Edgar's Book Round-Up, August 2022

It’s been a long one, man, I don’t know. Here’s some books. Links go to our Bookshop, as always.

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First up, we’ve got Daja’s Book and Briar’s Book, the two concluding volumes of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic tetralogy. I read the first two when I was a kid, and while I read the sequel series early in 2020, I hadn’t revisited this set of stories, following four gifted young magic-users as they learn to use their considerable powers, which had been missed in their even-younger years because they manifest (mostly) through crafts of various kinds. I say “even-younger” because the main characters are, like, twelve when the story begins — but Pierce has never been one to stint on worldbuilding or magic systems. The characters are very young, but the settings in which they move feel robust and lived-in, the adults in their orbit only rarely falling into caricature. Honestly, having arrived at the latter books of the series, there’s little to say to summarize the plot that wouldn’t give away the action of the earlier entries, but suffice to say that it’s fairly tight, the stories efficiently told. I’ve long loved the way Pierce conceptualizes magic in these books specifically, and my opinion is not changed by revisiting it.

A portrait of Chaucer from the Ellesmere manuscript of the Tales, via Wikipedia.

Next up was Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, an acknowledged masterwork that needs little introduction. Which also makes it strangely difficult to discuss in a meaningful way with any kind of brevity — what can I say? I liked the rime royal stories, in general, better than the heroic-couplet ones; I skipped the notoriously-antisemitic Prioress’s Tale because I had no reason to slog through it; I’ve been bothering my friends with nonsense like, “swynkeres of the world, unite!” because it amused me to do so. Chaucer’s English is really rich — I got pretty far into it on the sheer power of reading language that feels exactly like jamming your fingers all the way down into rich, loamy earth. By contrast, the array of classical references made by the characters was a really interesting look into late-Medieval classical reception, and the frequent allusions to Cicero and Seneca were fun and weird. I’m glad to have read all of it, having only read selections in a high school English class I didn’t like.

After that, I absolutely sprinted through T. Kingfisher’s latest outing, What Moves the Dead. A sort of expanded retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the novella follows Alex Easton, a retired soldier (whose gender is also soldier, for in-universe historical reasons) as they go to visit their childhood friends, the Ushers; once there, they find Madeline near death, her brother acting very weird, an American doctor baffled by his own involvement and the siblings’ ailment, and some very unsettling hares. As always, Kingfisher’s prose is light and readable, her focus on character close and compelling; I enjoyed the fictional-central-European-country in some kind of third-quarter-nineteenth-century period as a conceit. It was fun, and if you’ve ever lived in a house with damp problems, it’ll really speak to you.

I am a Dostoevsky guy to such an extent that I own this teeshirt, which I was thrilled to receive as a gift a few years ago, and here is a picture of me wearing it.

I followed that, or rather, next finished, The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky as translated by Constance Garnett, in audiobook form (though I’ll note that the link goes to the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation). This marks what seems like it’ll probably be a series of Dostoevsky rereads; I started here in large part because the audiobook was available immediately when I needed another one, but it’s also long been my favorite of Dostoevsky’s major novels. I am pleased to report that, barring major reappraisal after subsequent rereads, it’s still my favorite: Myshkin is not only a magnetic presence but a completely compelling character. I have also long disliked Garnett’s translations, but for this one, it worked pretty well — the more-elevated social status of most of the characters was well-served by her somewhat fussy language use (which is not true of the other Dostoevsky novel on this round-up). I was also stricken anew by Dostoevsky’s gift for writing extremely uncomfortable social situations, with which The Idiot is rife: whether it’s parties you don’t want to be at, people making fun of someone who doesn’t realize they’re the butt of the joke, or just weird almost-events that spark with lingering disquiet, they’re all here and they all make you want to crawl out of your skin. I also found that my own attitude towards many of the characters had changed a lot in the years since I last read this one — obviously, I still think Myshkin is an incredible character, and his adventures through then-contemporary Russian society are fascinating, but I found myself much more sympathetic to figures I’d previously found annoying, and frankly taken aback how the sheer youth of several of the characters. I have long characterized myself, for better or worse, as a Dostoevsky guy, and I am pleased, but also resigned to, reporting that that is still true.

