Deeds & Words

I didn’t know that. I thought they had beaks, and they do, but according to the book Gifts of the Crow, crows have four lips. They just aren’t where we mammals expect them to be. Crows, ravens and jays have four lips, at the intersection of the trachea and bronchial tubes. These, combined with six powerful muscles and a vocal apparatus called a syrinx, allow them to make hundreds of sounds and even imitate human speech. It also puts corvids in the category of songbirds, something that is a little harder to believe.

As some of you have observed, I’m on a crow kick — more accurately, a corvidae kick. With that curious synchronicity that seems to happen when you focus a lot of mental energy on a topic, two books on that very topic found their way to me lately. Well, one I had to go seek out, but still.

Wild Birds Unlimited is a Santa Rosa Store specializing in All Things Avian. They have seed mixes, suet and jam cakes, meal worms, feeders, houses, binoculars, spotting scopes, bird sculpture, bird jewelry, bird clothing and books on birds. I called them about two weeks ago to see if they had any books on the physiology of corvids. They did not.

By the way, books on the physicality of birds in general and corvids in particular are darned hard for me to find! People want to write books about corvids in mythology and folklore, and books about corvid behavior. Well, I want to read those books too, but right now I was curious about things like how a crow’s brain works, and what their resting heartbeat is (643 bpm)  and stuff like that.

“Nope,” the nice lady at Birds Unlimited said, “We don’ t have any books like that but we have a nice book called Bird Brains. It’s not about brains, exactly, but it’s about corvidae and how intelligent they are. It’s old though, it was written in 1995.”

Bird Brains was written by Candace Savage and published by the Sierra club, in 1995. Savage is an articulate writer who loves corvids, and the photographs in the book are outstanding. Savage includes folklore and folk tales about ravens, crows, magpies and jackdaws in sidebars on almost every page. Because of when she was writing it, Savage cannot back up her delightful anecdotes of the reasoning power, tool-making and innovation of crows with “hard science.”

Along came The Gifts of the Crow, by John Mazluff. This book was published in 2012. The way I found out about it was by talking to Brandy (another crow fan; hmm… crows and books, what’s up with that?) about my search. “Oh, a friend at Copperfield’s told me there a new book out about crows,” she said. “It’s on the non-fiction, New Arrivals table.”  On my break I went over, and there it was.

Science-tech has evolved since 1995 and many of the things that Savage opined upon in 1995 have now been proved, or in some cases disproved, by the use of infra-red cameras and brain scans on living birds. These techniques do not harm the birds.

Gifts of the Crow discusses key areas of corvidae behavior:

1. Language
2. Delinquency
3. Insight
4. Frolic
5. Risk-Taking
6. Awareness
7. Passion, Wrath and Grief

I am talking about The Gifts of the Crow before I’ve finished it, something I rarely do, but the chapter on brain development and neurology alone is worth the price of the book. And the gem of knowledge that they have lips is worth it again.

Both books have good bibliographies, which also helps.

Gifts, while it is filled with charming pen and pencil sketches by Paul Angell, does not have photos. This may have been a marketing choice; they want it considered a science book, not a coffee table book, but still, it’s a shame. However, if you have Bird Brains on the table next to you while you are reading it, you can browse those exquisite photos as you read about these startling birds.

The Lost Art of Debate

My writer/reviewer friend Terry recently had a bully try to intimidate her on Facebook. Terry reviews for Fantasyliterature.com,and she contributes a weekly column called Magazine Monday. I am not going to include the name of the magazine or the editor in this post, but if you want to read Terry’s review, click here.

I am going to call the bully OSG, which is an acronym of something he calls himself. There will be no links to his blog because I don’t want to send people to this guy. You can probably find him if you have nothing better to do.

Terry always links from Facebook to her reviews. In the review, she said she found that this invitation-only hard SF magazine, edited by a low-midlist hard SF writer, felt like “an exercise in nostalgia.” In her comments on each story, she pointed out predictable plot lines with no twists or new ways of seeing things. Of the nine stories reviewed, she singled out three that she found highly successful and explained why. Generally, though, she concluded that this magazine, with its many reprints of stories that were not outstanding the first time around, not to be for her.

