Reading Wednesday
Feb. 25th, 2015 04:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile. Charley is a single mother and art teacher in LA. When her well-off father dies, she expected an inheritance, but instead finds that he sold literally everything he owned and bought a sugar farm in rural Louisiana, which furthermore is legally tied up in such a way that she can't even sell the land for its monetary value, but is obligated to try and actually run the farm. Meanwhile, Charley's half-brother Ralph Angel (the child of a brief high school relationship of their father's) is trying to turn his life around after dropping out of college, being addicted to drugs, having various run-ins with the law, and his partner dying of an overdose.
This is a weird book to review. The writing was occasionally beautiful, especially the descriptions of food or landscapes:
They rumbled out of town at a steady clip, the sky electric blue, the cane fields almost unnaturally green, and Charley felt her spirits lift for the first time in days. First stop, Mr. Nguyen, who sat on a milk crate beside his battered pickup parked along the road. He rose as the van approached, and flashed a cracked smile. Earlier, Miss Honey had referred to him as the Chinaman, but Charley thought she heard Vietnamese as he chattered with his wife, who pushed back the lids of Igloo coolers packed with fresh seafood on beds of ice — three types of shrimp, oysters, and crabs. Live red snapper thrashed and gasped in a five-gallon bucket. Miss Honey bought shrimp, her manner cordial but firm.
Then it was on to the produce stand in Arnaudville, where Miss Honey sniffed and pinched for ripeness like a chief inspector with the Department of Agriculture. Okra, speckled butter beans and black-eyed peas, bowling-ball-size cantaloupes, tomatoes, and cucumbers thick as Micah’s arm. Soon the van was cluttered with boxes, the air inside sweet from the bounty, sharp with the musk of red earth and Gulf water. West on Highway 90 and north on Route 26, past Elton and Oberlin, where cane yielded to rice paddies, which yielded to vast stretches of piney woods, a part of Louisiana Charley had never seen.
They rolled to a stop in a small turnout where a strip of multicolored flags hung over a sign that read WELCOME TO SUGAR TOWN. Stiff-legged, Charley helped Miss Honey to the ground, then followed her toward two wooden shacks. Sun fell through a blue plastic tarp strung between their sagging roofs, and variations in the blue light beneath reminded Charley of being underwater. She squinted into the shadows, smelled pine, saw watermelons strewn everywhere.
The little man in soiled overalls and rubber fishing boots hefted a melon onto a wooden table, rolled it over until the pale yellow spot faced skyward. With one stroke, he drove his blade through the center and sweetness filled the air as the halves tilted away, revealing flesh as red as beef filet. He stabbed his knife into the center of one half, cut rough square chunks. The heady aroma made Charley laugh. She laughed till her sides hurt and tears streamed down her face and they were all looking at her like she was crazy, and even then she could not stop. Because life should be as simple as a bucket of fish caught a few miles offshore and a van full of produce bought at a roadside stand. It should be as sweet as a cube of melon the color of your heart.
On the other hand, I suspect the author thinks Charley is way more sympathetic than she actually is. In her relationship with Ralph Angel in particular, it was hard to be on Charley's side when she constantly avoids him, lies to him, dismisses him, distrusts him, etc, etc. Not that people don't behave badly just like that in real life! But generally they don't get narratives that seem to treat the person doing so as the woobie. There was also a reoccurring element where resolutions happened off-screen. For example, Charley and Micah have a fight about if they should or should not go to the fair, and separate without deciding, both of them still angry. Next scene: they're at the fair. And I guess you don't really need to see them make-up because it's obvious that's what happened, but this happened multiple times, and it was weird to keep skipping over the resolution.
But eh, these are minor things. Overall I did really like the book, and I'll keep an eye out for more from the author.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
An Arranged Marriage by Jo Beverly. A Regency romance between Eleanor Chivenham, a slightly too old, unremarkable, lower nobility woman, and Nicholas Delaney, the handsome, charming, adventurous younger twin of an earl. They get married literally hours after meeting one another, for Plot Reasons, but must pretend to everyone that they're in an on-going romantic relationship. Okay, I am totally down for this trope! I love arranged marriages and pretend-dating, all of those types of stories. Unfortunately, this book really didn't work for me. Nicholas, you see, is secretly a spy, and therefore is very busy foiling Evil Napoleon Plots, mainly by spending all of his time away from home seducing French women. Which would be fine, if he had told Eleanor that's what he was doing. But no, instead he just stops speaking to her and lets her believe he's cheating on her and deliberately avoiding her. There was seriously no reason this had to be a secret. Come on, who did she even have to tell? And that's the main conflict for the majority of the book. It's a cruel, demeaning thing to do, to ice someone out without explanation, and I couldn't feel any sympathy for him, or the relationship.
Oh, well. I'm still going to try other books by the author, because there was such potential there.
What are you currently reading?
Astray by Emma Donoghue. A book of short stories, all historical fiction, by an author I quite like. Another book from my "clear off the shelves" project.
