Reading Wednesday 10/10
Oct. 10th, 2018 10:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livRecently read: How to be both by Ali Smith. (c) Ali Smith 2014; Pub Penguin Books 2015; ISBN 978-0-141-02520-9. A very strange combination of two completely unrelated books, unified by beautiful language and impressive characterization.
The first half of How to be both is a character study of a teenaged girl dealing with the sudden death of her mother. Nothing very much happens in it, but you really get a picture of George and her developing, ambiguously romantic, friendship with Helena, and glimpses of her mother, father and younger brother. It's entirely mimetic and set in normal reality in contemporary Cambridge. And then half way through it suddenly switches to being historical RPF about an obscure 15th century Italian artist called Francesco del Cossa. The connection between the two is that George and her mother visited a fresco painted by del Cossa just before the mother's death, and the conceit is that del Cossa is somehow reincarnated as a viewpoint that follows George around observing but not interacting for a few weeks. I mean, it's hard to think of anything I've read recently that's more weird.
I would have been interested to read a straight up fictional biography of del Cossa. Smith imagines the artist as someone assigned female, and carefully leaves it ambiguous whether he was a trans man, an enby, or the traditional girl dressing up as a boy in order to succeed in a masculine profession of any number of historical novels. The descriptions of his development and training as an artist and his relationships and general adventures are lovely. I'm really not sure what to make of del Cossa's ghost. I mean, I was sort of interested in George and it's kind of sweet to see her starting to reconnect and recover in the last part of the book. But del Cossa is a really strange narrator since he doesn't speak English and doesn't understand the 21st century.
So the combination was cool and original, but I'm not quite sure it worked.
Currently reading: Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi. The most wonderful thing: this book was recommended to me by my partners' 9yo. She's really excited about it and wants other people to read it so she can talk about it. It's from a series edited by Rick Riordan of YA books based on non-default mythologies, and this particular one is about a Desi girl who turns out to be the reincarnation of a hero from the Mahabharata. And she goes on a quest collecting McGuffins to defeat the big bad and save the world from destruction. There's a sarcastic pigeon companion and a magical sibling with whom she builds a fraught but really deep relationship. Absolutely glorious, I'm really enjoying it.
Up next: I'm looking forward to the sequel to The Invisible Library, The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman.
The first half of How to be both is a character study of a teenaged girl dealing with the sudden death of her mother. Nothing very much happens in it, but you really get a picture of George and her developing, ambiguously romantic, friendship with Helena, and glimpses of her mother, father and younger brother. It's entirely mimetic and set in normal reality in contemporary Cambridge. And then half way through it suddenly switches to being historical RPF about an obscure 15th century Italian artist called Francesco del Cossa. The connection between the two is that George and her mother visited a fresco painted by del Cossa just before the mother's death, and the conceit is that del Cossa is somehow reincarnated as a viewpoint that follows George around observing but not interacting for a few weeks. I mean, it's hard to think of anything I've read recently that's more weird.
I would have been interested to read a straight up fictional biography of del Cossa. Smith imagines the artist as someone assigned female, and carefully leaves it ambiguous whether he was a trans man, an enby, or the traditional girl dressing up as a boy in order to succeed in a masculine profession of any number of historical novels. The descriptions of his development and training as an artist and his relationships and general adventures are lovely. I'm really not sure what to make of del Cossa's ghost. I mean, I was sort of interested in George and it's kind of sweet to see her starting to reconnect and recover in the last part of the book. But del Cossa is a really strange narrator since he doesn't speak English and doesn't understand the 21st century.
So the combination was cool and original, but I'm not quite sure it worked.
Currently reading: Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi. The most wonderful thing: this book was recommended to me by my partners' 9yo. She's really excited about it and wants other people to read it so she can talk about it. It's from a series edited by Rick Riordan of YA books based on non-default mythologies, and this particular one is about a Desi girl who turns out to be the reincarnation of a hero from the Mahabharata. And she goes on a quest collecting McGuffins to defeat the big bad and save the world from destruction. There's a sarcastic pigeon companion and a magical sibling with whom she builds a fraught but really deep relationship. Absolutely glorious, I'm really enjoying it.
Up next: I'm looking forward to the sequel to The Invisible Library, The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman.
