Book 8: Not a punch but a dagger.

I finished Boy, Snow, Bird two days ago, actually, and my delay in writing about is only partially because the last two nights I was exhausted and didn't feel like doing much of anything by the time 8 o'clock rolled around and I had to sit in the boys' room while Mr F fell asleep.

The other part of the delay was that I wanted to think about the book. Boy, Snow, Bird is the kind of book that's hard to describe, both as a story and as how it affected me.

The storyline is this: Boy, the main character, runs away from her dad, who we mostly know as "the rat catcher." Boy ends up in Flax Hill, where she meets Arturo and Arturo's daughter, Snow.  It's a little bit of a spoiler only to tell you that Boy and Arturo fall in love and get married and have a daughter, Bird.

There are other things that I could tell about the storyline, twists and turns and dips and dives, but telling them would spoil the story too much, because at nearly every turn, Boy, Snow, Bird has a surprise waiting. It's the story equivalent of a kaleidoscope, or a detailed diorama that everywhere you look you notice something too new and too perfect, and saying too much about it takes a bit of that magic away.

There's magic, too, in the book, in both the literal and figurative sense. Mirrors behave oddly, it's possible that spiders talk, and people are not always what they seem, both literally and figuratively, too. The story slides in and out of these magical moments without even the slightest hint that they are unusual in anyway.

Most of the story is told from Boy's perspective, with the middle part being narrated by Bird, and neither of them are always likeable or always unlikeable, but they are some of the most interesting characters I've read in a long time.

At it's heart, Boy, Snow, Bird is a kind of semi-modern (it's set in the 40s, 50s, and 60s) take on a fairy tale -- sometimes literally: Snow is practically Snow White, and Boy is frequently compared to an evil stepmother (although it's not clear that she's evil, exactly).  There are even a sort of fairy godmother.  It's a neat take on the genre: magical realism meets fairytale; it's like the regular world got a quick sprinkle of fairydust: not enough to make it into some Disney world, but enough to make it seem like that's possible.

It's what's lurking down below the surface of the book that really makes you think, though.  Through the story, Helen Oyeyemi brings up issues of race and identity, violence and progress, and relationships.  There's always a hint of danger boiling below the surface, from the horrifying way the rat catcher works (he uses half-starved rats with their eyes pulled out to lure the other rats out) to the near-fight that Bird and her would-be boyfriend nearly get into with a stranger who accuses the boyfriend of being a Viet Cong, to the Thanksgiving dinner near the end of the story that actually made my skin ache a bit with how tense and terrible it was.  There's also love, but it's always a strained sort of love, as people are keenly aware of the imperfections in those they love, and rather than loving them for those flaws, have to actively work to get around them.

I've read books recently that packed a wallop of an emotional punch -- Salvage The Bones, for example, with the devastating look at a dirt-poor family in the week before Katrina hits -- but Boy Snow, Bird contains all that force not in a giant blow, but almost like a dagger in your mind: it sneaks in and before you know it, it's a part of you.  I keep rolling over in my mind scenes and stories, like the one where Bird claims to have told two stories to the spiders in her room, the second to get the spiders to not be angry about the first.  The book contains lots of little fable-esque stories in it: the characters are always telling each other stories, some of them fantastic fairy tales themselves, others based on what would be the characters' real lives, but which still have a strange, ethereal element to them. There's so much of the book to unpack that I might never stop thinking about it. Which is a good thing, for a story this wonderful.


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By Helen Oyeyemi:




PS/Update: I read this book so long after bookmarking it that I remembered almost nothing about it. Which is good, because if you read the description on Amazon it gives away some of the big secrets in the book and the book is WAY better without that. So if you buy/borrow it I suggest you do so without reading the spoilery description.  COME ON BOOKSELLERS, don't give away the farm.

Or maybe make a reference to this place being even more boring than Tosche Station. (Star Wars References)

If there was a bright center to the universe, I was on the planet it was farthest from. Please pass the blue milk, Aunt Beru.

Armada: A novel, Ernest Cline.

My theory that Star Wars has become the entire basis of Western Civilization, and will be the only thing remembered about the 20th century a thousand years from now (think that's ridiculous? Beowulf was the Star Wars of 700 AD) keeps getting proven in pop culture. People reference Star Wars to make a point and/or to score cheap points from fans of the movie. Hey we both know that thing from that movie!

