Although there are a few more days left to the year, this will be my last reading summary. Next Monday, if I have time, I might write a little overview of the entire year.
I wanted to read Death Comes to the Village as much because I'd previously liked Catherine Lloyd's Miss Morton series as for its plot. A rector's daughter and a wounded soldier joining forces to investigate crimes in a small village in Regency England? Sounds just my cup of tea! But, oh dear, was I disappointed… How could this anachronism-riddled, sketchy mess possibly be from the same author? Then I noticed that it was first published in 2013, nine years before Miss Morton and the English House Party Murder. It appears that Ms. Lloyd has put the intervening time to good use.
Then things got worse, since I read A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee. OH MY GOD the pretentiousness of this novel! It starts with the names of the boarding school (Dalloway) and its houses (Godwin, Wharton, Eliot, Boleyn, Atwood… There's a very obvious theme developing – you do see it, right? It's clever, right? Right?) and it just careens off from there. If I were to summarize this book, I'd say that it's a battle of warped minds between two disturbed girls, or that it shows what happens when a highly unstable girl is allowed to return to the scene of a traumatic event without direct supervision or regular monitoring from a therapist. Had I known in advance that it was inspired by The Secret History (which I loathe and DNFed at 50%), I never would have submitted myself to this pile of rubbish. I've seen it described as "sapphic dark academia;" well, it's neither dark (just bleak and squalid) nor academia (none of the texts mentioned are remotely obscure or particularly scholarly – many number among my favourites, and my reading tastes are not at all unconventional, as evidenced by this blog), and the sapphic elements feel pasted on and thoroughly unconvincing. The entire novel consists of a jumble of half-baked good ideas, with multiple plotlines that peter out before they go anywhere. Everything is superficial, except my boredom – that was very, very deep.
Fortunately, I received the very best literary Christmas present: my library finally acquired The Voyage Home by Pat Barker! I'd been anticipating reading this novel ALL YEAR, so it was with more than slight trepidation that I tapped "play"… I was convinced that I'd miss Briseis – and to be honest I did a little at first – but Ritsa captured my heart just as much as did her "almost daughter." I don't think I can adequately put into words my feelings about this series. From the very start, thanks to the emotional and psychological complexity Pat Barker imparts to her female characters, and no doubt amplified because I listened to the audio versions, narrated by the immensely talented Kristen Atherton, and therefore spent hours hearing these women's stories being told to me directly, I've felt intimately close to them, deeply invested in their lives. (I'd love to be more eloquent about all of this, but I'm writing while suffering from a terrible migraine and it feels as though someone's stuck an icepick in my ear, so this will have to suffice...) I'll be revisiting this novel, even if it means watching my step as I climb down the palace stairs.