Various and assorted

[dragojustine]

1. My favorite reviewer, Abigail Nussbaum, does a (as always) brilliant and articulate post-mortem of the utter train wreck that was Battlestar Galactica (Wait. How unpopular is this fannish opinion? Am I going to be shunned now?)

2. This is a really beautiful specimen of humanity. (Also, my love of black and white pictures of beautiful people seems to be getting worse, not better.)

3. I am not even sure if I really consider myself a member of SPN fandom anymore, but the con reports coming out of LA make me ridiculously happy. It's not even that our boys are so doing it, it's how much they absolutely love feeding the fangirls. "Jared and I had our own wrap party last night... That's why I'm having a hard time moving around this morning." *dies* They are so good to us!

4. I had a horrible allergic reaction to something today. The skin of my face is completely covered in hives. I'm all bright red and blotchy and bubbly and scaly. The skin on my eyelids has the same texture as a particularly unpleasant lizard. I'm bumpy and peely and itchy from my hairline to my jaw. I have no idea what triggered it or what to do, so I am mostly sitting around slathering my face with plain, unscented Cetaphil and trying (failing) not to pick at it. I am, as you can imagine, extraordinarily attractive.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger.

I was really, really looking forward to reading this- have been keeping my eyes open for it for the last few years. Turns out that it's really, really, really bad. Unsatisfyingly bad: a decently original, imaginative hook, a basically good story, a complicated structure that is actually well-organized, and a certain basic rock-bottom level of competence in the writing. It's readable. It's fun, until you slow down and take a breath and go wow, that sucked on about fifteen different levels. I started trying to write an actual review, and I simply couldn't find a way to organize or prioritize that many varieties of badness.

This is a book written with two first-person narrators who are completely non-distinguished in narrative voice. It's a complicated, time-hopping, puzzle plot wherein all the actual puzzle pieces are spelled out in ridiculously obvious and unchallening ways. It is full of caricatured and stock characters living out a writer's fantasy of too-cool over-intellectual bohemian anarchist artists who don't seem to evolve or change over the twenty-plus years of the novel. Our main characters come from from over-the-top, soap-opera-screwed-up families and both float through their entire lives on a vague cushion of independent wealth for the sake of narrative convenience. The time traveler lives possibly the strangest life imaginable and yet doesn't seem shaped or remotely altered by it.

But there are two truly horrific levels of badness, the first of which is, I acknowledge, all about my own personal issues: Halfway through the book, the entire story descends into the melodrama of how desperately our heroine craves a baby. That is all we get, for a hundred solid pages: how her life is incomplete without a baby, how it's all she can think about, how the lack of a baby destroys everything, how their inability ruins their entire marriage, and Jesus, lady. And, after miscarriage number seven (oh, grow a CLUE, lady), her husband dares to tentatively suggest adoption, and she freaks out and screams about him that she doesn't want a FAKE family.

Hint: please to not be making me utterly loathe your main character, especially not when it seems like you don't have any idea what is wrong with this picture?

And the second horrific level of badness: The plot is deeply creepy with no indication that the author acknowledges or deals with the creep factor. Clare's entire life from the age of six is shaped by Henry; she never exists as a person separate from him or without him. This adult man travels back in time and ends up grooming this little girl to be his wife through her entire childhood and adolescence, and she has no free will in the matter and no inclination whatsoever to think about who she is apart from him. I have almost infinite tolerance for creepy stuff like this if it's deliberate and thoughtful, but this isn't.

The end of my copy had one of those "book group reading guides." One of the questions was "How does the author manage to make their relationship eccentric -- even enchanted -- rather than sinister?" Which. Okay. If the book did that, managed to acknowledge that creepiness and negotiate the pittfalls of it and give her some agency in the whole creepy mess? That would be a good book. This? This is just icky.

It is a love story about two people who never once appear even remotely in love. They're just two random people who got trapped in this creepy dystopian entanglement with no particular identities of their own, no real feelings for each other aside from inevitability, and now way out, who end up deeply convinced they love each other out of a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

Comments

[miriad.livejournal.com]

I think this may be a disagreement on the scale of the one we had re: Gilmore Girls. Sounds like you like Clare about as much as I liked Rory and that's okay.

