I have no idea how this clunker got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Its greatest virtue is that it makes Eragon look like Pulitzer material. The writing can only be described as terrible. I've taught high school fiction writing and frankly, my students' products were less clunky, repetitive and difficult to track than this. The quality is so poor that it repeatedly intrudes, making it difficult to engage with the plot. I have a high tolerance for unevenness in this series, but I may never be able to finish this one. This is a first in my reading history.
Okay, but not as good as Anderson's previous in the series, Whales on Stilts!, which struck a better balance between parody and earnest absurdity. The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen has its own good jokes and affectionate jabs at genre fiction aimed at children, but doesn't pull it off as well. The authorial narrator is more talkative here, which is one of the up sides of this volume.
I read this after reading some fairly negative reviews, so I was pleased to enjoy it. Seymour's memoir stresses the "father" of her subtitle more than the "house," though the house plays a great role in both their lives. While there are some passages evoking the house directly through Seymour's eyes, her perceptions, as well as the reader's, are heavily filtered through her father's. Some reviewers have summed the book up as, essentially, "Boo hoo, I'm rich but I hate my father!" This is an extremely superficial reading of a much more complex narrative. Seymour uses Catullus's pithy "I love and I hate" (odi et amo) throughout to structure her account of many facets of her relationship with her father: Both extremes of her sentiment toward him, the poles of her certainty and doubt, her own negative self-regard, and other intertwined aspects of this relationship. Seymour's mother functions as a corrective narrator (though one presumes not always an accurate one), consistently serving up the refrain that Seymour is misunderstanding, or nursing old grievances, or airing the dirty linens. This device works well to allow Seymour to demonstrate how she questions her own interpretations and struggles to understand the intersecting and diverging truths of her own and her mother's experiences of their family history. This includes their reluctance to speak about whether her father had affairs with young men.
As to her father himself, I do wonder whether he had a temporal lobe disorder (which might account for his pedantry, his social difficulties, his often humorless and emotionally wounded interactions, the heightened importance and meaning with which he imbues some aspects of the world, and his obsessiveness). Seymour does not describe her father throwing tantrums as a child, but does highlight his irritability and great lability and anger as an adult; this description makes me wonder whether the concussion he suffered during his military service caused a closed-head brain injury that exacerbated his earlier difficulties. Just a speculation based on Seymour's descriptions.
For two additional accounts by children of parents passionately emotionally invested in an old house (as well as the financial and legal tangles of ownership and inheritance) intertwined with narratives about homosexuality and family secrets, read Nigel Nicholson's Portrait of a Marriage on his parents, Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West, and Alison Bechdel's graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.
Cute. With discursive asides reminiscent of Lemony Snicket and a wealth of absurd details, this is a lighthearted send-up of serial youth adventure/detective novels. It's a quick read, fun, and requires little reflection. Book candy, which occasional eruptions of melancholic disquisition. Enjoy.
The author's name also appears transliterated on the Cataloging-in-Publication data as Uthin Bunnyāvong.
This bilingual collection of short stories by Outhine Bounyavon is the first to be published in English. The stories, as well as Peter Koret's helpful introductory essay, "Contemporary Lao Literature," are presented in bilingual Lao/U.S. English facing pages. Since the essay describes what happens in several of the stories, leave it for after reading the collection.
Outhine's stories are likely to strike the Western reader as slightly alien in structure. Their linguistic style can't really be assessed; the translation, at least, is a little clunky. The stories tend toward moral themes such as the rightness of respect, kindness, and honesty. They are not particularly nuanced. This collection gives the reader a good sense of how s/he might structure a story to tell to a Laotian listener. My favorite, "Father's Friend," is, perhaps, about both compassion and seeing the world differently. Many of the stories, though I don't disagree with their morals, are somewhat soppy; again, this may convey some cultural information.
Having read this collection, I would be interested to read something like Bounsang Khamkeo's I Little Slave: A Prison Memoir from Communist Laos to broaden my understanding of the author's, and stories', context.
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Shoshana has commented on (217) products.
