Reading Wednesday

[brigdh]

What did you just finish?
The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair. This book... well, it had a lot of potential! Rakhee is a young Indian-American whose parents are having marital problems. One summer Rakhee and her mother go back to Kerala to stay with her mother's family; while there, Rakhee discovers a mysterious garden hidden in the nearby forest and a young girl living there who claims never to have left the garden. No prizes for guessing that the girl's origin is tied up with Rakhee's family. Eventually the family history – involving teen pregnancies, blackmail, mental illness, affairs, suicide, arranged marriages, incest, and more – is revealed, and Rahkee's life is ~altered forever~.
The problem with having a child narrator is that the reader generally figures things out much more quickly than the character, especially when it's anything to do with sex or relationships. Sometimes that can lead to interesting uses of dramatic irony. Sometimes it's just boring. The Girl in the Garden is the second one. It was also melodramatic to the point of ridiculousness, and never seemed to quite decide if it wanted to follow fairy tale logic (I mean SERIOUSLY, a little girl living on her own in a garden with her pet albino peacock?) or be more realistic. Instead it tries to do both and ends up muddled somewhere in between.

The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly. In 1913, Lydia Asher's baby daughter is kidnapped by Grippen, the master vampire of London, in order to force Lydia to assist him in tracking down a rogue vampire newly arrived from the Balkans. Both Lydia's husband James and her vampire friend/lover/dude who might secretly be using her Don Simon Ysidro are out of the country, so Lydia tries to simultaneously keep any of her servants or family from realizing what's wrong, track down the Balkan vampire and save his victim (an American heiress who's very into vampire novels), track down her daughter's whereabouts and rescue her, track down Grippen's whereabouts and take bloody revenge, and wait for the guys to get back.
I think this was my favorite of the Asher books since the first one. I loved getting so much of Lydia's POV, and it was nice to have a plot that didn't center on spying and WWI. I've finished this series now (well, until the next book gets published; Hambly has talked some about writing it on her Facebook), and while I didn't like it quite as much as the January books, it was really good. Recommended to anyone who likes vampires!

Dead and Buried by Barbara Hambly. It's the book about Hannibal's backstory! And it only took nine books to be finally revealed. This is also the book that's alllll about passing. Not just the multiple characters passing for white, but an actor passing for a lord, poor passing for rich, the reappearance of the Mayerlings, and whatever Hannibal is doing (not passing, not really, but changing his name and denying his past identity).

The first time I read this book, it took me until the very last scene to figure out who Hannibal had been. I think I got confused by Diogenes's son and exactly how the dates worked out - I kept expecting Hannibal to have been Theo instead of Alexander. I do wish we had more of Rose in this book. I really want to know her thoughts about Hannibal's backstory: does she figure it out herself (she has all the same information Ben does, but she wasn't there to witness Hannibal's emotional reactions, which might be enough to make the difference)? Does Ben tell her? Does Hannibal?

There's also the question of why Hannibal waited this long to tell them (and even then he doesn't actually tell them so much as Ben figures it out on his own). I don't think it's because Hannibal doesn't trust them or thinks they don't want to know (Ben, at least, if not both of them, has clearly been curious for some time, and I always wonder if Hannibal would have told him earlier if he had asked. But Ben's always been incredibly considerate of Hannibal's reserve). I think Hannibal is bone-deep, self-loathingly, self-destructively ashamed of his past, and kind of can't bear for Ben and Rose to know about it. Which makes me wonder about how they all deal with the secret now being revealed: do they just never talk about it? I have a lot of questions: why did he choose 'Hannibal" as a name? Does he think of himself as 'Hannibal' or 'Alexander' or something else entirely? When he asks if Philippa has remarried, what answer is he hoping to hear (I want him to be hoping for 'yes', but there's no real indication either way)? Is he ever tempted in the future to write to Gerry (or maybe talk Ben into writing to him) to hear more news about the family?

I really would love to read an AU where Hannibal runs into Patrick before he's dead. I'm not sure Hannibal would even want to, necessarily... there might be too much baggage. But I'd love to see what they would say to each other. And what would Patrick think of Hannibal's current lifestyle? Would he try to give Hannibal money? I think that would horrify Hannibal even more than just seeing Patrick. I also have a theory that Hannibal deliberately named Patrick and Diogenes in his will as Gerry's guardians as a way to give Philippa as much control as possible: Diogenes was too lazy to care and usually on another continent, and Patrick was (at the time) a poor relation, generally described as a good guy, and Hannibal claims he was also in love with Philippa. Also maybe because Hannibal/Patrick. Another thing I wonder about them is if Hannibal originally intended to actually commit suicide, and Patrick talked him down into just faking it. I'd love to know about everything that was going on then and Hannibal's exact thoughts and motivations.

