Just because it's funny
Heh. I love Big Brother.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Enjoying the climb
I've never been much of an outdoorswoman (what with the appreciating the marvels of indoor plumbing and all), but there's something compelling about adventure tales of people exploring and encountering the farthest reaches of our world. Hence the latest pick, Richard Preston's The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring.
As any fourth-grader worth his natural-history salt can tell you, California redwoods are at the pinnacle of tree life - they don't get higher than this. Despite the fact that their imposing size is enough to give even non-acrophobes the heeb, a few hardy students and researchers decided that it would be nifty to climb these things and see what's up there. What they found is a fascinating and entirely unknown ecosystem that still isn't fully explained.
Non-fiction is at its most appealing to me when it's paced like a novel, with a strong narrative thread and clear themes that tie the whole story together. Anyone can pull together a dull recitation of facts (including a fourth-grader doing a report on redwoods), but not every author can make the facts flow and sing. Preston, thankfully, falls into the latter camp - what could have been something on the order of, "and my seventeenth most favorite lichen is...." instead grabs you immediately and pulls you into the narrative of discovery. Perhaps most significantly, it inspires as well - suddenly the wilds of northern California and southern Oregon are much higher on my list of places to visit one day. I kind of like the idea of standing next to something that was alive when Gutenberg first brought us the printed word.
As any fourth-grader worth his natural-history salt can tell you, California redwoods are at the pinnacle of tree life - they don't get higher than this. Despite the fact that their imposing size is enough to give even non-acrophobes the heeb, a few hardy students and researchers decided that it would be nifty to climb these things and see what's up there. What they found is a fascinating and entirely unknown ecosystem that still isn't fully explained.
Non-fiction is at its most appealing to me when it's paced like a novel, with a strong narrative thread and clear themes that tie the whole story together. Anyone can pull together a dull recitation of facts (including a fourth-grader doing a report on redwoods), but not every author can make the facts flow and sing. Preston, thankfully, falls into the latter camp - what could have been something on the order of, "and my seventeenth most favorite lichen is...." instead grabs you immediately and pulls you into the narrative of discovery. Perhaps most significantly, it inspires as well - suddenly the wilds of northern California and southern Oregon are much higher on my list of places to visit one day. I kind of like the idea of standing next to something that was alive when Gutenberg first brought us the printed word.
Labels: non-fiction, Science, trees
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
What happened, and why am I in this dumpster?
As a thread title on one of my favorite message boards devoted to books proclaims, "Christopher Moore is a genius." I reached back into the archives for Bloodsucking Fiends, and I confess that I concur with the assessment.
Jodi has a problem - she's woken up in a dumpster with a burned hand and slowly discovers that she's newly nocturnal with a bloodlust problem. She's a vampire, and while it's done wonders for her hair she's finding normal business hours to be rather inconvenient to her undead life. Enter C. Thomas Flood, a fresh-off-the-turnip-truck arrival in San Francisco, hoping to be a writer but spending his time night-managing/bowling with frozen turkeys at a local grocery store. Jodi spies the perfect new boyfriend (she's a serial monogamist) in Tommy, and Tommy sees, well, an attractive woman giving him the time of day for the first time ever. A perfect match? Mostly, but there's that small matter of Jodi's creator to deal with....
Moore's comic stylings are absolutely note-perfect - he's the absolute master of the unexpected bon mot and witty suckerpunch. I can't get enough of the way he sets up a joke so perfectly and then delivers it just exactly the right way to catch you slightly off-guard. He does nicely with his inversion of the usual formulae - the typical tough guys and giggly girls give way to slacker beta males and gals more than capable of fighting the forces of darkness (if not runs in their pantyhose). Even the bit characters get their moment in the sun - Tommy's five Chinese roommates all hoping to marry him to get their green cards pop up in typically endearing fashion.
I'll definitely be picking up the sequel (You Suck) and will continue to delve into his substantial backlist.
