Mely (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
coffeeandink) wrote2013-12-13 01:42 pm
coffeeandink) wrote2013-12-13 01:42 pm
Entry tags:
Still behind on everything I want to post about, so have this instead
Oh, hey, Open Road Media is epublishing all of Mary Renault's contemporary novels, even the terrible ones. Seriously, do not waste any part of your limited lifespan on North Face. If you're immortal, I guess you can spare the time, but there are still so many more fun things you could be doing instead.
no subject
no subject
I had a great weakness for the hero, but would probably find him too full of manpain now. I did like this small bit where it momentarily seemed like he could act, but then he carefully suppressed all emotion and Acted.
no subject
no subject
No, I don't think I've ever written them about. naraht has links in another comment, and papersky may have posted about them at some point.
no subject
no subject
If you don't like the Greek novels, I wouldn't bother with the contemporaries. The Greek novels are much better.
Well, most of the contemporaries have more women, so they're better in that respect. It's just that the endings are all about confirming that women just can't be geniuses like men, and so they have to sacrifice themselves for men's success, and in one case also love affairs with men are waymore important than love affairs with women.
I do like Renault's prose style. I love the world-building in the historical novels. I am fascinated by the oblique character interactions and all the emotion by implication in many of the contemporaries. But--I'm not usually someone who would rather have no representation than flawed representation. But Renault pushes me to that place.
no subject
I wouldn't disagree with this exactly, in theory, but I am another person who hasn't yet succeeded in getting on with the Greek novels (something about the style?), and I certainly don't regret having read the other contemporaries. Painfully flawed yes, but fascinating, and often clearly cut from the same cloth as The Charioteer. The subtle character interactions, the vivid portraits of a very specific period in English history, and the open representation of gay, lesbian *and* bisexual characters all make them worthwhile for me (though I do recognise that the misogyny may make this not the case for others).
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I think Return to Night, Purposes of Love, *and *The Friendly Young Ladieshave interesting beginnings and middles, and are fascinating as sociological documents, but I hate the endings of each and every one of them. (I really liked the nursing stuff in Purposes of Love. It's a critical aspect of the effect of WWII on the professionalization of women in the UK that I haven't seen dealt with in fiction elsewhere. Sadly, all the social and sexual stuff made me want to send everyone far, far away from each other.)
no subject
What appeals to me about Return to Night is a love story with dynamics that are still unusual in a novel even in 2013 and, in Hilary, a female main character who is as complex, well-drawn and compelling as just about anyone I have encountered in fiction. Renault *could* write women, shockingly enough. She just couldn't write plots that didn't end up undermining them.
(However I love the book enough that I'm perfectly happy to ignore the final two chapters.)
no subject
Sorry for the weird italics! It's a combination of reply by email and rich html formatting, I think.
I'm not sure we disagree. :)
Return to Night was my favorite of the contemporaries after The Charioteer, and it's a relationship dynamic I like even better now than I did when I first read it. I suspect I will be impressed with Hilary on a reread.
But ohhhhhhhhh that ending. I am making a scowly face and clawing at air just thinking about it.
no subject
I will do my best not to bounce all over the place in your comments here, because I'm very interested in having more people reading and talking about these books, even if the eventual verdict is not good.
It is a very infuriating ending, clumsy in a purely literary way as well as undermining, I think, many of the things that the author has shown (rather than told) us about Hilary during the course of the book. Well overdue for some fannish rehabilitation, methinks...
no subject
Bounce all you like! :)
no subject