This is one of my favorite books of ALL TIME EVER. I tried to write a response and I realized that I was going to say something that was going to be mean or mean spirited and not worth it, all over a book. So I erased and started over. And then I erased it again.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree and not really talk about it because I think I'll say something stupid. However, I did have to comment on one part of your review.

Your reaction to Clare and her pregnancies bugs me. Talk to someone who has had a miscarriage or two or five and who desperately wants a baby with *her* eyes and *his* nose and has dreamed about it for years and IT JUST ISN'T HAPPENING and *then* tell me that Clare is being ridiculous.

She knows she won't get to keep him forever. That Henry has a short amount of time to be with her and so much of that time he's traveling. She wants something of his to hold on to and I GET THAT. I totally understand her need to create something tangible with him that's a part of him.

Are you upset because someone believes that she isn't complete without a baby? That she doesn't think she's a complete person until she procreates?

I get it. Not everyone feels the need to have kids and people shouldn't feel that they have to have children to be a whole person. HOWEVER, her baby need isn't really about the baby as much as it's about holding on to what she's losing.

Anyway. I'm going to let this one go. To each her own and all that.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

Probably a much larger scale, if you were almost mean spirited about it- and I'm so glad you weren't. Thank you.

I stand by my reaction to the book, but I completely understand that that particular bit of it is all about my issues and not, you know, objective quality, and the issue is difficult as hell and I apologize for being flippant about it.

I understand (intellectually, if not really...) what an incredibly strong and emotional desire that can be, and lots of the things that bothered me- the way Clare doesn't seem to exist as her own person at all, the way she lets this nearly ruin the marriage- is me being annoyed at the author more than the character. Obviously a person in that position deserves a lot of empathy, and I really hope that doesn't sound like a straining-at-gnats sort of distinction.

The thing that bugged me was the sensation that she didn't much care about the baby at all. By which I mean, at this point in her life she sees that the time-traveling is incredibly dangerous to Henry, a complete curse, and it's put him in situations that are life-threatening and turn him into a little bit of a violent sociopath. She insists on having a child who is going to, at the age of five years old, end up naked and alone in uncontrollable situations and need to run for her life and steal to survive (sure, it turns out better for Alba than for Henry, but Clare has no way of knowing that), and she's risking that child having to do that without a mother as well as without a father. All so that she can have, not a family with a child, but a well-preserved DNA sample of Henry.

I know that that's a really unsympathetic reading of her. It's just- I've known women (lots, back when I was very involved in the Mormon church) who were desperate for biological children, and two who ended up having to adopt and will fight tooth and nail against any insinuation that they aren't a "real" family now. Clare just lost my sympathy when she called adopted children "fake," even though I know that was an incredibly emotional moment for her and I know that she was trying to hold on to Henry as much as trying to have a kid. I'm sure I was inclined to not give the benefit of the doubt at all, just because of my opinion of the book on other fronts.

Anyway, I wanted you to know where that's coming from. I did a piss-poor job up there separating my annoyance at the book as a whole from annoyance at a character in particular, and it was failure of empathy and me being an ass on the internet and I'm really sorry.

[sir-yessir.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to pop in and say that I think you have some valid points, but I actually really love that book, and I'll probably continue to do so. I want to point out, however, that no matter how bad you think the book was, HOW MUCH MORE AWFUL IS THE MOVIE GOING TO BE. Seriously.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

I don't know- the movie versions always leave stuff out. And if the movie version leaves out ANY of the two hundred straight pages of baby-longing? I'm gonna consider it an improvement. And if they leave out the scene of our supposedly sympathetic heroine screaming that adopted babies are FAKE? Imma give 'em a medal.

[ariadne83]

Urgh just when I thought I'd managed to completely block out the time-traveling half-formed fetus.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

Yes. Thank God- from the other reactions to this post, I was starting to be afraid that I was the only one. Seriously, if this was a fic, I'd be That Fangirl sending unpleasant emails to the author saying "You gotta warn for this shit!"