Jodi has a problem - she's woken up in a dumpster with a burned hand and slowly discovers that she's newly nocturnal with a bloodlust problem. She's a vampire, and while it's done wonders for her hair she's finding normal business hours to be rather inconvenient to her undead life. Enter C. Thomas Flood, a fresh-off-the-turnip-truck arrival in San Francisco, hoping to be a writer but spending his time night-managing/bowling with frozen turkeys at a local grocery store. Jodi spies the perfect new boyfriend (she's a serial monogamist) in Tommy, and Tommy sees, well, an attractive woman giving him the time of day for the first time ever. A perfect match? Mostly, but there's that small matter of Jodi's creator to deal with....
Moore's comic stylings are absolutely note-perfect - he's the absolute master of the unexpected bon mot and witty suckerpunch. I can't get enough of the way he sets up a joke so perfectly and then delivers it just exactly the right way to catch you slightly off-guard. He does nicely with his inversion of the usual formulae - the typical tough guys and giggly girls give way to slacker beta males and gals more than capable of fighting the forces of darkness (if not runs in their pantyhose). Even the bit characters get their moment in the sun - Tommy's five Chinese roommates all hoping to marry him to get their green cards pop up in typically endearing fashion.
I'll definitely be picking up the sequel (You Suck) and will continue to delve into his substantial backlist.
Unknown in Kansas
On the strength of the Edgar Award nomination, I grabbed Nancy Pickard's latest, the standalone title The Virgin of Small Plains. I read one of her Jenny Cain novels many years ago (the Bionic Mom is a fan), but hadn't turned back to her since.
It's 2004 in the tiny town of Small Plains, Kansas, and things have changed since the night in 1987 that the body of a young Jane Doe is found in the middle of a snowstorm. Never identified, her grave has become a pilgrimage site as believers come in the hopes of experiencing a miracle. Abby Reynolds, only 16 when the body was found, feels that now is the time to give the Virgin back her name and find out once and for all what happened that night. After all, she's emotionally invested - her high school sweetheart, Mitch Newquist, suddenly and mysteriously left town the day after the body was found, with no explanation or contact since. Turning to her longtime friend and current sheriff Rex Shellenberger, Abby blows open the mystery like a Kansas twister.
Pickard's trying something new here, and I think it works - there's a strong Jodi Picoult vibe running throughout, particularly in how the characters are drawn and the significance of their relationships. She also makes excellent use of her native Kansas for her setting - the mercurial moods of Central Plains weather take on a life of their own in her description. My only nitpick is the somewhat obvious mid-twist (the twist before the final one) that sets up the third act - while I give Pickard points for using different clues to cue a common plot point, it was still a bit too easy to guess. Overall, a strong showing - I'd love to see another standalone from her.
It's 2004 in the tiny town of Small Plains, Kansas, and things have changed since the night in 1987 that the body of a young Jane Doe is found in the middle of a snowstorm. Never identified, her grave has become a pilgrimage site as believers come in the hopes of experiencing a miracle. Abby Reynolds, only 16 when the body was found, feels that now is the time to give the Virgin back her name and find out once and for all what happened that night. After all, she's emotionally invested - her high school sweetheart, Mitch Newquist, suddenly and mysteriously left town the day after the body was found, with no explanation or contact since. Turning to her longtime friend and current sheriff Rex Shellenberger, Abby blows open the mystery like a Kansas twister.
Pickard's trying something new here, and I think it works - there's a strong Jodi Picoult vibe running throughout, particularly in how the characters are drawn and the significance of their relationships. She also makes excellent use of her native Kansas for her setting - the mercurial moods of Central Plains weather take on a life of their own in her description. My only nitpick is the somewhat obvious mid-twist (the twist before the final one) that sets up the third act - while I give Pickard points for using different clues to cue a common plot point, it was still a bit too easy to guess. Overall, a strong showing - I'd love to see another standalone from her.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Required Reading
Miss Literacy may love to read, but she also has a soft spot for the dismal science of economics - far from being financial reports and interest rates, the field provides a really fascinating lens through which to view human behavior. Unfortunately, few people seems to share Miss Literacy's view, as so many of our current political debates appear to be predicated on a complete lack of understanding of basic economic principles.
It seems to me that the level of discourse on significant issues would be vastly improved if everyone were required to read Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor, and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car. Awesomely noir/comic-book cover styling aside, Harford's insights are a great explanation of how so many of our great political challenges (the environment, illegal immigration, health care, etc.) have their roots in a market failure. Not only that, he also explains with devastating clarity just how ass-backwards some of the proposed solutions are when considered from the perspective of an economist.
