Catch up 2018 Part Two

[mtvessel]

Still way behind, so here is another round-up from the second half of 2018.

Sep 2018
Metamorphoses - Ovid, tr. David Raeburn – Penguin, 2004
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I should declare an interest in that I knew the translator. He was the headmaster of my secondary school. We had divinity lessons with him and I shall never forget his critical approach to biblical texts - he was the one who made me aware that there are two creation stories in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis, and Eve is made from Adam's rib in only one of them. In the other, men and women are created equal. As you can probably tell, he was a good teacher and a capable headmaster, and his clarity and scholarly approach also show in this translation.

All the stories feature magical transformations of one sort or another, which gives them a certain saminess. Many derive from the gods punishing uppity mortals - Bacchus turning the daughters of Minyas into squeaking bats and causing their looms to sprout vines and ivy, for instance. This suggests that Ovid may have had a rather conservative agenda. But some stories can also be read as subtle or overt satire on the powers that be, particularly Augustus who was busy cementing his imperial rule at the time. And the very theme of metamorphosis suggests that attempting to create a state that will stand the test of time is a doomed enterprise.

Oct 2018
The Adventures of Hucklebury Finn - Mark Twain – Amazon Classics, no date given
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Oof, the language. It may be a classic, but it has more uses of the n-word than I have ever come across in my entire life. The demotic speech is also hard to read. Hucklebury himself is an interestingly conservative character, unlike his friend Tom Sawyer - he worries whether in helping Miss Watson's escaped slave Jim, he is betraying her when she has only been nice to him. This despite the fact that Jim is running away because she was about to sell him down the river. It's a shame that Twain didn't spot that the othering language and characterisation of black people with which he invests some of his characters were what made slavery possible in the first place, but no-one can deny that Huck ends up on the right side in the end.

Oct 2018
Penric and the Shaman - Lois McMaster Bujold – Tor, 2016
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This is the second in what is now a sequence of five Penric and Desdemona novellas and is a lot more interesting than the first, in part because it brings together the godly/demonic possession magic of the first two Chalion books with the beast magic of the third, The Hallowed Hunt, showing how they are in fact two aspects of the same basic idea. Penric, now a full divine in the Order of the Bastard, is sent to assist the Greyjay Oswyll, a priestly policeman, in the apprehension of Inglis Kin Wolfcliff, a royal shaman who has apparently murdered his best friend Tollin and fled, taking Tollin's ghost with him. Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that.

The decision to make Inglis a viewpoint character helps to keep the story interesting but means that any dramatic tension about whether he is the dangerously powerful criminal that Oswyll thinks he is is lost. It also means that we get less of Desdemona's viewpoint, which given that the other main characters are all men is a serious disappointment (surprisingly, this novella fails the Bechdel test). Nonetheless, the character interactions are warm and winning, and Penric and Desdemona continue to make a fine team. I would have liked a longer and more complicated story, but for what it is, it's good.


Oct 2018
This is going to hurt - Adam Kay – Picador, 2017
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This is the diary of a junior doctor in the NHS who has since become a standup comedian. The career trajectory may seem strange until you read it. The main message I took from it is that given the lack of funding and the diabolical bureaucracy it fosters, and the sheer stupidity of many patients, we are extremely lucky to have any doctors and nurses at all. Indeed my main concern with this book is that aspiring medics will read it and be put off the idea for life.