian is: I was only able to get so distracted by my nitpicking because the book wasn't holding my attention. At all.

A more tedious take on the Dracula legend you couldn't hope to use as a door-stop. The plot wanders glacially from library to archive to accidentally surviving collection of really dull letters (and I say this as someone whose beloved day job involves exactly these things), characters spend hundreds of pages failing to notice details like their striking resemblence to portraits of Dracula (pointed out to the reader ad nauseam) or the fact that key people shared the same surname (oh my goodness, could they be related? our narrator wonders, a good 80 pages or so after the reader spotted it immediately). Nothing happens in a mere sentence where three paragraphs can be ground out; possibly the goal is suspense, but the effect is boredom. The plot relies on endless chains of hilarious coincidence instead of people actually working things out. Above all, no-one involved appears to have the sense they were born with. No wonder poor Dracula waited so many fruitless centuries for people to find his tomb, even though he left them convenient maps in hundreds of books in libraries all over Europe.

Reader, I'm giving it to a charity shop. Although that feels a bit mean on whoever is unfortunate enough to buy it.

Dreary nonsense. Avoid.

~~Nic

To Have and Have Not

Time for another reprint of a review I first published elsewhere; this piece, about EJ Swift's debut novel Osiris, appeared in SFX magazine back at the beginning of this year, and somehow or other I seem to have forgotten to repost it until now. Still, book two of the series is out in the US next month (although not in the UK until February next year, alas), so let's pretend I'm just being timely, eh?

Enjoy.

--

Dystopia is back. Granted, it’s always been literary fiction’s preferred mode for dabbling in genre, and in the Young Adult field you can’t move for the stuff. But only recently have writers of adult sf begun returning, in any number, to the gloomy well labelled Tales Of Little Folks Crushed Beneath The Wheels Of The Merciless System. Yay?

Step up, little folks: Adelaide is a spoiled and disaffected scion of the Rechnovs, a ludicrously wealthy family whose members have massive political clout within the floating city of Osiris and “more skeletons than they have closets”; Vikram is a boy from the wrong side of the tracks – aka the Western Quarter, where Osiris’s poor are kept cooped up and half-starved behind checkpoints bristling with guns – with a burning sense of injustice. Together, they fight crime.

Well, sort of. Together, they form an uneasy alliance with conflicting goals related to crime in a kind of abstract sense, and spend much of their time not being entirely honest with each other. Both are compelling, flawed individuals, although Vikram never quite convinces as a fish out of water among the rich, fitting in too easily unless the story requires him not to. The plot works better as background mystery than – as it becomes towards the end – foreground drama; but it’s the characters, and what their lives show us of the fascinating, stratified world of Osiris, that are the heart of this promising debut novel.

~~Nic

"There should be a difference."

"But I must tell you another thing of Fanny, so odd and so stupid. Do you know, she says she does not want to learn either music or drawing."

"To be sure, my dear, that is very stupid indeed, and shows a great want of genius and emulation. But, all things considered, I do not know whether it is not as well that it should be so, for, though you know (owing to me) your papa and mama are so good as to bring her up with you, it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as you are;—on the contrary, it is much more desirable that there should be a difference."

Such were the counsels by which Mrs Norris assisted to form her nieces' minds.

It's often been said that, of all Jane Austen's novels, Mansfield Park (1814) is the problematic one; the one that's hardest to like. Heroine Fanny Price gives Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles a serious run for her money in the insipid passivity stakes, love interest Edmund Bertram provides suitably vacuous and hypocritical support as a proto-Angel Clare, and the central romance has all the warmth and spark of a bag of ice cubes; indeed, Austen appears to care so little about its denouement that she disposes of it in a single, rather acerbic line:

I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Edmund did cease to care about Miss Crawford, and became as anxious to marry Fanny as Fanny herself could desire.

And yet: I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It's a delicious piece of imaginative observation, as you would expect. Also - new to me, this, in my third Austen novel - while I couldn't stand a single character, I had an absolutely fantastic time hating them all and hoping they'd die in pain and/or penury. Through their every insufferably smug, stupid or selfish act is laced Austen's never-more-biting wit: sometimes in the form of direct commentary, sometimes content to let characters hoist themselves with their own petards. I wouldn't want to claim Austen deliberately set out to create a parade of unlikable grotesques; Fanny's early situation, in particular, is treated with considerable sympathy, and many of those around her have a mix of positive and negative personality traits. Rather, this: if Pride and Prejudice is a novel in which most characters start out as essentially well-meaning, and most have become better people by the end (smarter, kinder, more self-aware), Mansfield Park feels like an exploration of the idea that people don't, by and large, change. Most people respond to adversity, or to the discovery that they're wrong about something, not by trying to correct their faults (as, say, Darcy and Elizabeth do), but by clinging more firmly to their flawed instincts and convictions.