Although it's not really that unusual to see a Star Wars reference in a scifi book, it is unusual to see one on page 4, as this one was.  On that same page, Cline references Time Bandits, both of which are cheap (clever?) ways of establishing a rapport with his narrator and demonstrating who this person is.




Although if you want to claim to be more than a Star Wars poser, you'd probably want to go for a deeper reference. Maybe say something about getting those units on the South Ridge repaired.

"I'm eatin' Samoas from coast to coast, scream dope fresh if you reppin'" *Crowd screams through mouthfuls of crumbs*

The other day I posted what probably is the greatest song ever in the history of the world. Today, listening to that song, I noticed that on Youtube a related video is this one.

This one is not quite as great but still deserves your full attention.




I'm reppin'. I am not 100% sure what that is but if it involves cookies I'm in.

Book 7: Wherein I discuss a possible poltergeist and end up getting mad at Amazon reviewers.

I was one of those people who liked the ending of Lost. I know they didn't explain the island at all, and lots of the mysteries in the show went unexplained, but I kind of like that. I think sometimes explaining something makes it less mysterious, less frightening, less eerie.

I say that as someone who briefly thought perhaps he had a poltergeist in his house last night. I had gone upstairs to get something out of the closet, and while I was standing there in the hallway I was briefly farther away from the usual airport-level noise in our house, and I heard this little twitching or clicking. I traced the sound down to the bedroom that used to be The Boy's, and was supposed to now be Mr F's but he and Mr Bunches won't sleep in separate rooms, so it's just a bedroom.

The door was moving, just slightly, back and forth over and over and over, as though something were on the other side, trying to open it.

I watched it for a few seconds and ran over things in my mind. An animal? But I didn't hear any scratching and the door was moving too rhythmically, I thought. The wind?  It's January in Wisconsin, so we don't really open windows, and anyway the windows in every room but our bedroom are sealed shut with a variety of devices to keep Mr F from getting out them.

I stood there in the hallway for a minute or two more, and was really kind of enthralled and a little spooked.  It was exactly like someone on the other side... of the door... was trying to open it but they couldn't quite get a grasp of it.

"Sweetie," I called her.  "Come up here!"  I motioned her from the top of the stairs and told her to be quiet.  As she came up the stairs I pointed at the door and started to say something but she interrupted.

"Oh, the door," she said. "That happens when the boys are jumping on the ball."

I watched it disappointed, hearing Mr Bunches downstairs bouncing up and down on his exercise ball while he watched Thunderbirds. Sweetie showed me how when he stopped, the door stopped.

I'm not saying I would've been crazy about having a ghost in our house, but any explanation for that door was bound to be a disappointment: something mundane, like that, or an animal that had gotten in, or a breeze: whatever wasn't a ghost that caused the door to move would've been a disappointment because it wasn't as fantastic as I'd imagined.

That's why I liked the ending of Lost: It told what happened to those people, while not explaining the island at all, because honestly, what explanation could they have given that would've made it feel worthwhile? They were going to let down a whole lot of people explaining all of it, and better to let some people get mad while others could still wonder at what the island might be.

Last night, I finished Acceptance, which is the third book in Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach trilogy, and the lesson of not explaining stuff was driven home again, as was the wisdom of never listening to book reviewers ever.

Acceptance, the whole trilogy, is what Vandermeer called weird fiction. It's sort of scifi, sort of fantasy, sort of horror, really a genre all its own, and it's a genre I really like.  The basic plot of the series undersells how great it is: "Area X" is a region of land that one day become enveloped in a barrier, one which makes anything that hits it disappear. There is an opening into Area X, and in the first book the 12th Expedition is just starting out its exploration of the area.

From there, the fate of the 12th expedition, and what happens next, fill out the rest of the book and the next 2. It's hard to say more without spoiling anything, and this isn't a book you want spoiled in any way.

The book itself doesn't feel like it's carrying any message greater than the personal: it's primarly an intriguing story chock full of interesting concepts, twists and turns, deceptions, excitement, and mysteries.  To the extent that Vandermeer has anything more on his mind than "here's a great story, enjoy," the book seems to play around with the concept of identity: various characters go by different names, or are nameless, for different reasons, at different times, and Vandermeer deliberately muddies the humanity of some of the characters.  A major character in the 2nd two books, for example, is for most of the book a disembodied voice on a telephone, and the person he is calling keeps imagining "The Voice" as a variety of strange beings: a dinosaur living underground, for example.  This contrasts with there being actual monsters in the books, as well.

