![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Come a Stranger (Voigt, reread)
4/5. I seem to have fallen into a Tillerman series reread, in the sense that I picked up this book from the shelf a month ago while E was sick, was (as usual) stunned by how much I still loved it, and now I’m reading all the rest of them too, completely out of order (except possibly for Homecoming, which I find too painful to read and have never actually finished).
I like A Solitary Blue better than Come a Stranger, but let’s face it, I am hopelessly in love with the Tillerman series in general, and you’re just going to have to deal with my squeeing about all of them. So, you know, I have this huge bias going in. These books are the last set of books I’ve actually fallen in love with as an adult. (Bujold was the penultimate set. Sutcliff I know I would have fallen in love with had I read it as a kid, but now it’s just a strong like.)
Come a Stranger was the hardest one for me to find when I first read all of these around five (?) years ago (all the other ones were available from the library, and this one I had to request specially, although it has a respectable number of reviews on amazon, and has since been rereleased and my library now owns it, and I own it too). It is the one about a black girl, Mina Smiths, Dicey’s friend.
It is a wonderful book, like all the Tillerman books. Mina finds out that sometimes people are prejudiced against black people more than she thinks they are, but the book isn’t about that. She makes friends with Dicey, and in the process finds out that people aren’t always as prejudiced as she thinks they are, but the book isn’t about that. We see some of the events of Dicey’s Song from Mina’s point of view, but the book isn’t about that. Mina has a quasi-romantic entanglement (slightly more about that later) but the book is most emphatically not about that.
It’s about — it’s about life, and the relationships we make, and love, and growing up, and living in the world. It’s about being human and what makes us human.
One of the things it’s about, without making a big deal out of it, is — Mina’s family. It’s very background, no attention is paid to it at all. There’s no huge drama or conflict; the interfamily conflicts that do exist are the kinds of short-term ones that every family has, and in fact the biggest family drama in the book has nothing to do with Mina herself. And yet on this reread I found myself noticing very strongly how Mina’s family plays into who Mina herself is, and how that compares and contrasts with how Dicey’s family plays into who Dicey is, and Jeff’s family, and Dicey’s mother’s family, and how their strengths and weaknesses are supported or exacerbated by family… I think this whole series is a seven-book rumination on family. And I love that. And I love that it manages to do so in such a quiet way that I never really explicitly noticed until now. (Of course it’s hard not to realize it for the Tillermans themselves! But the themes are deeper than I realized. I even think that each book taken by itself is not necessarily about family, but the cycle as a whole is clearly about family.)
So one thing that is more in the foreground is that Mina falls in love with — well, someone where a working romantic relationship is not at all possible. And there are so many ways this could have gone terribly wrong, and in another author's hands it would have, and it — doesn’t. It’s exactly right, in my estimation.
(I probably won’t natter on quite so much about all the other books, but this one is special to me, if only because it was so hard for me to find.)
I like A Solitary Blue better than Come a Stranger, but let’s face it, I am hopelessly in love with the Tillerman series in general, and you’re just going to have to deal with my squeeing about all of them. So, you know, I have this huge bias going in. These books are the last set of books I’ve actually fallen in love with as an adult. (Bujold was the penultimate set. Sutcliff I know I would have fallen in love with had I read it as a kid, but now it’s just a strong like.)
Come a Stranger was the hardest one for me to find when I first read all of these around five (?) years ago (all the other ones were available from the library, and this one I had to request specially, although it has a respectable number of reviews on amazon, and has since been rereleased and my library now owns it, and I own it too). It is the one about a black girl, Mina Smiths, Dicey’s friend.
It is a wonderful book, like all the Tillerman books. Mina finds out that sometimes people are prejudiced against black people more than she thinks they are, but the book isn’t about that. She makes friends with Dicey, and in the process finds out that people aren’t always as prejudiced as she thinks they are, but the book isn’t about that. We see some of the events of Dicey’s Song from Mina’s point of view, but the book isn’t about that. Mina has a quasi-romantic entanglement (slightly more about that later) but the book is most emphatically not about that.
It’s about — it’s about life, and the relationships we make, and love, and growing up, and living in the world. It’s about being human and what makes us human.
One of the things it’s about, without making a big deal out of it, is — Mina’s family. It’s very background, no attention is paid to it at all. There’s no huge drama or conflict; the interfamily conflicts that do exist are the kinds of short-term ones that every family has, and in fact the biggest family drama in the book has nothing to do with Mina herself. And yet on this reread I found myself noticing very strongly how Mina’s family plays into who Mina herself is, and how that compares and contrasts with how Dicey’s family plays into who Dicey is, and Jeff’s family, and Dicey’s mother’s family, and how their strengths and weaknesses are supported or exacerbated by family… I think this whole series is a seven-book rumination on family. And I love that. And I love that it manages to do so in such a quiet way that I never really explicitly noticed until now. (Of course it’s hard not to realize it for the Tillermans themselves! But the themes are deeper than I realized. I even think that each book taken by itself is not necessarily about family, but the cycle as a whole is clearly about family.)
So one thing that is more in the foreground is that Mina falls in love with — well, someone where a working romantic relationship is not at all possible. And there are so many ways this could have gone terribly wrong, and in another author's hands it would have, and it — doesn’t. It’s exactly right, in my estimation.
(I probably won’t natter on quite so much about all the other books, but this one is special to me, if only because it was so hard for me to find.)
no subject
I love the Voigt books. She's brilliant.
Have you read Hilary McCay's books about the Casson family? I read those as an adult (as with the Voigt books). I adore McCay's Casson series.
no subject
I have not read those! But clearly I shall have to :)