Instead of Mansfield Park being a failure, because so many of the outcomes for its characters are unsatisfactory (when judged in terms of their development, or of what they 'deserve'), I think it can be read as frankly - even savagely - pessimistic: for good or ill, personality is shaped by the environment in which we grow up, and it remains largely static thereafter.

Upbringing is a key theme of the novel. At its opening, ten-year-old Fanny Price is abruptly transplanted from her chaotic childhood home, a place marked by "such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else" that her harried mother (who, we're told, "married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly") opts to throw her eldest daughter on the mercy of her wealthier relations, Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram of Mansfield Park. That the great estate is not going to be an especially welcoming place is signalled in a conversation about whether the Bertrams should adopt such a lowly girl; "We shall probably see much to wish altered in her, and must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner", says Sir Thomas, but these things can probably remedied, and they can always send her away again if she proves to be a "dangerous" influence on his more well-bred daughters. "I hope she will not tease my poor pug", is the only - characteristically sagacious - contribution from Lady Bertram.

So it proves. (The 'unwelcoming' part, that is, not the pug-teasing. No-one's that mean in this book.) Mrs Norris, Lady Bertram's other, widowed sister, spends the journey from Portsmouth to Mansfield Park reminding Fanny at length "of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce", such that by the time Fanny arrives, to find an unfriendly house where "nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort", she's far too cowed and miserable to speak up for herself, and in any case is convinced that said misery is simply a sign of her own wicked ingratitude.

The pattern continues, and deepens, as Fanny grows up; where her cousins are pampered and indulged, Fanny is treated only slightly better than a servant, shivering in an unheated attic room on the rare occasions when she is not expected to be at Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris' beck and call, making tea and doing their needlework and generally being reminded at every opportunity of her dependence on their patronage. Mrs Norris, perhaps because of her awareness that she, too, owes much to the Bertrams' generosity - she lives in a house on the estate, granted her by her brother-in-law - is particularly keen to reinforce the hierarchy. When Fanny is invited to dine at a neighbour's one evening, Lady Bertram's reaction is bemusement and twittery alarm ("But why should Mrs. Grant ask Fanny? [...] How came she to think of asking Fanny? Fanny never dines there, you know, in this sort of way. I cannot spare her, and I am sure she does not want to go. Fanny, you do not want to go, do you?"); Mrs Norris, however, does not mince her words:

"The nonsense and folly of people’s stepping out of their rank and trying to appear above themselves, makes me think it right to give you a hint, Fanny, now that you are going into company without any of us; and I do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins [...] That will never do, believe me. Remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last."

With a relish that can really only be described as malicious, she goes on to tell Fanny that it looks like it might rain this evening, but under no circumstances should she imagine the carriage will be sent for her; she'll have to walk back. When Sir Thomas gives this idea short shrift, asking Fanny what time she wants the carriage, Mrs Norris - "red with anger" - comes as close as she ever does in the book to defying him (as a rule, she agrees with him as often and as fervently as possible, even if it means utterly changing her stance in the middle of a conversation), insisting that "Fanny can walk". She loses, but it's a disturbing illustration of how bitterly some will fight to ensure the 'difference' of status and privilege is maintained.

Environment is also crucial in the formation of the character of Fanny's cousins. A pivotal sequence of the novel concerns an extended visit by Sir Thomas to Antigua, to oversee his estates there, in what may be Austen's most direct engagement with the connection between slave-based colonial wealth and the lives of her English landed elites. His absence, Austen notes censoriously, "was unhappily most welcome" to his daughters, Maria and Julia, who are thus freed to moon over their somewhat caddish neighbour Henry Crawford, a process culminating in a disastrous, borderline scandalous attempt to stage a comic play at Mansfield Park, in which all concerned spend a bit too much time rehearsing alone with members of the opposite sex. Lady Bertram basically ignores the whole thing, while Mrs Norris, far from keeping a watchful eye on her charges' respectability, tears into Fanny when the latter - out of a combination of shyness and moral scruples - says she'd rather not take part. Mrs Norris labels Fanny "a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her - very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is".

