4 posts tagged “catherynne m valente”
I've just finished reading Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams by Catherynne M Valente. This little novel is about a hermit-woman called Ayako who lives in the shadow of a five-layered pagoda on the side of a mountain, and dreams up other selves and existences.
Yes, this is one of Valente's "weird ones", in the best possible way that a story can be weird. As usual her poetic prose is richly sensual, thick with wonderful images, and the ideas she weaves into the story are just as wonderful -- Oedipus and the sphinx's riddles; quantum physics (which, yes, I can wrap my head around); the fall of Troy and of her village at the same time; a Babylonian creation myth that becomes her own story of creation/reshaping. And more, of course.
I want to know what could have been spun from the lumpy black silk... perhaps I already know.
I shan't share the true beauty of this novel, the line near the end that brought a smile of sadness and happiness to my face -- that lesson is there, waiting, for the interested to learn, and I shan't spoil it. Suffice to say that this is a beautiful, moving tale, one that shall stay with me for a very long time, and I highly recommend it to any reader who (a) was intrigued by my review (obviously; I aim to intrigue), and (b) wants something very different to what they'll find on a high street bookshelf.
Minor point of interest: The book
comes in two cover-colours -- red or blue -- with a small variation in
the texts of each. Mine was actually the blue one, but the
amazon-vox connection only gave me the red one.
Quite an odd thing happened this year. From being someone who actually read very little fantasy or scifi, and preferred weird non-specfic stuff like Donna Tartt's books (which are a lot of awesome, and are the best non-specfic books I've read this year), I went to someone devouring fantasy and scifi - and some of it weird, new, non-mainstream stuff. It happened with my summer holiday, where I finally decided I would read China Miéville's Perdido Street Station, Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Frank Herbert's Dune, as well as a random book called The Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson. They were all fantastic. And I haven't looked back.
Some of the books I've read haven't been fantastic. They've been mindblowingly awesome in more ways than I can count. They are:
4th Place: The Carpet Makers, by Andreas Eschbach
On a low-tech world, the main industry is the manufacture of carpets of human hair. Each takes so long to make that it is a lifetime's job for the group of men, who weave the carpet from their wives' hair and provide money from the sale for each's one son to survive while weaving his own carpet. But the ships that take the carpets offworld have stopped arriving. In a weave of plot threads with no main character, the reason for the carpet-making tradition and the fall of the vast interstellar empire are superbly told. One of the more imaginative scifi books I've read.
3rd Place: The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop
In the city of Ashamoil, gunslinger Gwynn - currently in the employ of the Horn Fan slave-trading cartel - finds himself drawn to a woman called Beth who made an etching of him. While the cartel's fortunes are shattered by a man's desire for vengeance, Gwynn realises that Beth is not quite what she seems. And wow, that summary does not do the book justice; it forgets Raule, a doctor who collects deformed dead babies; it doesn't quite express the dark, chimeric nature of the book. This is real "dark fantasy".
2nd Place: The Scar, by China Miéville
Linguist Bellis Coldwine is fleeing New Crobuzon aboard a ship headed for an island colony, when the ship is attacked by pirates. Along with all the other passengers, she is taken to Armada: a vast floating city of ships of all sizes slung together, grown over with houses and offices and gardens and more. There, with a fellow passenger, she realises that the city's leaders, the Lovers, have a dangerous plan in mind for the city, and she becomes determined to stop it. This book is vast, filled to overflowing with Miéville's imagination, and everything about it works - setting, characters, plot, narrative. An absolutely stunning book.
And the best book I've read in 2006...
1st Place: The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, by Catherynne M Valente
A girl has been cast out into the palace's gardens for a strange marking: the skin around her eyes is stained black, with stories written in tiny handwriting. She tells these stories to a daring boy, and the fairy-tale stories weave in and out of each other with beautifully imaginative lyricism. An absolutely amazing book, brimming with ideas and beauty.
Read the prelude, and then the beginning of the stories.
