Book-It 'o12! Book #26
Aug. 16th, 2012 08:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alivemagdoleneThe Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one, two, and three just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan
Details: Copyright 1999, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Marnie comes to the remote fishing hamlet of Torcurra as the reluctant bride of Isake Isherwood, a lord of her parents' farm. But two days later, while thatching the roof, Isake falls to his death. Marnie's only kindness comes from Father Brannan, the village priest, and Raver, the strange mad boy whose incoherent cries belie his gentle heart. Taking him in one windy night, Marnie makes a startling discovery: Raver is not mad but deaf.
Determined to communicate with the boy whom Marnie now calls Raven, she invents a system of hand-words. Raven learns quickly and has soon all but shed his madness. Yet while Marnie and Raven forge a deep bond, the villagers, already suspicious of Marnie's role in Isake's death, see his transformation as the result of witchcraft. Even as Marnie's and Raven's bond turns to love, and as they uncover the mysterious value of their cottage, Marnie is forced into a witchcraft trial where the test of the iron bar will determine her fate.
Set in the times when magic was a force to be reckoned with, The Raging Quiet is the epic saga of a remarkable woman whose only crime is being different."
Why I Wanted to Read It: After a recent re-reading (I think part of why this challenge is so damn stunted this year is because of my love of re-reading as comfort food) of the excellent Witch Child, I've been poking around for some more fiction regarding [W]itch trials during the "Burning Times" and I'd happened to get The Burning Time on a library search for "Goddess+worship+fiction", which only made me want to seek out [W]itch trials in fiction even more (in the hopes of, you know, finding something actually good).
I figured that "young adult" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be enjoyable (Witch Child, after all, was geared towards that market) and though the plot seemed a little too close to the historical fiction of bodice-rippers minus the hilarious sex scenes, I'd give the book a try.
How I Liked It: A warning sign of how the book will skew is the customary author bio on the back flap.
I actually cringed at the "great affinity with deaf people," which sounds like such smarmy ableism (how exactly to you feel "great affinity" with deaf people?) and the idea that sign language sounds more like a hobby than a necessity.
The book has several strong premises to make it excellent despite the author's off-putting bio: the themes of intolerance and a better look at the mindset that fed and still feeds witch hunts, a coming-of-age with a female protagonist, the fact one of the heroine's only allies is the central religious leader of the town.
Unfortunately, the author finds a way to defeat all of these.
Too many pivotal characters lack any sort of depth. The main character's mother isn't so much a character as the lazy personification of two wedded forces at war with the main character, familial obligation and social respectability. The husband whose death early in the book plunges the heroine into further hardship is both a drunken rapist and a charmer who bewitches (so to speak) her, with nothing to bridge the gulf between the two.
Too often, the author relies on the reader to do the work. Rather than demonstrate the lead character's strength of will and faith in her own convictions, the author states them. Repeatedly. Some half-hearted subplots never get fully developed. An odd moment of seeming sexual tension between the main character and the priest who aids her (presumably entirely on the part of the priest, from whose view this particular episode is described by the narrator) flutters briefly before the friend/surrogate-father relationship is resumed.
Also lazy and sloppy is the narration. Told in the third person, the viewpoint slips between the heroine, the priest, and the deaf boy aided by the first two. Rather than "Marnie suspected from his concerned, lingering gaze on her face that the sleepless nights were visibly taking a toll on her," or even "Had Marnie not been so weary, she would've noticed his concerned, lingering gaze on her eyes deeply shadowed from lack of sleep," the book jumps "The shadows under Marnie's weary eyes were deep and he realized how little she must be sleeping." Such back and forths interrupt the narrative flow.
The dialog is likewise stilted and the author can't quite seem to decide in which era she is writing. It can come across as overly modern at times as well as almost desperate at others to sound "authentic of the period."
The book is wrapped up far too tidily with an all-too-ending out for the heroine and her new love. Speaking of which, the relationship between the main character and the deaf boy becomes one of romance almost out of obligation. There's no slow build up and it seems as though it would've made more sense (and a far more interesting story) to keep them as friends, the spotlight kept on their bond by their shared shunning from the townsfolk rather than a need to pair off in time for the happy ending of the book.
Combine the various flaws with the initial problematic aspect of a "savior" to the disabled (her canonization for having "invented" a sign language along with being the first to realize that he is not in fact "wild" or otherwise mentally impaired but simply without his hearing) and you've got a book easy to skip. I find it hard to imagine even the young audience for which it is written not noticing the author's numerous pratfalls (to say nothing of the fact the book contains a rape) which leaves us with just another young adult book that's an opportunity (particularly one to educate) wasted.
Notable: Like The Burning Times and unlike Witch Child, the accused is actually a Christian. Another half-hearted stab at a deepening of a character is the affinity for nature tacked on to the boy which is more "manic pixie dream boy" than "unencumbered by social restriction so free to express his free-spiritedness." He dances naked under the moon (just because he likes it) and performs some sort of expression of joy at the sun in the sky which the priest notes could be construed as [P]agan sun-worship. Again, a lost theme that could've been explored is the growing separation implemented by the rising Church of the cities against the rural townsfolk who were among the last to be converted to the "new religion."