The play ends badly for all concerned - hormonal young people in a sexually-repressive society get a bit over-excited when given the chance to interact, who would've thought? - but it is only the most obvious  example of the damaging effect of Mrs Norris' style of upbringing, with her attitude that all things are permitted to certain, special individuals. Reflecting on the sisters' respective fates near the end of the novel, Austen is explicit in her judgement that the pernicious influence of Mrs Norris stretched beyond this one incident:

That Julia escaped better than Maria was owing, in some measure, to a favourable difference of disposition and circumstance, but in a greater to her having been less the darling of that very aunt, less flattered and less spoilt. Her beauty and acquirements had held but a second place.

Maria is not a particularly sympathetic character: she follows Mrs Norris' example in treating Fanny with cultured contempt, she shows little intelligence or self-restraint, and - having had her heart broken by Henry Crawford - she launches into a hasty marriage "being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry". Marrying someone you don't at least respect is never a recipe for success in an Austen story, and when Maria throws it all away some time later for the sake of an angry, self-defeating fling with Henry it comes as no real surprise. But it's hard not to feel a little sorry for her when her father refuses to take her back under his roof, after the end of both her affair and her marriage:

Maria had destroyed her own character, and he would not, by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, by affording his sanction to vice, or in seeking to lessen its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such misery in another man's family as he had known himself.

As if the patriarchy's sexual double standards coming down on her wasn't bad enough, worse lurks in the form of her saviour:

It ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an establishment being formed for them in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.

Life alone with Mrs Norris; I don't think anyone deserves such a fate. (Perhaps I don't hate all the characters as much as I thought I did...)

The final set of characters who are held up - by other characters within the novel - as an emblem of The Wrong Upbringing are the Crawfords, rakish Henry and his forthright sister, Mary. They are a dazzling, charismatic pair (or certainly they appear so to people as starved of company their own age as the younger Bertrams of Mansfield Park): charming, gregarious, intelligent, and largely indifferent to the emotions of anyone but themselves. Henry, I have already dealt with: he strings along the Bertram sisters, and breaks both their hearts; later, he turns his eye on Fanny, besieging her with declarations of affection and unwanted offers of marriage, and exercising his own form of patronage (getting Fanny's brother William a good post in the navy) in an effort to either make her feel in his debt (Fanny's gratitude deficit problem strikes again), or demonstrate his sincerity, depending on how cynical you're feeling as you read. (Guess how I read it.) I don't think he's actively cruel, but he's certainly destructive in his unthinking pursuit of the pleasures to which he feels entitled.

Mary, meanwhile, divides her attentions between the two Bertram brothers, Thomas (the dissolute one, who will inherit) and Edmund (the earnest younger son, who's going to become a curate). As Abigail has noted, readers of Mansfield Park have tended to view Mary quite favourably; her frankness and wit, especially set against Fanny's essential dullness, has put some in mind of Elizabeth Bennet. I wouldn't go that far, by any means, but there's no doubt she's a refreshing diversion from the priggishly self-satisfied Fanny and Edmund show. She also shows good judgement and generosity in being more willing than anyone else in the novel to take Fanny on her own terms, rather than treating her as the status difference dictates, and to defend her and draw critical attention to the way she is treated at Mansfield Park:

"I wish you a better fate, Miss Price, than to be the wife of a man whose amiableness depends upon his own sermons; for though he may preach himself into a good-humour every Sunday, it will be bad enough to have him quarrelling about green geese from Monday morning till Saturday night."

"I think the man who could often quarrel with Fanny," said Edmund affectionately, "must be beyond the reach of any sermons."

Fanny turned farther into the window; and Miss Crawford had only time to say, in a pleasant manner, "I fancy Miss Price has been more used to deserve praise than to hear it."

I'm also less inclined than Abigail to condemn Mary so utterly for her rather mercenary attitude to marriage, which is signalled early on when she declares, "I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage", and is maintained in her plan to marry Thomas rather than Edmund, even though she much prefers the latter, because the former promises to bring with him rather more wealth and status. My problem with Mary is not her calculation in this - given how few options were open to a woman of her time and station to exercise control over the course of her life, I think she's entitled to marry for whatever reason she prioritises - but the fact that she inflicts significant emotional damage in the way she carries out her plan, and with little apparent regret.

