A mixed bag of reviews
Jan. 8th, 2011 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nineveh_ukI've been meaning to post a couple of lines on a few things for ages, but am rubbish at getting round to it. Here goes.
Not having a Radio Times last week I was lucky to catch a bit of Front Row telling me there was a new Alan Bleasdale (and as everybody has been saying, about time to). This was a two part, three hour drama on - guess what - the sinking of the Laconia, and the picking up of the survivors by the U-boat responsible. It was terrific stuff, well-written, well-acted (though how almost no-one guessed that the German woman was German, goodness only knows, because I can't believe anyone British would have believed her a native speaker unless she claimed she had grown up somewhere in Colonial Far Away), beautifully shot, nice CGI (only the smoking chimney was obviously painted in), with very effective emotional manipulation. It's a German co-production, and I did have some difficulties in the first twenty minutes until I learnt to tell apart the various blond men with beards. The second part isn't quite as good as the first - there are some great scenes, but the British in East Africa, and Americans on Ascension Island are presented less subtly than the other characters. Admiral Dönitz comes off rather well, the role of heartless German baddie taken by an assistant. Prompted to look up the incident afterwards, I was sardonically amused to note that Dönitz - who dictating at the end the new rules of not giving aid to the shipwrecked, notes that "if we lose, they will call this a war crime" - that post-Nuremberg, "the sentence of Dönitz [was] not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare" - because the Allies had been doing it first.
I loved the women's college element of this story, but - speaking as a person who roles her eyes when reading that "Twilight" is a bad example for teenage girls - good heavens, but Master Jervie is the creepiest romantic hero I have ever come across. I could have rather enjoyed a novel about a man who, having taken it upon himself to educate a girl finds himself falling in love with her and torn about how to behave. This is not that novel.
I had high hopes of this, so regret to report that I found it technically accomplished, unsubtle, and boring as hell.
Flicking through this the other day, it suddenly struck me that Miles might have had much less angst about women if only he didn't mistakenly believe that his mother was prepared to leave Beta Colony for Barrayar solely on account of the Power of Lurve for his father.
I read this before Christmas, and it's simply terrific. I picked it up off the table in Waterstones, recognising Zweig as a collaborator of Richard Strauss. Beware of Pity is his only novel, and follows the encounter of a young lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army with a paralyzed young woman, Edith von Kekesfalva, who falls in love with him. It's brilliant and terrifying and sad - the portrayal of Edith's father in particular is extremely subtle and human - and I spent quite a lot of it feeling that surely there was some allegory in it somewhere, given that it was first published in 1938 and Zweig was Jewish, only to find that there didn't seem to be. It's an involving, but not easy read - it struck me at the end that it actually makes quite a lot of sense if read as a horror novel. In many ways it could have been written by Stephen King.
Unfortunately, the best thing abot this novel is the original title, "Män som hatar kvinnor" – "Men Who Hate Women". You can see why it went for international English-language* publication, but it's a pity. Our hero journalist and his goth hacker sidekick are both entirely uninteresting characters. Fortunately, the central mystery, "who probably killed Harriet Vanger" and the story of the Vanger family and corporation are interesting and entertaining, even if the end is a bit conventional. I did wonder whether at times there were elements that would have meant more to me had I been more familiar with the cultural context - issues such as the legal guardianship of adults, for example.
*Swedish readers, I assume the lumpen prose is down to the original, not the translator?
