July books
Non-Fiction
Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. I should have just read Hermione Lee's biography. Nicolson is a son of Vita Sackville-West, as he never tires of telling us, and milks his moments with Woolf, and his mother's connection, for all they're worth. He spends far more time on Vita than Woolf's husband Leonard or sister Vanessa, which I felt a rather poor choice.
Nicolson provides a good deal of information about her inner life--his time spent editing her letters was well spent. But he clearly disagrees with Woolf's opinions, and spends several pages telling us so every time her pacifism or feminism comes up. His reasons for disagreeing are poorly thought out and not well supported (apparently "women...had little cause for complaint" in Woolf's era, because after all, did not Woolf herself become something of a success? So how bad could the sexism possibly be? Ridonkulous.), but he nevertheless quotes HIS OWN PIECE from 1979 to show how silly Woolf's feminism was. Excuse you, Nicolson, you spent your whole life riding on your mother's literary and social successes. Biting the hand that feeds is not particularly clever. He's pretty awful about Woolf's possible childhood sexual assault, as well. Nicolson is in a huff that her half-brothers are accused by modern biographers to have assaulted Woolf, even though Woolf herself has said they did. Here's Nicolson in his own words, "In recollection, Virginia made more of a drama of the affair than the facts justify." For fucks sake!
My rage at Nicolson's constant inclusion of Sackville-West and his own uncertain claims aside, I did enjoy this book for its descriptions of the Bloomsbury group and for the tidbits of Woolf's writing. She was a true genius.
Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour. Mary Wollstonecraft was a passionately political woman; her essays A Vindication of the Rights of Man and its follow up, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, made her justly famous, particularly in intellectual circles. After a disastrous love affair (from which issued A Short Residence in Sweden Norway and Denmark and her natural daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft fell in love with William Godwin. Godwin was well known himself, particularly for Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Although neither believed in marriage, when Wollstonecraft found herself pregnant they decided to marry to make their child's life easier. And thus, a few months after her parents' marriage, Mary Godwin was born. Wollstonecraft died a few agonized days later, probably of peurperal fever.
Four years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Devereux/Vial/Clairmont (she went by a number of different names; she was actually an unwed mother masquerading as a widow), who had children of her own. And thus does Jane Clairmont, later called Claire Clairmont, enter the story. All the little girls and boys grew up in a household full of books and very short on money.
One day, the handsome Percy Shelley entered their lives. 20, a poet, given to extravagant exaggerations about his own actions and the persecution he suffered, Shelley seemed like a savior to Godwin (who expected to get a great deal of money from his aristocratic patron) and Godwin's daughters (who viewed their new friend rather more romantically). Shortly thereafter, Shelley fell in love with 16 year old Mary Godwin (many say for her parentage as well as for her beauty and wit) and, with Jane/Claire Clairmont's help, the girls ran off with him. Of course, Shelley was married at the time, to another teenage girl, and she was pregnant with his second child. But no matter!
Shelley, Mary and Jane/Claire swept across Europe, constantly impoverished but flush with excitement and the romance of it all. A tense triangle sprang up amongst them--Mary and Shelley were in love, but Jane/Claire felt left out, and Shelley liked that she was so sensitive and easily persuaded. Eventually, they ran out of money and returned to England, where they found themselves utterly ostracized. Not even Mary's family would see her, despite their own pasts. Mary's first child was born and died, shortly followed by the birth of another child. She, Shelley and Claire retreated from London for their health, and fell in for a short time with the notorious Lord Byron. Claire had a brief, lopsided affair with him that left her pregnant and Byron annoyed. Meanwhile, Mary had begun to write her greatest work, Frankenstein. This was also a period of tragedy: no sooner had they returned to England than Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide in a little anonymous room, and shortly thereafter Shelley's wife Harriet drowned herself. Less than two weeks later, Mary and Shelley were married.
They continued to live much as they had, although Mary's social ostracization was somewhat lessened. Mary bore two more children in short succession, and then lost her son William and daughter Clara while in Italy. She continued writing, studying, translating while simultaneously leading a vivacious social life and producing good copies of her friends' writing. Shelley became distracted by another woman (the duplicitous Jane Williams, oh how I hate her)
And then tragedy struck. Shelley and his friend were drowned at sea, leaving Mary a widow with an infant son and no money, in a foreign land. She returned to England, fought to get a small allowance from her father-in-law, and spent the rest of her life writing articles and books to supplement her income. Her remaining son, Percy, grew up to be a good-natured man with no poetry and little intellect. Mary died of a brain tumor at 53, having spent her life devoted to Shelley and then, to Shelley's legacy.