Mary and Henry, in other words, are both highly selfish; not in wanting what they want, but in their lack of regard for the consequences to other people of their getting it. In Mary, this is is seen not only in the way she toys with Edmund, but also in her wilful blindness to her brother's flaws. She is baffled and offended by Fanny's refusal to return Henry's attentions; when Fanny points out, quite reasonably, that Henry hasn't exactly shown himself to be a trustworthy potential suitor, what with being a massive cad to Maria and Julia and everything, she responds airily:

"Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt, and cared very little for the havoc he might be making in young ladies’ affections. I have often scolded him for it, but it is his only fault; and there is this to be said, that very few young ladies have any affections worth caring for. And then, Fanny, the glory of fixing one who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one’s power to pay off the debts of one’s sex! Oh! I am sure it is not in woman’s nature to refuse such a triumph."

Fanny shook her head. “I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman’s feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of."

There is a shocking callousness to Mary's sentiments here; a complete denial of the reality of how precarious is a woman's status and reputation in a society such as theirs. She has a certain unthinking privilege here, of course, because unlike Maria she has little family to shame. Even after Henry has ruined Maria's life, Mary continues to excuse him, even having the gall to blame Fanny for the situation, saying (as reported by Edmund):

"Why would not she have him? It is all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Henry would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object. He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Rushworth again. It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham."

In what way is it Fanny's job to make Henry learn how to behave? Not that Mary is alone in this idea; Mrs Norris, predictably, also blames Fanny for her high-handed decision to refuse a guy who can't keep his hands off other women. Edmund, for his part, wasn't always so taken aback by the very notion that Fanny's duty was to make Henry a better person; indeed, before Maria ran off with Henry, Edmund tried to persuade Fanny of exactly the same thing. When Fanny told Edmund she couldn't marry Henry because they have completely different temperaments ("There never were two people more dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable"), this is the really helpful and life-affirming exchange that followed:

"I am persuaded that he does not think, as he ought, on serious subjects."

"Say, rather, that he has not thought at all upon serious subjects, which I believe to be a good deal the case. How could it be otherwise, with such an education and adviser? Under the disadvantages, indeed, which both have had, is it not wonderful that they should be what they are? Crawford’s feelings, I am ready to acknowledge, have hitherto been too much his guides. Happily, those feelings have generally been good. You will supply the rest; and a most fortunate man he is to attach himself to such a creature - to a woman who, firm as a rock in her own principles, has a gentleness of character so well adapted to recommend them. He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity. He will make you happy, Fanny; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything."

"I would not engage in such a charge," cried Fanny, in a shrinking accent; "in such an office of high responsibility!"

This section was perhaps the only time in the novel after the first few chapters that I felt any real sympathy with Fanny, or any anger on her behalf. Just as they have ever since she was moved to Mansfield Park, every single one of her relations - the people she trusts - assumes they have the right to dictate Fanny's life to her: refusing to take her expressed wishes remotely seriously, belittling her fears and intelligent objections alike, playing on her deep sense of social convention and obligation (Lady Bertram: "you must be aware, Fanny, that it is every young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this"), and even (in the case of her uncle) telling her she obviously doesn't understand her own feelings. Of course, Fanny hardly helps herself in this regard; so determined is she to be polite and self-effacing that she shrinks from speaking as strongly and directly as she might:

Fanny knew her own meaning, but was no judge of her own manner. Her manner was incurably gentle; and she was not aware how much it concealed the sternness of her purpose. Her diffidence, gratitude, and softness made every expression of indifference seem almost an effort of self-denial; seem, at least, to be giving nearly as much pain to herself as to him.

All it takes is the discovery that her uncle has ordered a fire to be lit in her room before her faith in her own judgement starts wavering:

A fire! it seemed too much; just at that time to be giving her such an indulgence was exciting even painful gratitude. She wondered that Sir Thomas could have leisure to think of such a trifle again; but she soon found, from the voluntary information of the housemaid, who came in to attend it, that so it was to be every day. Sir Thomas had given orders for it.

"I must be a brute, indeed, if I can be really ungrateful!" said she, in soliloquy. "Heaven defend me from being ungrateful!"

