Recent reading
Jan. 24th, 2020 06:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeThe first reading round-up of the new year is a mix of my usual random nineteenth-century fiction and Flight of the Heron-inspired Jacobite history books.
Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf (1891; translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach, 1898). Written in the 1890s and set seventy years earlier in the Swedish province of Värmland, this is an odd, meandering book that I'm not sure how to summarise. The title character is a priest who is defrocked for drunkenness and later becomes a 'pensioner' in a sort of almshouse run by a rich woman. The pensioners oust their mistress from power in a complicated incident that might or might not involve the devil, and the rest of the book follows their and their neighbours' lives over the year for which the pensioners are in charge. It doesn't really have a single plot—chapters wander off on tangents, bring in new characters and tell vaguely related stories (I suppose 'saga' was the right word). I enjoyed it a lot—the descriptive language is lovely, with some gorgeous descriptions of the natural world and the scenery of Värmland (which, having looked up some pictures, is indeed pretty nice!) and some really memorable vivid scenes of dramatic action. In places I was a little confused by the sort of magical-realist atmosphere—am I supposed to take these things the narrator says about magic or the devil literally, or not, or is that the wrong question? I couldn't quite work it out. However, I suspect that's on me for not having the context to understand it—so I shall have to read some more nineteenth-century Swedish fiction and see how much more there is as good as this!
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1864). I love Le Fanu's short stories (especially Carmilla, of course), so when I found one of his novels at the library I had to pick it up. In some ways Uncle Silas is very different to the ghost stories, and Le Fanu is clearly making the most of the longer form: it's much slower-paced than Carmilla, and it takes a while for anything very dramatic to happen. But this slow pacing is used to very good effect: this book has a really good sense of gradually building, slowly creeping vague dread. The plot is fairly straightforward and rather fairytale-ish: when seventeen-year-old Maud Ruthyn's father dies she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, a mysterious figure who has hovered in the background of Maud's life for some time and about whom she knows very little—apart from that he used to be a notorious rake and was once accused of murder. Now, of course, Maud being her father's only heir, he has both motive and opportunity to murder her too, as several other characters point out—but he's a reformed character now and treats her kindly, so there's nothing to worry about. Or is there...? And so the vague dread creeps in, and the darkness closes around Maud. Her inexperience of the world and good nature only increase her unsureness, though in the end her instincts prove quite reliable. The book is great fun, although after the brilliant gothic atmosphere sustained all the way through the ending almost felt like a let-down. Once the truth finally becomes clear it's all over very quickly, and several questions are left unanswered—although perhaps that only keeps up the mood of eerie uncertainty...
And two history books about the Jacobites: The Jacobite Cause and The Jacobite Clans of the Great Glen 1650-1784, both by Bruce Lenman. The first is a good short account of how the Jacobite movement happened: where it came from, who did what and why, how it developed and how it ended. The second is a more detailed look at Highland society and politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as it relates to the Jacobite risings, focussing on a few key Jacobite figures and their clans—and, also interestingly, going into some detail on what happened to the Highlands after the Jacobites failed. Both were very interesting and informative, although Lenman does have a bit of a tendency to launch into details without fully explaining the relevant background, which as someone who doesn't know loads about the period could be confusing. And, of course, both books are very relevant to my new love The Flight of the Heron, and I feel like I now have a much better handle on the context for the plot and characters.
And now I'm going to re-read The Flight of the Heron itself :D Expect lots of delighted/anguished re-read thoughts posts over the next week or so...
Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf (1891; translated by Pauline Bancroft Flach, 1898). Written in the 1890s and set seventy years earlier in the Swedish province of Värmland, this is an odd, meandering book that I'm not sure how to summarise. The title character is a priest who is defrocked for drunkenness and later becomes a 'pensioner' in a sort of almshouse run by a rich woman. The pensioners oust their mistress from power in a complicated incident that might or might not involve the devil, and the rest of the book follows their and their neighbours' lives over the year for which the pensioners are in charge. It doesn't really have a single plot—chapters wander off on tangents, bring in new characters and tell vaguely related stories (I suppose 'saga' was the right word). I enjoyed it a lot—the descriptive language is lovely, with some gorgeous descriptions of the natural world and the scenery of Värmland (which, having looked up some pictures, is indeed pretty nice!) and some really memorable vivid scenes of dramatic action. In places I was a little confused by the sort of magical-realist atmosphere—am I supposed to take these things the narrator says about magic or the devil literally, or not, or is that the wrong question? I couldn't quite work it out. However, I suspect that's on me for not having the context to understand it—so I shall have to read some more nineteenth-century Swedish fiction and see how much more there is as good as this!
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1864). I love Le Fanu's short stories (especially Carmilla, of course), so when I found one of his novels at the library I had to pick it up. In some ways Uncle Silas is very different to the ghost stories, and Le Fanu is clearly making the most of the longer form: it's much slower-paced than Carmilla, and it takes a while for anything very dramatic to happen. But this slow pacing is used to very good effect: this book has a really good sense of gradually building, slowly creeping vague dread. The plot is fairly straightforward and rather fairytale-ish: when seventeen-year-old Maud Ruthyn's father dies she is sent to live with her Uncle Silas, a mysterious figure who has hovered in the background of Maud's life for some time and about whom she knows very little—apart from that he used to be a notorious rake and was once accused of murder. Now, of course, Maud being her father's only heir, he has both motive and opportunity to murder her too, as several other characters point out—but he's a reformed character now and treats her kindly, so there's nothing to worry about. Or is there...? And so the vague dread creeps in, and the darkness closes around Maud. Her inexperience of the world and good nature only increase her unsureness, though in the end her instincts prove quite reliable. The book is great fun, although after the brilliant gothic atmosphere sustained all the way through the ending almost felt like a let-down. Once the truth finally becomes clear it's all over very quickly, and several questions are left unanswered—although perhaps that only keeps up the mood of eerie uncertainty...
And two history books about the Jacobites: The Jacobite Cause and The Jacobite Clans of the Great Glen 1650-1784, both by Bruce Lenman. The first is a good short account of how the Jacobite movement happened: where it came from, who did what and why, how it developed and how it ended. The second is a more detailed look at Highland society and politics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as it relates to the Jacobite risings, focussing on a few key Jacobite figures and their clans—and, also interestingly, going into some detail on what happened to the Highlands after the Jacobites failed. Both were very interesting and informative, although Lenman does have a bit of a tendency to launch into details without fully explaining the relevant background, which as someone who doesn't know loads about the period could be confusing. And, of course, both books are very relevant to my new love The Flight of the Heron, and I feel like I now have a much better handle on the context for the plot and characters.
And now I'm going to re-read The Flight of the Heron itself :D Expect lots of delighted/anguished re-read thoughts posts over the next week or so...
no subject
Date: Jan. 24th, 2020 09:08 pm (UTC)Also, the old-growth forests of Värmland, like most of Sweden, are now mostly gone or patched with clearcuts. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
Expect lots of delighted/anguished re-read thoughts posts over the next week or so...
: D
no subject
Date: Jan. 25th, 2020 05:56 am (UTC)And thank you for the recommendations—they do both sound relevant to my interests, I'll have to check them out! :D
no subject
Date: Jan. 25th, 2020 07:55 am (UTC)Also, I am active in an environmental organization trying to prevent the remaining old-growth forests from being cut down. : )
no subject
Date: Jan. 25th, 2020 05:27 pm (UTC)And that's good. The UK has virtually no real old-growth forest (and the government have been doing their best recently to get rid of much of what little old woodland there is—although there are also conservation efforts going on to resist that, happily), so it's heartening to hear about conservation movements in more fortunate places!