My Prizes: An Accounting

Meine Preise [My Prizes], by Thomas Bernhard

A gathering of brilliant and viciously funny recollections from one of the twentieth century’s most famous literary enfants terribles.

Written in 1980 but published here for the first time, these texts tell the story of the various farces that developed around the literary prizes Thomas Bernhard received in his lifetime. Whether it was the Bremen Literature Prize, the Grillparzer Prize, or the Austrian State Prize, his participation in the acceptance ceremony—always less than gracious, it must be said—resulted in scandal (only at the awarding of the prize from Austria’s Federal Chamber of Commerce did Bernhard feel at home: he received that one, he said, in recognition of the great example he set for shopkeeping apprentices). And the remuneration connected with the prizes presented him with opportunities for adventure—of the new-house and luxury-car variety.

Here is a portrait of the writer as a prizewinner: laconic, sardonic, and shaking his head with biting amusement at the world and at himself. A revelatory work of dazzling comedy, the pinnacle of Bernhardian art.

If I could, I would write a love ode to this short collection. It is a series of personal remembrances of prizes which Thomas Bernhard collected over the years for his plays and novels. Prizes which, he reminds us again and again, he would be loathe to accept were it not for the prize money attached. Nevertheless, I can only be thankful he did deign to attend, because without it, I would not have been able to read the marvelous My Prizes.

Bernhard is acerbic, rude, and sarcastic, but also endearingly susceptible to supposed insults about his commitment to Austria, his adopted homeland, with which he has a complicated love-hate relationship. During his acceptance of the Austrian State Prize for Literature (which he prefaces by relating his extreme embarrassment to have won, given that it is only the Small State Prize, which is usually given out to young new up-and-comers, not older established writers, and that he only "came to terms with the prize" because of the twenty-five thousand schillings attached to it) the minister, perhaps unwisely, upsets him by calling him a foreigner born in Holland, though living amongst the Austrians for some time. However factually accurate it may have been, the provocation it offers Bernhard is amply repaid as he gives what has to be one of the rudest acceptance speeches in history. Bernhard describes it thusly:

[T]he theme was a philosophical one, profound even, I felt, and I had uttered the word State several times. I thought, it's a very calm text, one I can use here to get myself up out of the dirt without causing a ruckus because almost no one will understand it, all about death and its conquering power and the absurdity of all things human, about man's incapacity and man's mortality and the nullity of all states.

At this point in My Prizes, the reader knows to take Bernhard's description of his actions as calm and reasonable with a grain of salt. Luckily and hilariously, the actual speech given is reprinted in the back of the book. To be sure, Bernhard's speech does mention the State a couple of times, and it does talk about death and man's incapacity and the nullity of government. It also says:

Our era is feebleminded, the demonic in us a perpetual national prison in which the elements of stupidity and thoughtlessness have become a daily need
....

We're Austrian, we're apathetic, our lives evince the basest disinterest in life, in the workings of nature we represent the future as megalomania.

We have nothing to report except that we are pitiful, brought down by all the imaginative powers of an amalgam of philosophical, economic, and machine-driven monotony.

Before ending with:

In my name and in the name of those here who have also been selected by this jury, I thank you.

If only the state minister had stuck around to hear that last part! Graciousness itself, amirite? After causing a near-riot and clearing the auditorium, Bernhard is completely satisfied, as it means the next prize committee thinks twice about hosting a ceremony and instead just asks him to pick up the check at his convenience, which is probably best for all the parties concerned.

Bernhard writes with panache, and often the prizes and ceremonies are merely an aside to whatever more random topic Bernhard wants to discuss - buying and returning a suit:

Whoever buys the suit I have just returned, I thought, has no idea that it's been with me at the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize of the Academy of Sciences in Vienna. It was an absurd thought, and at this absurd thought I took heart. I spent a most enjoyable day with my aunt and we kept laughing over the people at Sir Anthony, who had let me exchange my suit without objections, even though I had worn it to the awarding of the Grillparzer Prize in the Academy of Sciences. That they were so obliging is something about the people in Sir Anthony in the Kohlmarkt that I shall never forget.

getting a luxury car (which he insists on buying right now, from the showroom, even though he has no idea how to drive it out of the store), his time staying in the Lung Disease Hospital attached to the Steinhof Insane Asylum (which "had seven rooms of either two or three patients, all of which patients died during the time I was there, with the exception of a theology student and me. I have to mention this because it is quite simply essential for what follows." N.B.: It isn't.), or getting ambushed by an acquaintance who will not. stop. talking ("Whenever I'm reminded of Saiko, who, as I mentioned, was the author of The Man in the Reeds, the first thing I think of is his lecture about never buying shoes before four in the afternoon and I have retained something of that lecture even today, and his four-hour lecture on what a novel is comes in second.").

