A Jungle of Tales

  This rather surreal novel is built as a mosaic from different stories. It is a little slow to get off the ground, as the reader has to figure out how an escaped prisoner named Ludger Sylvaris relates to “symptomers” – people with strange habits from around the world – and how the narrator got caught up in looking after a cabinet filled with their files. But once that connection is made, the book becomes very engaging and insightful. The ending is suddenly violent and a bit odd…but it DOES tie back to Mr. Sylvaris, so it is indeed part of the whole. You have to have a high tolerance for weird and unexplained – mixed with social commentary - to like this book. Which I do, and I did.   The symptomers are described by Professor Kwan as a new step in humanity’s evolution (kind of like the X-men). As a biologist, I feel compelled to point out that evolution in general and punctuated equilibrium specifically doesn’t actually work based on the NEED to evolv...

  This thirteenth century semi-Arthurian romance 1 featuring a female (or at least AFAB) knight contains some truly fascinating takes on gender for the period. Besides the titular knight, Silence, it also contains their parents’ love story, which is unusuall y sweet and well-balanced between the parties, even by today’s standards. All that, of course, only makes the “happy” ending more of a gut-punch! I was of course expecting that Silence would either die or go back to living as a woman, because that’s the kind of ending a medieval audience would accept. Silence doesn’t die, but…the person they are dies, in a more upsetting way than had to be the case.  However, one could easily adapt this as a more positive feminist and/or queer tale by tweaking the very end, and I’d quite like to see that done (indeed, I’m somewhat tempted to do it myself!)   1.Merlin appears in it, but Arthur does not   If you want to avoid further spoilers…just stop here a...

  This is a beautiful book. I was worried when starting it that it would be too overwhelmingly sad, since it is about a woman in 1990s Ireland grieving the loss of the girlfriend she could never publicly acknowledge. However, while this IS a story about grief and loss - and the complicated emotions that come with loving a difficult person - it is also frequently funny. The flashbacks also get quite spicy at times, though the melancholy of the present timeline is apt to dampen the titillation for the reader as well as for Pen. Penelope is an apt name for the main character, an introverted homebody who has spent 13 years hoping the beautiful, flighty, not-so-monogamous Cara will someday choose her alone. Of course, as members of the Amazon Attic collective that Cara often hung out with point out, Cara did love her: she invited Pen to move into her family home*, talked her up every chance she got, and always did come back as if tethered on a string. Conversely, when Pen ...