‘I seen folks squoze theirselves into weddins,’ drawled a voice from behind the nearest tomb. ‘An’ I won’t say I didn’t invite myself to the inauguration of Andrew Jackson and sleep that night on the floor of the White House – leastwise that’s where I woke up –’ Lieutenant Abishag Shaw of the New Orleans City Watch stepped into sight and spat a line of tobacco at a cockroach the size of a mouse, which was climbing up the broken remains of the casket – ‘but this’s the first time I seen a man stow away for a ride in somebody else’s coffin. This our friend?’
I totally need the backstory fic about Shaw's adventures in DC. When was he there? Why? For how long did he stay?

In the parlor, Mohammed LePas, the blacksmith, was quietly organizing where the men would meet in the morning, to search the swamps that lay at the back of town.
Yay, Mohammed (from 'Sold Down the River') again! I kind of want him and Ben to be better friends than they seem to be.

‘Lady Philippa wouldn’t believe Droudge if he told her water flowed downhill. She loathes the man – at least she did when I knew her – and, considering what she put up with from the boy’s father, I can’t imagine there’s much in the way of vice she hasn’t heard of before. Droudge would tell her, of course. He’s vindictive that way.’ Hannibal frowned at some memory. ‘But once they have a decent lawyer, and he’s tracked down the girl – or boy – or multiples thereof – in question, I can’t see a judge refusing bail, no matter what Patrick’s will may have said.’
This is totally my canon proof that Hannibal is bi.

‘Why would he want to see me?’
‘Because he knows you were Patrick’s friend, as well as his father’s.’
‘God help the both of them.’
January had been raggedly tired then – it had been full daylight when he’d returned home after seeing Trinchen still lived, and he’d had to force himself out to seek Hannibal before returning to the Countess’s once more. He’d said, ‘No. God help him. You may be able to talk some sense into him, and that may very well save his life.’
I really like that - for a book that's basically entirely about Hannibal's pain - he descends into self-pity remarkably few times. And when he does, like here, Ben immediately calls him on it and Hannibal makes the effort to do better. It's so refreshing compared to stories where people are encouraged to entirely wallow in their angst.

After a time, he asked, ‘Do you fear he’ll look like his father?’
Hannibal raised dark eyes, darker in circles of sleepless bruise. Head shake – slight, as if he had gone beyond the ability or desire for movement. Then he looked away. ‘He was the mirror of his mother when he was five. I expect he still is.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘With the whole of my heart.’ His gaze remained on the trees beyond the door.
A flat monotony of dull green: no mountains, no hills, no seasons to speak of. Tropical heat or tropical rain. A world where earth and water mixed, entangled in the wet heavy vegetation of the swamp.
Did Hannibal dream of Paris?
Of Oxford where he had studied – studied what? – before he had joined Derryhick’s ‘merry band’ and thrown away his future to follow wine and song?
Waking in the night, did he sometimes wait to hear the bells of Oxford’s spires, or those of Notre Dame as January still sometimes did?
Oh, Hannibal. (Also I'm very amused by Ben wondering about Hannibal's dreams, since that was a significant part of Ben's courtship of Rose.)

"Then he spread out his arms in the moonlight, raised his face to the moon . . . and smiled, leaned back, and fell like that into the river. They found his body about a week later, near Rouen. Did Patrick never tell you?’
The Viscount said, ‘I never asked him.’
There was silence for a time. ‘Did he know, do you think, sir?’ asked Foxford at length. ‘What he was doing, I mean?’
Hannibal sat silent, one skeletal finger tracing the edge of the desk. Then he said, ‘Who knows what you think you’re doing, when you’re that drunk? I know your father wasn’t happy. I know he knew what he was doing to Philippa – to his wife,’ he corrected himself, ‘and to you, living as he did. And to his lands, for which he had . . . a great deal more feeling than most people guessed. I heard him say, more than once, that you and your mother would be better caretakers for his birthright than he was ever capable of being. He looked happy when he fell.’
Oh, Hannibal. Oh, man. Just this whole scene is so tragic and heart-breaking.