My Prizes is vastly entertaining, and it's written with a sly knowledge of the author's own ridiculous behavior. Bernhard is fully realized within the pages, and he displays his foibles and eccentricities with sublime indifference of your good opinion. The reader is quickly charmed by his sardonic outlook on life and the vast machine that is prize- giving.

Bernhard is a character, and I wish only that he had been more recognized during life, that we might have more accounts of his unparalleled talent for accepting prizes.

Sunshine

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, lives a quiet life working at her stepfather's bakery. One night, she goes out to the lake for some peace and quiet. Big mistake. She is set upon by vampires, who take her to an old mansion. They chain her to the wall and leave her with another vampire, who is also chained. But the vampire, Constantine, doesn't try to eat her. Instead, he implores her to tell him stories to keep them both sane. Realizing she will have to save herself, Sunshine calls on the long-forgotten powers her grandmother began to cultivate in her when she was a child. She transforms her pocketknife into a key and unchains herself--and Constantine. Surprised, he agrees to flee with her when she offers to protect him from the sun with magic. They escape back to town, but Constantine knows his enemies won't be far behind, which means that he and Sunshine will have to face them together.

I really wanted to like this book. I've read it at least three times. Robin McKinley is just one of those writers that are just not very accessible to me. But Sunshine is even harder for me than her other books for a couple of reasons.

One: the info-dumping. Oh, god, the info-dumping. Sunshine is narrated by the titular character, a young twenty-something who is the baker in a Cheers-type bakery/cafe. And while the narration might be a good idea in some cases, as it involves us in her world quickly, sometimes it just. . . stinks. Often in the middle of conversations, Sunshine will begin thinking along a tangent, about the new realities of the post-magic world, or about demon/sorcerer mixes, or about comics she's read about vampires. It's annoying - Sunshine piles on information, without context or relevance. And it happens constantly. I will be halfway through an interrogation and someone will ask Sunshine a question and then five pages about Sunshine's regulars at the bakery will intrude before we get back to the answer. It's a lot of repetition and it drags the story down. And even with all that, there's still huge gaps in my knowledge about the world. What caused the magical wars? How did all this demon blood get mixed into the population in the first place (since even small manifestations of it are so obvious, wouldn't a full-blood demon be infinitely so?), how come everyone in the book has some heretofore unsuspected magical past? Has Sunshine really never asked her boyfriend about his unique and complicated magic tattoos, even after four years of being together?

Additionally, the mental gymnastics never seem to tend to anything. In a series, I could almost forgive the constant, seemingly irrelevant musings. But this is a stand-alone, and there is no pay-off for most of the internal questions.

For example, Sunshine spends pages and pages thinking about the possibility that she is one of the unfortunate demon blood/sorcerer crosses. We find out that 90% are criminally insane, that it manifests at puberty often, but not always, that if she is, she could go bad, etc. etc. ad nauseum, but we never find out if she actually is or not. We know that there is a demon blood test, but Sunshine never even wonders about taking it. She thinks for pages about whether the demon blood came from her mother's side, but spends maybe one sentence wondering just what kind of demon. So it's hard to care about that eternal question, "Is she or isn't she?" because Sunshine herself seems so detached about it. There's no tension there.

Two: for a magic-handler whose element is sunshine, Sunshine sure is morose.

Honestly, the biggest problem with the book is the main character. That sounds like the kiss of death, but it's not, oddly enough. Here, the world that Robin McKinley is interesting enough to suck you in, at least for a while. Plus, Sunshine's weaknesses as narrator and key character are really only terrible when she's thinking. When she simply acts or talks, she's instantly more likable and bearable, and even cool. The introspection - and there is a lot of introspection - is the weakest part of the book. If McKinley had tightened it up a lot - cut some, combined some - then even that could have been an asset, rather than a debit.