Let me be blunt: Fanny is, for much of the novel, infuriating. In her self-abnegation, in her grovelling gratitude, in her utter committment to fall on the sword of pointless martyrdom at every opportunity, Fanny sails right past saintly and into teeth-grittingly annoying. She sometimes has good points, as in her rejoinder to Mary, quoted a few paragraphs above, about the harm Henry does to his emotional conquests. Yet it's hard not to read her constant yes-sir-no-sir-whatever-you-say-sir mantra as a passive-aggressive commentary on those around her who are less obedient and pathetically grateful than she is (particularly when coupled with the highly judgemental tongue that she occasionally unleashes in private, with Edmund, at the expense of the Crawfords and others); it's hard not to roll your eyes at such overblown protestations of her complete lack of anger as this:

But though her wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.

It's not at all surprising, then, that she fixates on Edmund. He's the only person she knows who is prepared to spend time talking to her, albeit mostly to mould her into a younger, female version of his views; I can only read acid satire into Austen's narrative aside, after Edmund has expressed relief that Fanny agrees with his judgement on a certain point, "Having formed her mind and gained her affections, he had a good chance of her thinking like him". But, perhaps more importantly, he is safely off-limits to her - way beyond her social status, has the hots for the impossibly glamourous and witty Mary Crawford - so he fits her need to continually remind herself of how lowly she is.

In any case, Fanny's Nice Girl patience and self-effacement is eventually rewarded when the Henry/Maria situation blows up. Mary's shrug of a reaction to Maria and Henry's affair is the death knell for Edmund's infatuation with Mary; to his horror, rather than being properly outraged, she dismisses the whole episode as "folly":

"Guess what I must have felt. To hear the woman whom— no harsher name than folly given! So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance, no horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings? This is what the world does. For where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt!"

There are a couple of key things to note in here about Edmund: even in the midst of his sister's disgrace, everything is about him ("Guess what I must have felt"), his ideas about proper womanly behaviour and emotions ("feminine [...] loathings"), and, more pertinently for the overall argument of this post, he is convinced that Mary has been "spoilt" somehow by the world. He goes on to tell Fanny that he believes Mary has "a corrupted mind", and refers to "a dash of evil" that makes an "alloy" of her character - an obvious opposition to the "purity" we have been repeatedly told, including by Edmund, that Fanny has. The way is now clear for Edmund to forget about Mary, and console himself with steady, innocent, well-behaved Fanny, who knows her place so well she can provide perfectly timed, soothing reassurance during his self-righteous speeches ("He stopt. 'And what,' said Fanny (believing herself required to speak), 'what could you say?'" - again, I read Austen's satire voice at work, here...).

As he alluded to when he tried to persuade Fanny that she should marry Henry to make him a better person, Edmund has long believed that the Crawfords show signs of having been given too much autonomy when they were growing up; they were raised by guardians who were frequently absent, or very disengaged. Even early on, he notes that Mary has too much unfeminine forthrightness, Henry a lack of steadiness and judgement. While Edmund has a crush on Mary, he is uneasy about this, but willing to overlook it; having initially disapproved of the play-staging idea during his father's absence, on similarly high-minded moral-hazard grounds to Fanny, his scruples evaporate when it looks like the ladies will bring in another young man from the area to play the role earmarked for him. Realising that some other chap is now going to be play-romancing Mary instead of him, he tries to shame Fanny into dropping her objection, on the grounds that she - she! - is putting Mary's peace of mind and reputation at risk, by blocking him from taking part with her morals and stuff:

"Think it a little over. Perhaps you are not so much aware as I am of the mischief that may, of the unpleasantness that must arise from a young man's being received in this manner: domesticated among us; authorised to come at all hours, and placed suddenly on a footing which must do away all restraints. To think only of the licence which every rehearsal must tend to create. It is all very bad! Put yourself in Miss Crawford's place, Fanny. Consider what it would be to act Amelia with a stranger. She has a right to be felt for, because she evidently feels for herself. I heard enough of what she said to you last night to understand her unwillingness to be acting with a stranger; and as she probably engaged in the part with different expectations - perhaps without considering the subject enough to know what was likely to be - it would be ungenerous, it would be really wrong to expose her to it. Her feelings ought to be respected."