Dragonsblood by Todd McCaffrey
Shoshana, January 2, 2009
I have no idea how this clunker got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Its greatest virtue is that it makes Eragon look like Pulitzer material. The writing can only be described as terrible. I've taught high school fiction writing and frankly, my students' products were less clunky, repetitive and difficult to track than this. The quality is so poor that it repeatedly intrudes, making it difficult to engage with the plot. I have a high tolerance for unevenness in this series, but I may never be able to finish this one. This is a first in my reading history.The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen (M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales) by Mt Anderson
Shoshana, January 2, 2009
Okay, but not as good as Anderson's previous in the series, Whales on Stilts!, which struck a better balance between parody and earnest absurdity. The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen has its own good jokes and affectionate jabs at genre fiction aimed at children, but doesn't pull it off as well. The authorial narrator is more talkative here, which is one of the up sides of this volume.Thrumpton Hall: A Memoir of Life in My Father's House by Miranda Seymour
Shoshana, January 1, 2009
I read this after reading some fairly negative reviews, so I was pleased to enjoy it. Seymour's memoir stresses the "father" of her subtitle more than the "house," though the house plays a great role in both their lives. While there are some passages evoking the house directly through Seymour's eyes, her perceptions, as well as the reader's, are heavily filtered through her father's. Some reviewers have summed the book up as, essentially, "Boo hoo, I'm rich but I hate my father!" This is an extremely superficial reading of a much more complex narrative. Seymour uses Catullus's pithy "I love and I hate" (odi et amo) throughout to structure her account of many facets of her relationship with her father: Both extremes of her sentiment toward him, the poles of her certainty and doubt, her own negative self-regard, and other intertwined aspects of this relationship. Seymour's mother functions as a corrective narrator (though one presumes not always an accurate one), consistently serving up the refrain that Seymour is misunderstanding, or nursing old grievances, or airing the dirty linens. This device works well to allow Seymour to demonstrate how she questions her own interpretations and struggles to understand the intersecting and diverging truths of her own and her mother's experiences of their family history. This includes their reluctance to speak about whether her father had affairs with young men.As to her father himself, I do wonder whether he had a temporal lobe disorder (which might account for his pedantry, his social difficulties, his often humorless and emotionally wounded interactions, the heightened importance and meaning with which he imbues some aspects of the world, and his obsessiveness). Seymour does not describe her father throwing tantrums as a child, but does highlight his irritability and great lability and anger as an adult; this description makes me wonder whether the concussion he suffered during his military service caused a closed-head brain injury that exacerbated his earlier difficulties. Just a speculation based on Seymour's descriptions.
For two additional accounts by children of parents passionately emotionally invested in an old house (as well as the financial and legal tangles of ownership and inheritance) intertwined with narratives about homosexuality and family secrets, read Nigel Nicholson's Portrait of a Marriage on his parents, Harold Nicholson and Vita Sackville-West, and Alison Bechdel's graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic.
Whales on Stilts (M. T. Anderson's Thrilling Tales) by M T Anderson
Shoshana, January 1, 2009
Cute. With discursive asides reminiscent of Lemony Snicket and a wealth of absurd details, this is a lighthearted send-up of serial youth adventure/detective novels. It's a quick read, fun, and requires little reflection. Book candy, which occasional eruptions of melancholic disquisition. Enjoy.Mother's Beloved: Stories from Laos by Bnounyavong Outhine
Shoshana, January 1, 2009
The author's name also appears transliterated on the Cataloging-in-Publication data as Uthin Bunnyāvong.This bilingual collection of short stories by Outhine Bounyavon is the first to be published in English. The stories, as well as Peter Koret's helpful introductory essay, "Contemporary Lao Literature," are presented in bilingual Lao/U.S. English facing pages. Since the essay describes what happens in several of the stories, leave it for after reading the collection.
Outhine's stories are likely to strike the Western reader as slightly alien in structure. Their linguistic style can't really be assessed; the translation, at least, is a little clunky. The stories tend toward moral themes such as the rightness of respect, kindness, and honesty. They are not particularly nuanced. This collection gives the reader a good sense of how s/he might structure a story to tell to a Laotian listener. My favorite, "Father's Friend," is, perhaps, about both compassion and seeing the world differently. Many of the stories, though I don't disagree with their morals, are somewhat soppy; again, this may convey some cultural information.
Having read this collection, I would be interested to read something like Bounsang Khamkeo's I Little Slave: A Prison Memoir from Communist Laos to broaden my understanding of the author's, and stories', context.
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