It’s
been a busy couple of months since I last posted, but with bathroom renovations
almost complete, colleagues over their ailments at work, and various other
interruptions out of the way, it’s time to knuckle down to writing, blogging
and occasionally tweeting again.
I
have been reading Egg and Spoon by Gregory Maguire for our “Witches” themed
book club discussion next month. I’ve
never read anything by Maguire before and I found this book both enjoyable and
frustrating.
The
book is strongly steeped in Russian folklore interspersed with a spattering of
pre-revolution Russian history. I really
enjoyed the folklore elements: the elusive fire-bird, the irritable ice dragon,
and the wise-cracking witch Baba Yaga in her capricious house. I also initially liked the two main
characters, Elena and Katerina, whose lives, in one fateful moment, get swapped
about.
There’s
so much to like in this story, and perhaps that’s the problem. There’s just too much happening: Matryoshka
dolls marrying dragon-tooth soldiers, a subversive/subservient feline, Tsar
Nicholas, Rasputin and an unnamed monk locked in a tower, train travel, tornado
travel, and the Tsar’s adventure loving godson, the list goes on. These are all very entertaining, but by the
end of the book, I found I didn’t care as much about the main characters as I
did in the earlier chapters when their lives and the complications were simple.
I
also have a problem with books, particularly children/YA books that make too
many obscure references. How many
children, or even adults, will know anything about Caligula, Robespierre,
Benedict Arnold, or Tallulah Bankhead?
And those were mentioned in just one paragraph! There were at least a dozen more seemingly
irrelevant references like that. When I
read, I don’t want to take myself out of the story to go search Google to find
out who the author is talking about. The
same goes for words that don’t even appear in a dictionary. I read to be transported out of the ordinary
world into an extraordinary one. I can
tolerate looking up one or two things if they are relevant to the story; any
more than that gets annoying.
All
that said, some of the writing was lovely – particularly descriptions of the
Russian countryside and St Petersburg – and the banter between Baba Yaga and
her cat was rather witty. As I said,
there is much to enjoy in the book, but I think simplifying the story would
have made it more powerful. The message
to Live your life seemed tacked on at
the end when carrying on the theme of need and greed would have been more
appropriate.
“Oh, the
peskiness of brute childhood! I always
detested it!” remarked the witch.
“Nonesense,”
replied the kitten. “You ate children
for a living and loved it.”
‘Yes, but
by invitation only. A mob is an ugly
thing, and the younger, the uglier.”