OSG pounced, immediately mischaracterizing what Terry had said. “The idea that good storytelling is an exercise in nostalgia strikes me as appalling,” is one example.Terry wrote nothing even close to that.  Another is, ” Clear, unadorned prose is an out-dated style?” Terry wrote nothing like that statement either. She did describe the prose in one story as clear and unadorned.

He probably didn’t know who he was dealing with. In addition to being astonishingly well-read, Terry, who brings the values and intellectual rigor of literary criticisms to her reviews, is also a practicing lawyer. She handled him tidily.  The exchange, with OSG hectoring and trying to put words in Terry’s mouth, and Terry calming correcting him, only went on as long as it did because Terry kept inviting him to debate the review on its merits, something he refused to do.

Back at the Brat-Cave

Like most bullies, as soon as he realized he did not have a compliant victim, OSG ran away. From the safely of his blog, though, he continued to whine, revealing at last his real problem with Terry’s review. Terry had noted that there was only one piece of work in the magazine that had been written by a woman.

Here was the true source of OSG’s rage. He described the comment as something from the crazy-old-feminist-with-something-up-her-pooper-category. (That is an exact quote and it’s his link to the review.) Here is the single most revealing quote in his post:

“You’re kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t with some people, aren’t you? Can you imagine the froth, the rage she would have spewed if they hadn’t included any female authors?”

We’ll come back to that comment in a few minutes.

Is Terry a feminist? Hell, yes. Is she crazy? I’m not a clinician, but I can say with confidence that she is not any more crazy than anyone else I know… and far less crazy than some. Is she old? Terry referred to her age in the column. To OSG, she probably does seem old. She’s a year younger than me, so of course, to me she does not.

OSG could have engaged Terry on the specific points of her review. Why didn’t he? I don’t know, but three theories occur to me:

1. He can’t analyze. He’s a simple binary soul; he either likes it/doesn’t like it,and case closed.
2. He doesn’t want to elevate female Terry to the level of an equal in his mind by dignifying her review with a thoughtful response.
3. He can’t respond because, despite some artful bluffing, he hasn’t really read the magazine.

Personally, if I were a betting person, I’d put my money on #3.

The Briefcase Bomb

Now let’s, as the kids say, “unpack” that “Damned if you do…” statement.

What’s the subtext here? It’s pretty simple:

1. Women can’t write. Letting one in was a kindness. Be appropriately grateful.
2. Hard SF is our domain, the privilege of men. Keep up the attitude, honey, and we’ll see to it that none of you get in. Got it?

My comments here are not about the magazine at all. The editor obviously picked stories he liked or stories from authors he likes. If he is truly going to print a bimonthly magazine of reprinted hard SF, though, there are plenty of women who were and are highly skilled at the straightforward “hard” science fiction short story; Leigh Brackett; Kate Wilhelm; James Tiptree Jr; Marta Randall (although she was always New Wave), Connie Willis. I can name that many and I barely read short fiction.

OSG’s real problem is that about forty years ago the rigid gender roles started breaking down, and apparently he only just now got the text message. OSG is a gamer. It must just frost his tomatoes that women are entering gaming in droves, and writing games. Women successfully write military science fiction. Women are CEOs, scientists, astronauts, explorers. A woman runs the I Fucking Love Science page (another thing that must cause OSG great ire).

This goes a bit beyond a Facebook kerfluffle for me. Women, right now, are under as much assault as we were in the 1970s and 1980s. Women still earn less per hour than men, even when they do the same work. One entire political party has made rolling back the rights of women a key plank in its platform. Like the 1970s and 80s when derisive terms like “bra-burner” and “ball-breaker” were used to shame and ridicule women, men use the internet and social media to try very hard to silence women who dare express any opinion other than, “Yes, dear, you’re so smart,” or work in any area other than Pinterest or a knitting blog.

In Petaluma, California, this week, the girls at Kenilworth Middle School were called into an assembly with the superintendent, who told them they could no longer wear yoga pants, leggings  or skinny jeans, because tight clothing was “distracting the boys from their studies.” In 2013, adolescent girls are still being told by their educators that they are responsible for the behavior of boys. This makes me approach guys like OSG with a lot less humor.

There is certainly a contingent of young men, many of whom still live at home, who work out their own mommy issues by bullying or packing up on women in social networking arenas. OSG, based on the bio on his blog, seems a little too old to be one of these, but I can make no judgments about his emotional age. If his Mum still brings Marmite sandwiches down to his secret fort in the basement, that would certainly explain the “crazy old feminist” line.

