Kay's Bookshelf

Genre: Fairytale Main characters: Talia Time and place: Once upon a time :) First sentence: “The booted feet stopped before me as I sat on the ground, hugging my knees.” Summary: The princess that will remain in fairytale history as the Sleeping Beauty has just been born, and has just been cursed. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so her distraught parents order the destruction of all the spinning wheels in the kingdom. A thing that brings Talia’s hopes for a better future to an end. Without her spinning wheel there is no way for her to earn her bread, much less to gather a dowry. Without a dowry, she cannot marry her betrothed. Her only consolation is her plan to have a child by him, a little girl to chase away solitude, a little girl whose name’s already been picked. But after a while it becomes obvious that Thalia cannot have children, so she tries to quench her thirst for love into the arms of a string of men, all having something or other in common with the one she has, ages ago, been in love with.

General impression
A cute take on a fairytale we all know and love. A bit more sex than I expected, but a lot less than it could have been (there are sex scenes but there are not very many details about any of them). A fast read, with a bit of darkness added in for good measure (after all, we can never properly appreciate true happiness unless we’ve seen sorrow, right?).

Characters
The main character, Talia, is an interesting one: she is rather on the ugly side, complete with warts on her face, and yet men find her sexually attractive, which means she must have something about her. Despite the hardships she endures (and the fact that she seeks consolation, without finding it, in the arms of many men), she is essentially a good person, and one is sorry to see her being so miserable and alone. Luckily this is a fairytale so it must end well, right? :)

Relationships
I happen to very much like the love stories where ordinary-looking people fall for each other, and as such I loved reading about Talia’s meeting Willard, and their marriage plans. Sure, at first they didn’t seem to care that much about one another (their decision to be married being based on both of them’s certainty that no one else will ever want them), and I wasn’t that interested in them either, however after a while, when their feelings developed and crystallized, I … well, I wasn’t able to root for them, since by then Willard was already at a monastery, but I kept thinking fondly of what might have been. An interesting thing, to become invested in a relationship after it has already run its course; but Talia kept thinking about him fondly, and, as I was right beside her, so did I.

Plot
There’s relatively little plot, since this is a novella and all. Interestingly enough though, most of it was unexpected for me, going into a whole other direction than I thought it would have. A pleasant surprise, of course :)

Setting
I am not entirely sure how believable the setting is. Don’t get me wrong, the medieval rural life is okay enough done, but the thing that puzzled me a bit is the fact that royal heads seemed to be walking among ordinary people a bit more often than I thought they would be. A thing that detracts a tiny bit from the credibility of it all (but then again, we’re talking about a fairytale here so no one expects 100% credibility, right?).

Thoughts on the title
I don’t remember there being any sevenfold spell in the original fairytale (nor was I certain what the idea of a sevenfold spell actually entails), everything becomes clearer in the last third of the book. So yes, it’s an okay title I guess.

Thoughts on the ending
The ending was, of course, worthy of a fairytale. “And they lived happily ever after”. I loved it, of course, especially as it was a tiny bit unexpected :)

What I liked most
The very reason why I picked this book up, and the thing that I enjoyed most, was the whole idea behind the book, about what happens to the ordinary girls in the kingdom when someone sets a curse on the princess. A novel perspective if there ever was one, I think.

What I liked least
There’s nothing that has actually bothered me (although to be honest I didn’t quite get why the mother’s words became a spell, but since it was a rather cute addition to the story I will not protest that much).

Recommend it to?
Anyone in the mood for a quick light read. Fairies, spinning wheels, and a happy ending await you :)

Buy the ebook from Carina Press | The author’s page for bloggers | The author’s blog | An excerpt from the book

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First of all, I have very much loved the very idea of having a monarch (a person whose life experience exceeds by far the average one, plus who has an absolutely unique outlook on life) discover reading. Especially as this way it sort of makes sense why the main character did not previously show an interest in books:

“She’d never taken much interest in reading. She read, of course, as one did, but liking books was something she left to other people. It was a hobby and it was in the nature of her job that she didn’t have hobbies. Jogging, growing roses, chess or rock climbing, cake decoration, model aeroplanes. No. Hobbies involved preferences and preferences had to be avoided; preferences excluded people. One had no preferences. Her job was to take an interest, not to be interested herself. And besides, reading wasn’t doing.”

