As I’m taking a break from copyedited pages for a moment, I thought I’d report on the other b.e.a books I’ve been reading. As instructed I have now read Teach Me, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost and am halfway through V for Vendetta.
They’re all amazing. I seem to be blessed by the god of picking up only good books. Yay me.
Teach Me is such a scorching read I thought my eyes would melt and dribble down my face onto the page. The book is so intense, captures so perfectly romantic obsession, teenage monomania (I’m not saying other age groups don’t get monomanical, I’m just saying R. A. Nelson captured that particular kind of monomania), and heartbreak that the book verges on being too uncomfortable to read. It’s extraordinary and will surely sell by the truckload.
All the Fishes Come Home to Roost is a wry smile of a book, which is incredible given that it’s a memoir of a truly appalling childhood. Rachel Manija Brown was dragged off to India to live on an ashram with her parents. At a very early age she realises she’s an atheist stranded amongst the obsessively godly. She’s also forced to go to the most hellish school I’ve read about in years, populated by brutal nuns who beat the students no matter what their behaviour: good, bad or indifferent. It’s also a lovely memoir of Brown’s reading history, from stirring histories of Indian heroes to fantasy, which she discovers after the following exchange:
“Have you ever read a book called Dragonsong? I think you’d like it.”
“No, but I like the title. Is it really about dragons?” I had been disappointed by Madeleine L’Engle’s Dragons in the Water, in which the dragons were boringly metaphorical.
Some of Brown’s reading history is almost identical to mine: Lots and lots of English boarding school books, mostly written by Enid Blyton. The colonical influence is still strong in Australia and India.
I don’t think either of these books come out till September, so if you weren’t lucky enough to snag them at B.E.A., you’ll have to wait, but they’re both totally worth waiting for.
did you pick up a copy of I, Coriander? i don’t have the author, since i gave it to my stepsister, but it was charming.
i didn’t seem to get any of those. a shame.
I agree, I agree, I agree.
Rachel’s book was stunning and brutal and wonderful. Teach Me messed me all up.
Aww, thank you! So they read Enid Blyton in Australia too, huh? I had idly wondered about that.
By the way, I don’t know if you get automatically notified when someone replies to a comment you post on LJ, but I responded to your comment in my LJ.
Holly said that: teach me messed me all up.
Me too. I can’t remember the last time I found a book such a painful read.
No, Rachel, thank you! It’s an awesome book. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been to write, but it was a pleasure to read.
Shana: No, i didn’t even see coriander at b.e.a. There were so many books!
no kidding! see website link for the photo of my gloriously book-covered couch.
my favorite are the surprises – things you don’t expect to fall in love with.
Shana: Jesus wept! How’d you get all that loot home?
three days of meetings, three loooooong walks home. worth it, though!
i must get that book! that dragonsong and dragons in the water thing is completely apropos, i was absolutely obsessed with both l’engle and mccaffrey in those early teenage years…. sounds amazing.