Sunshine is not wrapped up very tightly in the end. A lot of things are still open when the final page is turned. Which is to say: if Sunshine had been the first in a series, or even the first of a collection of books set in this world, I would be a lot more cool with it (assuming, of course, that the info-dump-style narration ceases with the next books). But it's meant to stand alone, and the jumble of information dispensed throughout remains just that: a jumble. This type of narrator (morose, detached) is a bad choice for a first-person story.

Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

For Kivrin, preparing for on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of he fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be retrieved. But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin - barely of age herself - finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.

I just want to start off by saying that writing this up, I accidentally wrote "Boomsday Book" instead, which I wish was a real book, filled with people saying things like, "This! Is my boomstick!" and generally being a lot more lighthearted than Doomsday Book. Not that I didn't enjoy Doomsday Book. Just that it was not lighthearted. And didn't contain popular characters from the Evil Dead movies. Well, nobody's perfect.

The book's title is a play on words, from the ancient English survey record spelled "Domesday Book", but which was at the time it was written (1086 a.d.), in my abbreviated understanding, pronounced "doomsday". The book is the first in what became Willis' most well-known world: sometime in the twenty-first century, historians use time travel to do research in the location and time of the actual events, which is pretty much the awesomest idea ever. Here, Kivrin gets sent off to the 1300s, a century which an incompetent adminstrator has only just deemed safe enough to explore. A series of extremely unlikely events combine to prevent Kivrin and the people waiting anxiously for her return (namely her advisor and father-figure of sorts Dunworthy) from being reunited.

I like this book, I really do. But it is a loooong book. Too long. Often, I found myself skipping descriptions and minor character chatter because it was repetitive and senseless. Which is Willis' point (and trademark), to some extent: people are idiots, and always looking for someone else to blame. But Doomsday could easily have been cut by a hundred pages. Things go pretty quickly in the beginning, and at light-speed in the end (especially when Dunworthy winds up unconscious for more than a week and a somewhat major character gets sick and dies off-screen. What, what!) but the middle drags. In fact, just about all of book two (which in my version is 259 pages out of the book's 578 total, a whopping 45%) drags. There's a lot of hand-wringing in the twenty-first century, and, as others have pointed out, the reveal at the end of book two is something we all see coming a mile away, or 259 pages ago.

Willis tends to write screwball comedies, which she does well, but it's very much out of place here. The tone of the book is really not appropriate for it, since you're following along on the whimsical plot of the rationed toilet paper and then --BAM! People start dying left and right. Whiplash much? She only uses it for the twenty-first century parts, which is a relief, since I doubt very much that the fourteenth century resembled a screwball comedy, especially when people began dying of *Spoiler!* the black plaaaaaaaaague! Or here, the "blue sickness," as they call it poetically. Yeeeeeeah, you're still gonna vomit up blood and grow buboes with that. (NB: Buboes! Best word ever, y/y? But a word to the wise, do not, repeat, do not google image it)

Once you get past all the highly improbably coincidences (a terrible strain of influenza was released from a seven hundred year old tomb, that managed to infect Kivrin and the tech putting in her coordinates, for starters) the historical part is pretty interesting. No doubt it is completely made up out of whole cloth, since the records for this period are slim pickin's, but Doomsday's a fascinating take on how we interpret and create a story for the past, which can bear little or no resemblance to the real thing. Or, to put it another way, it is Motel of the Mysteries, but for the Middle Ages, rather than the 1980s.

Although I skimmed the modern (or, okay, "futuristic", even though it sounds about as futuristic as 1994) parts, I did enjoy the historical parts. The story of the family Kivrin falls in with is interesting, although I was a bit frustrated with her sometimes completely thoughtless actions, given that she was supposed to be able to blend in with the "contemps". Especially when everyone in the twenty-first century seemed to assume that not blending in would lead to a swift burning at the stake. Well if you believed that, Kivrin, why did you try and chat up Gawyn by his lonesome, you hussy? In fact, no one in the Middle Ages even approaches the suggestion of burning Kivrin at the stake, which is almost a let down, especially after she does a whole bunch of incredibly suspicious, time-period unfriendly things whilst trying to get information about the rendezvous point out of her host family.