Harford's mostly coalescing many of the major theories in economics here, but his writing style does a much better job of presenting the theories to a general audience than the vast majority of economic writing. The little glimmers of British humor sprinkled throughout the text are delightfully endearing, and his frequent use of clarifying examples turns Nobel-winning academic research into a relatable and engaging story.
But perhaps best of all, I know have the perfect book to recommend to anyone interested in viable political problem-solving. Now, to get all of those politicians to read it.....
It seems to me that the level of discourse on significant issues would be vastly improved if everyone were required to read Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich are Rich, the Poor are Poor, and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car. Awesomely noir/comic-book cover styling aside, Harford's insights are a great explanation of how so many of our great political challenges (the environment, illegal immigration, health care, etc.) have their roots in a market failure. Not only that, he also explains with devastating clarity just how ass-backwards some of the proposed solutions are when considered from the perspective of an economist.
Harford's mostly coalescing many of the major theories in economics here, but his writing style does a much better job of presenting the theories to a general audience than the vast majority of economic writing. The little glimmers of British humor sprinkled throughout the text are delightfully endearing, and his frequent use of clarifying examples turns Nobel-winning academic research into a relatable and engaging story.
But perhaps best of all, I know have the perfect book to recommend to anyone interested in viable political problem-solving. Now, to get all of those politicians to read it.....
Followed by a black dog
The British use the term "black dog" to mean a sense of pervasive melancholy that follows you everywhere, and Stephen Booth picks it up as the title of his debut novel set in the Peak District of Northern England.
To newly-arrived officer Diane Fry, Detective Constable Ben Cooper seems to have it all - when they set out on initial interviews in the case of a missing teenage girl named Laura Vernon, everyone seems to know Cooper's name and speak of his father with reverence. Needless to say it needles Fry, an aggressive up-and-comer eager to use her new appointment as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. However, Cooper's life (like Fry's) is far more than meets the eye - both are trying to escape a past that just can't quite let them go.
As they throw themselves into the Vernon case, the duo find that all of their suspects are something more than they originally appear as well. The dogwalker that found Laura's shoe is oddly cryptic in his interviews and seems to know just how to push the police officers' buttons, but what about Laura's family? Her mother vacillates between heartbroken and coldly unemotional, while her father insists the gardener did it and her brother returns from university seemly for the sole purpose of exposing the family's secrets. As the clues and red herrings pile up, Cooper and Fry clash over their different styles and their mutual need to keep their own secrets....
This one was a recommendation from the Bionic Mom, and I can see why she liked it - Booth does a great job of setting the scene of desolate-yet-beautiful moors and small, insular British farming towns. There's something about an English setting that lends such a different feeling to the same plot set in America. Unfortunately, so many of the plot and character elements feel just as derivative as the setting is distinctive.
I have to confess that the "tortured hero/heroine" shtick is so unbelievably tired to me - honestly, if your only experience with law enforcement is reading mysteries you'd think that losing a beloved family member to crime or being the victim of a violent attack yourself is as obligatory to the job as passing the physical exam. I realize that authors feel the need to give their officer heroes a reason for being in their line of work, but I'd be just as happy with the "I just want to help people" rationale - at least that's somewhat more likely be representative of reality.
Overall, average but nothing special. The Bionic Mom promises that his most recent book is his best - look for that in the near future.
To newly-arrived officer Diane Fry, Detective Constable Ben Cooper seems to have it all - when they set out on initial interviews in the case of a missing teenage girl named Laura Vernon, everyone seems to know Cooper's name and speak of his father with reverence. Needless to say it needles Fry, an aggressive up-and-comer eager to use her new appointment as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. However, Cooper's life (like Fry's) is far more than meets the eye - both are trying to escape a past that just can't quite let them go.
As they throw themselves into the Vernon case, the duo find that all of their suspects are something more than they originally appear as well. The dogwalker that found Laura's shoe is oddly cryptic in his interviews and seems to know just how to push the police officers' buttons, but what about Laura's family? Her mother vacillates between heartbroken and coldly unemotional, while her father insists the gardener did it and her brother returns from university seemly for the sole purpose of exposing the family's secrets. As the clues and red herrings pile up, Cooper and Fry clash over their different styles and their mutual need to keep their own secrets....