From the safety of my blog, I picture OSG huddled in an old recliner, patched here and there with duct tape, clutching his remote as he cycles through endless loops of the original Star Trek. As Kirk smooches one mini-skirted female alien after another, he murmurs, “Why can’t it just be like that now?” And there I must leave him. I am a woman. I have work to do.

I found a book called 642 Things to Write About. That’s a grammatically incorrect title; I don’t care. It is also a book with a lot of white space — lined space, to be accurate. Since it’s a workbook, that’s just fine. This collection was developed by the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and it contains 642 ideas to start a person writing.

There are many challenges in writing; but facing the blank page or screen is the worst. It’s especially bad when you’ve got that twitchy need to write, and when you sit down in front of the computer or the ruled pad or the journal, nothing emerges. This book is a great treatment for that.

The Writers’ Grotto, whatever that is, came up with 642 writing ideas in a burst of creativity over a twenty-four hour period. There are usually 2 ideas per page, but some pages are divided into quadrants and there are four.

I picked seven examples arbitrarily just to give you the flavor:

1. Describe yourself — physically and your personality — as if you were a character in a book.
2. Describe five memories –events you remember well. Now take one of them further.
3. The moment you knew you were no longer a child.
4. Write a scene that begins “Joe was the last person on earth I expected to do that.”
5. Pick a person, then ask yourself: What is the hardest choice they ever had to make?
6. You’re having lunch with a friend, and they get a call in the middle of the mea. Write just your friend’s part of the conversation.
7. Find a map or globe. close your eyes, pick a spot. Write about a person arriving there for the first time.

The book is slightly more expensive than a high-end journal. I got one for a friend. Don’t get one for yourself unless you are actually going to use it (browse through it in the store first or see the examples above.)

It’s a good book to have for a jump-start or a way to collect some writing that you will be able to use later. Remember, after all, that NaNoWriMo is only eight months away. Enjoy!

While she was writing her award-winning novel Swamplandia! Karen Russell would slip away to “have trysts with monsters.”  Those trysts, or the results of them, are collected in her latest book, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

Most of the stories in the collection feature monsters or, in Russell’s words, “a monstrous transformation.” Sometimes the monster in the story is not the character you expect.

In Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Clyde is truly a vampire, and so is his wife, Magreb. They currently live in a lemon grove because the ripe, juicy lemons temporarily end the craving for human blood. In his long existence, with Magreb’s help, Clyde has discovered that many sayings about his kind are untrue;  he can exist in sunlight, he has a reflection, and he doesn’t need human blood to survive. He still craves it, though. Magreb finds freedom in her condition, but Clyde is trapped by his self-image; “For me mirrors had the opposite effect. I saw a mouth ringed in black blood. I saw the pale son of the villagers’ fears.” It is this image that drives the action Clyde finally takes at the end of the story. I thought the story went on a bit too long past the climax, but Clyde’s voice is wry and affecting.

Reeling for the Empire wouldn’t be out of place in an Ellen Datlow horror anthology, or the New Yorker. This story of young Japanese women who have transformed into giant silkworms can be read as pure horror, as a story of personal transformation, or as a meditation on government, commerce and citizenship. How often have governments sacrificed their citizens for profit or technological advantage? On another level, this could just be a story about the lies men tell women, and that women tell themselves.

The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979, tells us the story of fourteen year old Nal, whose life is imploding the year vast flocks of gulls, more than ever seen before, invade the beach town where he lives. Nal, who is academically gifted and headed for college, feels his future slipping away when his mother is discharged from her job at a nursing home after a random accident. Nal, introverted and embittered, wishes he could be more like his sunny and popular brother Samson. Nal decides that he is being stalked by one of the gulls, and follows it to a huge nest where he finds various articles the seagulls have scavenged. Some of these things – tickets, passports – have future dates on them, as if the seagulls are traveling through time.

I enjoyed the surrealism of this story, especially the time-travel flirtation and the way the gulls, randomly (or perhaps not) are playing havoc with the lives of people. I liked how this fancy contrasted with the concrete, gritty details of Nal’s life –his habit of talking to himself, the crotchety shopkeeper who tells him his blue-dyed Mod haircut makes him look like the Antichrist. “Seagull Army” delineates a turning point, a formative moment, in Nal’s life, even though I’m not sure just what Russell means by Nal’s choices.