All of these tempestuous romances, tragic deaths, domestic quarrelings, petty gossiping, and timeless literature went on in a period of incredible tension and upheaval. Revolution after revolution swept Europe. England was a land of strict censorship laws, incredible disparities between rich and poor, strict codes of conduct--and amidst all this, Mary Shelley is just a smart, depressed woman with few allies, trying to live her life. She was intimidatingly well-read, and set herself to a rigorous education of languages and history. Like her mother, she suffered from bouts of depression; and like her mother, she devoted a great deal of time to uplifting women (but in specific cases, not as a general group). She spent her last days campaigning to get a widowed friend of hers a small allowance to live on.
Seymour does an incredible job of creating a seamless biography out of the countless letters, diaries, articles, and books written by and about her subjects. I never felt overwhelmed, although this book is stuffed full of names, quotes, historical contexts, literary criticism...For anyone interested in the Romantics, the history of early nineteenth century, the evolution of political thought, or Mary Shelley herself, I highly recommend this book.
Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold Packard. Queen Victoria's eldest daughter was born 17 years before the youngest. Her daughters had drastically different relationships with their parents: their mother alternated between codependency and harsh dislike for each of them. Their father lavished attention on some and gave almost none to others: Vicky was her father's star pupil, and recieved his training before she married into the Prussian royal family, while Beatrice was only four when her father died. Vicky was an intellectual, Alice had an appetite for nursing and good works, Lenchen loved sports and engineering, Louise was a gifted artist, Beatrice devoted to family. Vicky married into the Prussian royal family, Alice to a German Grand-Duke (the equivalent of being the king of a small kingdom), Lenchen and Beatrice to landless German royals, and Louise to a British duke (the first English princess to marry within her country in 350 years). And yet, despite their different personalities, upbringings, marriages, and countries in which they spent their adulthood, the feeling I got from all of them was the same. Regardless of their capabilities, regardless of how much money they had or how many palaces, their lives seem so straitened to the modern eye. Victoria's daughters were born into an age in which the monarchy was fast fading from political importance. They were too royal and too female to be allowed to do almost anything.
Which is not to say they did not try. Vicky pushed for a more liberal, united Germany all her life, to the detriment of her reputation in Prussia and her relationship with her eldest son, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Reading this book made me want to punch Bismark in the face like a billion times.) Alice founded hospitals and tended to the sick with her own hands; her influence lent credence to the emerging nursing style. Lenchen became a drug addict. Louise was the first British royal to be publicly educated (she forced her mother to let her take art classes) and became a beloved society dame who did a good deal of charity work. Beatrice was the Queen of England's right hand for decades.
But reading this book, I was not so much impressed by their accomplishments as by their tragedies. Child after child dead of hemophilia, disease, or killed in wars. Loveless marriages. Used as political pawns and figure-heads, with all the appearance of power and none of it. Vicky and Alice apparently had no friends (certainly they were allowed none in childhood); the younger daughters managed to make only a few. No control over where they lived. Bound by endless, astoundingly strict protocol. Vicky watched her husband die an agonized death that took years, then suffered through death by breast cancer under doctors who refused to give her pain killers. Assasination attempts (even on their wedding days). And hideous, horrifying clothing. No one needs that many ruffles!
The story of Queen Victoria's family is a fascinating one, filled with odd tidbits. (Such as, Louise's father-in-law wanted to be buried with his first wife. His third wife was so annoyed with this that she threatened to cut her late husband's heart out so she could bury part of him with her, too.) And I did enjoy this book: it's pretty well organized, the style is readable but not gossipy, and the research is definitely there. The problem is, Packard's biases shine through immediately. He hates women of intelligence or power--as controlling as Victoria was, sure there was *something* positive about her? And surely Alfred didn't do *all* the ruling for her? Their eldest, Vicky, is continually described in the most horrid terms possible: her intelligence is described as "flamboyant" and "egocentric;" even as a child Packard has nothing but harsh words for her. He blames her for the cluster-fuck that was the Prussian royal family--even though she was a TEENAGER when she entered it, her parents-in-law were monstrous, and Prussia was under control of the manipulative chancellor, who worked for decades to turn the country and her family against Vicky. (This is not supposition--it's a matter of historical record that the most powerful man in Prussia did everything in his power to cause her pain.) The only women Packard has kind words for are the ones who selflessly devoted themselves to other people in the least political fashion possible. And even those women, he makes careful note of their weight and how they looked like sausages.