Queen Sugar by Natalie Baszile. Charley is a single mother and art teacher in LA. When her well-off father dies, she expected an inheritance, but instead finds that he sold literally everything he owned and bought a sugar farm in rural Louisiana, which furthermore is legally tied up in such a way that she can't even sell the land for its monetary value, but is obligated to try and actually run the farm. Meanwhile, Charley's half-brother Ralph Angel (the child of a brief high school relationship of their father's) is trying to turn his life around after dropping out of college, being addicted to drugs, having various run-ins with the law, and his partner dying of an overdose.
This is a weird book to review. The writing was occasionally beautiful, especially the descriptions of food or landscapes:
They rumbled out of town at a steady clip, the sky electric blue, the cane fields almost unnaturally green, and Charley felt her spirits lift for the first time in days. First stop, Mr. Nguyen, who sat on a milk crate beside his battered pickup parked along the road. He rose as the van approached, and flashed a cracked smile. Earlier, Miss Honey had referred to him as the Chinaman, but Charley thought she heard Vietnamese as he chattered with his wife, who pushed back the lids of Igloo coolers packed with fresh seafood on beds of ice — three types of shrimp, oysters, and crabs. Live red snapper thrashed and gasped in a five-gallon bucket. Miss Honey bought shrimp, her manner cordial but firm.
Then it was on to the produce stand in Arnaudville, where Miss Honey sniffed and pinched for ripeness like a chief inspector with the Department of Agriculture. Okra, speckled butter beans and black-eyed peas, bowling-ball-size cantaloupes, tomatoes, and cucumbers thick as Micah’s arm. Soon the van was cluttered with boxes, the air inside sweet from the bounty, sharp with the musk of red earth and Gulf water. West on Highway 90 and north on Route 26, past Elton and Oberlin, where cane yielded to rice paddies, which yielded to vast stretches of piney woods, a part of Louisiana Charley had never seen.
They rolled to a stop in a small turnout where a strip of multicolored flags hung over a sign that read WELCOME TO SUGAR TOWN. Stiff-legged, Charley helped Miss Honey to the ground, then followed her toward two wooden shacks. Sun fell through a blue plastic tarp strung between their sagging roofs, and variations in the blue light beneath reminded Charley of being underwater. She squinted into the shadows, smelled pine, saw watermelons strewn everywhere.
The little man in soiled overalls and rubber fishing boots hefted a melon onto a wooden table, rolled it over until the pale yellow spot faced skyward. With one stroke, he drove his blade through the center and sweetness filled the air as the halves tilted away, revealing flesh as red as beef filet. He stabbed his knife into the center of one half, cut rough square chunks. The heady aroma made Charley laugh. She laughed till her sides hurt and tears streamed down her face and they were all looking at her like she was crazy, and even then she could not stop. Because life should be as simple as a bucket of fish caught a few miles offshore and a van full of produce bought at a roadside stand. It should be as sweet as a cube of melon the color of your heart.
On the other hand, I suspect the author thinks Charley is way more sympathetic than she actually is. In her relationship with Ralph Angel in particular, it was hard to be on Charley's side when she constantly avoids him, lies to him, dismisses him, distrusts him, etc, etc. Not that people don't behave badly just like that in real life! But generally they don't get narratives that seem to treat the person doing so as the woobie. There was also a reoccurring element where resolutions happened off-screen. For example, Charley and Micah have a fight about if they should or should not go to the fair, and separate without deciding, both of them still angry. Next scene: they're at the fair. And I guess you don't really need to see them make-up because it's obvious that's what happened, but this happened multiple times, and it was weird to keep skipping over the resolution.
But eh, these are minor things. Overall I did really like the book, and I'll keep an eye out for more from the author.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
An Arranged Marriage by Jo Beverly. A Regency romance between Eleanor Chivenham, a slightly too old, unremarkable, lower nobility woman, and Nicholas Delaney, the handsome, charming, adventurous younger twin of an earl. They get married literally hours after meeting one another, for Plot Reasons, but must pretend to everyone that they're in an on-going romantic relationship. Okay, I am totally down for this trope! I love arranged marriages and pretend-dating, all of those types of stories. Unfortunately, this book really didn't work for me. Nicholas, you see, is secretly a spy, and therefore is very busy foiling Evil Napoleon Plots, mainly by spending all of his time away from home seducing French women. Which would be fine, if he had told Eleanor that's what he was doing. But no, instead he just stops speaking to her and lets her believe he's cheating on her and deliberately avoiding her. There was seriously no reason this had to be a secret. Come on, who did she even have to tell? And that's the main conflict for the majority of the book. It's a cruel, demeaning thing to do, to ice someone out without explanation, and I couldn't feel any sympathy for him, or the relationship.
Oh, well. I'm still going to try other books by the author, because there was such potential there.
What are you currently reading?
Astray by Emma Donoghue. A book of short stories, all historical fiction, by an author I quite like. Another book from my "clear off the shelves" project.