As I said earlier, book three goes lightening fast, both as the plague gathers momentum in the village, and as Dunworthy and crew finally realize that Kivrin is stuck in 1348 and they scramble for a way to get her out. The ending is super bittersweet, which is why I don't enjoy this as much as some of Willis' other works, but also uplifting in some ways, as the priest of the village gives to the utmost, even as he puts himself at risk for catching the disease. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Kivrin does get rescued in the end (Willis is not that dark, y'all), but can anyone say PTSD? I mean, she pretty much got to watch as everyone she had bonded with died horribly of a disease that Kivrin knew all about but couldn't cure, and that she herself was immune to. And then she got to bury all of them. I don't know about you, but gosh darn if that wouldn't put me off of time travel for a good long while. Also, talk about unsafe working conditions. I'm sure OSHA wouldn't approve.

Jellicoe Road

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.

Nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

Jellicoe Road is really two stories in one: the events of twenty-two years ago (it says eighteen in the description because the people in the "B" plotline age about four years throughout the novel) and how they affected five friends, and the senior year of Taylor Markham, who has a new position of power in the Territory Wars at her boarding school. The stories intertwine (through a manuscript that Taylor has read) and eventually intersect in ways that would seem pat in the hands of a lesser author. Marchetta does wonderful things with all the characters, even secondary and tertiary ones. Even characters that never appear on the scene, and are only mentioned by other characters, are imbued with personality, like Jonah's mother and brother.

This is one of the most fantastic books I've read. It starts out slow, as Marchetta sets out the threads of all the story lines, but as you get further into the two time lines, you begin to match up events and people, so that by the end of the book, you immediately want to re-read it, just so you can lengthen that "Aha!" moment. I freely admit that I was sobbing straight through the last third of the book the first time I read it, and the whole way through the second time.

It's a complex book, in that you really are sort of given a lot of pieces which don't fit together, until later events in the book put them into order and context. Sort of like Pulp Fiction, only about teenagers instead of gangsters. Marchetta is a master at spooling out details, things that seem insignificant until they suddenly become very important. She does this in such a way that although you may not take very much notice of this or that small detail, when the revelations come, you remember what came before very clearly - so that the process of piecing these stories together isn't a strain on your memory or patience. Which is all the more impressive because I have a terrible memory, so managing to make seemingly irrelevant details memorable is quite a feat.

Marchetta has always been one of my favorite authors in terms of what she understands about teenage girls, and she manages to get humor, sorrow, love, action, romance, and mystery all packed in, without being melodramatic or overbearing. Or well, it is melodramatic, but only in that teen angst, my-whole-world-is-splitting-apart-and-no-one-even-realizes-it kind of way. In Marchetta's hands, the unabashed rawness of the emotion is both thrilling and terrifying.

I am kind of a sucker for this type of book (if it is a "type" and not just some one-off description) where people love each other so much, but it's still not enough to keep out sorrow and pain, and the characters just have to find a way to manage the pain and find the joy in life. Actually, that's what most of Marchetta's books are about - the equivalent of her characters all ending the books singing, "I get by with a little help from my friends". And there's no need to sneer, finding out you're not alone can be the best feeling in the world.


How do I feel by the end of the day
(Are you sad because you're on your own)
No, I get by with a little help from my friends.
Do you need anybody?
I need somebody to love.
Could it be anybody?
I want somebody to love.

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends.
Mmm, gonna try with a little help from my friends.

The Trouble with Jenny's Ear

The Trouble with Jenny's Ear, by Oliver Butterworth

Suddenly Jenny can hear what people are thinking. Her enterprising brothers immediately think of ways to take advantage of this unusual talent but Je...more Suddenly Jenny can hear what people are thinking. Her enterprising and electronically-inclined brothers immediately think of ways to take advantage of this unusual talent but Jenny is less comfortable with her new knowledge. The adventure culminates in a plot by the children to get Jenny on game shows and win enough money to buy land that is otherwise destined for the developer's table, but all their efforts may not be enough as everything spirals out of control.