Also, read her short stories:
The Maiden-Tree
Bones like Black Sugar
Urchins, While Swimming
And, quick life update:
- My gran died on Friday. Looks like it was in her sleep. I'm okay (she was 90, and very frail, so this isn't exactly unexpected) but then I'm not quite okay, you know? I'm not depressed or anything, and I cried once and probably won't again until the funeral, so don't worry about me. Still, I miss my gran a little, and I think it will hit more when I go up to Scotland for the funeral (whenever the hell that is - because she died unattended, the doctor won't simply sign off on her death certificate, so there has to be an autopsy. She was 90, WTF? Heart gave out, or a stroke, or some other kind of system failure. Stupid people.)
- Working tonight. Closing, out at 10pm-ish. What a rocking New
Year's Eve I shall be having. Ohhh riiight, sexy time! Though, I will
be home before midnight, and will try to finish off Catherynne M
Valente's book The Labyrinth - so the moment of 2007's beginning will actually be quite good, despite the McDonald's smell clinging to my hair.
- Sent off TANSU to Sybil's Garage a few days ago.
- Finished a first draft of A TRIPTYCH, for the Iris Print "fairy tale and fantasy" boy's love anthology. It's currently 6,500 words, which is about twice as long as I expected. I think I like it, quite a lot actually, but I need to re-read, see what it looks like in dawn-light, and some tweaking will probably be in order before I send it to Rhi for beta-ing.
- Still excited about THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION being accepted. Can I call myself a writer yet? I don't know. But I'm not a not-writer either. And yeah, I know, anyone who writes is a writer, but am I a writer? I think there is a difference, be it just the flimsy barrier of published/not-published. But I changed my LJ profile from "a hopeful writer" to "a writer" and it feels a little odd, still.
One of my favourite authors, Catherynne M Valente, has a new short story out: Urchins, While Swimming (fantasy). It's a wonderful story and definitely worth taking a few minutes to read.
And if you like it, buy her book! I highly recommend it.
I think I have been bitten by the Short Story bug. A year and a half ago, I had never written anything shorter than the opening chapters of novels. Just over a year ago I wrote my first short story - MCFUTURE - a work-inspired piece that, I'll be the first to admit, is far from original but was brilliant fun to write, though now I consider the quality of the writing rather sub-standard. Not long after that I wrote my second short story - FLIGHT - based on a reaction I'd love to have been able to give to my boyfriend's snooze alarm.
I was very proud of myself. Two short stories! I uploaded them to fictionpress and left it at that.
Then, earlier this year, I wrote STATUES for the Writers of the Future Contest and, while that story was 16k and definitely has more to be told, I think it started something. Because I have since written A SHADE OF YELLOW, TANSU, THE BEAUTIFUL COLLECTION and EMPIRES AND GLASS, as well as three short-short pieces (less than 1000 words, one of them less than 100 words) and a few more shorts-in-progress.
The latest addition to the menagerie of short fiction is A FAY OF STEAM, a steampunk fairytale that I'm writing to send to Cabinet des Fées. It's set in the city of Retyelnen, in which A SHADE OF YELLOW takes place, and is set before that story.
In all honesty, I quite like this bug. Not only will it hopefully net me some publication credits, but I've found that writing short stories is brilliantly fun. I can play around with different ideas that aren't developed enough to become novels, or that I don't have time to develop into novels, and with different narrative styles (like present tense and first person) that I wouldn't use in a novel. So bite on, dear bug!
.....And what is it that can distract a good bug? Only a good book, and I have found one in the wonderful The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M Valente. How good is this book? Let me tell a story:
Today I decided to finally get my arse in gear and head on over to the British Library to register, because a book I need to read is there and I'm sure I'll find it a useful resource for the rest of the year. It's about an hour's round trip from where I live, via the London Underground. When I reached the BL, I discovered that you required both proof of identity and proof of address, and I did not have the latter. I had wasted an hour. Normally I would be viciously pissed off at this, but not today. Another hour spent on the Underground meant another hour reading Catherynne M Valente's book. No other book has made me enjoy wasted time to quite that degree.
The book is about a strange girl who lives in the Palace Gardens, shunned by the court. A daring boy approaches her and she begins to tell him stories - fairytales, with stories within stories within stories, woven together and told in Valente's wonderful lyrical prose. It is an absolutely fantastic book, a feast for the imagination.
Read the opening - HERE!
Read her short story The Maiden-Tree - HERE!
Read her short story Bones Like Black Sugar - HERE!
Catherynne M Valente is a fantastic author, and I heartily recommend everyone to buy In the Night Garden.