Proving Up is a strange, dark horror story, a companion piece in some ways to “Reeling for the Empire.” The tone is eerie, the story a dark, stripped-down fable not unlike Robert Jackson Bennett’s novel Mr Shivers. In the American west in the late 1800s, homesteaders must “prove up” before they are awarded the deeds to the property they’ve been working.  Oddly, “proving up” includes having a glass window in your house. In a remote section of drought-ridden Nebraska, a group of families plans to trade a window back and forth so that each of them gets their deed. Miles, the youngest Zenger son, is trusted with carrying the precious window to the nearest neighbors, who are due for an inspection.

Before Miles leaves on his journey, Russell plants more than enough hints about who, or what, the “monster” is. The descriptions of drought-ravaged land are pitch-perfect, and the stories of certain other families, who have not been successful, told in a glancing way by Miles (and the tension between his own parents) build up the suspense. Because the window is glass and fragile, Russell lets the reader assume what the catastrophe will be, but the truth, as it unfolds, is stranger and darker. Russell makes a structural mistake here – her point of view choice requires a jarring shift that the end that actually reduces the power of the story, but line by line, this is a devastating and poetic story that stayed with me.

The Barn at the End of our Term is unabashedly surreal. Eleven US presidents are reincarnated as horses in a stable on a farm. It’s not clear why. There are twenty-two horses in the stable, and eleven of them are always presidents. The story is told from the point of view of Rutherford B Hayes, who spends most of the story trying to figure out how to escape. (Eisenhower, on the other hand, tries to figure out how he can run for President again.) Rutherford has no clue about where the farm exists in time and space. It is like a bardo state, or maybe purgatory (although it’s hard to see its function if it is) and finally, Rutherford does find a way to move on.

Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgating is mostly for laughs, but it is bittersweet, too. This is another story that could have appeared in any literary magazine, or The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, equally comfortably. Doug shares the rules for tailgating before the epic annual match-up; Team Krill versus Team Minke Whale. He explains how best to get to the ice caves in Antarctica, what to wear, what to drink, what to tip the Russians. (Rule Ten, Don’t Fall Overboard.)

Doug and his friends are loyal fans of the saddest underdog team ever: “The krill are in a rebuilding year. The krill are always in a rebuilding year. Every year the whole franchise of 60,000,000,000 gets eaten.” And later, “We’ve got a pretty good offense but we’ve got a pretty dismal record on defense.”

Dougbert mentions in passing the defection of his wife, who left him for a billionaire hotel development, and his hatred of the violent fans of Team Whale. From the starting place of tailgaters, particularly those who follow underdog teams, Russell spring-boards into a funny and thought provoking little tale about evolution and faith.

The New Veterans is an exploration of trauma, memory and healing. Beverly is a massage therapist. Under a newly passed law, returning veterans can have massage included as a benefit, and Derek Zeiger is her new client. Derek has a tattoo that covers his whole back; a mural that tells the story of one day, a day when his friend was killed by an IED. As Derek talks about that day, Beverly realizes that the tattoo moves under her fingers; she can change it. She moves a line in the tattoo. On his second visit, Derek tells a slightly different version of events, one in which he reveals a personal sense of guilt for his friend’s death. In the next visit, the story changes again, depending on what Beverly manipulates on the tattoo.

Beverly is a gifted massage therapist who is dealing with her own issues; the post-traumatic stress of her mother’s protracted death from cancer. Beverly was the caregiver; her sister married and moved away. As Beverly continues to work with Derek, and changes the tattoo, his story changes each time, and Beverly grows worried. What if these are delusions, and she is making Derek worse? The story’s climax combines a dramatic phone confrontation with her sister and a final massage for Derek before coming to a resolution. The story ends with Beverly thinking about Derek, but she is really the one who has had a breakthrough.

The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis is a dark, thoughtful take on bullying, loyalty and guilt. Larry Rubio is part of a gang of four kids in New Jersey. One day they find a scarecrow tied to a tree in the park that is their territory. As they inspect it, they notice a scary resemblance to a boy they bullied last year in school. They take down the scarecrow and throw it down a hole. Their plan is to watch it disintegrate. It does, but not in any normal way. Whole sections of the scarecrow begin to disappear; the hands, the feet, finally the head. The other boys assume Larry is doing this. Larry knows more about Eric Mutis than any of the others, so this is a logical conclusion.

