Wednesday reading--A Stranger in Olondria

[asakiyume]

Hey, it's Wednesday, and I've actually read a thing: A Stranger in Olondria. I'm going to write up a review of it, because I ended up loving it; I think it's an amazing book, beautifully, powerfully told--and that's not what I went in thinking, or even what I was feeling in the first fifth of the book. Early on I had the impression that it was an admirable book that I was going to effortfully work my way through, but my mind completely, totally changed, so much so that by the end, this passage about coming to the end of a book--used as a heartbreaking analogy for final separation--was exactly how I felt:

Earlier, frightened, you began to have some intimation of it: so many pages had been turned, the book was so heavy in one hand, so light in the other, thinning toward the end. Still, you consoled yourself. You were not quite at the end of the story, at that terrible flyleaf, blank like a shuttered window: there were still a few pages under your thumb, still to be sought, treasured. Oh, was it possible to read more slowly?--No. The end approached, inexorable, at the same measured pace. The last page, the last of the shining words! And there--the end of the book.

Comments

[sartorias]

Lovely book by a lovely person.

[asakiyume]

Entirely agree.

[evelyn_b]

Aw, that's fantastic! It's the best when a book wins you over.

[asakiyume]

And I have that experience so rarely nowadays because I'm much more likely to abandon books. But this one, from the start, had enough that I loved to induce me to continue, and whoa, I was rewarded.

[aamcnamara]

YES. Right?? God, I love that book. And I love that passage--I have it dog-eared in my copy, which I do very rarely.

The Winged Histories is also magnificent in a wholly different way. I adore them both.

[asakiyume]

She has so many brilliant, beautiful observations of life. It's the small moments she captures (but also the large things about the human condition). I'm beside myself.

Yes, I can guess that Winged Histories will have a different feel. I am looking forward to it!

[kore]

I've heard this is so good!

[asakiyume]

It really is.

[sovay]

The last page, the last of the shining words! And there--the end of the book.

That's wonderful.

[asakiyume]

The next passage is equally beautiful:

Then the silence comes, like the absence of sound at the end of the world. you look up. It's a room in an old house. Or perhaps it's a seat in a garden, or even a square; perhaps you've been reading outside and you suddenly see the carriages going by. Life comes back, the shadows of leaves. Someone comes to ask what you will have for dinner, or two small boys run past you, wildly shouting; or else it's merely a breeze blowing a curtain, the white unfurling into a room, brushing the papers on a desk. It is the sound of the world. But to you, the reader, it is only a silence, untenanted and desolate.

And then, a line so heart-striking in the context of the novel: This is the grief that comes when we are abandoned by the angels: silence, in every direction, irrevocable.

[gwynnega]

Her book of short fiction, Tender, is amazing too.

[asakiyume]

She had a short story, "Walkdog," that I adored and continually recommend.