The history of Victoria's daughters is a fascinating one, but this is not the book to read it in. Look for something a bit less overwhelmingly sexist.
Fiction
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is charged with libel and decides to take some time off from his magazine. Instead, he works to find what happened to Harriet Vanger, the young niece of a wealthy CEO. Meanwhile, punky hacker Lisbeth Salander has her own investigations, which presumably eventually have something to do with Blomkvist and the Vanger family. I don't know, because I couldn't bear to finish this. It usually takes me about a day to read a book. It took me an entire month to slog through less than 300 pages of Larsson's bullshit.
His writing is simultaneously ridonkulously sensational (chapter after chapter of escalatingly SHOCKING! sex acts) and brain-numbingly boring. Page after page of stilted, unbelievably dialog. Constant info dumps in place of action or dialog. Larsson repeats himself on pretty much ever page; nothing is hinted at or unsaid, everything is reiterated. Blomkvist and Salander make no sense as human beings; in 250 pages, I knew more about their computers than I did their inner lives or even, how they talked. I kept slogging through this because everyone rated it so highly, but I seriously do not get why. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is it all one big parody or something?
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. A young girl's father takes her on a tour of Europe, and slowly tells her the tale of what happened to her mother, years before. As a student, Paul found a book lying open amongst his notes. It was beautifully bound, but all the pages were blank, excepting a large print of a stylized dragon. When he brought it to his mentor, Rossi paled, then gave him an envelope and told him to get lost. The envelope contained a record of Rossi's own investigation of the book, but when Paul returned to talk to him, his mentor was gone--and only a smear of blood remained. Paul and Rossi's daughter Helen searched through the libraries of Europe for clues to Rossi's whereabouts or the books' secrets, but eventually the trail went cold. Years later, Paul disappears himself, and his daughter embarks on her own search.
The book takes at least a hundred pages to get into gear, and switches between at least three different time periods, with a number of narrators. I don't believe the multitude adds much to the story--this book could have been set entirely in Paul's time without losing much, if anything. Kostova does an excellent job of creating a sense of creeping dread, but the story takes so long, and is told in such a drawn-out way, that the terror petered out long before the final climax. There are several scenes that still stick with me--Paul watching Helen, the hunger in the librarian's eyes, a Soviet conference...But a month later, I cannot remember the ending.
White Cat by Holly Black. Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of curse workers--people who can kill you, erase your mind, change your luck, shape your emotions, etc, at will. "Workers" have been known to the world for hundreds of years, but because of their huge, and often dark, powers, being a curse worker is illegal. The Sharpes have been living by their wits and their curses for generations. But Cassel has no curse power of his own, and with his father dead, his mother in prison, and his older brothers trying to achieve their careers, he has nothing to do but go to class.
Oh, and try to come to terms with the fact that three years ago, he murdered his best friend. And he has no idea why.
Equal parts Momento, YA fantasy, and gangster movie, White Cat is enthralling. I read most of it during my lunch hour, and then sat testily at my desk, trying to think up ways to read the rest of it as quickly as possible. (In the end, I snuck it into the bathroom with me to finish. Yes, it was worth it.) Cassel has a quick wit, a slightly-too-smart-mouth, and long experience as a con artist, but even he finds it challenging to navigate the halls of his preppy private school, deal with his claustrophobic, secretive family, and get over his ex-girlfriend...all in addition to a conspiracy that could very easily turn fatal. And astoundingly, the plot doesn't get in the way of Cassel's character development. By the end, not only had the story twisted in on itself in darkly clever ways, but the characters were fully realized, with depths of their own.
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik. The Temeraire series answers the age-old question, "How would the Napoleonic Wars change if dragons existed?"