Larry, our first person narrator, is wrestling with guilt, not over beating up Eric (which they did a lot) but about a more personal betrayal which is revealed at the end of the story. Larry talks about the beatings and other acts he and his friends do as if they were “guys going to a factory;” this is their role, their job. I thought that made sense, as Russell describes the poverty around them. These are boys with no options, who have blown up their fear and powerlessness into a need for respect and brotherhood – they have a sense of rightness about what they do. They beat up anyone who wears a certain brand of shoe, for instance, because it’s a Nike knock-off. “The H logo was a flamboyant way to announce to your class: Hey, I’m poor!”

Without ever explaining the scarecrow, Russell reveals the truly awful thing that Larry did to Eric; after which, Larry says, “I felt evil and powerful.” This is a good insight; this moment is probably the only time in his life that Larry will ever feel powerful and effective.

If I were an English teacher, I’d love to teach this story alongside Steven King’s “The Body.” I think they have a lot to say to each other. That said, while I admire the story technically, I didn’t care for it particularly. The story is narrated by an older Larry, looking back, and he is stuck in this moment. Again, I think that was well done but I’m not sure I wanted to end this book on that image.

Russell is a gifted story-teller and a gifted writer who is still learning. I recommend these for her insights and her command of the craft.

I generally don’t read romantic comedies. I don’t watch romantic comedy movies either. It’s a matter of personal taste, and I’m not saying my taste is good (after all, I will watch any SyFy Original Monster-of-the-Moment movie; I’ll read any lame thriller). Rom-coms just don’t do much for me.

Here’s the exception: City of Dark Magic, by Rupert Flyte (the pseudonym for the two writers, Meg Howry and Christina Lynch). The title and the cover pulled me in before I realized what was happening; a skyscape of Prague at the bottom of the book, the Monad, an alchemical figure associated with Dr John Dee, in musical looking lines front and center. Then I read the back, “Prague is a threshold/To another world/Where the fabric of time is thin/A city steeped in blood.”

Wow! This sprightly rom-com has everything. Everything; cute dogs, acrobatic sex, haute couture, quasi-magical drugs, art, Beethoven, clever banter, a four hundred year old dwarf, a heroine whose acute sense of smell is the key to the plot, the identity of Beethoven’s Immortal Beloved*, exquisite travelogue about the most fascinating city in Europe, a blind child genius, acrobatic sex, secret codes, secret journals, secret passages, secret letters, secret rooms. Did I mention that several characters engage in acrobatic sex? Did I mention the Golden Fleece? The driven and strangely Hillary-Clinton-like (though Republican) US Senator? Did I mention Tycho Brahe? Did I mention… ?

The book bounds along, with enough wit and pacing to distract from any of the obvious plot questions a reader might have. Sarah Weston, pursing her PhD in musicology, is a Beethoven student with a very sensitive nose. She gets invited, strangely, to a castle in Prague to complete a Beethoven exhibit her mentor started, before he jumped, or fell (or was pushed?) out a window and died. Prince Lobkowicz, the currently owner of the castle and the large, eclectic  family treasure, was actually raised in America. From the moment Sarah arrives, things get freaky, and she gets freaky with an anonymous lover in the castle’s bathroom.

Sarah is funny and smart, definitely the sexual aggressor in one or two of her hook-ups, and pretty brave. The writers go a bit too far when they introduce two other art restorers. Sometimes, trying to play exactly against stereotypes just creates a different kind of stereotype, and that’s what happened here. US Senator Charlotte Yates has the same trouble as a character; a bit over the top in a book that’s already well over the top. (Surprisingly, the four hundred year old dwarf is not over the top.) I observed these flaws, but I wasn’t stopped by them.

Characters we’ve met die, some in gruesome ways, but the writers work around this by shielding us from the view of the bodies, mostly, and making sure it’s not characters we know well.

Howry and Lynch have both written for television, and I think that comes through here in a couple of odd ways. For example, while we are told Sarah is attractive, we are given no physical description. Prince Max is described as looking like his various ancestors, but again, no real physical description. Interesting choice… as if they are leaving it up to the casting directors of the reader’s imagination to put faces and hair color on the performers. By contrast, Nico, Suzi and Oksana are quite well described.

