Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Just finished: The Forgotten Daughter by Joanna Goodman. I don't have much to add since my vent post last week, beyond that I continued to be frustrated with its failure to live up to its potential. Also apparently it's a sequel to a book about Elodie.

Like most media about extremism written by a moderate (at least I assume Goodman's politics are fairly centrist/Liberal) it does a weird thing where it unintentionally makes the extremist position look way more fun and cool right up until the end, where the reader is told to not do this cool thing. I didn't like either of the main characters, but the separatist Véronique was way more fun and interesting than the Liberal James, who I assume is the one we're supposed to believe is correct. I don't think this book is intentional pro-FLQ propaganda, but my problem with books (and films, TV, etc.) about extremist movements and people is that I find it far easier to sympathize with the character who wants something passionately than the character who's cool with the status quo. This is Storytelling 101 stuff. The only thing James seems to want is into Véronique's pants, which isn't that interesting a motivation when there are coffee shops to bomb and such.

Anyway, if the author had just doubled down on the dysfunction, the romance part of the story would be a lot better. Instead she seemed committed to getting her boring leads together even though they don't seem to like each other very much.

Five Little Indians by Michelle Good. This one was fantastic. It's about five young survivors of residential school in BC. They're abducted, violently, from their homes, thrown into this horrible torture camp, and then let go when they "graduate" with a bus ticket to Vancouver and their lives and family ties disrupted. And then they survive, or don't.

This is a story where all the trigger warnings apply. It's a deeply upsetting read. It's also a very important read, and it brings the horror of residential school and intergenerational trauma home in a way that's visceral and affecting. Brace yourself, but read it.

Currently reading: Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson. Was no one going to tell me that the third book in Robinson's Trickster trilogy just dropped? Yesterday, apparently. I just started reading it but I'm so psyched for closure on this fantastic series. It starts with some hardcore body horror stuff so you know she's not fucking around at all. 

Comments

[kore]

My Trickster copy is coming tomorrow!! I dunno if I can focus enough to read it, but I wanted to buy it new in hardback to support her, esp after all the shit.

[sabotabby]

Yes. I feel so bad for her and everyone involved in the production. She created pure magic and Latimer shat all over it.

[kore]

That was so terribly depressing. The whole phenomenon just got poisoned by that one racist person.

[minoanmiss]

I find it far easier to sympathize with the character who wants something passionately than the character who's cool with the status quo.

I feel this for both Watsonian and Doylist reasons. Watsonially, intensity is more compelling and emotionally affecting and just plain fun. Besides, one reason for stories is so things can happen the way they should, rather than how they have to, which brings me to the Doylist reasons. If I read a story about revolutionaries I want to indulge my sympathy with them, not get told "it'll never work". I have to deal with "it'll never work" IRL, where I can't be a revolutionary because I and the people I love are the kind who die in revolutions -- I totally WANT to take the "burn it all down" tack but I can't. So why would I want to take that tack in fiction?

Also, "because he wants to fuck her" is a boring motivation by itself. It can lead to fun things -- one of the threads in one of my favorite books is about a man becoming a revolutionary in part because he gets to know the people who need help in part through a specific girl who turns out to be much less familiar and much more leaderly than either of them expects. I liked that his desire led to him actually getting to know her as a sentient. If he'd just wanted to fuck her I think I wouldn't've finished the book.

[minoanmiss]

and now I'm thinking of the balance of fantasy (defined broadly) vs verisimilitude vs expressed personal truth in fiction. Which beats thinking about shipping receipts.

[sabotabby]

Yes to all of this.

It may never see the light of day but one of my reasons for writing this novel is that I want the revolutionaries to succeed. Not to be misguided, not to be martyrs, not to have some postscript where 100 years later the dystopia got overthrown, but you know. Win and such.

Of course, in the case of Forgotten Daughter, I'm not actually sympathetic to the FLQ. It's just that the Liberal response was so awful that I ended up rooting for them as the lesser evil. Or at least the ineffectual evil. There's a million potentially interesting stories there but that's not the one that the author told.

[minoanmiss]

I am cheering for your novel! But I mean I have been because it's your novel. :D

[nyctanthes]

I'm thinking it might be time to read Trickster...

[sabotabby]

The first two books are excellent and so is the third so far

[kore]

Both books have some of the BEST writing about Native American life I've ever read. I am really stoked she finished the trilogy.

[sabotabby]

*cough* Indigenous people here are not Native American *cough*

[kore]

//FACEPALM

I dithered about what to type there for a good couple of minutes and just went with my own NM background, which was of course really wrong. I blame depression brain fog.

[sabotabby]

Depression brain fog is a helluva drug. Doesn't help that the terminology has changed but we still need to do things like talk about the Indian Act because they didn't change the name for that.

But yeah, Eden Robinson is First Nations (Haisla and Heiltsuk).

[kore]

Argh, I'm really sorry I messed up like that.

[sabotabby]

Tons of people do. That's why the Elements of Indigenous Style exists.

[rdi]

TIL that Elements of Indigenous Style is a thing

[sabotabby]

It's not the world's most exciting read (that would be Indigenous Writes by Chelsea Vowell, which covers a lot of the same ground but also goes into law and other issues) but it's the clearest guide to terminology I've encountered.