Curious, Healing

Books about healing, business, and fun

fiction

“Alcestis” by Katharine Beutner

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Recommended to me by: David Schwartz

In Greek myth, Alcestis was the perfect wife because she stepped forward to die in place of her husband. After three days, Heracles rescued her from Hades. This book explores the raw, harsh side of the myth, starting with childbirth and death, continuing with sisterhood and death, and ending in rape and submission.

Amidst the harshness, engaging details are woven together to show a woman’s life in ancient Greece. Royal women, maids, and slaves all eat and do their hair and even visit the chamber pot.

The book is casually homophobic. A male homosexual relationship is shown in the context of adultery and cowardice. A woman is raped by another woman, and then is shown desiring her rapist.

Gods and goddesses are capriciously cruel and kind as the whim takes them, and the humans live in fear of their next display of power-over. It’s not a cosmology I would want to live with.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Wild Wood” by Charles de Lint

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The Wild Wood is part of the same series of books based on Brian Froud’s illustrations as Something Rich and Strange.

Charles de Lint is a well-known fantasy author, but the writing in this book is distractingly amateurish, with overly detailed descriptions of people’s clothes and exact measurements of snowfall, along with cardboard characterizations.

For example, the main character Eithnie is described as “spacy” several times without context, possibly to make it more plausible that she twice forgets plans with her friend Joe as she’s swept along by the plot. Joe himself is defined by his Japanese heritage as being both inscrutable and magically able to be in the present moment.

I found the ending anti-climactic as well, and wished Eithnie’s skills as an artist could have played a bigger role.

The book is out of print in the original illustrated hardcover edition, but is Available at bookshop.org as a trade paperback.

“Something Rich and Strange” by Patricia McKillip

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Some 30 years ago, I picked up an unassuming paperback copy of Patricia McKillip’s “The Riddle-Master of Hed” at a library book sale. When I finished it, I held the closed book in my hands, paused, then turned to the first page to begin again. I’ve been a fan of that series, and of standalone “The Forgotten Beasts of Eld” ever since.

Sadly, “Something Rich and Strange” doesn’t live up to that high standard. Most of McKillip’s books are dreamy and impressionistic. This one is too, but the dreaminess is forced to serve a moralistic message about environmental pollution. Even though I agree with the need for awareness and action, it was unsatisfying to see characters manipulated into acknowledging it.

The book was written as a response to macabre woodland faerie illustrations by Brian Froud. Since this book is set beside and in the Pacific Ocean, the illustrations interrupt rather than support the narrative. The cover is pretty, though.

The book is out of print in the hardback illustrated edition.

“The Girl Who Fell from the Sky” by Heidi W. Durrow

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I wanted to love and learn from this book, but there were too many jarring inconsistencies with my own knowledge.

As a child, Rachel falls 9 stories and her only lasting injury is to the hearing in one ear. With everything I know about physical and psychological trauma, I wanted at least one sentence explaining that one. Even her hearing disability is only mentioned in passing, as if an editor said, “Hey, whatever happened to that?”

So much trauma and loss, some of it arbitrary and unlikely, and no one in the book grieves. Some of the characters drink, but no one talks about grieving.

I live very near where this book is set, walking distance from Irving Park and its tennis courts, biking distance from Laurelhurst park and its duck pond.

Rachel’s grandma neglects her garden, and the only green is under the bird feeder from fallen seeds. This is Portland. Some plants may die, but any unattended earth is guaranteed to be overrun by verdant weeds.

I wanted to learn about being biracial in Portland in 1982, about racism and anti-racism and one girl’s experience. I wish I trusted the information I received.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword” by Barry Deutsch

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Subtitle: Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl

Recommended to me by: Barry Deutsch’s Alas, A Blog

A graphic novel set in an Orthodox Jewish town called Hereville, in a blended family with many girls and one little brother. The facial expressions and other details in the drawings are captivating – I read the book twice and noticed a lot that I’d missed the first time. The characters are realistic even while engaged in unrealistic adventures.

The strict rules of Orthodox Judaism are included in the story, with only the occasional pictorial editorial comment, such as the bored expressions of the youth having “vibrant, passionate discussions” on Shabbat. Yiddish terms are translated in footnotes.

The fantastic elements of witch encounters and troll fights contrast oddly with the Orthodox background, sibling arguments about reputation, and a step-mother’s efforts to manage a large family. The ending is decidedly unexpected.

Mirka is portrayed as reaching for a knife, sword, or tree-branch to violently solve her problems. She is also portrayed as being so immersed in Jewish culture that she didn’t recognize a pig when she saw one.

I’m not sure what to think of the book. It draws me in, and at the same time leaves me wondering if the author’s message is subtly derogatory toward Judaism. While I wouldn’t want to live in an Orthodox community myself, I don’t want to see one exposed to ridicule, either.

Barry Deutsch is a cartoonist in Portland, Oregon.

Available at bookshop.org.

“Filter House” by Nisi Shawl

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Recommended to me by: emilytheslayer on LiveJournal because Nisi Shawl is one of WisCon’s 2011 guests of honor

“Filter House” is a collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories, written with exquisite integrity. I felt safe in the author’s hands as she portrays people of color, people of size, people with disabilities and other marginalized groups as whole, valuable people (what a thought!), without erasing the details of their experiences.

Some of the stories address dystopian futures where water is in short supply, reminding me of James Tiptree’s dystopian short stories.  Other stories playfully explore what it’s like to be a scholarly princess befriended by a marauding dragon, or to practice trance-possession on another planet.

Shawl’s other published book is “Writing the Other: A Practical Approach,” and I look forward to reading it as soon as I can track down a copy.

Available at bookshop.org.