Reading
Big news for the first reading update of March: I dropped The Little Friend by Donna Tartt. I made it about 8% through the audiobook (which is 2 hours, believe it or not) before I started to suspect that I was reading a big ‘ol nothingburger of a novel. This was distressing, as I thought my love of her other novels, The Goldfinch and The Secret History, would make this an automatic win for me.
Sadly that was not the case.
First off, what I loved: The writing was absolutely stellar. Tartt has the uncanny ability not only to bring her characters to life, but to also do it with sentences that sing off the page. When read by Karen White, these sentences are poetic and mesmerizing.
Which leads me to my problem with this novel: The first two hours were all lush sentences bringing characters to life. The plot doesn’t really move forward. I was starting to think that this entire book would be, to use a phrase I really like, “just vibes.”
It’s a similar feeling I got when I watched Perfect Days, a Japanese-language film made by Wim Wenders. The film concerns a toilet cleaner and his cozy, yet obsessive routine, which hides a deeper pain. That film was beautiful, but it was more of a snapshot of Kōji Yakusho’s character rather than a story with narrative heft. I wanted more plot. I wanted more conflict. Now, I don’t hate Perfect Days. In fact, it stands out as a film that did something different, and though it didn’t become a new favorite, I liked it well enough.
The Little Friend‘s audiobook clocks in at 26 hours. Perfect Days is a 2-hour film. While it isn’t fair to compare works of fiction of different mediums, I think it’s fair to say I’m more willing to sit through a beautiful 2-hour movie with a light plot instead of listening to a 26-hour audiobook with a plot that doesn’t seem to go anywhere.
I checked Goodreads, and I was right in my assessment: all of the low ratings touched on this book going nowhere. Even the murder mystery, the event the prologue describes in haunting detail, isn’t solved by the end of the book. The low ratings all agree the writing is stellar; it just isn’t a book that has a traditional mystery narrative. All of the glowing reviews state that this is a wonderful character study and all negative reviews should stop talking about wanting a plot so badly. I find that kind of review unhelpful. They seem to think that expecting a plot, and expecting a murder to be solved in a story is some kind of bizarre ask. It’s also worth noting that of Donna Tartt’s three published novels, The Little Friend has the lowest rating (3.48 as opposed to The Goldfinch’s 3.96 and The Secret History’s 4.16).
I started listening to Relic of the Gods, the third volume in Philip C Quaintrell’s Echoes Saga. I’ve been having a good time with these audiobooks, despite the lackluster writing. I have run into a snag in this volume, though. Without giving away any spoilers, I am finding it hard to stomach our main characters’ alarming slaughter of almost an entire race of people. Now, these people are Villainous with a capital “V”, but the indiscriminate nature of the slaughter makes me think the author just wanted to have our heroes kill mindless hordes for sheer action. These villains contain no nuance. They are just awful. Yet our heroes kill whole groups of men and women with dragon fire. Buildings are set ablaze with no thought as to who occupies them. Gory details of violence are at the forefront, yet our heroes magically kill no children. The author doesn’t even mention this race of people having children.
This, to me, is the height of lazy writing. Violence needs direction. While our heroes have a good reason why they’re attacking this group of people, their thirst for revenge is genocidal, and that doesn’t sit well with me. I’m not ready to give up on this book yet, because this is a small gripe in the grand scheme of things, but it does make me want the protagonists to suffer a bit for their hubris. Hopefully I, as a reader, get that at some point.
Now on to what went right this week.
I finished Dangerous Women, the George RR Martin and Garnder Dozois-edited anthology of stories concerning, you guessed it, dangerous women. This is a long anthology, running at almost 800 pages. Some of the stories were novelettes/novellas, and some of them took place in established universes, such as Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, and George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.
I read all of the stories (and enjoyed most of them) except for the final novella. This novella, The Princess and the Queen, or, the Blacks and the Greens by George RR Martin takes place in the ASOIAF world 200 years before the events of A Game of Thrones. This was my first encounter with this world, as I haven’t read A Game of Thrones nor watched the TV show. I’m sorry to any ASOIAF fans reading this, but I simply refuse to read a series that will never be completed. I might watch the show someday, but the books will remain on my shelf until we get an official announcement from a publisher that the last two books will be published. I’ve been burned before by The Gentleman Bastards series and The Kingkiller Chronicles (no shade to Scott Lynch, Patrick Rothfuss, or GRRM, though. Wrapping up an immensely popular fantasy series while dealing with rabid fans and your own issues is something I can’t even begin to understand).
All that is to say that I found this novella unbelievably boring. I think it would have more of an impact if I’d read the books and/or watched the show, as that would provide much needed context to make this novella interesting. Since it’s written in the style of a historical textbook, I couldn’t get into it. I’m keeping this anthology on my shelf, though, as I do intend to read this novella once the final novels in ASOIAF are announced.
Writing
I submitted my magi-themed story to CafeLit magazine. Fingers crossed that it gets picked up.
I’m starting to wrap up the outline of my novel, which I’ve decided to tentatively title “Mythos.” That doesn’t really give a clue as to what it’s about, but who knows where the novel will go. That tentative title might not mean anything once the manuscript is complete.
Speaking of the manuscript, I started writing the first chapter. I’m only a few hundred words in, but I was too excited to wait until I finalized my outline. Starting next week, I’m planning on putting a tracker at the bottom of these blog posts to track the word count of my first draft. The goal is 120,000 words. We’ll see how long that takes.
MYTHOS – First Draft progress report: 620/120,000 words – 0.52%
—
What have you been reading and/or writing this week? Let me know in the comments below.
The Night Bulletin 