The Geurnsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Horrors! Not fantasy! But I shall let that pass...

One reason this book was so very excellent was because it was correspondence.  I’ve always loved sending and receiving letters--it appeals to my romantic side.  One of my favorite books, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, is written entirely in correspondence.  Those letters, however, are only between two people; The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society manages to balance numerous different letter-writers without the reader becoming too confused.  It helps that there is one central character tying all of them together.  The only cavil I have with books written in letters is small: not everyone can write interesting letters.  If one wanted to make the book entirely realistic, one would have to put in at least one character who writes incredibly tedious letters, or has bad grammar, or can’t spell.  But then nobody would want to read it, so I’m not really complaining.

Another reason this book was brilliant was because of the main character’s writing style.  So wonderfully sharp and witty!  She may not want to be a “light-hearted journalist” anymore, but she certainly excels at it.  I was slightly reluctant to read this book at first, but then I got to the end of her first letter and read the postscript about “that dismal woman” and Jane Carlyle’s “charming little notes.”  I started sniggering loudly and was very disappointed when I had to stop reading and listen to the visiting Dalai Lama.

Not many books can manage to be funny and deadly serious at the same time without being campy, but The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society did.  The main character was engaging and amusing, but she still took everything seriously.  She never laughed at the islanders’ war stories like some journalists.  The islanders themselves never made a huge deal out of it.   They didn’t describe the horrors of the occupation overdramatically, but told it simply as it was, and that’s what made it so effective.  This book was the perfect mix of serious and funny.

All of these reasons add up to make a marvelous novel, and the happy ending made it a perfect read.

The Great Goddess Diana (part II)

Yet another reason DWJ is such a bloody genius: her plots are giant chaotic messes and sheer insanity, and things just keep getting thrown into the disorder and making it crazier, but the whole time she knows exactly what she's doing, and by the ending, on the last few pages, everything makes sense.  She untangles all the plot threads, reveals the mysteries, and tidies up all the loose ends.   She's like one of those super intense jugglers from Cirque du Soleil, who effortlessly hurl twenty fragile plates in the air and catch every single one.

I love tidy endings.  They just make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and I can't stop smiling.  If the ending is a particularly good one, I tend to make noises like a happy guinea pig.  DWJ makes me do that a lot.

The Great Goddess Diana

I was reading one of her older books for the first time recently, The Time of the Ghost, and I realized another reason her books are so good.  She has such strange ways of describing feelings, and they shouldn't make any sense, but they do.  They make such perfect sense it's uncanny.  In her own words:

"Some people get stiff and unhappy writing because they think they can’t manage to write how it feels to have an adventure, or to be in the middle of very fast, exciting action. This is nonsense. Everyone knows. What you have to do, if you are stuck this way is to stop thinking in words and then shut your eyes and think how it would be if you were the one having the adventure, falling down the cliff or being attacked by a vampire, or whatever. You’ll know at once. Then you simply put down what you know. It may come out queer, but queer is good where actions and feelings are concerned."

--from her website.

A Brief Addition to the Muddling

Actually, there's a brilliant book by the even more brilliant Diana Wynne Jones that's just a big spoof of stereotypical fantasy.  Unlike Piers Anthony's Xanth series (a never-ending spoof series set in a world called Xanth, in which the author uses every single element of fantasy), however, it is a guide.  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  A work of genius.  It's basically an encyclopedia to all things fantasyland, complete with the occasional gnomic utterance.  

And then she apparently liked the idea so much that she turned it into a novel.  

It's set in a fantasy world, but everything is so...practical.  That's the great thing about DWJ--it's fantasy, but it makes so much sense.  None of this mystical nonsense that you're supposed to instinctively understand.  An example that comes to mind is from Howl's Moving Castle, when the main character has a rant at a suit of clothing she's mending, and the suit then gains magical powers and does exactly what she was accusing it of doing.  It just seems such obvious and no-nonsense way to do magic.  

DWJ is brilliant that way.  Perhaps my favorite line of hers is "He left the room like a very long procession of one person." I believe that's from Howl's Moving Castle, although it may be from The Lives of Christopher Chant.  If anyone cares.

Muddling Through Why Fantasy Occupies My Shelves

Most of the books on my shelves are fantasy.  And when people ask, I tend to say this defensively.  All too often, fantasy is frowned upon. Scoffed at.  I frown upon the scoffers' scoffing.

I mean, if I think of the stereotype of fantasy literature, it's all muscly barbarians hefting swords and white-robed priestesses with heaving bosoms, and grumpy dwarves, willowy elves, disguised royalty, a large amorphous mass of pure evil, and at least two apostrophes in each name.

So I get where they're coming from.

But not all fantasy is like that, thank the gods.  Barely any, if you stick to children and teen fantasy.  Which I do, despite being plenty old enough to read about heaving bosoms.

The thing about fantasy--and sci-fi, the two of which one should NEVER CONFUSE--is that it opens you up to possibilities.  Faeries may not be real, but what if they are?  How would you know what to do if you were taken below into their faery kingdom and offered food?  Or take science fiction.  Think how much less surprised and panicky you'd be if you were an avid sci-fi nerd and suddenly encountered an alien.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

Basically, it prepares you for the unlikely.

It makes life more magical.  You read enough fantasy or sci-fi, and you start believing it--while you're reading, of course, but some of that belief stays with you even after you've finished the book.  Just enough sparkle that you're wary around mushroom circles, or that you're more open to the idea of sentient life in space.

Sci-fi and fantasy explore possibilities that no other genre can.  Other fiction is bounded by a tedious thing called "reality," and non-fiction is constrained by not only this "reality," but also truth.  But sci-fi and fantasy are completely free.  Reality? Pssh. They make their own reality.  And truth? It is true in that reality. They're sort of a problem-solving exercise as well...the author thinks up the craziest scenario possible and then tries to fix it.

And of course: it's the best escapist literature offered.  I have to live in reality, so why would I want to read about it as well?  Dull.

So really, don't ever feel embarrassed about reading fantasy or sci-fi.

(Unless you're reading the one with the muscly barbarian.)