Another Green World

The School for Good Mothers, by Jessamine Chan. It’s a dystopian novel about what could happen if Child Protective Services goes bonkers. Our protagonist (who is really not very likeable) has what she calls a “really bad day” and has a rather appalling lapse in judgment while caring for her toddler daughter. The child is mildly traumatized but not harmed, and then the rest of the book is about the horrible fourteen months or so that the mom spends hoping to regain access to her daughter. ( Spoil about the part of the book that came as a surprise to me ) It was interesting, and bits were quite entertaining, but I would have preferred either a more sympathetic protagonist, or a better message than “government is bad,” or both.

One of the things I liked most about the book was the way the protagonists’ Chinese-American heritage tended to compound many of her problems. Her mother’s own style of parenting was not ideal, by the standards this training system wanted, but it made sense, given the circumstances. And the protagonist’s reactions to her own childhood, and to being Asian-American, were worthwhile – but the reader’s awareness of this side of the story may be diluted by the overall dystopia.

This is the book that I didn’t want to read on Christmas, though it’s due back at the library this week, and once I started it today I made a point to read the whole thing so that I could move past it, rather than committing my imagination to living in the world for any longer. I’m kind of impressed that the author could do that to herself. I would not have wanted to live in this woman’s head and situation for all the months it surely took her to get the book written.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg. This was a favorite of mine when I was younger, and J's book club recently read it so I figured I should read it again too. As an adult, I can see that the most important outcome of the story for the children is not that they know the secret of the artwork they loved when they ran away to live in the Met for a week, but that they now know the extraordinary Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver, by E.L. Konigsburg. It's the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine, very cleverly arranged, for younger readers. I was 11 when it was published, and I wonder that I didn't read it then, because I had certainly read a lot of other books about her. Maybe I looked down on it because the other books I'd read were written for adults? Anyway, our narrators are Abbot Suger (who had the first Gothic cathedral built, and I've been reading about him in architecture books), the Empress Mathilda, William the Marshal, and Eleanor herself. They're all sitting around Heaven in the 20th century waiting to see if Henry II will be let Up to join them.

Proust and the Squid: The Story and the Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf. Very interesting. The first third is on the development of writing systems (exactly the sort of thing my mom loved to read about). The second third is about learning to read - the author invites us to skim the section on neuroscience, but I did wade through it. The final third is insights from her own career as an expert in dyslexia.

As it turns out, there are two main pathways to dyslexia. One is having a difficult time understanding words as made up of specific sounds that recur in other words. The other is having a time delay between seeing letters (and colors, etc.) and being able to name them. It turns out that at least the time precision part is normally governed by the left side of the brain, whereas dyslexics end up reading with the right side of the brain, possibly because they're already more gifted in using the right side, or else their brain just happens to read that way, strengthening the right side and enhancing its other gifts. With different languages, there are different prevalent patterns in dyslexia - in English, many have the first problem, many have the second, quite a few (maybe it was the majority?) have both, but about 10% have neither.

Elegy for Eddie, by Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie Dobbs #9. This one's set in spring 1933, and it's already ominous with the approaching war. Good, but Maisie spent a lot of time feeling ambivalent or unhappy, and I hope she'll have a more positive experience in the future - I guess we'll see.

The Bees: A Novel, by Laline Paull. This book is astounding. I learned about it from a local author who specializes in "furry" fiction.

The basic premise is Watership Down, but bees are so much more alien than rabbits - their society is bizarre, and much of the time they're under the influence of hive-generated chemicals. This author has a vivid imagination and somehow managed to create this world effectively, having learned an awful lot about bees.

I had two small concerns. First, the bee "culture" is a bit more anthromorphized than necessary, but that's also true of Watership Down, with its religion and such, and it's really not at all extravagant in that regard. Second, more seriously, there was a point fairly early where I found it difficult to read for very long, and upon reflection I realized that our POV character had such a limited, short-term perspective that I just didn't want to spend that much continuous time in her head. So I set it aside for a few days. But as she grew older (she had just hatched at the beginning, after all), she definitely developed into a unique individual. There's plenty of action, and the final chapters were as spell-binding and dramatic as one could hope for.

So, if you enjoy trying on different ways of seeing the world, I highly recommend it.

The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, by E.L. Konigsburg. I picked this up at the library when I got From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for J. It's a much newer book, and still fun. A quirky girl rebels against the conformity of summer camp and instead finds her summer devoted to saving the giant sculptures her quirky uncles created - amazing multi-story towers with hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of glittering pendants.

Ocean's Echo, by Everina Maxwell. This book's set in the same universe as her Winter's Orbit, and I enjoyed them both immensely. Their genre is, basically, queer romance space opera with military/political issues to be resolved, and this one explores what happens if you create a mind meld between a rather obnoxious chaotic neutral rich kid and a lawful good military officer whose mother died a traitor. I hope Maxwell keeps writing at this pace - her books are fun!

The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray. Oh, this was fun. It's a house party, hosted by the Knightleys at Donwell Abbey, with all the main Jane Austen characters, several of the minor characters, and added children for some. I thought the author handled them all very well and made lots of sound choices. I've tried books that brought together characters from more than one Austen story before, but they were disappointing. If you like Austen fanfic, I highly recommend this one.

False Value, by Ben Aaronovitch. Rivers of London #8. This time, Peter's working in a tech company and trying to figure out whether someone is doing nefarious things with some technology supposedly invented by Babbage and Lovelace. There was a murder, but by the end of the book I'd forgotten who the murderer and victim actually were. They were kind of beside the point, though.