With this massively hypocritical little speech in mind, I found it hard to root for Fanny to defeat the alluring Miss Crawford and win Edmund's heart. Edmund may talk the talk better than his sisters do, but in the end his strength of character is every bit as hollow as theirs; he just likes the sound of his own self-righteous posturing. Which, well, I suppose that gives him quite a bit in common with Fanny, after all. The end of Edmund's regard for Mary is greeted by a rather obnoxious scene in which the pair of them congratulate themselves over how they understand Mary's flaws ("how delightful nature had made her, and how excellent she would have been, had she fallen into good hands earlier"), and what a relief it is that Edmund has escaped her. And with that behind them, they're free to settle for each other:

Time would undoubtedly abate somewhat of his sufferings, but still it was a sort of thing which he never could get entirely the better of; and as to his ever meeting with any other woman who could— it was too impossible to be named but with indignation. Fanny's friendship was all that he had to cling to.

How romantic. I wish them hundreds of equally sanctimonious children!

~~Nic

Judging a Book by Its Cover (but mostly its prose)

Don't judge a book by its cover; it's a maxim many readers live by. And I don't, as a rule, buy books based on their covers. When I pull a book off the shelf in a bookshop I generally look at the back of a book first, to find out what it's about, and if that sound interesting I'll dip into the first chapter to sample the writing. When I buy a book online, meanwhile, it's because I've specifically searched for that book, or for books by that author, or for books in that academic series; the cover isn't a factor in my decision, because I was already planning to buy the book anyway.

I do sometimes notice covers, but I'm much more likely to be put off by a bad (or unwelcoming) cover than attracted by a good one. I've been told by several people that Gaie Sebold's Babylon Steel is quite good, but I just can't get past its horrific cover. I've noted before that I probably never would have read Graceling unless it had been sent to me for review, because the cover (woman in impractical leather outfit in the snow) coded it as something (urban fantasy) that doesn't interest me. See also the plague of cosy-fic covers featuring out-of-focus ladies wearing pastels that adorn the three-for-two displays at Waterstones: those covers I notice, since they're face-upwards on a table, and those books I rarely turn over to read a synopsis.

But occasionally I do buy a book because of its cover. I've been known to buy a replacement copy of a book I already own, and really like, because I prefer the new cover design. And sometimes a piece of cover art clicks with me, swaying me into looking twice at a book I might have passed over. Elantris (2005), by Brandon Sanderson, was one such book.

Unfortunately, I rather wish it hadn't been.

Elantris is that rare thing; a book blessed with several good covers. The US edition, at the top of the post, is the one I bought; firstly because I'm a sucker  for fantastical cityscapes, secondly because there's a female character front and centre, and she's wearing reasonably sensible clothing. Then a few years ago the book was published in the UK, and I fell head over heels for its atmospheric semi-abstraction, so much so that I nearly bought the book all over again, even though I hadn't read it yet, and even though I'd read one of Sanderson's other books by then, and been seriously underwhelmed by it. (Note to the publisher: I would totally buy a print of this cover art. Or better yet this one, for Mistborn.)

Anyway. Because I can't bear to get rid of books I haven't read, and at least a tiny bit because I was hoping Elantris would turn out to be good enough that I'd have reason to buy the pretty, pretty UK edition, I ignored my previous experience of Sanderson's writing, and the warning of my fellow Alexandria Victoria about this very book, and decided to give it a go.

No, it turns out Elantris has all the same strengths and weaknesses as Hero of Ages. There are some good world-building ideas: chiefly, the titular city of Elantris, once fabled for its magic and now fallen into ruin and taboo as the result of what many believe is a curse. One day ten years ago, the Elantrians found themselves waking with a strange affliction that resembles a cross between leprosy and radiation poisoning: their hair fell out, their skin became a black and grey patchwork, they lost all awareness of cold or heat, their hearts stopped beating, and their bodies could no longer heal even minor cuts and bruises. Revulsion and revolution saw the Elantrians locked up inside their rapidly decaying city by the neighbours who once looked up to them as gods, going slowly mad from gnawing hunger and the unrelieved pain of injuries they cannot heal; in the years since, any outsider who shows signs of developing the symptoms has been cast into the city, and ritually forgotten.