That personal level carries the book and makes it somehow grand in scope while being intense in viewpoint.  The fate of the entire world may be at stake -- it's not clear how much risk Area X poses-- but Vandermeer keeps the book focused on a small group of characters, making it seem at once as if Area X and the Southern Reach are the world, and at the same time increasing the sense of isolation while at the same time helping us feel attached to characters who sometimes don't even have names.  It's masterful, really.

And there are CREEPY scenes. I won't describe them too you, because they're too awesome, but there was at least one scene in each book that left me shuddering. I described one to Sweetie and she agreed it was one of the freakiest things she'd ever heard.  It's not horror, quite -- just really really really strange, so strange that it's hard to reconcile, at times, with anything that might make sense, and that's part of the sense of weirdness and fright: we're pretty far away from home, even though this is all taking place right on earth in sometimes mundane surroundings like a supply closet or government agency.

Even Vandermeer's use of language adds to the strangeness: he keeps referring to one thing in Area X as the "topographical anomaly," for example, while an area where samples from Area X is stored is called the 'cathedral.' Nothing seems quite to match up.

In the end, Vandermeer doesn't leave you as hanging, maybe, as Lost. It feels like everything is answered, but the answers aren't just laid out for you. You have to work for them, listening (I heard this on audiobook, which was a great way to do it) for details and paying attention and thinking about it.  Even then, there's a sense of ambiguity; I was telling Sweetie about the books and I kept saying I'm pretty sure this and I'm almost positive that.  It wasn't frustrating, though; it was work, but a fun kind of work, to put all the pieces in place.

The work pays off.  This is a book -- a series of books -- I'll probably never forget, and in fact just after I finished Acceptance I thought about going back immediately and re-reading the trilogy, putting my newfound perspective into play again to see if I could glean more from everything.

Which brings up my final point about these books:  People, and how much they suck. About a year ago, I had a gift card from Amazon and was browsing around for a book, and I came across this trilogy available as a set. I read the description and thought That sounds pretty good. Then I read a few reviews of it, and the reviews put me off buying the books.  Most people complained that everything wasn't laid out on a plate -- but that's not how they put it. They said stuff like mysteries are never explained and the like. I read the first book, Annihilation, on loan from the library because I was still curious, and then i was hooked.

I probably shouldn't be swayed by negative reviews. Most people come at reviews from their own perspectives, and my tastes are not like other people's.  A book like this is going to be a hard sell for some people, I suppose, but the reviews seem so wildly off the mark in retrospect that I've stopped reading Amazon review of books, period.  It's one thing to not like a book, but it's another entirely to not get it but still pan it, and I think most of the negative reviews I read were, in retrospect, people who didn't understand the book and didn't want to have to think their way through things. That's okay; I don't like many kinds of mysteries and mind-games and things that make me do stuff I'm not crazy about. So I don't read those kinds of books. Amazon maybe ought to rethink it's policy of letting just anybody post stuff.  It's people that give people a bad name.

Anyway, that's my rant. I don't want to get offtrack.  Sometimes life needs to be a little strange, and sometimes things are better if their insides are not laid bare and everything explained about them.  Jeff Vandermeer nailed that idea with these books.  Acceptance, the whole trilogy, is one of those rare gems of books that I would like to own. It's not for everybody, but if you like intriguing, strange, scifi-ish stories, these are worth reading.

Sometimes -- just SOMETIMES -- I HEART Winter, too.

Thanks Sears that's very helpful.

Our washer broke down Saturday, and we scheduled an appointment this morning for a tech from Sears to come out. Scheduling an 8 a.m. appointment gives you a 4-hour window when the tech might show up.  Our 4 hour window was 8-noon.

At 10:50 I checked to see when I might expect the guy and got this:

Everything that's wrong with America, in one sentence.

He says his chin tattoo of an ex-girlfriend’s name - now covered up - was much worse.

— from an AP story about a man who has no regrets about getting a tattoo commemorating the Patriots victory in Superbowl 50 just before New England lost the AFC championship.