Category: Opinion

Difficult Questions: Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan (2008)

24th July 2009 / / 4 Comments

(WARNING: This review contains discussion of adult concepts. Judge for yourself whether you wish to continue reading.) 

There has been something of a stir about Tender Morsels in the British press recently (in the Observer and the Daily Express and the Daily Mail), mainly over the sexual content of what has been perceived to be a children’s book. First of all, let’s clear up some misconceptions: Tender Morsels is not a book for children — it is addressed to adults (be they old or young), and expects its readers to reflect on uncomfortable issues. Furthermore, though the book does include many harrowing events, it treats them far less frivolously than these write-ups suggest . But, in a way, it’s apposite that these issues should be raised; because one of the central themes of Tender Morsels is how far we should shield children from ‘difficult’ issues.

Margo Lanagan’s latest novel is an interpretation of the tale of Snow White and Rose Red, and unflinching from the very start. As a teenage girl, Liga gives birth to two daughters, one the result of sexual abuse by her father (who is  subsequently killed), the other of a gang-rape committed by boys from the village (these are depicted obliquely — the latter taking place entirely ‘off stage’ — yet not in a way that skirts around them; later harrowing scenes may be less oblique, but are still not treated lightly). Unable to face life in a world that has done all this to her, Liga prepares to throw herself from a cliff; but is rescued by some magical agency that transports her to the world of her heart’s desire — a world much like her own, but idyllic. There she raises her daughters: Branza, fair and calm; and Urdda, wild and dark.

However, others eventually find their way into this dream-world: first a dwarf, who finds that he can turn things there into precious gems and metals; then a young man, dressed in a bear costume for a festival in his village, who turns into a real bear in Liga’s world. And the traffic is not all one-way. Urdda, having known only Liga’s heaven, stumbles into the real world and finds it much more to her liking. Ten years pass in the dream-world, and one in the real, before Urdda finds a way to bring her mother and Branza through; how will they cope in reality, with all its complicated, messy realness?

Before I get into the issues, let me say that Tender Morsels is a beautifully written book. For example, this, narrated by the boy-turned-bear:

From [Liga] and around her were all the smells of warmth, of home, of women. Fire and food, cloth and cleanliness. In my own house — my father’s house, but only me and Aran in it — no matter how I swept and scrubbed, all it smelled of was grief yet. I did not know what to do with it to make it a home again.

Lanagan is skilled evoking joy, mystery, and profound horror, all within the same narrative voice. And it’s a voice that feels right for telling fairytales (her first-person narrators ring similarly true) — because Tender Morsels is still a fairytale in many ways: magic causes trouble; wishes have drawbacks; those who do wrong are punished; there is a happy ending (though it’s not a neat one), and a strong moral heart.

What is the message of this story? It’s about facing reality head-on: Liga comes to realise that. by raising her daughters in her heaven-world — by trying to conceal the real world from them — she has deprived them of the opportunity to truly live. Life in the real world may be uncertain and dangerous, but it’s where people belong. (Lanagan labours this idea a little too much, but not so much that it disrupts her story.)

Does this mean, then, that the author is saying that sexual violence is everywhere, that it’s just a fact of life? I don’t think Lanagan’s message is that bleak, though it is honest and complex, and not necessarily comforting. I’ll explain my reasoning.

First, Lanagan stylises even the ‘real’ world of her novel: no hints of political structures, for example — no sense that this world would function as an actual place; therefore, I think she’s not saying that this is how reality is, but using sexual danger as a metaphor for danger in general. (Why sex? Perhaps because it’s an aspect of pre-industrial European societies that was there, but which we don’t often include when we think of them. I should also add, in case I’ve given the wrong impression, that Lanagan does include some positive portrayals of sex — it’s not always violent and brutal in the world of Tender Morsels.)

Even if we’re talking in generalities, then, does that mean the book is saying that children should just face up to the bad things in the world? Not necessarily — finding out the truth doesn’t automatically make life much easier for Lanagan’s characters; and Tender Morsels acknowledges the argument in favour of Liga’s raising her daughters in the dream-world: she was protecting them — what’s wrong with a mother wanting to do that? So I don’t think Lanagan is saying we should race to discover the many distressing aspects of life — just that we shouldn’t try to pretend they don’t exist.

It seems to me that a key issue behind the three articles I linked to above (and this related one from the Guardian books blog yesterday) is about trying to have some control over the manner in which children learn about ‘difficult’ issues. I don’t think it’s unreasonable per se to want to do that; I do think it’s unreasonable to expect books automatically to be a space conducive to that aim.

As for Tender Morsels, it’s a wonderful piece of writing that leaves one thinking deeply about the issues it raises. But it’s not for children.

E-books and readers

30th June 2009 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been trying out a couple of e-book readers today, and thought I’d post a few thoughts. My previous experience of e-books has largely been limited to reading them on desktop computers, which is okay for short stories, but not really for anything longer, and hardly ideal in any case. How would handheld devices fare?