In the first book, His Majesty's Dragon, the answer is that not much would alter--all the European nations have dragons, and they treat them like a cross between pets and battleships. The only real change is that communication is slightly faster and some additional battles are fought in the air. The main character, Laurence, is a British naval captain who befriends the dragon Temeraire; the first book is their introduction to aerial warfare. It's a wonderful story. But Novik complicates the narrative in a very satisfying way with the next book, Throne of Jade, which widens the world to include China. Further books take Laurence and Temeraire through Africa and finally, to Australia, all the while fighting Napoleon's forces and allies every inch of the way. The series slowly reveals itself to be a colonialist narrative told from a very post-colonialist pov. We are presented with classic European views and politics--the slave trade, use of opium for trade purposes, Manifest Destiny, etc--but the existence of dragons changes the result. When European traders take people as slaves from Africa, the African dragons and their warriors fight back, exceedingly effectively. The spread of European settlers in the Americas is very different, because the native Americans have plenty of defenses of their own. It's fascinating!
But the series is not just a game of "what if"--it's a deeply satisfying character study of the uncomfortably honorable Laurence, the brilliant-but-jejune Temeraire, and the diverse cast of side characters. Although there are a few battles in Tongues of Serpents, the majority of the plot is simply Temeraire and Laurence treking across Australia.
Laurence has always been a character driven by honor and duty--his sense of responsibility toward England weighed heavily and constantly upon his shoulders. But after Victory of Eagles, he has lost his taste for war, even against England's enemies. Although many called him a traitor for his mercy, he maintained his patriotism. But in this book, he must question his own loyalty to his embattled nation.
Although I think this series is easily the most mature look at the Napoleonic wars OR dragons that I've ever read, there's a great deal of humor and adventure in it, as well. The dragons each have fabulous personalities that clash horribly (they read a lot like scaly, half-ton cats). And there's nothing to get the blood up like fighting sea-serpents!
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. ** highlight for spoilers** When Elspeth dies, she leaves her papers to her boyfriend and her flat to her twin's children, the twin sisters Julia and Valentina. J&V are very pale, very slim, and although they're nearly 21, very unformed. They have no friends, no lovers, little education, and no interests besides watching tv together. They are astoundingly boring.
Meanwhile, their upstairs neighbor is struggling with OCD and a passionate love for his wife, who has left him because of it. And their downstairs neighbor is Robert, Elspeth's grieving boyfriend. And their own flat seems to be haunted... When Elspeth dies, she leaves her papers to her boyfriend and her flat to her twin's children, the twin sisters Julia and Valentina. J&V are very pale, very slim, and although they're nearly 21, very unformed. They have no friends, no lovers, little education, and no interests besides watching tv together. They are astoundingly boring.
Meanwhile, their upstairs neighbor is struggling with OCD and a passionate love for his wife, who has left him because of it. And their downstairs neighbor is Robert, Elspeth's grieving boyfriend. And their own flat seems to be haunted...
Niffenegger has a beautiful writing style, and her characters always feel precise and real to me. She knows the specifics of their lives--what kind of wine they like, how they brush their teeth, what they feel at 3 in the morning. She knows every inch of their environments, and describes them with a casual fluidity. But although every other character felt real and probable to me, I never bought Julia and Valentina. For one thing, they flop around in their lives like limp fish. For another, they are SO DUMB that they even infect other characters with stupidity. Valentina wants to leave Julia and go to school. Instead of just leaving in the night, or having a fight with Julia and then leaving, Valentina is sure that the only way is to kill herself, have a funeral, and then come back to life via Elspeth's ghostly powers. Not only is this the worst plan I've ever heard, but then Elspeth and Robert decide to go along with it because hey, otherwise she might try to kill herself for realsies. At this point in the narrative, my eyes crossed. So two adults kill a girl, hide her body, and then try to bring her back to life, all so Valentina doesn't have to talk to her twin for ten minutes. Gah!
And then in the end, Valentina can't get back into her body, so Elspeth takes over and runs away with Robert to be luvahs again, but he is racked with guilt or whatever. I mean, he still runs away with her and has a baby with her, but then he decides to run away. Clearly waiting to leave until *after* he'd gotten his dead girlfriend pregnant was the best choice. Ugh. Meanwhile, Valentina's death frees Julia to act like a normal teenager, and Valentina to become One with the Wind and be Free. Why she had to die for any of this to happen, I do not know. I think Niffenegger was trying to write a book about codependency and secrets, but the secrets were so dumb (the Eddie/Elspeth switch was equally idiotic) and we were mostly told, not shown, the codependency. There are kernels of a much better novel in this book (Robert and the cemetery, or Martin and Marjike), but they are overtaken by the gothic grand gestures of the two sets of twins.
Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson. I should have just read Hermione Lee's biography. Nicolson is a son of Vita Sackville-West, as he never tires of telling us, and milks his moments with Woolf, and his mother's connection, for all they're worth. He spends far more time on Vita than Woolf's husband Leonard or sister Vanessa, which I felt a rather poor choice.
Nicolson provides a good deal of information about her inner life--his time spent editing her letters was well spent. But he clearly disagrees with Woolf's opinions, and spends several pages telling us so every time her pacifism or feminism comes up. His reasons for disagreeing are poorly thought out and not well supported (apparently "women...had little cause for complaint" in Woolf's era, because after all, did not Woolf herself become something of a success? So how bad could the sexism possibly be? Ridonkulous.), but he nevertheless quotes HIS OWN PIECE from 1979 to show how silly Woolf's feminism was. Excuse you, Nicolson, you spent your whole life riding on your mother's literary and social successes. Biting the hand that feeds is not particularly clever. He's pretty awful about Woolf's possible childhood sexual assault, as well. Nicolson is in a huff that her half-brothers are accused by modern biographers to have assaulted Woolf, even though Woolf herself has said they did. Here's Nicolson in his own words, "In recollection, Virginia made more of a drama of the affair than the facts justify." For fucks sake!
My rage at Nicolson's constant inclusion of Sackville-West and his own uncertain claims aside, I did enjoy this book for its descriptions of the Bloomsbury group and for the tidbits of Woolf's writing. She was a true genius.
Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour. Mary Wollstonecraft was a passionately political woman; her essays A Vindication of the Rights of Man and its follow up, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, made her justly famous, particularly in intellectual circles. After a disastrous love affair (from which issued A Short Residence in Sweden Norway and Denmark and her natural daughter, Fanny Imlay), Wollstonecraft fell in love with William Godwin. Godwin was well known himself, particularly for Enquiry concerning Political Justice. Although neither believed in marriage, when Wollstonecraft found herself pregnant they decided to marry to make their child's life easier. And thus, a few months after her parents' marriage, Mary Godwin was born. Wollstonecraft died a few agonized days later, probably of peurperal fever.
Four years later, Godwin married Mary Jane Devereux/Vial/Clairmont (she went by a number of different names; she was actually an unwed mother masquerading as a widow), who had children of her own. And thus does Jane Clairmont, later called Claire Clairmont, enter the story. All the little girls and boys grew up in a household full of books and very short on money.
One day, the handsome Percy Shelley entered their lives. 20, a poet, given to extravagant exaggerations about his own actions and the persecution he suffered, Shelley seemed like a savior to Godwin (who expected to get a great deal of money from his aristocratic patron) and Godwin's daughters (who viewed their new friend rather more romantically). Shortly thereafter, Shelley fell in love with 16 year old Mary Godwin (many say for her parentage as well as for her beauty and wit) and, with Jane/Claire Clairmont's help, the girls ran off with him. Of course, Shelley was married at the time, to another teenage girl, and she was pregnant with his second child. But no matter!
Shelley, Mary and Jane/Claire swept across Europe, constantly impoverished but flush with excitement and the romance of it all. A tense triangle sprang up amongst them--Mary and Shelley were in love, but Jane/Claire felt left out, and Shelley liked that she was so sensitive and easily persuaded. Eventually, they ran out of money and returned to England, where they found themselves utterly ostracized. Not even Mary's family would see her, despite their own pasts. Mary's first child was born and died, shortly followed by the birth of another child. She, Shelley and Claire retreated from London for their health, and fell in for a short time with the notorious Lord Byron. Claire had a brief, lopsided affair with him that left her pregnant and Byron annoyed. Meanwhile, Mary had begun to write her greatest work, Frankenstein. This was also a period of tragedy: no sooner had they returned to England than Mary's half-sister Fanny committed suicide in a little anonymous room, and shortly thereafter Shelley's wife Harriet drowned herself. Less than two weeks later, Mary and Shelley were married.
They continued to live much as they had, although Mary's social ostracization was somewhat lessened. Mary bore two more children in short succession, and then lost her son William and daughter Clara while in Italy. She continued writing, studying, translating while simultaneously leading a vivacious social life and producing good copies of her friends' writing. Shelley became distracted by another woman (the duplicitous Jane Williams, oh how I hate her)
And then tragedy struck. Shelley and his friend were drowned at sea, leaving Mary a widow with an infant son and no money, in a foreign land. She returned to England, fought to get a small allowance from her father-in-law, and spent the rest of her life writing articles and books to supplement her income. Her remaining son, Percy, grew up to be a good-natured man with no poetry and little intellect. Mary died of a brain tumor at 53, having spent her life devoted to Shelley and then, to Shelley's legacy.