[gigerisgod.livejournal.com]

that reaction is pretty severe. hope you can nail down whatever it was that made you break out into hives so you can avoid it.

really hope you're feeling better today.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

I still have the texture of a really icky lizard, but I do feel better, so thanks!

[princessofg.livejournal.com]

maybe i won't be watching bsg someday after all. or maybe i'll just watch season one. :(.

[cnidarian.livejournal.com]

If I were you, I would watch it until the mid-season break in Season 4. Then stop.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

And, see, I would watch until the mid-season break of Season 2. Ah well *g*

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I'm convinced that the miniseries and the first season of Season 1 are the some of the best television SF ever. Right up through the mis-season break of Season 2, it's incredible.

Then the whole damn thing fell off a cliff.

[cnidarian.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that reaction sounds bad - are you allergic to a lot of things? Hope you figure out what caused it so it doesn't happen again.

And I loved the book, but I understand some of your issues with it. I was a bit concerned about the age difference when only one of them had the memories of the future relationship.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

I'm not allergic to anything, to my knowledge, though I had mystery hives once before when I was a kid.

And yeah- that's a short version of the ickiness I was seeing. But it does seem like a lot of people really loved it, and I see why.

[cnidarian.livejournal.com]

Huh, how strange. It might be worth seeing your doctor if it doesn't clear up soon.

[kaballa.livejournal.com]

I found that there was enough in BSG to keep me content, and parts of the ending even made me happy. Perhaps I've moved out of die-hard fandom enough that the flaws just didn't bother me that badly - I knew parts of it were a crock of shit but I was just pleased that the story had an ending, as so many shows never do.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

*nods* see, my problem with it is that I started out so incredible- I think the mini and first 1.5 seasons of BSG may well be the best SF TV ever, or at least damn close- that I just couldn't stand to see the way it went downhill. I think if the whole run had been uniformly mediocre, I probably wouldn't care one way or the other, but I was fannish enough about it when it was good to feel kind of personally betrayed.

[parvarteal.livejournal.com]

Should you take some benadryl for your allergic reaction?? That sounds highly unpleasant - I hope you feel better soon!

About the book, I agree on all the points you raised plus have some additional bits but essentially, yeah, definitely not my favorite. My mother-in-law is currently pissed at me because I expressed that opinion and she'd just read it with her book club. I'm not certain why she thought I'd need to read that - we were trying to have a baby when I was in my accident and with everything that's happened to me since babies are not looking possible. She knows this. She doesn't 'approve' of adoption (does she get a vote??) and told one of her friends that my husband should 'get rid of' me because it wasn't fair he should be punished just because I couldn't have kids. Bleh.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

RE the book: I'm so glad it's not just me (because I was starting to think it was).

RE your mother-in-law: Oh my god, what a truly horrible person. I sincerely hope for your sake that she raised a son better than she is (I assume so, or you wouldn't have married him).

*hugs* good luck with the adoption (and dealing with her), if that's the way you end up going.

[sothcweden.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing this review. You were able to clarify why even though I love the premise of the CDP and what a pain in the ass it is for Henry, the book never made my list of favorites/recommendations.

As someone who has multiple adopted family members, I utterly reject Claire's stance on having a real family. Even though I have seen friends struggle with having children and how important it is to them to have a biological child, family (for me) has very little to do with blood. And I hadn't thought about how Claire's childhood was directed by Henry and how she didn't really have a choice, since she was molded by their interactions from age 6, I think.

A throwback to a post you made before I had an LJ with which to comment: The Sparrow is near the top of my personal favorites list, and I adore it for so many reasons.

[dragojustine.livejournal.com]

*nods* I mean, after seven miscarriages- when he seriously fears for her life- he suggests an adoption and her response is to get angry at him for suggesting a fake family? I'm not sure I've ever lost all sympathy for a character quite that quickly or irrevocably.

And the Sparrow! Oh god, I adore that book.