This one is a childhood, well, not fave, exactly, but a comfortable reminder of my youth. Also, when I first read it, it didn't seem so out of date as it does now. It's almost quaint, in its depictions of a model New England town, wherein young boys are excited as anything to get a pile of cast off electronics so they can make radios and invent closed-circuit television. Nowadays, of course, it's a lot easier to set up camera and recording systems. That is, everyone (including me) can do it, because cameras do it automatically. All the discussion of the magic of intercom systems (and the accompanying explanations to bewildered parents and teachers) and the ringing of phones underline my point: the crucial action which takes place at the end of the book and enables Jenny at al. to keep their beautiful lake and forest (nb: that was not a spoiler. I mean, come on, what kinds of kid's books do you read that you think they won't get to save the land from suburban stasis?) could have easily been averted by an operational cell phone.

It's a sweet, nostalgic book, in which the government wants only to protect children who have magnificent mind-reading abilities, and the president just bemoans the loss of his buttons in the morning, where men and women fall in love and get engaged after a week, and parents let their children cook up cock-eyed schemes to defraud people with a "It probably wouldn't do any harm to try. . . "

There isn't any character development to speak of, as the action drives the plot. The trouble with Jenny's ear doesn't even enter the story for a good fifth of the way into the book, and we spend our time watching her brothers wreck all kinds of havoc with their gadgets before they get around to Jenny's ear. It's a slow, easy-going pace, even if (as a repeat reader) I wanted to hurry up and get to the meat of the story.

Jenny remains sweet and wholesome throughout, and perhaps gains a little backbone by the end. She plays the role of the wise old person, dispensing wisdom and serenity with both hands, despite being only five years old. It's all a light bit of fluff, a "cute little trick" of a book that manages to get its protagonists through crisis after crisis without demonizing anyone. There are no villains, only gently misunderstood people, and everything ties up in a neat little bow in the end. All in all, a harmless bit of fluff.

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

Connie Willis, "All My Darling Daughters"

I was reminded of this short story today, and since it left such an indelible scar on me, I figured maybe I should talk it out as some sort of PTSD therapy effort. I have read the story twice, once when I checked Fire Watch out of the library in undergrad, and then again years later when I found it in The Winds of Marble Arch, just to see if I remembered it accurately. The second go-round was actually less traumatic, mostly because I knew what was coming. The slow dawning of horrified realization from my first reading was, thankfully, a unique experience.

I didn't think it was an easy story to get into - it's set in a boarding school type place, in the future, and Willis does the old Clockwork Orange slang thing, although not to such an extent (or else the story would be completely incomprehensible). There is some explanation for the situation, although since it's told from one girl's point of view, the reader is not given a tutorial on the inner workings of this society. That factor helps set the tone for sure, and the only real problem from doing it this way was that when things finally click for the reader (at least in my case), you're not sure for awhile if you're interpreting words and actions correctly in this fictionalized world, or if you're mistaken about what these things mean (and if you are like me, you're thinking, "please, let me be mistaken."). This somewhat lessened the impact of the reveal for me, thank goodness.

I don't want to spoil this story, so this discussion will have to remain disappointing vague, for anyone who has both a morbid sense of curiosity to know what happens and a desire to protect their own fragile psychosis by not reading it themselves. The story does make you think about power and desire, and the way in which people can look at someone and see only an object, something that is less than the sum of their parts. I'm glad Willis wrote it, and I'm glad I read it, even though I feel like I lost some of my innocence. I have no doubt that there are people who see the world and behave the way that the villains of the story do, and it's heartbreaking to think of the people they destroy by so doing.



Also, it helps to know I have company. Here are some other reviews of the story:

In describing an aspect of the story, tvTropes says: "[It is] the least horrifying thing, out of the many horrifying things about ["All My Darling Daughters"].

"Features an Excellent Vocabulary of Expletives Worthy of College Students of the Future"
"Manages to Both Titillate and Terrify"
"Creepy"
"One of the Most Disturbing Things I've Ever Read"
"Not to My Liking"
-All from GoodReads

"Frack This Creepy Father Pet Stuff"
-Blue Tyson

"So Incredibly Horrible to Read" and "I'm Not Sure I've Ever Been So Shaken by Anything Else I've Ever Read"
-Marchenland

And then, most poetically and succinctly:

"Ouch"
-Susan Stepney

Living Dead Girl

Living Dead Girl, by Elizabeth Scott

A 15-year-old girl has spent the last five years being abused by a kidnapper named Ray and is kept powerless by Ray's promise to harm her family if she makes one false move. The narrator knows she is the second of the girls Ray has abducted and renamed Alice; Ray killed the first when she outgrew her childlike body at 15, and now Alice half-hopes her own demise is approaching ("I think of the knife in the kitchen, of the bridges I've seen from the bus... but the thing about hearts is that they always want to keep beating"). Ray, however, has an even more sinister plan: he orders Alice to find a new girl, then train her to Ray's tastes. Disturbing but fascinating, the book exerts an inescapable grip on readers—like Alice, they have virtually no choice but to continue until the conclusion sets them free.