This book would make a perfect one-season series on Showtime or HBO, or even BBC America if it was on late enough. Smart, silly, suspenseful, ready to be filmed in the Czech Republic… who wouldn’t green-light that?

*Okay, not really.

I picked up The Oxford Murders, by Guillermo Martinez, at Mockingbird Books. It was an impulse buy, one of the days I was working there. I swear some days I buy more than I shelve. Anyway, I liked the title; the cover made me curious and the back cover sounded like a good murder mystery with a bit of a twist; an Argentinian writer with an Argentinian character, studying mathematics in Oxford, gets caught up in a series of murders.

The book is well-written and ably translated by Sonia Soto. The discussion about mathematics, especially the Fermat’s Theorum, is great. Interesting how this has seized the imaginations of writers. Martinez addresses it and Steig Larsson has his crime-fighter character, Lizbeth Salander, solve it (shortly before she gets shot in the head and forgets the solution).

The mystery, though, is threadbare and transparent. That disappointed me, and made our viewpoint character seem a little bit dim, despite his mathematics scholarship. The book is mostly about discussions between our narrator and the brilliant logician who works with the police to solve the murders. I felt like the book brimmed with missed opportunities, like the first murder victim, who mentions in passing that she entered a crossword contest as a young woman, and ended up at Turing’s code-breaking estate during WWII. Instead of endless theorizing, more could have been spent on that.

This is not a book to seek out, but it would nice to have it in your backpack or purse (or in your car) if you are planning a trip, or expect to have to wait somewhere. It is a pleasant way to spend a few hours.

I had forgotten what a rich, immersive, layered, ornamented book A.S. Byatt’s Possession is. When I was reading it, it seemed… well, not small, but perhaps intimate. This is because so much of it takes place in the intimate confines of letters and journals. Certainly, the geographical stage it occupies is not sprawling. This apparently small story is like a series of nested boxes; the further in you go, the more you find.

Byatt is a master writer, controlling dozens of plot points, theme points, and symbols in Possession. This is a book that scholars will be writing about, and students will be doing senior papers about for years to come.

Today I’m just going to confine myself to the title – Possession. When I first read the book in 1991, I was drawn to the Edward Burn-Jones’s cover (which alludes to a painting in the book) and that title. I thought it referred to swoony sexual ecstasy. That is one meaning of the title, certainly; that sense of being overtaken, possessed, by an infatuation that captures not only your physicality but your imagination.

There is also the “possession” by spirits. Spiritualism plays a role in the story; and even though Roland and Maud are not “possessed” by Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte, they do function somewhat as proxies for them, finishing up the unfinished Victorian story. In one beautifully weird and ghostly scene, in a dark, abandoned turret bedroom, Maud appears to “channel” Christabel, reciting a poem (and an eerie little poem it is, too) that contains the clue to the location of the hidden letters.

Dolly ever sleepless

Watches above

The shreds and relics

Of our lost Love

Which her small fingers

May never move.

In a satirical poem, Mammy Possest, Ash skewers mediums and their tricks, a position that is explained later in the book as stemming not from skepticism but from deep emotional pain.

People can be possessed by darker emotions, too, like greed and jealousy. Jealousy is personified by Blanche Glover, who loves Christabel and tries desperately to hang onto their relationship in spite of the growing conflagration of Ash and LaMotte’s love. Her jealousy ultimately destroys her.

The book, though, is also about possession – ownership. The book starts with Roland, shy, law-abiding Roland, taking possession of – stealing – two unfinished letters that were drafted by Ash. He removes them from the library. While this might not be an actual crime, it is certainly academically unethical, but he can’t stop himself. The legal ownership of the letters is a plot point throughout the book. The sleek and morbid villain, Mortimer Cropper, obsessively collects the possessions of Randolph Henry Ash. He is not interested in the life of the mind (although he did write a book about Ash), he collects the things the poet owned, used, touched. He carries Ash’s pocket-watch and uses it ostentatiously. Cropper is an American, coming from a gleaming modern compound in New Mexico, and has a voracious appetite for the personal effects of the Victorian poet. Two possessions; his personal photocopying machine and his huge Mercedes sedan with the tinted windows, define him. Cropper’s great-grandmother was a spiritualistic medium; Cropper’s mania for collection has the feel of grave-robbing and his compound is described as if it is a sepulcher, containing the bones and relics of ancient saints.

