Booklog: Fiction Dump

[nebroadwe]

Catching up with the booklog, I herewith post reviews for the last novels I read before Lent began.

Georgette Heyer, Cotillion:

Miserly, reclusive Matthew Penicuik has determined to leave his fortune to his ward, Kitty Charing, on condition that she marry one of his great-nephews. His choice (and Kitty's) is handsome, rakish Captain Jack Westruther, but the captain has no desire to dance to anyone's piping but his own. Desperate, Kitty enlists Westruther's cousin, the slow but sensible Freddy Standen, in a sham betrothal; she claims it will bring her into society so that she can form another eligible connection once they cry off, but in reality she hopes to make Westruther jealous enough to offer for her. It's a perfect plan, she reassures Freddy; nothing could possibly go wrong ... One reason I enjoy these stories so much is that it's common sense, as much as love, which allows the protagonists to defeat the forces of cant and melodrama. Heyer has a fine sense of the bathetic; Freddy "rescues" Kitty from the situations into which her impetuosity propels her by simply coping with the practical details (e.g. providing a special license for an eloping couple) she -- and countless other romance novels -- ignore in favor of the indulgence of sentiment. Hero and heroine do fall into each other's arms in the end, but in the realization that if love is a rose, it's one that needs to be watered and fertilized and pruned to bloom fully. Not the best of Heyer's novels (that would be The Grand Sophy), but well worth reading.

Tom Holt, Snow White and the Seven Samurai:

It's an ordinary day in the land of fairy tales: the Big Bad Wolf is sneaking up on the Three Little Pigs; Snow White is making sure everything at her rescuers' cottage is tidy; and the Wicked Queen is booting up her mirror from the command line to ask it the usual question. But when teenage hackers masquerading as the Three Blind Mice crack the system and scrozzle the OS, it's up to a rag-tag band of heroes -- or possibly the Wicked Queen and the hackers' sister -- to figure out a way to the Happy Ending before it's too late. I find Tom Holt to be hit-or-miss; this is the first real hit I've had with him since Who's Afraid of Beowulf?. His humor is more cynical than Pratchett's; despite all the fun here with metacommentary on fairy tale tropes and slipped-sideways versions of traditional stories (the Seven Dwarfs as both the Seven Samurai and the Magnificent Seven, or the Big Bad Wolf carrying out one-man commando raids against Three Heavily-Armed Pigs), the end is logical and just but not merciful. When the Wicked Queen's the fairest of them all, demanding that life be fair, too, is a dangerous gamble. Recommended to snarky fairy-tale fans everywhere.

Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain:

Johnny Tremain is a silversmith's apprentice in pre-Revolutionary Boston, whose talent is exceeded only by his self-consequence. A fellow apprentice's trick leaves him with a crippled hand; dejected and sullen, he finds a haven at the press of the radical Boston Observer and a friend in Rab, a journeyman printer. Drawn into the circle of the Sons of Liberty, Johnny takes part in the Boston Tea Party and other subversive activities, learning to discipline himself against the day when he and his nation will strike out for true independence. Yes, I hadn't read this before, and I am reminded that (with a very few exceptions) the Newbery Award committee knows how to pick 'em. This is a historical novel and a pleasingly realistic character study and a Bildungsroman; the prose is clean and the narrative voice absolutely sure. Even the minor figures are rounded out, and Johnny's growth is shown in his ever keener perception of the mixed motives and sometimes contradictory personal and political loyalties of his fellows as well as his opponents. Recommended reading not only for history buffs like me, but also for writing buffs, as an example of how to do characterization properly.