First, I had a go with the iPod Touch. To be fair, this was not really designed for reading e-books, so it’s no surprise that it was very awkward to use. Trying to do almost anything using the touch-screen interface was such a fiddly job, and moving to a specific page with the ‘page meter’ (don’t know the official name) was practically impossible. It’s not very comfortable to hold for purposes of reading, either.

The Sony Reader was better – and, indeed, much better in general than I expected. You can actually hold it like a book; and there’s no screen glare, so it’s quite comfortable to read (though the unit itself is a little heavy). The controls took some getting used to, and I could do without the brief inversion of colours that comes with each transition between pages. But I could certainly see something like this becoming a viable alternative (price notwithstanding)) to lugging around 800-page novels (if I felt like reading many).

And yet… I still feel that e-books are not about to supplant the paper variety any time soon – and not just for relatively superficial reasons like ‘printed books look nicer’ (although they do). I think there are real practical concerns; I’m surely not the first person to suggest this, but it strikes me that there are key things that printed volumes do well and e-books don’t – and that the best kinds of electronic book are those for which the traditional format is too restrictive.

For example, a dictionary you can search online is far more practical than a huge tome you have to pick up and flick through. But when it comes to reading fiction, where you don’t want to be concerned with the mechanics of how you’re reading, a printed book is an ideal format – you just pick it up and read. This, I think, is the real sticking-point for e-books and e-book readers – they have portability on their side, but their current format is inferior to what they’re competing directly against. And I’m not sure whether refinements to the technology I saw today are going to address that.

Personal reflections on books and gender

13th May 2009 / / 3 Comments

This post has been inspired by an entry in Juliet McKenna‘s LiveJournal asking whether publishing is sexist. It may turn out to be more a series of fragments than a properly coherent argument, and I doubt that I’ll offer any original insights; but I’ve never written about this topic before, so we’ll see how it goes.

To start with my own experiences as a reader: yes, most of the books I have read in my lifetime have been by men, and most of the books I have reveiwed have been by men. Yes, I was surprised by the ending of The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler when we read it at school; and no, I didn’t read ‘books for girls’. But then, I didn’t read many ‘books for boys’ either — the closest I got were all the adventure gamebooks I read (the vast majority of which were written by men; and which had, I would surmise, a largely male readership). Mostly, though, I just read books — the gender of the author was genuinely never a concern to me. As an adult, I notice an author’s gender more; and, if I see that I’ve read a few books in a row by male authors, I do often think, perhaps it’s time I read a female author or two. I’m not entirely sure whether that’s a good way of looking at it; I think there’s something to be said for the free-spirited way I read as a child, picking up anything and everything with no regard for any criteria other than that it sounded good.

…

There has been quite a pause between my writing the last paragraph and this one, as I’ve confronted the fact that I probably do have a real gender bias in my choice of reading matter. It’s quite hypothetical, but it’s there. I would never reject a book on the basis of its author’s gender (gender might affect the order in which I read a group of books, but that’s different); I would reject it on the basis of whether I thought I’d like it. Now, I don’t tend to read books that have been explicitly written for a particular gender, of any sort — chick-lit, lad-lit, whatever, they generally don’t appeal to me (though I’m sure I could find exceptions if I looked); but if I had to choose one (and I’m talking about the really hackneyed, stereotyped stuff here), I’d go for a book written for my own gender. Hopefully there’s enough out there to read that I’ll never have to resort to making such a choice, but there it is.

So, I can understand (as I previously thought I couldn’t) how readers might prefer authors of one gender over another.  But I think the issue is also tied up with other factors. One of the commenters on Juliet’s post, Maura McHugh, says that, in the fantastic genres, we still have some people viewing some kinds of fiction  as more ‘suitable’ for women to write than others (i.e. fantasy rather than hard SF or horror), and cites as an example ‘paranormal romance’ being excluded from definitions of horror. Now, I think she conflates two different issues here. Yes, some people do think that women can’t or shouldn’t write particular kinds of fiction (in my view, all such opinions are wrong). The thing is, though, I wouldn’t classify ‘paranormal romance’ as ‘horror’. But I wouldn’t classify ‘paranormal detections’ (which are often written by men as well as women) as horror, either. And I would exclude these kinds of fiction not because of their authors’ gender, or because I think they’re intrinsically inferior (which, by the way, I don’t); but for the same reason I wouldn’t call Count Duckula horror — because I think (broadly speaking — of course there’s some overlap) they try to do different things and work in different ways.

Finally, to answer Juliet’s question: is publishing sexist? I have nothing to do with the industry, so I can do no more than speculate. I don’t think it is, not conciously anyway; but I do think there is a bias towards male writers — yet the majority of readers are female. Perhaps it is not so much one gender being favoured deliberately over another as the industry seeking to maintain a preconceived pattern of gender. A few years ago, Mark Morris wrote Fiddleback (known as The Lonely Places in the US), a psychological thriller with a female lead. It was published under a gender-neutral name to make it more appealing to women. That doesn’t excuse any biases against female writers, but it does demonstrate that ‘gender expectations’ can work both ways. Perhaps it’s that the publishing industry likes it when one set of books appeals to one gender, and another set of books appeals to another gender, and doesn’t like to rock that particular boat.