Title: The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan
Details: Copyright 1999, Simon & Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "Marnie comes to the remote fishing hamlet of Torcurra as the reluctant bride of Isake Isherwood, a lord of her parents' farm. But two days later, while thatching the roof, Isake falls to his death. Marnie's only kindness comes from Father Brannan, the village priest, and Raver, the strange mad boy whose incoherent cries belie his gentle heart. Taking him in one windy night, Marnie makes a startling discovery: Raver is not mad but deaf.
Determined to communicate with the boy whom Marnie now calls Raven, she invents a system of hand-words. Raven learns quickly and has soon all but shed his madness. Yet while Marnie and Raven forge a deep bond, the villagers, already suspicious of Marnie's role in Isake's death, see his transformation as the result of witchcraft. Even as Marnie's and Raven's bond turns to love, and as they uncover the mysterious value of their cottage, Marnie is forced into a witchcraft trial where the test of the iron bar will determine her fate.
Set in the times when magic was a force to be reckoned with, The Raging Quiet is the epic saga of a remarkable woman whose only crime is being different."
Why I Wanted to Read It: After a recent re-reading (I think part of why this challenge is so damn stunted this year is because of my love of re-reading as comfort food) of the excellent Witch Child, I've been poking around for some more fiction regarding [W]itch trials during the "Burning Times" and I'd happened to get The Burning Time on a library search for "Goddess+worship+fiction", which only made me want to seek out [W]itch trials in fiction even more (in the hopes of, you know, finding something actually good).
I figured that "young adult" doesn't necessarily mean it can't be enjoyable (Witch Child, after all, was geared towards that market) and though the plot seemed a little too close to the historical fiction of bodice-rippers minus the hilarious sex scenes, I'd give the book a try.
How I Liked It: A warning sign of how the book will skew is the customary author bio on the back flap.
“Sherryl Jordan writes: "All my life I have felt a great affinity with deaf people, and have loved sign language."”
I actually cringed at the "great affinity with deaf people," which sounds like such smarmy ableism (how exactly to you feel "great affinity" with deaf people?) and the idea that sign language sounds more like a hobby than a necessity.
The book has several strong premises to make it excellent despite the author's off-putting bio: the themes of intolerance and a better look at the mindset that fed and still feeds witch hunts, a coming-of-age with a female protagonist, the fact one of the heroine's only allies is the central religious leader of the town.
Unfortunately, the author finds a way to defeat all of these.
Too many pivotal characters lack any sort of depth. The main character's mother isn't so much a character as the lazy personification of two wedded forces at war with the main character, familial obligation and social respectability. The husband whose death early in the book plunges the heroine into further hardship is both a drunken rapist and a charmer who bewitches (so to speak) her, with nothing to bridge the gulf between the two.
Too often, the author relies on the reader to do the work. Rather than demonstrate the lead character's strength of will and faith in her own convictions, the author states them. Repeatedly. Some half-hearted subplots never get fully developed. An odd moment of seeming sexual tension between the main character and the priest who aids her (presumably entirely on the part of the priest, from whose view this particular episode is described by the narrator) flutters briefly before the friend/surrogate-father relationship is resumed.
Also lazy and sloppy is the narration. Told in the third person, the viewpoint slips between the heroine, the priest, and the deaf boy aided by the first two. Rather than "Marnie suspected from his concerned, lingering gaze on her face that the sleepless nights were visibly taking a toll on her," or even "Had Marnie not been so weary, she would've noticed his concerned, lingering gaze on her eyes deeply shadowed from lack of sleep," the book jumps "The shadows under Marnie's weary eyes were deep and he realized how little she must be sleeping." Such back and forths interrupt the narrative flow.
The dialog is likewise stilted and the author can't quite seem to decide in which era she is writing. It can come across as overly modern at times as well as almost desperate at others to sound "authentic of the period."
The book is wrapped up far too tidily with an all-too-ending out for the heroine and her new love. Speaking of which, the relationship between the main character and the deaf boy becomes one of romance almost out of obligation. There's no slow build up and it seems as though it would've made more sense (and a far more interesting story) to keep them as friends, the spotlight kept on their bond by their shared shunning from the townsfolk rather than a need to pair off in time for the happy ending of the book.
Combine the various flaws with the initial problematic aspect of a "savior" to the disabled (her canonization for having "invented" a sign language along with being the first to realize that he is not in fact "wild" or otherwise mentally impaired but simply without his hearing) and you've got a book easy to skip. I find it hard to imagine even the young audience for which it is written not noticing the author's numerous pratfalls (to say nothing of the fact the book contains a rape) which leaves us with just another young adult book that's an opportunity (particularly one to educate) wasted.
Notable: Like The Burning Times and unlike Witch Child, the accused is actually a Christian. Another half-hearted stab at a deepening of a character is the affinity for nature tacked on to the boy which is more "manic pixie dream boy" than "unencumbered by social restriction so free to express his free-spiritedness." He dances naked under the moon (just because he likes it) and performs some sort of expression of joy at the sun in the sky which the priest notes could be construed as [P]agan sun-worship. Again, a lost theme that could've been explored is the growing separation implemented by the rising Church of the cities against the rural townsfolk who were among the last to be converted to the "new religion."
