Writers, friends

[serene]

Stuff about two friends' books recently, and I should share, promising no impartiality:

1) sogwife picked up my copy of pameladean's Tam Lin the other day, and said, "Huh," which I was unable to interpret. She likes fairy tales, so I asked her if she knew the legend. "Oh, yeah, and I'm pretty sure I've read this one. It's the one set in a college, right? I liked this one." (I know it makes no sense for ME to be proud that someone liked someone else's book, but I am anyway.)

2) Finished Farthing this morning. As is the case with Pamela, I've liked papersky's writing since before I knew she was an author. (I *think* I knew her before her first book was published. Let me go look. Yes, probably so, as I was posting on our then-shared newsgroups for a couple years by then.) Anyway, I have always liked her writing, and this book is no exception.



I was sad at the end. It didn't happen the way I wanted it to. Yet it was satisfying. I am holding back the urge to write to Jo and say, "Please reassure me that it all works out in the end!" because I know that what I really want is to read it and have it all work out in the end. (The book is the first in a trilogy.)

Also, a strange thing: For years, I've been hearing/reading about the debate over whether or not there are too many queer characters in the book(s). My reaction over the years, not having read the book, has been, "How silly. Queer people are all around you. Get over it." And then I ran into one character (after meeting several others) in the book who turns out to be queer, and my gut reaction was "Well, that was one too many." Not that the character couldn't have been queer, or that there wasn't at least a plausible case to be made for writing her that way, but my gut said, "No, really, another one?" and I didn't have that reaction for the several "outings" before that in the book, so I'm not sure what that was about.

That's such a tiny thing that I wouldn't have even mentioned (or perhaps remembered) it had it not been for the frequent notes Jo gets about how there are too many queer people in the novel. Overall, I loved the book, though, and found it to be the perfect combination of ease of reading, fresh story, interesting and sufficiently complex plot, and talented characterization.

Comments

[damned_colonial]

Wow, really, people say that? I had no idea!

I read the book in a state of cringe thinking "oh no oh no oh no please don't make the murderer be queer", because although I knew papersky's reputation and thought I could trust her not to have done that, I didn't *know* know. And I've been burnt so many times before, most recently by Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar series, where EVERY SINGLE QUEER is either murdered or a murderer.

Anyway.

I read "Farthing" while ill, and not really 100% switched-on, and a tiny little corner of my brain noticed an early reference to "Jack" and went "whuh?" and kind of thought it might be relevant later but didn't really process it properly, and then it came to the last chapter or so, and OMG YAAAAAYYYY because the DETECTIVE was sekritly gay, and that's a twist I really hadn't expected, and it made me SO HAPPY.

As for queers showing up all through the book, I suspect if I hadn't been so busy cringing, I would've been delighted. The more the merrier, say I. And if I look around at people I know, well, the numbers are well over 10%, you know? So I expect to see that in at least some pockets of the fictional world. Complaining that there's One! Whole! Book! in the world with, what, 15% gay characters? That's like people complaining that appointing a single female Supreme Court judge is "reverse discrimination".

[serene]

Well, a queer person was the murderer in Farthing, too. She didn't do the killing, but she arranged for it all, and even set up the innocents to take the fall. (Then again, one of the innocents and the detective are queer, too.)

I feel I should rush to say I don't actually think there are too many queers in the book. I was just noting that I had that gut reaction at one point (when we find out about Mommy and Sukey).

[damned_colonial]

Mmmm, yeah, I guess my problem (based on books I've read previously) is more with there being a gay character at the start of the novel who turns out either to be killer or killed. I'm not thrilled by a character turning out, at the *end*, to be gay and a killer, but it doesn't give me the same sense of foreboding and dread that the early signalled kind does. Also, Walton had made me feel a LOT safer by the end of the book because of the gay detective. So I wasn't feeling quite so, you know, battered by it.

[vito_excalibur]

Re: Caudwell: no they're not. I can think of at least two queer characters in the last book alone who were neither.

[damned_colonial]

By that stage I was probably just cringing pre-emptively :-/

[firecat]

All of the Small Change trilogy rocks.

I'm glad I missed the debate about whether there were too many queers in Farthing before I read it.