Next up, in print, was James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. I am embarrassed to report that this is my first experience with Baldwin at any length, but it will not be the last. The novel follows David, a man wracked with self-loathing, as he reflects on his relationship with the titular Giovanni on the night before he returns to America from the house he rented in Provence to get away from Paris — and, by extension, Giovanni. As with Canterbury Tales, it’s hard to know what to say about this novel that adds any meaning to the discussion. I will note that Baldwin makes it easy both to feel for and feel distaste for David, keeping us locked into his self-flagellating version of events — self-flagellating, but equally, David seems to attempt to exorcise any culpability he has (and he certainly has it) for Giovanni’s eventual fate. And Baldwin’s prose absolutely outclasses pretty much everything else on this list: every sentence perfectly balanced, descriptions brief and powerful, an absolutely transfixing eye for detail. I’m excited to read more of his work — and all this sounds very dry, so I can only say that I mean every word of this paragraph very earnestly. It’s phenomenal.

After that, I finished Tade Thompson’s The Rosewater Redemption, the third and final installment in the Wormwood trilogy. Long-time readers will recall that I loved the first two books; this one was no different, at least on the level of character and setting. Unfortunately, the novel has the added weight of having to finish the story laid out in the first two books, and concluding a trilogy as exciting yet considered as this one was never going to be an easy task. Seeing Kaaro’s story through to its end, however, was very important to me — and clearly, it was to Thompson, too. Despite earlier promises, I won’t say too much, but I will note that the inclusion of Oyin Da, a.k.a. Bicycle Girl, as a viewpoint character was an excellent move from a narrative standpoint, and while I had some issues with how the story as a whole came to a close, I certainly enjoyed the ride.

My next finish was Christopher Collard’s translation of Aeschylus’ Oresteia (though, due to vagaries, this link goes to the Fagles translation), the cycle of three plays consisting of “Agamemnon,” “Libation Bearers,” and “Eumenides.” I understand that Aeschylus’ Greek is very difficult, hinging as it does on swift changes of tone; Collard bears up well, rendering regular speech as prose and the choral odes as rather free verse. In terms of the plays themselves, “Libation Bearers” is by leagues the most interesting, at least to me: much has been made by people who care about it of the depiction of the formation of the areopagita in “Eumenides,” but it left me pretty cold, while “Agamemnon” felt more like an introduction than a complete story. “Libation Bearers,” on the other hand, offers a number of fun possibilities with respect to staging (not that I’m in a position to make any kind of staging decision, but it’s fun to think about) as well as, of course, the appearance of Orestes and Electra, two of tragedies more fascinating siblings. In any case, I’m glad to have read it, and having read Collard’s translation, I feel well-prepared in case I decide to mess around with it myself.

The cover of the first edition, via Wikimedia Commons.

And because I have little sense of self-preservation, I went immediately from The Idiot to Crime and Punishment for my audiobook reading, so here is where I finished Crime and Punishment, again in the Constance Garnett translation. Garnett’s translation, as mentioned above, felt really weird for C&P, if only because of her propensity to choose genteel phrasings over — as in Magarshack’s translation — just saying, “To hell with you!” I’ll admit, too, for all C&P was my introduction to Dostoevsky, it’s never been my favorite: the plot feels less well-balanced than later novels (or, indeed, than earlier ones), and while it has a lot more action than some of Dostoevsky’s other works, stuff happening isn’t really the engine of most of Dostoevsky’s novels. All this, obviously, is just my opinion, and, as mentioned, I’m a Dostoevsky guy to a kind of embarrassing degree; for all C&P may not be my favorite, I have long sought to be like Razhumikhin. Which might be telling on myself; I don’t know.

I close this round-up with Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Red Tree, which Cameron reviewed here. I haven’t read Kiernan since my teens, when I read her first several novels in quick succession, and I am pleased to report that her writing is as electric as I remember it. The Red Tree follows Sarah Crowe, a struggling author, as she decamps from Atlanta after her prior relationship collapsed to an isolated farmhouse in Rhode Island, where there seems to be something unusual about the giant red oak behind the house. True to to form, Kiernan layers this relatively familiar gothic premise with references and digressions, a profoundly unreliable narrator (who is aware that she’s unreliable, but not always in what particular way), splicing Sarah’s story with excerpts from other texts, real and fictitious — and always, achingly beautiful prose that holds the reader entirely captive. It was really, really good, and I’m looking forward to getting back into Kiernan’s work.

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