Perhaps, Clever Author Being Clever, she thought that was enough?
I don't think so. It was not the kind of historical fiction that wildly namedrops, so it did not, thank God, come off like Forrest Gump's tour of the Middle East; I think the intention was an ordinary person's perspective glancing off events whose ultimate results no one, not even the people who thought themselves the most well-informed at the time, could fully have predicted, but I think first that since the narrator's interlude in Cairo is not a turning point in her life—"It's funny, isn't it, how you can be so different when you're away from home?"—merely its most colorful and vividly remembered period, the more historical and the more fictional strands never feel joined by anything more than a coincidence of the author's desire, and second that the narrative frame, by which the narrator has access to all the hindsight of the present day, actually undercuts the power of these overlays of history, because not only do we know how it all turned out, this fact is heavily underlined for us in the closing statements. And it is not a bad novel. The style is fluent and visually detailed, if not particularly of the 1920's, the characters are sharply drawn, I had none of the complaints about language that kept me from loving A Thread of Grace as much as one of its protagonists deserved. I enjoyed Dreamers of the Day. But I would have liked it to be up to the depth and grip of its ambitions, even if that meant two novels instead of one. Or another author writing it.
If the author's hoping for that resonance, for humor, then that's good, but otherwise maybe a little embarrassing?
I think definitely humor. But again, if you're going to throw the ghosts of Napoleon and Saint Francis and at least one Ptolemy into the mélange, do more with them! There's a whole strange novel there. Navigate the river while negotiating the currents of memory it brings, the land you passed through once in life and keep returning to in death, in dreams, while gods you never believed in walk up and down the banks and those who might once have worshipped them are shades you cannot touch, as once you disdained to speak to them, the dark-skinned extras in your private film: tell me that story. I know it's not the one Mary Doria Russell wanted to write. But it tantalizes me.
no subject
I don't think so. It was not the kind of historical fiction that wildly namedrops, so it did not, thank God, come off like Forrest Gump's tour of the Middle East; I think the intention was an ordinary person's perspective glancing off events whose ultimate results no one, not even the people who thought themselves the most well-informed at the time, could fully have predicted, but I think first that since the narrator's interlude in Cairo is not a turning point in her life—"It's funny, isn't it, how you can be so different when you're away from home?"—merely its most colorful and vividly remembered period, the more historical and the more fictional strands never feel joined by anything more than a coincidence of the author's desire, and second that the narrative frame, by which the narrator has access to all the hindsight of the present day, actually undercuts the power of these overlays of history, because not only do we know how it all turned out, this fact is heavily underlined for us in the closing statements. And it is not a bad novel. The style is fluent and visually detailed, if not particularly of the 1920's, the characters are sharply drawn, I had none of the complaints about language that kept me from loving A Thread of Grace as much as one of its protagonists deserved. I enjoyed Dreamers of the Day. But I would have liked it to be up to the depth and grip of its ambitions, even if that meant two novels instead of one. Or another author writing it.
If the author's hoping for that resonance, for humor, then that's good, but otherwise maybe a little embarrassing?
I think definitely humor. But again, if you're going to throw the ghosts of Napoleon and Saint Francis and at least one Ptolemy into the mélange, do more with them! There's a whole strange novel there. Navigate the river while negotiating the currents of memory it brings, the land you passed through once in life and keep returning to in death, in dreams, while gods you never believed in walk up and down the banks and those who might once have worshipped them are shades you cannot touch, as once you disdained to speak to them, the dark-skinned extras in your private film: tell me that story. I know it's not the one Mary Doria Russell wanted to write. But it tantalizes me.