All of these tempestuous romances, tragic deaths, domestic quarrelings, petty gossiping, and timeless literature went on in a period of incredible tension and upheaval. Revolution after revolution swept Europe. England was a land of strict censorship laws, incredible disparities between rich and poor, strict codes of conduct--and amidst all this, Mary Shelley is just a smart, depressed woman with few allies, trying to live her life. She was intimidatingly well-read, and set herself to a rigorous education of languages and history. Like her mother, she suffered from bouts of depression; and like her mother, she devoted a great deal of time to uplifting women (but in specific cases, not as a general group). She spent her last days campaigning to get a widowed friend of hers a small allowance to live on.
Seymour does an incredible job of creating a seamless biography out of the countless letters, diaries, articles, and books written by and about her subjects. I never felt overwhelmed, although this book is stuffed full of names, quotes, historical contexts, literary criticism...For anyone interested in the Romantics, the history of early nineteenth century, the evolution of political thought, or Mary Shelley herself, I highly recommend this book.
Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold Packard. Queen Victoria's eldest daughter was born 17 years before the youngest. Her daughters had drastically different relationships with their parents: their mother alternated between codependency and harsh dislike for each of them. Their father lavished attention on some and gave almost none to others: Vicky was her father's star pupil, and recieved his training before she married into the Prussian royal family, while Beatrice was only four when her father died. Vicky was an intellectual, Alice had an appetite for nursing and good works, Lenchen loved sports and engineering, Louise was a gifted artist, Beatrice devoted to family. Vicky married into the Prussian royal family, Alice to a German Grand-Duke (the equivalent of being the king of a small kingdom), Lenchen and Beatrice to landless German royals, and Louise to a British duke (the first English princess to marry within her country in 350 years). And yet, despite their different personalities, upbringings, marriages, and countries in which they spent their adulthood, the feeling I got from all of them was the same. Regardless of their capabilities, regardless of how much money they had or how many palaces, their lives seem so straitened to the modern eye. Victoria's daughters were born into an age in which the monarchy was fast fading from political importance. They were too royal and too female to be allowed to do almost anything.
Which is not to say they did not try. Vicky pushed for a more liberal, united Germany all her life, to the detriment of her reputation in Prussia and her relationship with her eldest son, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Reading this book made me want to punch Bismark in the face like a billion times.) Alice founded hospitals and tended to the sick with her own hands; her influence lent credence to the emerging nursing style. Lenchen became a drug addict. Louise was the first British royal to be publicly educated (she forced her mother to let her take art classes) and became a beloved society dame who did a good deal of charity work. Beatrice was the Queen of England's right hand for decades.
But reading this book, I was not so much impressed by their accomplishments as by their tragedies. Child after child dead of hemophilia, disease, or killed in wars. Loveless marriages. Used as political pawns and figure-heads, with all the appearance of power and none of it. Vicky and Alice apparently had no friends (certainly they were allowed none in childhood); the younger daughters managed to make only a few. No control over where they lived. Bound by endless, astoundingly strict protocol. Vicky watched her husband die an agonized death that took years, then suffered through death by breast cancer under doctors who refused to give her pain killers. Assasination attempts (even on their wedding days). And hideous, horrifying clothing. No one needs that many ruffles!
The story of Queen Victoria's family is a fascinating one, filled with odd tidbits. (Such as, Louise's father-in-law wanted to be buried with his first wife. His third wife was so annoyed with this that she threatened to cut her late husband's heart out so she could bury part of him with her, too.) And I did enjoy this book: it's pretty well organized, the style is readable but not gossipy, and the research is definitely there. The problem is, Packard's biases shine through immediately. He hates women of intelligence or power--as controlling as Victoria was, sure there was *something* positive about her? And surely Alfred didn't do *all* the ruling for her? Their eldest, Vicky, is continually described in the most horrid terms possible: her intelligence is described as "flamboyant" and "egocentric;" even as a child Packard has nothing but harsh words for her. He blames her for the cluster-fuck that was the Prussian royal family--even though she was a TEENAGER when she entered it, her parents-in-law were monstrous, and Prussia was under control of the manipulative chancellor, who worked for decades to turn the country and her family against Vicky. (This is not supposition--it's a matter of historical record that the most powerful man in Prussia did everything in his power to cause her pain.) The only women Packard has kind words for are the ones who selflessly devoted themselves to other people in the least political fashion possible. And even those women, he makes careful note of their weight and how they looked like sausages.
