the girl from uncle

tonight I'll finish "Uncle Silas" by Sheridan Le Fanu. So far it's very Lemony Snicket, but the real thing, not the snarkery. ("real thing"??)

***

I wondered why the book jacket called it subversive. About halfway through I started seeing it. The heroine keeps seeing things and having the reality of her perceptions questioned directly till she thinks she's mad. And then it ... oh wait. Spoilers behind the cut.

But I can certainly say that the narrator's guesses about who is good and who's evil and her constructions of their motives - that is just briliiant. I'm a reasonably sophisticated mystery-novel reader and that's part of what a good mystery novel does - jerks the reader around doubting first one person, then another, then believing wholeheartedly in the innocence of that first person, then doubting them again! le Fanu did this perfectly. I didn't know what to think. And with the conventions of genre also twiddled around so that one minute I'd think Oh! of course the orphan's cousin will seem coarse and rough, but then will have a heart of gold! and the next - No, her cousin hides the most treacherous soul full of lies... Oh so perfect!

It becomes clear that they're going to lock her up in a madhouse or kill her. And she realizes she is utterly vulnerable to this...

Anyway, the cool bits with the doubting-of-senses are... the bit where she is looking at the bars on the windows and arguing with the evil governess... the "hotel room" at "Dover" ... there were others. Especially the scene with her uncle. "I felt incredulous and amazed; it seemed as if a dream were being enacted before me. A transaction of the most serious import, which I had witnessed with my own eyes, and described with unexceptionable minuteness and consistency, is discredited... with an imbecile coolness... He patted and smoothed my head - he laughed gently... I felt as if I should lose my reason." Aaaaaaa! Poor Maud!

The portraits of Silas. Think about this. childhood one - manhood - and then the endless descriptions of his ghastly old age.

What year is it... hmm. 1864. What I'm not getting is the other comment on the book jacket - of how deeply this book influenced yeats and joyce. and how it's all about ireland somehow Whaaa? How? I'll think about this in the morning. Isn't it in derbyshire... I guess if it is sort of about political unrest, violence, violent repression, power, and history... well. That makes sense. Making the disempowered doubt the reality of the violence they JUST experienced.

honestly i think fr4ncine has helped me to be a better reader and to see way more than I would have otherwise. her cool mental leaps. (not to mention that i read everything twice, once in english and once in spanish (at least partway - i was not going to read all of paradiso in spanish, HA!))

Wait - is this one of Jo's books? If so, she probably spent some crazy class discussing it and can enlighten me completely.

What I should do is develop better habits. What I've always loved is to suck up books like there's no tomorrow or infinite tomorrows. Wait till the book dims in memory, then read it again and see what new insights i get off the differences. What i think i should do is read however, but take some notes and mark up the book and then be sure not to move on too quickly - to write something up for real for each book. No more sponge. i'm so lazy!

Comments

[Jo]

That is my book, but I can't remember it very well. Is that the one where you're reading along in her diary and all of a sudden the Bad Guy is writing in it? I loved that moment. I'm sure we talked about Textuality and Identity for three hours and then called it a day.