And yet, I don’t know what to think of the fact that the book is written around a real, living character. This is usually very rarely done in books, perhaps with a good reason to (for the impressionable minds not to confuse the person with the character, and viceversa I think). Also, one must wonder what the queen herself must have thought to find herself the central character in a book — although to think of it I guess it largely depends on her stance on reading :)

From a reader’s point of view, it was interesting to notice the changes the reading has brought on the queen (some of them being things that I have discovered in me, previously, and attributed them to the large number of lives I have lived via all the books I read). The queen starts to notice details about people, starts to care more about their feelings, and even “reads” them better. She herself says about books, ‘At the risk of sounding like a piece of steak, [...] they tenderise one.‘). On the downside, she has stopped caring about appearances so much (even her famous punctuality ceasing to exist), as all she really wants is to spend some more time with her nose buried in a book.

These changes (and more like them) make me think of this book as a coming of age story. Because in a way it is just that, a novella where the main character grows, becoming better and wiser than before (despite the fact that the queen is around 80, and usually coming of age stories are centered on young people). Quite an original approach, in my opinion.

Thoughts on the title: Obviously a play on words, and I liked it. The fact that the word “reader” is in there somewhere has helped me discover this little book in the first place :)

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most: At the very beginning, when the queen discovers the mobile library, she tries to decide what book to choose. I was somewhat amused by her criteria, and the way she related to the writers (a way most likely unique to herself, as who else has had the opportunity of meeting so many of them :) ). About Ivy Compton-Burnett she says “I remember that hair, a roll like a pie-crust that went right round her head.“, Cecil Beaton was “a bit of a tartar. Stand here, stand there. Snap, snap.” and so on. I found this quite natural — since the queen had no idea about the authors’ actual writing she had to find some way to differentiate them, right? — but been amused by it nevertheless.

Also, all the bookish quotes. I adored the bookish quotes :)
A random one:

“What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.”

I bet every passionate reader has felt like this now and then (I know I often do :) ).
And another, on the same note:

“Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it.”

What I liked least: Not an actual problem per se (and admittedly I know too little about the real queen to actually have an opinion on it), but at times I was a bit bothered by the fact that the queen never talks about herself in the first person, and it can get a bit strange at times. Example:

‘Has Your Majesty ever considered writing?’
[...]
‘What should one write?’
‘Your Majesty has had an interesting life.’
Yes,’ said the Queen. ‘One has.’

Recommend it to? Anyone who loves to read, as they’re bound to enjoy the queen’s musings on the topic of books :)

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Due to this being only a novella the characters are probably a bit less fleshed than the could have been. Nevertheless I think the author did a great job in portraying them. It was a bit amusing actually to see the antithesis between the “perfect” wives (their only interest in the world being to have the house always spotlessly clean) and the “others”, the normal ones (with normal houses, messy now and then, and also with normal interests outside the home). I liked the way the whole book seemed to say “I’ll take personality over extreme cleanness every day”, by always emphasizing the differences between the two. Just think that, for example, all the latest female newcomers in town are likable and easy to relate to: from Joanna herself, to smart mouthed Bobbie (my favorite), to their friend Charmaine who couldn’t help mentioning star signs about every sentence or so, to children’s books author Ruthanne. All very opposite to the rest of the Stepford wives, with so little personality one couldn’t tell them apart.

On the whole, while what happened to the poor town women saddened and scared me a little, what crept me out the most was the change in the men. Both Joanna’s family and Bobbie’s were happy ones when first moving in to town, with husbands that were both understanding and supportive to their wives. The very idea of them turning (seemingly) all of a sudden into, after all, their exact opposite (so much so that they never hesitated in doing bad things to the very people they previously swore to love and to cherish) made me more uncomfortable than everything else. Joanna and Walter entered the story as a tight team, going strong — no more than a few months later that team’s members ended up in arms, one against the other, leaving Joanna no one to turn to when the need arose. So very sad.