The history of Victoria's daughters is a fascinating one, but this is not the book to read it in. Look for something a bit less overwhelmingly sexist.
Fiction
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Journalist Mikael Blomkvist is charged with libel and decides to take some time off from his magazine. Instead, he works to find what happened to Harriet Vanger, the young niece of a wealthy CEO. Meanwhile, punky hacker Lisbeth Salander has her own investigations, which presumably eventually have something to do with Blomkvist and the Vanger family. I don't know, because I couldn't bear to finish this. It usually takes me about a day to read a book. It took me an entire month to slog through less than 300 pages of Larsson's bullshit.
His writing is simultaneously ridonkulously sensational (chapter after chapter of escalatingly SHOCKING! sex acts) and brain-numbingly boring. Page after page of stilted, unbelievably dialog. Constant info dumps in place of action or dialog. Larsson repeats himself on pretty much ever page; nothing is hinted at or unsaid, everything is reiterated. Blomkvist and Salander make no sense as human beings; in 250 pages, I knew more about their computers than I did their inner lives or even, how they talked. I kept slogging through this because everyone rated it so highly, but I seriously do not get why. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Is it all one big parody or something?
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. A young girl's father takes her on a tour of Europe, and slowly tells her the tale of what happened to her mother, years before. As a student, Paul found a book lying open amongst his notes. It was beautifully bound, but all the pages were blank, excepting a large print of a stylized dragon. When he brought it to his mentor, Rossi paled, then gave him an envelope and told him to get lost. The envelope contained a record of Rossi's own investigation of the book, but when Paul returned to talk to him, his mentor was gone--and only a smear of blood remained. Paul and Rossi's daughter Helen searched through the libraries of Europe for clues to Rossi's whereabouts or the books' secrets, but eventually the trail went cold. Years later, Paul disappears himself, and his daughter embarks on her own search.
The book takes at least a hundred pages to get into gear, and switches between at least three different time periods, with a number of narrators. I don't believe the multitude adds much to the story--this book could have been set entirely in Paul's time without losing much, if anything. Kostova does an excellent job of creating a sense of creeping dread, but the story takes so long, and is told in such a drawn-out way, that the terror petered out long before the final climax. There are several scenes that still stick with me--Paul watching Helen, the hunger in the librarian's eyes, a Soviet conference...But a month later, I cannot remember the ending.
White Cat by Holly Black. Cassel Sharpe comes from a family of curse workers--people who can kill you, erase your mind, change your luck, shape your emotions, etc, at will. "Workers" have been known to the world for hundreds of years, but because of their huge, and often dark, powers, being a curse worker is illegal. The Sharpes have been living by their wits and their curses for generations. But Cassel has no curse power of his own, and with his father dead, his mother in prison, and his older brothers trying to achieve their careers, he has nothing to do but go to class.
Oh, and try to come to terms with the fact that three years ago, he murdered his best friend. And he has no idea why.
Equal parts Momento, YA fantasy, and gangster movie, White Cat is enthralling. I read most of it during my lunch hour, and then sat testily at my desk, trying to think up ways to read the rest of it as quickly as possible. (In the end, I snuck it into the bathroom with me to finish. Yes, it was worth it.) Cassel has a quick wit, a slightly-too-smart-mouth, and long experience as a con artist, but even he finds it challenging to navigate the halls of his preppy private school, deal with his claustrophobic, secretive family, and get over his ex-girlfriend...all in addition to a conspiracy that could very easily turn fatal. And astoundingly, the plot doesn't get in the way of Cassel's character development. By the end, not only had the story twisted in on itself in darkly clever ways, but the characters were fully realized, with depths of their own.
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik. The Temeraire series answers the age-old question, "How would the Napoleonic Wars change if dragons existed?"