The novel opens with Raoden, the heir to the kingdom that lies in Elantris' shadow, becoming one of these outcasts. It's a compelling set-up, and the account of Raoden's early days in Elantris is well drawn. Somewhat resisting the typical fantasy urge to make this a tale of heroes and villains, Sanderson also explores the fragile political, economic and religious situation of Raoden's kingdom, and the role that memories of Elantris might play in the unrest to come. That the analysis of all this never really rises above a first-year undergraduate essay doesn't really matter; Sanderson's clunky way with exposition, however, does. He repeatedly pauses the narrative to have interchangeable characters deliver laboured synopses of background information to each other:

"Our studies tell us slavery is illegal in Arelon, but those men keep referring to the peasant as their possession."

Lukel frowned, turning eyes on the two contesting nobles. "Slavery is illegal, but it probably won't be for long. Ten years ago there weren't any nobles or peasants in Arelon - just Elantrians and everyone else. Over the past decade, commoners have changed from families that owned their own land, to peasants beneath feudal lords, to indentured servants, to something more resembling ancient Fjordell serfs. It won't be long before they're nothing more than property."

Sarene frowned.

None of this - or any of the other explanations we get, about trade networks, or how nobility is based on annual income, or the spread of a particular religious sect - is ever illustrated through episodes in the narrative or the actual experiences of named viewpoint characters. It's only ever summarised for us, little bite-size lectures on what we need to know to understand the mechanics of Sanderson's plot. It makes for tedious reading.

Characterisation, too, suffers the same problems as did the cast of Hero of Ages: they tell us and each other who they are, in lieu of being distinguished via their actions or their dialogue, and the two protagonists are - just like Vin and Elend in the Mistborn trilogy - essentially superhuman. Like Vin, Sarene - a princess of a neighbouring land, who arrives in the kingdom to discover that her husband-to-be, Raoden, is 'dead' - is basically the only female character of any note, and she's world-shatteringly awesome at everything that's important. While her lack of ability at painting and needlework is played for laughs, she's the cleverest person in any room she steps into, she wins basically any argument she embarks on - whether or religion or politics or economics - and she's a excellent fencer. There are some potential interesting points lurking in her back story about the status of women in the sort of pre-modern-Europe-esque society Sanderson has invented, and in particular about the fate of women who buck male ideals of womanhood by being a bit too smart, forthright, or tall, but unfortunately the exploration of this largely boils down to the fact that none of the boys like her, oh no:

"They say they give their women more freedom, but there's still the impression that the freedom was theirs to 'give' in the first place.

"In Teod I am an unmarried daughter. Here in Arelon, I am a widowed wife. That is an enormous distinction. As much as I love Teod, I would have to live with the constant knowledge that no one wants me. Here, at least, I can try to convince myself that someone was willing to have me - even if it was for political reasons."

This starts well, with the smart point about how her apparently more liberated homeland is still markedly paternalistic towards 'its' women. But then an examination about how women's status in societies like this is entirely reliant upon their marriage, and how widowhood often gives such women unprecedented freedom, gets buried under a bizarrely off-base whinge that doesn't even make sense (she'd still be a widow even if she went back home; the sea doesn't, so far as I'm aware, wash away marriage contracts).

Raoden is a prime embodiment of the fantasy genre's apparently in-built and inescapable assumption that noble-born people are just inherently better. Within days of his arrival in Elantris he's achieving things no-one else has even dreamed of, pinpointing exactly the right way to rally every individual he meets, in order to organise the destitute inhabitants to do useful work instead of being lazy enough to get swallowed by despair and violence. There's a disturbing not-so-subtext running through his storyline that the poor and chronically ill simply need to pull their socks up and find some Purpose in their life, and then they wouldn't waste their days being all hungry and stuff. We're repeatedly told that those Elantrians who have slipped into pain-induced comas, or gone mad, or turned violent, have just let themselves go: they're not mentally ill, they've just "surrendered their intellect"; the ones who can't move or feed themselves because their bodies no longer heal or produce analgesic chemicals have "given into their pain". But given useful tasks by their benevolent, all-wise overlord, they immediately get better:

"Do you know what it is? The secret, I mean?"

Kahar smiled. "I haven't been hungry in days, my lord. It is the most amazing feeling in the world - I don't even notice the pain anymore."

See? If people living with poverty and disability only put their back into some good honest work, they'd find that their pain and hunger just sort of... evaporates. After all, it's not like disability is real or anything. Magic!

I feel slightly ill. And I won't be reading any more Sanderson, however pretty the covers are.

~~Nic