This one was a recommendation from the Bionic Mom, and I can see why she liked it - Booth does a great job of setting the scene of desolate-yet-beautiful moors and small, insular British farming towns. There's something about an English setting that lends such a different feeling to the same plot set in America. Unfortunately, so many of the plot and character elements feel just as derivative as the setting is distinctive.
I have to confess that the "tortured hero/heroine" shtick is so unbelievably tired to me - honestly, if your only experience with law enforcement is reading mysteries you'd think that losing a beloved family member to crime or being the victim of a violent attack yourself is as obligatory to the job as passing the physical exam. I realize that authors feel the need to give their officer heroes a reason for being in their line of work, but I'd be just as happy with the "I just want to help people" rationale - at least that's somewhat more likely be representative of reality.
Overall, average but nothing special. The Bionic Mom promises that his most recent book is his best - look for that in the near future.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Miss Literacy swats her own hand
Sorry for the paucity of updates lately - a promotion at work is leaving me much less blogging time. The reading at least is proceeding apace, and I'll give a nod to the following top picks from the last few months:
Passage, by Connie Willis. Probably one of the few books worthy of the new appellation "speculative fiction," as it's not really sci-fi or fantasy but isn't realism either. Unbelievably well-written and an engrossing story about what it might be like to discover what death is like.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson. Wonderfully humorous with a quiet mystery at the core. Atkinson's got a flair for telling a straightforward story while presenting it all out of time. Normally I find flashbacks and flashfowards nothing more than a pretension at style, but Atkinson, in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, "make[s] it work." Besides, who doesn't love a good tale of a train-wreck family that calls to mind the past histories of Loveline callers?
The Game, by Laurie R. King. King blew the rest of her own (already spectacularly good) series out of the water with this entry. Not many mysteries, or even books for that matter, leave me almost breathless at the author's skill, but this one did. The rare book that rises to the level of true art.
Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb. Not only fascinating for the education in Ethiopian history and the role of Islam in it, but Gibb also puts forth one of the best explorations of loss and displacement I've read in a long time. Emotionally fraught and hopeful all at once.
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin. An excellent biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer that only gains strength for being read in light of the current political situation here in the U.S. Just goes to show that FBI wiretaps, personal vendettas made political, and pillorying dissenters to militarism are hardly new unAmerican activities.
Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie. I don't read a lot of chicklit as I tend to find the genre lacking in creativity, but Crusie's above the rest. She's got enough humor to put the comedy back in romantic comedy, right where it should be. I never thought I'd laugh so hard at a book where the heroine is an actuary.
Passage, by Connie Willis. Probably one of the few books worthy of the new appellation "speculative fiction," as it's not really sci-fi or fantasy but isn't realism either. Unbelievably well-written and an engrossing story about what it might be like to discover what death is like.
Behind the Scenes at the Museum, by Kate Atkinson. Wonderfully humorous with a quiet mystery at the core. Atkinson's got a flair for telling a straightforward story while presenting it all out of time. Normally I find flashbacks and flashfowards nothing more than a pretension at style, but Atkinson, in the immortal words of Tim Gunn, "make[s] it work." Besides, who doesn't love a good tale of a train-wreck family that calls to mind the past histories of Loveline callers?
The Game, by Laurie R. King. King blew the rest of her own (already spectacularly good) series out of the water with this entry. Not many mysteries, or even books for that matter, leave me almost breathless at the author's skill, but this one did. The rare book that rises to the level of true art.
Sweetness in the Belly, by Camilla Gibb. Not only fascinating for the education in Ethiopian history and the role of Islam in it, but Gibb also puts forth one of the best explorations of loss and displacement I've read in a long time. Emotionally fraught and hopeful all at once.
American Prometheus, by Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin. An excellent biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer that only gains strength for being read in light of the current political situation here in the U.S. Just goes to show that FBI wiretaps, personal vendettas made political, and pillorying dissenters to militarism are hardly new unAmerican activities.
Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie. I don't read a lot of chicklit as I tend to find the genre lacking in creativity, but Crusie's above the rest. She's got enough humor to put the comedy back in romantic comedy, right where it should be. I never thought I'd laugh so hard at a book where the heroine is an actuary.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
The story of women
On a recommendation from my physical therapist (who rocks, btw), I picked up Anita Diamant's The Red Tent at the library last week. I've been meaning to read this for a good long while, but it never managed to jump from the shelf into my hot little hands until now.
In the novel, Diamant takes the brief sketched story of Dinah from Genesis and fashions it into a full-blown life story. Instead of being a named but voiceless daughter of Jacob, Dinah becomes a part of a rich feminine tradition in ancient Canaan that is slowly losing its power. But in addition to trying to offer an alternative view of biblical history, it's also a deeply felt work on what it means to be female, regardless of place or time. Reading it made for an interesting callback to a college course I took in Judaic Civ - we read a lot of feminist biblical criticism first quarter, and Diamant's book is a nice extension of that.
Not surprisingly, a quick look at the reviews at Amazon shows just how difficult it is to work with biblical stories (or really any religious text) in fiction - there will always be a subset of readers who expect a strict adherence to the text's words and want to see the literature used a vehicle to extend its teachings. While there's certainly a growing market for such work, I don't think that the two need to be mutually exclusive. Part of the joy that comes from fiction is the ability to play with ideas in a freeform setting, and sometimes a different perspective on the familiar is illuminating.
I've talked in this space before about the historical context for the Bible, and how removing it from that context robs us of some of the tools we need to understand it. Even if we could prove definitively that God did in fact hand down his words directly to man and these words are in the Bible, the context still matters. The nature of the original language matters - any student of foreign languages can tell you about the sheer impossibility of literal translation. The historical context of the Bible through time matters too - the King James translation was commissioned by him as a political response to the new translations into English coming out of Geneva at the time. Consider the perils of transcription as well - how many changes were unintentionally introduced by scribes and monks? The New Testament adds further complexity, as Biblical scholars widely believe that the Gospels were written long after the events in question. Basically, I don't think for a second that the Bible sitting on my shelf today is the same as it was when it first appeared in written form, and there's no way for me to tell how much of it has changed. If we ignore context, we cheapen the value of what religious texts can be.
But back to the book. One of the aspects of this book that I really loved was how it dispensed with the Doc-Marten-stomping, men-are-vile attitude that tends seep through in a lot of feminist biblical study. Being a feminist who hates men seems counterproductive in my view - we're in this world together, and knee-jerk excoriation of the XYs is no better than the patronizing little-lady attitudes of chauvinists. Sure, there are some villains in the piece, but there are also men of great tenderness, particularly those that enter in Dinah's later life.
Also noteworthy are the explorations of relationships (both loving and tempestuous) between the women in Dinah's world - Diamant states in the reader's guide that her inspiration for the story was trying to understand the tension between Leah and Rachel mentioned in the Bible, and she uses her questioning to good effect here. Likewise, Dinah's relationships with Re-nefer and Meryt in the book's last third are carefully drawn and a true reflection of the deeper emotions underneath.
Not for the literalists or prudish (OMG! Biblical people had sex, and some of them might have even liked it!) among us, but a worthy read for those who are intrigued by the idea of putting flesh on the bones of a bare biblical story.
In the novel, Diamant takes the brief sketched story of Dinah from Genesis and fashions it into a full-blown life story. Instead of being a named but voiceless daughter of Jacob, Dinah becomes a part of a rich feminine tradition in ancient Canaan that is slowly losing its power. But in addition to trying to offer an alternative view of biblical history, it's also a deeply felt work on what it means to be female, regardless of place or time. Reading it made for an interesting callback to a college course I took in Judaic Civ - we read a lot of feminist biblical criticism first quarter, and Diamant's book is a nice extension of that.
Not surprisingly, a quick look at the reviews at Amazon shows just how difficult it is to work with biblical stories (or really any religious text) in fiction - there will always be a subset of readers who expect a strict adherence to the text's words and want to see the literature used a vehicle to extend its teachings. While there's certainly a growing market for such work, I don't think that the two need to be mutually exclusive. Part of the joy that comes from fiction is the ability to play with ideas in a freeform setting, and sometimes a different perspective on the familiar is illuminating.