Hannibal said, ‘I can’t.’
Only the agony of two cracked ribs kept January from grabbing the fiddler by the arms and shaking him till his teeth rattled. Head throbbing with sleeplessness, body and bones a mass of pain from the events of the past thirty-six hours, he opened his mouth to shout, ‘For the love of God, why not?’ at him.
And closed it, the words unsaid. Understanding, from the cornered stillness in Hannibal’s ashen face, that there was probably only one thing in the world that would keep his friend from undertaking the journey upriver with him to keep him – by his impersonation of a white master – from being kidnapped by slave-stealers on the way...
And that this was it. Whatever this was.
That he would not – and could not – abandon the son of a woman he had not seen in seventeen years.
AHHH this whole scene also! There's a lot of really fantastic scenes in this book. They're both in so much pain and it's kind of excellent.

"And with the passe blancs it’s worse, because people you meet in their house might be black, only you can’t tell . . .’
‘For God’s sake, Benjamin.’ Hannibal straightened up from the basin, wiped his face with a clean flour sack. ‘It isn’t as if blacks were lepers—’
‘That is exactly what we are.’ January stepped over to Hannibal, wiped the back of his hand down the white sleeve of the fiddler’s shirt. ‘And that is exactly what they fear. To touch us, to associate with us, because doing so would result in some of our social odium smirching them.’ He pointed to the place where his hand had touched. ‘If you were a Southerner,’ he said quietly, ‘you’d be able to see the stain.’
Hannibal said nothing.
This is one of my favorite exchanges between them.

‘At the town house?’
‘You know it?’
‘Gods, yes. The lot of us took it over like invading Goths and turned it into Liberty Hall. I hope to God somebody whitewashed the poem I chalked on to the wall of the back drawing room."
"Liberty Hall", awww. Hannibal was totally a baby revolutionary.

‘Rose!’ a voice whispered outside. ‘Rose, for God’s sake.’
She turned over, sat up sleepily. ‘What on earth . . .?’
‘I have found you out at last, you wicked woman,’ said January to Rose, recognizing the voice. And, padding to the French door: ‘Come in through my study, Hannibal.’
*cough*OT3*cough*

‘Patrick used to quote that portion of the Iliad,’ said Foxford. ‘When he spoke about my father... Achilles and Patroclus, parting for the last time:
‘Now give thy hand; for to the farther shore
When once we pass, the soul returns no more:
When once the last funereal flames ascend,
No more shall meet Achilles and his friend;
No more our thoughts to those we loved make known;
Or quit the dearest, to converse alone.
‘He didn’t speak of him, but I don’t think he ever stopped missing him.’
Patrick and bb!Hannibal were totally a couple, no? Or maybe Hannibal had a previous OT3: Hannibal/Patrick/Philippa.

Hannibal breathed out a short bitter laugh. ‘Wouldn’t that be a sight to behold? Enough to send the poor girl dashing back to Natchitoches—’
January said, ‘She wouldn’t have to know.’
Hannibal started to reply, then didn’t. Sat for a time on the crumpled and sheetless mattress, meeting January’s gaze.
In time, he sighed and asked, ‘When did you guess?’
One of my favorite things about this series is how subtle and smart people can be about one another. There's not a lot of long explicit discussions about feelings, but they understand one another so well. There's a lot going on under the surface.

‘Oh, yes,’ agreed Hannibal softly. ‘Because it meant, you see, that neither Gerry nor Uncle Diogenes had any legal control of the Foxford estate at all. That it was legally mine – still is, as a matter of fact. A terrifying thought.’
January bowed elaborately to him, and Hannibal hit him with the pillow.
And then: OMG DORKS.

"It’s the Feast of All Saints, Benjamin,’ he added with a fleet smile. ‘The night when those dead and buried come back to help the living." [...] Hannibal sighed and got to his feet, pale in his ragged nightshirt like a corpse climbing forth from a dishonored grave. ‘Facilis descensus Averno,’ he said, unconsciously providing the rest of the passage of Virgil that Uncle Diogenes had spoken, to reflect upon the path into Hell – and out of it again. ‘Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus...’
I have this whole theory that Hannibal tends to think of himself as dead or a ghost (at least until something that happens between this book and the next), and these are just a few more quotes I wanted to pull out in support.
(And the FFA discussion, now closed. Damn that post went by quickly.)

What are you currently reading?
A Breath of Fresh Air by Amulya Malladi. A novel about the Bhopal gas disaster of 1984.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. A satire about a sensible woman who goes to stay with melodramatic, brooding relatives on a decaying farm.