Book Reviews: The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis; The Quartered Sea, Huff; The Owl Service, Garner

[juushika]

Title: The Screwtape Letters
Author: C.S. Lewis
Narrator: Joss Ackland
Published: Harper Audio, 2012 (1942)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 225
Total Page Count: 288,235
Text Number: 941
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: An experienced demon writes letters to his nephew, advising his work as the personal corrupter of a Christian convert. This is fantastic in audio (I listened to Joss Ackland's reading); the narrator so well inhabits that deceptively charming, incisively cruel personality. The epistolary format is expressive; there's engaging narrative tricks in the interplay between mentor, pupil, and victim, subverting the reader's investment in the speaker and playing with expectations of "good" and "bad" endings. I appreciate the work when read that way: the playfully critical view of humanity's benign and common evils, haunted by the ghost of a horror story. I don't know that the text holds up well to more rigorous criticism, or that the social commentary in particular has aged well. Luckily, I don't care. I'm not Lewis's intended audience and find no benefit in closer reading.


Title: The Quartered Sea (Quarters Book 4)
Author: Tanya Huff
Published: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, 2015 (1999)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 415
Total Page Count: 288,650
Text Number: 942
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A bard with an unusually close connection to water travels across the sea to find undiscovered lands. "Unusually close" is very Huff, but perhaps the only fun part of the book. The protagonist's characterization grates; it was a relief to realize this was initial and to witness his significant growth, but I still dislike him. The world expands significantly, in ways which question and deepen the magic system, but the setting and local plot, hot and humid and hateful, failed to engage me. I'm not sorry to've read this, particularly for its additions to the worldbuilding, but this is the first book in the series that I haven't enjoyed.


Title: The Owl Service
Author: Alan Garner
Narrator: Wayne Forester
Published: Naxos Audiobooks, 2008 (1967)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 200
Total Page Count: 289,400
Text Number: 946
Read Because: recommended by starshipfox, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A Welsh vacation home is turned upside down by strange, magical events. This has a phenomenal combination of elements, setting issues of class and culture against history and mythology, but with a local focus—a single Welsh valley; particular, precise magics like the titular dinner service. Garner's sparse language and emphasis on dialog creates a magic which is simultaneously visceral and dreamlike, more experienced than described, with a deep intuitive logic. It's a subtle combination of elements, and deceptively compelling. Books of this sort can struggle at the end, since they need to maintain the slice-of-life narrative while still giving payoff to the magics, and this falls victim to that to some extent—the end is brief and exists largely in implication, and I wish it gave Alison and/or central characters more focus; like the end of Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, I feel like the end is simultaneously phenomenal, intense with implication and begging reader involvement, and somewhat detached from the larger narrative.

But I found this compelling, transporting. I've bounced off of Garner before (perhaps because I was a more limited reader then; perhaps—and this I suspect is the case—because the balance of plot/adventure to magic/mythological was weaker in that book), but this has changed my mind. Profound magics haunting the local and human is very much my style, and I'll read more Garner in the future.

Comments

[breathedout]

Every time I see "borrowed from the Multnomah County Library" in one of your posts, I get a lovely wash of nostalgia for home. {-:

[juushika]

It's such a good library system! It's what got me into/made it possible for me to read ebooks, and the number of books they're bought after I put in a request is staggering, atop an already fantastic catalog.

(I'm actually not living in the Portland area rn [shhhh, a secret], but have bounced between there and nearby for the last decade or so, and really love the city, too.)

[starshipfox]

I'm pleased you liked The Owl Service. He's really good at writing about Profound magics haunting the local and human -- that's one of the things that draws me to his work. The Owl Service is somewhat unique in his writing in that it's the last children's book he wrote, and the best, but he continues to explore these themes in his later work. I'm happy to give more recs if you want them!

[juushika]

Recs would be fantastic!

[starshipfox]

I really like The Stone Book Quartet (which is one volume, containing four interlinked novellas) -- it doesn't encompass fantasy in the same way as The Owl Service but it has the same sense of the numinous and the importance of place in the imagination. Really good descriptions of snow / stone! I'd also recommend The Voice That Thunders, which is totally different -- it's a collection of essays about writing, imagination and depression.

Many of his books are very strange. I'm really torn on Red Shift which I reread recently. It was written directly after The Owl Service, and it pushes the dialogue / leaving things left unsaid aspects of that novel much much further: it's really hard to figure out what the hell is going on, and there is very little explanation given other than dialogue. The structure is interesting, it's allusive, it's gripping. I don't know if I recommend it, but it is worth a look.

[juushika]

Belated tysm! Red Shift is on my list just b/c of its relation to Tam Lin, also because it was covered on the Backlisted podcast, as was Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, which mentioned that episode, and I'd prefer to read the thing before listening to people talk about the thing. Anyway I was already considering it before The Owl Service, so I suppose now there's no excuse. The rest are all really welcome starting places, especially

Really good descriptions of snow / stone!

because I'm a sucker for that sort of detail, so I particularly appreciate you pointing it out.