I've talked in this space before about the historical context for the Bible, and how removing it from that context robs us of some of the tools we need to understand it. Even if we could prove definitively that God did in fact hand down his words directly to man and these words are in the Bible, the context still matters. The nature of the original language matters - any student of foreign languages can tell you about the sheer impossibility of literal translation. The historical context of the Bible through time matters too - the King James translation was commissioned by him as a political response to the new translations into English coming out of Geneva at the time. Consider the perils of transcription as well - how many changes were unintentionally introduced by scribes and monks? The New Testament adds further complexity, as Biblical scholars widely believe that the Gospels were written long after the events in question. Basically, I don't think for a second that the Bible sitting on my shelf today is the same as it was when it first appeared in written form, and there's no way for me to tell how much of it has changed. If we ignore context, we cheapen the value of what religious texts can be.
But back to the book. One of the aspects of this book that I really loved was how it dispensed with the Doc-Marten-stomping, men-are-vile attitude that tends seep through in a lot of feminist biblical study. Being a feminist who hates men seems counterproductive in my view - we're in this world together, and knee-jerk excoriation of the XYs is no better than the patronizing little-lady attitudes of chauvinists. Sure, there are some villains in the piece, but there are also men of great tenderness, particularly those that enter in Dinah's later life.
Also noteworthy are the explorations of relationships (both loving and tempestuous) between the women in Dinah's world - Diamant states in the reader's guide that her inspiration for the story was trying to understand the tension between Leah and Rachel mentioned in the Bible, and she uses her questioning to good effect here. Likewise, Dinah's relationships with Re-nefer and Meryt in the book's last third are carefully drawn and a true reflection of the deeper emotions underneath.
Not for the literalists or prudish (OMG! Biblical people had sex, and some of them might have even liked it!) among us, but a worthy read for those who are intrigued by the idea of putting flesh on the bones of a bare biblical story.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
I had no idea Australia was so confusing....
In between my ongoing series projects (Laurie R. King's Russell/Holmes, Anne Perry's Charlotte & Thomas Pitt, and Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody), I took a time out for a selection from the Chicklit.com Book Club - Susan Elderkin's The Voices. I've generally had good success with their picks (particularly in non-fiction), and it's a way for me to explore authors I might have otherwise overlooked.
The Voices traces the life of Billy, a white Australian who becomes immersed in native aboriginal culture from childhood on. Told through several POVs and jumping back and forth in time, Elderkin.... loses me completely. Seriously - I have no idea what the hell this book is about. Most of the neural energy I expended on this took the form of, "Wait... now who's talking? Is this the present or a flashback? Spirit voices again? Oh Lord." I'm thinking that maybe Elderkin is like Faulkner in that she makes a whole lot more sense if you are drunk or not reading very carefully. I've seen other authors use the whole plotless-postmodernism thing to good effect (David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, another Chicklit pick, comes to mind), but Elderkin just seems like she's lost control of her bicycle here. While I think her writing style has a lot of promise, as some of her turns of descriptive phrase are simply gorgeous, I think she needs something more in the way of plot to rein in her more mellifluous tendencies. The PW review dubbed it "erratic," which pretty much tells you all you need to know. Beautiful background is wonderful, but as a writer, you have to make it mean something for the reader to care.
The Voices traces the life of Billy, a white Australian who becomes immersed in native aboriginal culture from childhood on. Told through several POVs and jumping back and forth in time, Elderkin.... loses me completely. Seriously - I have no idea what the hell this book is about. Most of the neural energy I expended on this took the form of, "Wait... now who's talking? Is this the present or a flashback? Spirit voices again? Oh Lord." I'm thinking that maybe Elderkin is like Faulkner in that she makes a whole lot more sense if you are drunk or not reading very carefully. I've seen other authors use the whole plotless-postmodernism thing to good effect (David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, another Chicklit pick, comes to mind), but Elderkin just seems like she's lost control of her bicycle here. While I think her writing style has a lot of promise, as some of her turns of descriptive phrase are simply gorgeous, I think she needs something more in the way of plot to rein in her more mellifluous tendencies. The PW review dubbed it "erratic," which pretty much tells you all you need to know. Beautiful background is wonderful, but as a writer, you have to make it mean something for the reader to care.