Sing it, sister.

This book is like a punch to the gut. It's short, painful, and leaves you gasping. That's as far as I want to take that metaphor. This book is supremely unpleasant, a short novella-length narration by a girl who believes (correctly) that she has no power. She's been so carefully trained that even her thoughts do not belong to herself. The connection she draws in her mind between her ten-year-old self's selfishness, and her subsequent 'punishment' is heartbreaking.

Scott writes sparingly, sometimes only one paragraph or a few lines per chapter, for further emphasis. Alice, the abducted, spends her time alternately wishing for death and justifying her continued imprisonment.

On Amazon, almost all of the negative reviews relate to how graphic the book is. In fact, to me, at points it almost felt like a child abductor primer, a step-by-step instruction manual on how to beat the life out of children and bend them to your will. Other review talk about how abrupt the ending is. Interestingly, no one brings up the improbability of the ending, the confluence of events which made it possible for things to fall out as they did. Not to say too many spoilers, but the ending came as such a relief, that maybe that's why no one questioned it. In a book that sticks (for the most part) grippingly to realism, the readers need a bit of the fairy tale ending. Otherwise we'd all turn the last page and want to die. Or become social workers and police officers. The abruptness was fitting, because no matter how things shake out from here, Alice is content.

Bewitching Season

Bewitching Season, by Marissa Doyle

In 1837 London, young daughters of viscounts pined for handsome, titled husbands, not careers. And certainly not careers in magic. Shy, studious Persephone Leland would far rather devote herself to her secret magic studies than enter society and look for a suitable husband. But just as the inevitable season is about to begin, Persy and her twin sister discover that their governess in magic has been kidnapped as part of a plot to gain control of Princess Victoria. Racing through Mayfair ballrooms and royal palaces, the sisters overcome bad millinery, shady royal spinsters, and a mysterious Irish wizard. And along the way, Persy learns that husband hunting isn't such an odious task after all, if you have the right quarry.

This was one of those books to which I had had been looking forward for quite some time. I had to wait all summer before it came to my turn in the queue, and I could pick it up and read it. So you might imagine my disappointment when I discovered that it wasn't quite all that. I'm a big fan of both regency teen novels and magic novels, and any combination thereof (see further Sorcery and Cecelia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot; also Amaranth Enchantment). Perhaps it's because I've read too many of these, but Bewitching Season did not strike a chord for me. It starts off with an excellent premise - two young magical twin sisters, about to embark on their Introduction to Society, have to navigate young men as well as nefarious wizards - but about a third or halfway in, I just found myself wanting to shake the main character, Persy. And that didn't go away.

Persy is ostensibly the wallflower and the less attractive of the two sisters because she's less vivacious (we know this because she mopes about it for the first three chapters). An old childhood acquaintence, all grown up and handsome, re-enters their drawing room, and clearly has eyes for her, and Persy for him, and yet we must suffer through the entire course of the book as Persy goes back and forth on he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not, managing to hit every cliche on her path to true love. Thinking that you don't deserve his love because you are the "plain" sister? Check. Believing that because your sister is talking to him (because you are too shy to do so) means that they love each other, even though you are the only person they discuss? Check. Trying to cast a love spell on him even though he is clearly already head over heels? Check. Assuming that all his behaviour after said love spell is just an indication that your magical skillz are too strong for his willpower? Check. Rejecting him to save him from your own heedless attempts to ensnare him? Check. Not to mention, of course, the usual burning touch of hands, breathless glances, etc. etc.

