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2010 Reading #17: East by Edith Pattou
Feb. 20th, 2010 06:20 pmBooks 1-10.
11. The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein.
12. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.
13. The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock.
14. Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld by Lucy Moore.
15. Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912 by Paul D. Nelson.
16. Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley.
17. East by Edith Pattou. Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this YA novel. On the one hand, there is a wealth of great physical detail in it about life in the 16th Century--in Norway, in France, at sea, and among the Inuit. The tools and skills of each of these cultures are really well described, and make the world of the novel seem authentic and grounded. On the other hand, this is a retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales, East of the Sun and West of the Moon (a Norwegian version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche/Beauty and the Beast), and in grounding it and giving it so much realistic detail, Pattou has changed it into something else and, in my opinion, diluted some of its charm. One of the major reasons that I love the original is that it is just so strange and impossible, so inexplicable and dreamlike; much of that is lost in this adaptation. But then, another of the major reasons I love it is that it's a reversal of one of the major tropes of fairy tales, that of the man/boy who quests for a princess. In this case, it's the woman/girl who is intrepid, determined, and resourceful, questing after the largely passive prince, and Pattou keeps that part of the tale intact. She also adds in much more about the girl's family, giving the daughter-sold-to-a-bear story a great deal more nuance and complexity. In the end, though, I wondered if that part of the story was significant enough to warrant the lengths to which the author goes to describe them. I guess I'm pretty skeptical of the fairy-tale retelling trend in general; it can be done well, certainly, but the ratio of worthwhile adaptations to forgettable ones seems to be pretty low.
11. The Dream Years by Lisa Goldstein.
12. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow.
13. The Bone Forest by Robert Holdstock.
14. Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld by Lucy Moore.
15. Fredrick L. McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912 by Paul D. Nelson.
16. Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley.
17. East by Edith Pattou. Boy, do I have mixed feelings about this YA novel. On the one hand, there is a wealth of great physical detail in it about life in the 16th Century--in Norway, in France, at sea, and among the Inuit. The tools and skills of each of these cultures are really well described, and make the world of the novel seem authentic and grounded. On the other hand, this is a retelling of one of my favorite fairy tales, East of the Sun and West of the Moon (a Norwegian version of the tale of Cupid and Psyche/Beauty and the Beast), and in grounding it and giving it so much realistic detail, Pattou has changed it into something else and, in my opinion, diluted some of its charm. One of the major reasons that I love the original is that it is just so strange and impossible, so inexplicable and dreamlike; much of that is lost in this adaptation. But then, another of the major reasons I love it is that it's a reversal of one of the major tropes of fairy tales, that of the man/boy who quests for a princess. In this case, it's the woman/girl who is intrepid, determined, and resourceful, questing after the largely passive prince, and Pattou keeps that part of the tale intact. She also adds in much more about the girl's family, giving the daughter-sold-to-a-bear story a great deal more nuance and complexity. In the end, though, I wondered if that part of the story was significant enough to warrant the lengths to which the author goes to describe them. I guess I'm pretty skeptical of the fairy-tale retelling trend in general; it can be done well, certainly, but the ratio of worthwhile adaptations to forgettable ones seems to be pretty low.