Not having a Radio Times last week I was lucky to catch a bit of Front Row telling me there was a new Alan Bleasdale (and as everybody has been saying, about time to). This was a two part, three hour drama on - guess what - the sinking of the Laconia, and the picking up of the survivors by the U-boat responsible. It was terrific stuff, well-written, well-acted (though how almost no-one guessed that the German woman was German, goodness only knows, because I can't believe anyone British would have believed her a native speaker unless she claimed she had grown up somewhere in Colonial Far Away), beautifully shot, nice CGI (only the smoking chimney was obviously painted in), with very effective emotional manipulation. It's a German co-production, and I did have some difficulties in the first twenty minutes until I learnt to tell apart the various blond men with beards. The second part isn't quite as good as the first - there are some great scenes, but the British in East Africa, and Americans on Ascension Island are presented less subtly than the other characters. Admiral Dönitz comes off rather well, the role of heartless German baddie taken by an assistant. Prompted to look up the incident afterwards, I was sardonically amused to note that Dönitz - who dictating at the end the new rules of not giving aid to the shipwrecked, notes that "if we lose, they will call this a war crime" - that post-Nuremberg, "the sentence of Dönitz [was] not assessed on the ground of his breaches of the international law of submarine warfare" - because the Allies had been doing it first.
I loved the women's college element of this story, but - speaking as a person who roles her eyes when reading that "Twilight" is a bad example for teenage girls - good heavens, but Master Jervie is the creepiest romantic hero I have ever come across. I could have rather enjoyed a novel about a man who, having taken it upon himself to educate a girl finds himself falling in love with her and torn about how to behave. This is not that novel.
I had high hopes of this, so regret to report that I found it technically accomplished, unsubtle, and boring as hell.
Flicking through this the other day, it suddenly struck me that Miles might have had much less angst about women if only he didn't mistakenly believe that his mother was prepared to leave Beta Colony for Barrayar solely on account of the Power of Lurve for his father.
I read this before Christmas, and it's simply terrific. I picked it up off the table in Waterstones, recognising Zweig as a collaborator of Richard Strauss. Beware of Pity is his only novel, and follows the encounter of a young lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army with a paralyzed young woman, Edith von Kekesfalva, who falls in love with him. It's brilliant and terrifying and sad - the portrayal of Edith's father in particular is extremely subtle and human - and I spent quite a lot of it feeling that surely there was some allegory in it somewhere, given that it was first published in 1938 and Zweig was Jewish, only to find that there didn't seem to be. It's an involving, but not easy read - it struck me at the end that it actually makes quite a lot of sense if read as a horror novel. In many ways it could have been written by Stephen King.
Unfortunately, the best thing abot this novel is the original title, "Män som hatar kvinnor" – "Men Who Hate Women". You can see why it went for international English-language* publication, but it's a pity. Our hero journalist and his goth hacker sidekick are both entirely uninteresting characters. Fortunately, the central mystery, "who probably killed Harriet Vanger" and the story of the Vanger family and corporation are interesting and entertaining, even if the end is a bit conventional. I did wonder whether at times there were elements that would have meant more to me had I been more familiar with the cultural context - issues such as the legal guardianship of adults, for example.
*Swedish readers, I assume the lumpen prose is down to the original, not the translator?
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-09 12:32 pm (UTC)Nicolette's small vivid dark face changed as she turned towards her mother, turning her from a reasonable being of ten years old to a mulish and standard-issue child. Ten years old was as much of an alien as anything that crept out its lichenish existence on the surface of Komarr. More, when Nicolette put her mind to it.
Ekaterin told herself that she ought to be glad when Nicolette turned into a sulky alien. She had always been sickeningly afraid that she would absorb the child too much into herself, make her an ally against Tien or a bulwark to keep Tien at bay. It would be heart-wrenchingly easy to turn to Nicolette for what she needed - what she had known for ten years that she was never going to get, since Tien first misunderstood one of her tentative jokes, when they were walking down the Parade at Bonsanklar on their honeymoon - and ignore what Nicolette needed, which was the space to grow.
"I like Lord Auditor Vorkosigan," Nicolette growled finally, and held out a stolid arm to be helped out of her school coat. The coat was too small, and that would be another expense; and if Tien was asked for it he would only look wounded, or, worse, embroil himself in some scheme that Ekaterin would only find herself a party to when it failed.
"I know you like Lord Auditor Vorkosigan. But..."
Ekaterin found herself reaching for the end of the sentence, and grasping only air. But what? Surely she couldn't suspect the Lord Auditor of designs on a child. Life with Tien had taken the shine off her high-mindedness and left her - she sometimes feared - coarsened beyond redemption; but no, to think that of the little man was unjust.