I might have had more patience for this had Persy had other redeeming characteristics - but she kinda doesn't. Maybe it's a facet of being a teenage girl that I've forgotten about, but her behaviour is both rude and selfish, by refusing to confide in her sister because of her own jealous antics and "noble" mindedness. That's really what I disliked the most - her rejection of her sister means the book isn't really about friendship and sisterly relations and adventure, it's about this wah-wah narrator who puts her family and friends in danger by not telling them everything she knows, then goes about refusing to listen to advice and decides the best way to solve everything is to run away. Persy's misguided martyr mindset is inappropriate and irritating when everyone around her just wants her to succeed.

The "main" plot, that of the missing governess, is solved with, really, very little fanfare. Most of the book is taken up with fruitless searches for her, which (while realistic in their futility) are pointless, as in the end, the bad guys bring the girls to her anyhow. So that they could have done absolutely nothing and still found her. Gosh this review sounds bitter. Bewitching Season is really not that bad - inoffensive and harmless, at the very least. I just wish that the relationship Persy has with her little brother was actually between her and her sister. And that she wouldn't whine so much. To paraphrase Love, Actually: "Get a grip, people hate sissies. No one's ever going to like you if you cry all the time."

Adios to My Old Life

Adios to My Old Life, by Caridad Ferrer

As a talented singer-guitarist with a dream of going pro, Alegria Montero is getting fed up with the endless, boring parade of quinceaneras and other family party gigs. She's longing for something bigger. And Oye Mi Canto - a new reality show that's searching for the next Latin superstar - is definitely that. Ali figures she'll never make the cut, but auditioning sounds like a good way to get her overprotective father to take her ambitions seriously.

To Ali's complete shock, she passes her audition. Next thing she knows, she's dealing with wardrobe fittings, cameras, reporters, vocal coaches, and websites designed by lovestruck fanboys. She's also dealing with jealousy, malice, and sabotage among the contestants, all of which has her wondering: Is it really time to shoot for the stars and try to win the whole competition, or is it time to say "Cut!" and become a normal teenager again?

Adios has a lot of things going for it - humor, teen angst, glitter and a peppy, poppy voice. The rhythm of the writing feels very fresh and true, with the spanish interspersed and the natural cadences of speech. The plot seems ludicrous, but Ferrar plays with that, trying to make the characters as real as possible so we accept the circumstances. Ali Montero is an uber talented seventeen year old, who can play guitar as well as piano, and who sings the old ballads as well as she does the hot new singles. She's got a place assured in the competition, a hot assistant director making eyes at her, a ever loyal cousin, a loving father, and one mean bitch nemesis. In the end, the utter absurdity of the plot does overwhelm the book. It's a modern fairy tale wrapped up in American Idol, and everything comes out okay in the end with the fairy god(father) pulling the strings. It's a soothing, easy read, because you know that all the conflicts will end up with a happy ending, good will triumph over evil, and that everyone gets exactly what they deserve.

Unfortunately, the utter niceness of it all brings down the depth of the story - why care about Ali's arguments with her father about whether she can handle this type of life when you know it will all be solved when Ali proves she can be cool under pressure and finds her father a nice romance? Why care about Ali's (kinda ridiculous) break-up with Jaime when you know that although he lives in New York and she lives in Miami, there's going to be an easy solution for everyone concerned? [NB. An easy albeit, creepy solution, in which he follows her around all day, filming her, mmmm.] All the choices and characters in Adios are black and white - which isn't to say that they're bad, just. . . less great. There's little character development, because Ali already is (basically) perfect. She's stressed, to be sure, but she entertains no doubt, and she never questions herself. And maybe she doesn't need to, because she makes all the right decisions, but it's not the most compelling read.

I'm more upset by this than I really ought to be, because the writing itself is so sparkly and sparky and kicky, that it deserves better material. It sounded like a real person talking, and first person point of view books need that kind of voice. As a narrator, I utterly believed in Ali. I just wish she had more interesting things to talk about.

Mara, Daughter of the Nile

Mara, Daughter of the Nile, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Mara is a proud and beautiful slave girl who yearns for freedom. In order to gain it, she finds herself playing the dangerous role of double spy for two arch enemies - each of whom supports a contender for the throne of Egypt.

Against her will, Mara finds herself falling in love with one of her masters, the noble Sheftu, and she starts to believe in his plans of restoring Thutmose III to the throne. But just when Mara is ready to offer Sheftu her help and her heart, her duplicity is discovered, and a battle ensues in which both Mara's life and the fate of Egypt are at stake.

