The Shining Company (Sutcliff)
May. 16th, 2013 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnNote the first: I apparently always want to add an extra e to Sutcliff's name. Sigh.
Note the second: Oh, hey, by the way, rarewomen happened and ALSO DIDO FIC, including SF Dido!AU!(Here is where I squee about it — if you don't know the Aeneid, it's okay, you need only this post and this to read them — and here’s my reveal post and more nattering on about the Greek Myth SF AU (spoilers!).)
4/5. This book sat on my shelf for a month because I’ve only read Sutcliff’s Roman stuff (uh, two books) and I was kind of side-eyeing her taking on a Celtic subject. Um. Sometimes I’m kind of stupid. This was totally amazing: gorgeous prose and the research I expect from her and allllll my tropes as usual (loyalty, friendship, partnership, hard choices, etc.) and what the heck it’s a retelling of Y Goddodin. (I am thick. I did not realize this until Aneirin showed up.) WHAT. I think the last half of the book I kept on going !!!! Y Goddodin!!!!
I mean, I guess that if one looked at it rationally, one could come up with a lot of things that might be slightly obnoxious. There’s essentially no plot. The plot, such as it is, is, well, the plot of Y Goddodin, which is to say the plot of every Welsh poem ever. (Hint: The Welsh don’t make poetry about their awesome victories and how they totally crushed the other guy, dude. They just don’t. This is not a super-feel-good book.) The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent, which might bother someone who was a little more involved with the era than I.
But I don’t look at this book rationally :)
Note the second: Oh, hey, by the way, rarewomen happened and ALSO DIDO FIC, including SF Dido!AU!(Here is where I squee about it — if you don't know the Aeneid, it's okay, you need only this post and this to read them — and here’s my reveal post and more nattering on about the Greek Myth SF AU (spoilers!).)
4/5. This book sat on my shelf for a month because I’ve only read Sutcliff’s Roman stuff (uh, two books) and I was kind of side-eyeing her taking on a Celtic subject. Um. Sometimes I’m kind of stupid. This was totally amazing: gorgeous prose and the research I expect from her and allllll my tropes as usual (loyalty, friendship, partnership, hard choices, etc.) and what the heck it’s a retelling of Y Goddodin. (I am thick. I did not realize this until Aneirin showed up.) WHAT. I think the last half of the book I kept on going !!!! Y Goddodin!!!!
I mean, I guess that if one looked at it rationally, one could come up with a lot of things that might be slightly obnoxious. There’s essentially no plot. The plot, such as it is, is, well, the plot of Y Goddodin, which is to say the plot of every Welsh poem ever. (Hint: The Welsh don’t make poetry about their awesome victories and how they totally crushed the other guy, dude. They just don’t. This is not a super-feel-good book.) The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent, which might bother someone who was a little more involved with the era than I.
But I don’t look at this book rationally :)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 12:53 am (UTC)You and at least 50% of Sutcliff fandom.
TSC is and will always be one of my favorite Sutcliffs, and I'm not sure why. I mean, yeah, rocks fall, everybody dies, and there's no plot in the modern Western lit sense (but that's true of most Sutcliffs), but idk, I just love it a lot.
The prose is sort of partially Welsh-reminiscent and partially Roman-Britain-reminiscent
I think this is generally true of Sutcliff's take on Roman Britain--I think a while back someone mentioned that some of her "British" grammatical structures are basically literal translations of Welsh expressions.
(I feel like of the Sutcliffs I've read so far, she's strongest in Roman and Post-Roman Britain, although I enjoy Blood Feud a lot; her later settings are good but not quite as passionate; her pre-Roman Celtic stuff trends heavily into Questionable Archaeology territory, and runs awkwardly into her a) subscribing to Mythic Matriarchies, and b) not being very good at imagining a matriarchy that isn't misogynist as fuck.)
no subject
Date: 2013-05-18 09:10 pm (UTC)I did sort of assume that some of her more archaic-sounding "British" strucutres were Welsh-derived; nice to know :)
Heh. One thing about reading Sutcliff is that one has to sort of let one's wish for female characters take a back seat... that's probably my main complaint. But it hasn't stopped me reading her :)