Even if Nicolette is the right height for him, she thought with something that was almost hysteria. That was unfair too.
But still, was she being unfair overall? She weighed it unsparingly, and didn't think so. She had been starved for adult company, true, so starved for so long that she hadn't even known it until the Lord Auditor came into her life like a short victorious whirlwind. She had felt piqued - to use no stronger word - when he drew back and began to treat her with the reserve that befitted Tien's wife.
And she had asked him to talk to Nicolette about what having Vorzohn's Dystrophy might mean, about how Nicolette might be a mutant but that needn't stop her achieving whatever she wanted anyway.
He'd talked to Nicolette. He'd taken Nicolette out for ice cream, and to the Komarr Experimental Aquarium. He'd done nothing that one couldn't have asked of a brother-in-law, say, or an uncle. And yet...
"I like him," Nicolette insisted, with that Tien-like stubbornness that made Ekaterin die a little inside every time she noticed the resemblance, and then brought her alive again in time to feel the guilt of thinking so about Tien, who - after all - deserved her loyalty. "He calls me small lady. I asked him today if he'd marry me when he grew up."
That was Nicolette all over, bulling her way straight to the heart of a problem. At least she didn't take after Tien in that. Her straightforwardness was all Ekaterin, and for some reason it made Ekaterin want to weep.
She made herself smile instead. Nicolette was nothing but a baby; the Lord Auditor would be gone soon; the world could return to the anaesthetised calm of waiting to see what awful thing Tien would do next, and Nicolette would forget everything except that she'd been to the Aquarium, and probably remember that as a school field trip. "And what did he say?" said Ekaterin indulgently.
Nicolette sat down to take her boots off. "He said he wasn't going to grow any more. And then I said would he marry me when I grew up."
"And what did he say to that?" said Ekaterin, still making herself smile.
"He said it was an idea."
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-09 01:58 pm (UTC)*Actually, I can't help wondering whether - Elli Quinn's career excepted - "I don't want to move to Barrayar" isn't just an excuse. Miles must be a lot less refreshing in his attitudes to women who haven't grown up as second-class citizens, and only the truly stupid wouldn't wonder if he mightn't revert to type.
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-09 02:08 pm (UTC)I'm not sure he'd even have to revert to type, just get very focused on his Vor obligations and not pay enough attention to how those Vor obligations assume for themselves a framework where women only really come into focus when they're continuing a bloodline or being accused of adultery. And even if Cordelia was around to tell him off over that, I can't see even the most saintly and Cordelia-worshipping wife being particularly thrilled that he'd listen to his mother but not to her.
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-09 10:58 pm (UTC)I like Cordelia, but I must admit that the line about egalitarians coping with feudal society fine if they are on top of it is rather necessary to my being able to like Cordelia.
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-09 11:13 pm (UTC)Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-10 11:51 am (UTC)Coincidentally, I found Angelica Garnett's Decieved by Kindness in the charity shop the other day and last night got to the bit where Bunny Garnett marries her after having said he's going to when she was a baby. I don't know anything about Bunny Garnett, other than that he had slept with her father and his mother translated Tolstoy, but she entitles the chapter "Bunny's victory" and sees his marrying her as his revenge against her parents. And there I was thinking it only happened in fiction.
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-10 03:26 pm (UTC)You would think he might have read Moliere's 'L'Ecole des Femmes', which is a dreadful warning on that kind of enterprise. Marivaux also deployed this trope I think.
*How new and untrodden these fields we wonder, since I first read about this bizarrity in V Woolf's Common Reader when I was 17.
Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-10 04:49 pm (UTC)Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-10 04:50 pm (UTC)Re: Daddy-Long-Legs
Date: 2011-01-10 09:56 pm (UTC)My knowledge of Bloomsbury mostly involves Vita Sackville West, who isn't really, (little sister had a craze as part of her horticulture degree) and Carrington & Lytton Strachey rather than the Woolfs.