The description on the back of the book is exactly so - and it sounds kinda fun and dramatic and romantic, which is maybe why I feel so let down. Mara is good, but there were just some. . . parts. . . which made me really fall out of sympathy for the characters. The book takes place ostensibly in the reign of Pharaoh Hatshepsut, one of the famous women rulers of Egypt. The country is in turmoil, drained by her extravagent self-aggrandizing demands and insistence on two massive obelisks in the middle of a temple. An underground revolution quietly plots to remove her from the throne and place her half-brother in her stead. And okay, here is where I began to lose all liking for the romantic leads - part of the reason that they're trying to get rid of Hatshepsut is because she has the effontry to style herself king rather than royal wife and consort, and prefers erecting monuments to fighting wars. And sure, make the argument that we're trying to be historically accurate, and that those could have been valid points against her during the period of the book, rather just sexist excuses to get rid of her. But then you sort of have to go - but the rest of the book is wildly inaccurate! Why stick perniciously to something which casts your heroes in such a repugnant light, then play fast and loose with the rest of the facts?

And yes, I'm no preeminent scholar in egyptology and my information comes from wikipedia, but I would still like to point out that Hatshepsut ruled for about 22 years, not 15, her name was chiseled off by Thutmose III, twenty years later, rather than by her father Thutmose I, and her reign was marked by peace and prosperity, and she was not indolent towards foreign enemies. I admit, history changes with time, and the theory that Hatshepsut and Thutmose III actually got along, and he only took her name off things later to ensure a smooth succession is a pretty recent one. In 1953, the whole chiseling-off-the-name-to-erase-the-memory-of-a-cruel-ruler would have seemed pretty good stuff for a novel. But now it just makes her revolutionaries seem petty and only interested in their own advancement. But sure, let's read the book and pretend it's all fiction, and see Hatshepsut as the author writes her - a metallic voiced automaton. Seen in that light, the story is a little less off-putting.

But seriously. Some of the paragraphs in Mara really evoke the atmosphere of subtle danger and opulence, others just evoke. . . England?

'Right again. I am in the full confidence of the queen. It's most convenient. . . Aye, Her Majesty distributes bribes as lavishly as she does everything else!'

and

'That scurvy Architect! Yet he is her favorite.'

Scandalous! It's just a little jarring to be reading along, and then have to picture this "noble" Egyptian in like, a smoking jacket and monocle. Sheftu's nobility is apparent in his actions, namely that he really hates killing people unless he has to, and steals money and goods from graves. No? Not convinced? Then how about because:

He is young and tall...and well favored, with eyes like the night...When he smiles - it is like a magician's potion.

Oh, okay, now I understand. The main character, Mara, suffers from a fatal case of overconfidence. She's so confident, actually, that she becomes unsympathetic - her smirky ways and easy tricks just make you want to show her up. She's initally really rude to the only truly sympathetic character in the book - Inanni, a Syrian princess, who is, according to Mara, dumpy, sweaty, and stupid. Mara, of course, with her own glorious and unusual blue eyes and filmy garments learns to feel Pity out of her most Compassionate Heart, and kindly arranges for Inanni to be sent home at the end of the book. It's like you can actually see her heart growing two sizes that day. The reader can also be comfortable in attributing tender feelings to Mara because in the end, she remembers to free a slave she used to work with, although whether that makes up for her high-handed treatment of the other servants in the palace (and her own amusement at so doing) is perhaps best left unanswered.

Despite all my Issues with Mara, it really does beguile you a bit despite itself, which is a mark of how well done it is. Even though I longed for comeuppance for both Mara and Sheftu and I hoped sincerely that five years later finds them both unhappily disillusioned by Thutmose III, I admit that I got swept up in the denouement, hoping that rescue would come in the nick of time and that Sheftu would believe her and forgive her, even though she was patently a spy. And it does all end happily, although oh my GOD, how is it that someone whipped to the point of unconsciousness (several times) can just stand up and walk around in the end with no greater problem than a little soreness when it gets jarred by the litter ride to her lover's house, because they're not even going to go to the doctor first, and did they even have counts and countesses in Egypt, and, and, and...