What I liked most: The very idea the book is based on — quite an original one for the 70s (or at least so it seems to me). I am also amused at the fact that the book and its subsequent movies have so made their way in the public consciousness that the term “Stepford wife” has actually entered common use :)

What I liked least: It’s not that big a deal but I find it a bit hard to believe that no one ever wondered what happens back then, when women first started changing. From the newspaper articles Joanna read at the library we can see it was a gradual change, how come no one started worrying seeing more and more of their acquaintances radically different from one day to another? (it can be argued, of course, that perhaps some women did worry and they either left or were forced into silence — either way, as I said, it’s not that big a deal and it doesn’t affect the story flow at all).

Recommend it to? Everyone. It’s a short and captivating read.


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Coraline is the kind of girl that I do not doubt any child wants to be: daring and smart. A bit too daring to be believed actually (many things she went through were too spooky for me, I mean if I am to imagine myself (a grown-up) in the same conditions I would have reacted way way way worse :) ). Her smarts are up to the par too (just look at the scene where she parted with the “other mother” last). She seems a bit more mature than her age (and her neighbors downstairs agree with me), a trait most visible when she says “What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted?” (I know lots of people who have yet to grasp this simple truth and was happy to see Coraline thinking like this, a breath of fresh air). The parents are very busy people but I had the feeling that they really loved Coraline, despite their lack of attention to her every now and then. My favorite was her father, a passionate wannabe cook (something new in books, LOL), always trying out a new recipe and never getting it right :)

The animal characters were just as interesting. It goes without saying that I have absolutely loved the black cat, especially at her most vulnerable moment (because she was acting like every cat in need of protection does and I was glad to see Coraline offering her the protection she needed). I have also loved the singing mice of the neighbor upstairs (although it is not clear to me how they did know about the door and how they managed to talk to their “human carer” about it), and the very idea of them playing their little instruments with their little pink fingers (plus the fact that they didn’t like the rain because it made their whiskers droop) was both interesting and amusing for me (although I am not into mice, those particular ones seemed quite cool :) ).

It was very captivating for me to observe the world the other mother created: the painting of a bowl of fruit becoming a painting of a bowl of eaten fruit (“all that remained in the bowl was the browning core of an apple, several plum and peach stones, and the stem of what had formerly been a bunch of grapes“); the lion-pawed table clawing at the floor; the moving toys (with feelings too); the neighbors downstairs transformed into their younger selves (“Then they unbuttoned their fluffy round coats and opened them. But their coats weren’t all that opened: their faces opened, too, like empty shells, and out of the old empty fluffy round bodies stepped two young women.“); the house losing the details and becoming a sketch, and so on.

What I liked most: So many things I have trouble choosing. To pick a random two, the quote at the beginning:

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
—G. K. Chesterton

and this:

“Oh. It’s you,” she said to the black cat.
“See?” said the cat. “It wasn’t so hard recognizing me, was it? Even without names.”
“Well, what if I wanted to call you?”
The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. “Calling cats,” it confided, “tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.”
“What if it was dinnertime?” asked Coraline. “Wouldn’t you want to be called then?”
“Of course,” said the cat. “But a simple cry of ‘dinner!’ would do nicely. See? No need for names.”

What I liked least: Nothing. Too short a book and too charming for me to find it any fault. :)

Recommend it? Yes, absolutely, it’s very captivating and it’s quite short too.

Written by the same author:
American Gods
Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett)
The Graveyard Book
Snow, Glass, Apples
Stardust
Neverwhere

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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We are not told very much about the narrator, not even his name. We only know about him that he’s a struggling aspiring writer. As for Holly… I couldn’t fit her in any pattern :) She is a rather interesting person, always on the lookout for a place where she could belong, an as yet unknown place that will make her as happy as Tiffany does.

I was surprised to find it quite different from the movie. Including the ending. However, while I did like the happy-ever-after Hollywood version, I think this one is a better fit for Holly, as she kept traveling in search for her secret place. At least the cat ended up happily: “Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he’d arrived somewhere he belonged.”

Some say this book is written in relation to Marylin Monroe’s life (especially as the author and her were friends not to mention Capote wanted her to play Holly in the movie).

A quote, explaining both the title and a very important part of Holly:

She was still hugging the cat. “Poor slob,” she said, tickling his head, “poor slob without a name. It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him one: he’ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don’t belong to each other: he’s an independent, and so am I. I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together. I’m not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it’s like.” She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. “It’s like Tiffany’s,” she said.
[...]
It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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