Over to you — yes, for once I’m going to explicitly invite comments (which are always welcome in any case). Do you prefer to read authors of one gender over another? What’s your take on the whole issue?

The double-edged sword of Spotify

26th March 2009 / / 0 Comments

I’ve come across an article at MusicOMH by music producer Mark Moore (of S’Express) about Spotify, the new application that allows you to (legally) stream music over the internet, either for a monthly fee, or for free if you don’t mind a few adverts in between tracks. Moore’s argument is essentially that, though Spotify has been endorsed by the record industry, it’s actually detrimental to the long-term survival of that industry, because who’s going to buy music when you can listen to whatever you want for free?

Now, I’m a monthly subscriber to Spotify, and I think the program is a great idea. I’ve never personally been interested in carrying music around with me, and so never been interested in downloading — but I like listening to music when I’m working at the compter, and the ability to listen to whatever I want whilst doing so was very appealing. All the music posts on the present blog were done with the aid of Spotify; and it would have been a boon when I was blogging the Mercury Prize last year.

Nevertheless, I can see Moore’s point. I am not going to stop buying music: I’ve no plans to stop paying for Spotify, and I will still be buying the CDs of my favourite artists, and any other albums and hear and love. But it’s true that I feel less inclined to take a chance on an album where I’ve only heard a couple of songs, when I can listen to the whole thing on Spotify instead. And I would imagine I’m in the minority of Spotify users when I pay the monthly fee — ads can be ignored, and who doesn’t like getting things for free?

I’ll agree, there is a real issue over how musicians, now and especially in the future, are going to earn enough money from making music to make it worth their while. And I can’t offer any suggestions as to how that issue might be resolved. I am sympathetic to Moore’s idea of  having a six-month gap between an album’s release and its appearance on Spotifty (though, perhaps selfishly, I’d want to see that gap closed, or at least narrowed, for paid subscribers) — but Spotify would lose one of its major selling-points if that were to happen, so I can’t see it myself.

And in conclusion..? There is no conclusion, really. I’ll continue to use Spotify, because it’s convenient; and I’ll hope that artists are able to make all the music they want in the years to come.

Readers, writers, and blogging: relationships between

11th March 2009 / / 4 Comments

Gleaned from Charles Tan’s blog, there is an interesting article by Guy Gavriel Kay in the Toronto Globe and Mail, about how the relationships between authors and readers are changing now that writers have more of a ‘public presence’, with blogs and suchlike. So we get tales of readers publicly expressing their anger when authors fall behind on writing the new book; and tales of (in Kay’s words) ‘the fan base functioning as a mobile attack force for the author’. Both of these strike me as things I personally would never do or want to be involved in; but the article has got me thinking about my own experiences of this.

I think it was 2000 when I first e-mailed some authors to tell them I liked their books — only a handful of writers, sure, but I was enthusiastic about doing so (I’m even still in touch with one of them today — hi Paul!).  It was an exciting feeling to receive an e-mail back. I also remember my first FantasyCon, the buzz of seeing authors in person, stopping them in the hotel corridors for a breathless, semi-coherent chat… I have never ‘invested’ myself as fully in an author’s online community as some people do, but I can readily understand the appeal of it  — I know what the feeling of ‘connection’ is like.

Interestingly, though, as time has gone on, as I’ve grown more confident in my ability to think and talk about fiction, as I’ve built up what I think is quite a substantial body of published work (though I recognise that it is still well off the radar of many people who may be interested in reading it), as the opportunities to interact with authors online have increased — I’ve retreated. I don’t e-mail authors to tell them I like their books (I might drop them a note about a positive review, but that’s about it). I’m more reluctant to speak to them at conventions. Why? I’m not sure. Perhaps just because it’s hard to know what the rules of etiquette are — but, as Kay’s article shows, they’re clearly changing.

And there’s another side of this matter to me, which relates to my reviewing and blogging. I feel a kind of obligation to keep this blog updated on at least a semi-regular basis, and I feel bad that my output of externally-published reviews appears in fits and starts rather than with any regularity.

But there’s no reason why I should feel these things. The blog is entirely my own thing, I don’t know how many people read it regulalrly but the number must be small (though I salute you all!), and nobody’s going to tell me off if I don’t post often enough (at least, I hope not!). And yet, in a way, it’s right that I should feel such pressure; as Kay says, it’s a pressure that comes from the nature of the medium — by choosing to set up a blog like this, there’s an implication that I will write stuff for it. Just as, when authors choose to engage with their readership online, there’s an implication that readers are entitled to engage back.

Which is a roundabout way of saying: I agree with Guy Kay.

Quote of the Week

4th February 2009 / / 0 Comments

I was a week late coming across this article by Adam Roberts, but I must quote something he says in the comments:

“You shouldn’t read to pass the time, or to paint pretty mental pictures inside your head, or to learn things, or to be able to boast that you’ve read something, or because your teacher told you to: you should read to live.”

Hear, hear!

Archives

Browse posts by author, original language of book, or post category

© 2024 David's Book World

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑

%d