In the first book, His Majesty's Dragon, the answer is that not much would alter--all the European nations have dragons, and they treat them like a cross between pets and battleships. The only real change is that communication is slightly faster and some additional battles are fought in the air. The main character, Laurence, is a British naval captain who befriends the dragon Temeraire; the first book is their introduction to aerial warfare. It's a wonderful story. But Novik complicates the narrative in a very satisfying way with the next book, Throne of Jade, which widens the world to include China. Further books take Laurence and Temeraire through Africa and finally, to Australia, all the while fighting Napoleon's forces and allies every inch of the way. The series slowly reveals itself to be a colonialist narrative told from a very post-colonialist pov. We are presented with classic European views and politics--the slave trade, use of opium for trade purposes, Manifest Destiny, etc--but the existence of dragons changes the result. When European traders take people as slaves from Africa, the African dragons and their warriors fight back, exceedingly effectively. The spread of European settlers in the Americas is very different, because the native Americans have plenty of defenses of their own. It's fascinating!
But the series is not just a game of "what if"--it's a deeply satisfying character study of the uncomfortably honorable Laurence, the brilliant-but-jejune Temeraire, and the diverse cast of side characters. Although there are a few battles in Tongues of Serpents, the majority of the plot is simply Temeraire and Laurence treking across Australia.
Laurence has always been a character driven by honor and duty--his sense of responsibility toward England weighed heavily and constantly upon his shoulders. But after Victory of Eagles, he has lost his taste for war, even against England's enemies. Although many called him a traitor for his mercy, he maintained his patriotism. But in this book, he must question his own loyalty to his embattled nation.
Although I think this series is easily the most mature look at the Napoleonic wars OR dragons that I've ever read, there's a great deal of humor and adventure in it, as well. The dragons each have fabulous personalities that clash horribly (they read a lot like scaly, half-ton cats). And there's nothing to get the blood up like fighting sea-serpents!
Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. ** highlight for spoilers** When Elspeth dies, she leaves her papers to her boyfriend and her flat to her twin's children, the twin sisters Julia and Valentina. J&V are very pale, very slim, and although they're nearly 21, very unformed. They have no friends, no lovers, little education, and no interests besides watching tv together. They are astoundingly boring.
Meanwhile, their upstairs neighbor is struggling with OCD and a passionate love for his wife, who has left him because of it. And their downstairs neighbor is Robert, Elspeth's grieving boyfriend. And their own flat seems to be haunted... When Elspeth dies, she leaves her papers to her boyfriend and her flat to her twin's children, the twin sisters Julia and Valentina. J&V are very pale, very slim, and although they're nearly 21, very unformed. They have no friends, no lovers, little education, and no interests besides watching tv together. They are astoundingly boring.
Meanwhile, their upstairs neighbor is struggling with OCD and a passionate love for his wife, who has left him because of it. And their downstairs neighbor is Robert, Elspeth's grieving boyfriend. And their own flat seems to be haunted...
Niffenegger has a beautiful writing style, and her characters always feel precise and real to me. She knows the specifics of their lives--what kind of wine they like, how they brush their teeth, what they feel at 3 in the morning. She knows every inch of their environments, and describes them with a casual fluidity. But although every other character felt real and probable to me, I never bought Julia and Valentina. For one thing, they flop around in their lives like limp fish. For another, they are SO DUMB that they even infect other characters with stupidity. Valentina wants to leave Julia and go to school. Instead of just leaving in the night, or having a fight with Julia and then leaving, Valentina is sure that the only way is to kill herself, have a funeral, and then come back to life via Elspeth's ghostly powers. Not only is this the worst plan I've ever heard, but then Elspeth and Robert decide to go along with it because hey, otherwise she might try to kill herself for realsies. At this point in the narrative, my eyes crossed. So two adults kill a girl, hide her body, and then try to bring her back to life, all so Valentina doesn't have to talk to her twin for ten minutes. Gah!
And then in the end, Valentina can't get back into her body, so Elspeth takes over and runs away with Robert to be luvahs again, but he is racked with guilt or whatever. I mean, he still runs away with her and has a baby with her, but then he decides to run away. Clearly waiting to leave until *after* he'd gotten his dead girlfriend pregnant was the best choice. Ugh. Meanwhile, Valentina's death frees Julia to act like a normal teenager, and Valentina to become One with the Wind and be Free. Why she had to die for any of this to happen, I do not know. I think Niffenegger was trying to write a book about codependency and secrets, but the secrets were so dumb (the Eddie/Elspeth switch was equally idiotic) and we were mostly told, not shown, the codependency. There are kernels of a much better novel in this book (Robert and the cemetery, or Martin and Marjike), but they are overtaken by the gothic grand gestures of the two sets of twins.