In contrast to this acquisitive American, the American feminist Leonora Stern, who is bigger than life, brash, and aggressive, is not interested in ownership of the letters. She merely wants the ability to read them.

There are other possessions playing important roles in the story; boxes, dolls and jewelry. As the modern day protagonists search for “textual” proof that LaMotte and Ash traveled together in Yorkshire, Byatt deftly places a clue… a jet friendship broach Christabel gave to Blanche.

Ultimately, there is sexual possession; hot, sweet, swoony sexual infatuation; the possession that takes over your mind so that you can’t think of anything except the beloved. There are physical affairs and affairs of the mind. Two love stories play out in Possession. One ends sadly. In the final pages of Possession, the second story is only beginning.

The Imaginary Country

Mina Laury is one of Charlotte Bronte’s Tales of Angria. Angria is the imaginary land she and her siblings created and wrote about as children and young adults, into their twenties. These “tales” are not all highly plotted, and many are not actual stories at all, but vignettes or “sketches.” Mina Laury, with a duel, a wife and mistress meeting, and a proposal of marriage, probably has enough plot to qualify as a story.  It is not very scholarly to look at this work solely in relation to Bronte’s later work, particularly Jane Eyre, but it’s difficult not to.

The center of the love story in Jane Eyre is a choice for Jane; to leave the man she loves desperately, or become his mistress. Jane faces this dilemma twice; first when Rochester tries to trick her into a sham marriage, and again when the truth is revealed and Rochester asks her point-blank to live with him. Jane loves him, but he can never be free of his wife, who is mad. What does a woman who is desperately in love do?

Bronte wrote Mina Laury in 1838, nine years before she published Jane Eyre. She was twenty-two years old. Mina is no Jane, and Arthur (or Adrian), the Duke of Zamorna and king of Angria, is no Rochester – yet the similarities are powerful. Mina represents the road not taken, the choice Jane did not make.

Mina’s Story

The Duke of Zamorna is a recurring character in these stories; a powerful character; vigorous, intelligent, strong-willed, passionate and selfish. He is the uneasy king of a turbulent populace. He remains friends with his father-in-law, Northangerland, who rebelled against him and plunged the country into civil war. The people hate Northangerland and resent their king’s friendship with him. Mary, Northangerland’s daughter, is Zamorna’s wife, and it appears that this is not an arranged marriage but a love match – or, at least, Mary loves Zamorna. Mina Laury is the king’s mistress.

Historically, because of the political nature of royal marriages, royal mistresses were often cut some slack by the people. In Angria, however, this is clearly not the case. Zamorna and Mina are more like upper-class society types, not a monarch and his mistress.

Hartford was one of Zamorna’s loyal lieutenants, but his drinking and his infatuation with Mina Laury have driven him to the point of dangerous obsession. He decides that honorable marriage to him would be a better position than neglected mistress to the king, and decides to propose to Mina.

The meeting between Hartford and Mina seems quite familiar. At dusk, Mina is walking along a secluded road in the silent countryside when she hears hoofbeats clattering behind her. This should be a nostalgic scene to readers of Jane Eyre, even though the horse does not slip. Mina continues on to her house, and Hartford rides into her courtyard moments later. Although Mina has ceded all her power and reputation to Zamorna, she is well provided for materially. Because of the passive nature of her relationship to the king, I assumed she was a passive character, but she is not. This is what makes her interesting and frustrating. She and Hartford know one another from the civil war, when Mina’s house was used as a strategy center for the king. When Northangerland’s troops approached and took the house, Mina and Hartford escaped, and I think that Mina’s child was killed in that escape. Thus, she seems intelligent, brave, loyal and stoic.

For a woman whose whole identity is shaped by a man, Mina is self-confident and poised. When Hartford begins showering her with compliments, she deflects them gracefully. He compliments her tiny white hands, and she says she was a soldier’s daughter and her hands are peasant hands. Throughout the scene, Hartford (who is drunk) is passionate, barely in control, and Mina is calm and collected.

Finally, Hartford proposes, and Mina explains coolly that she would not be a good wife because she would break her vow and go back to Zamorna.

“…Hartford, if I were to be your wife, if Zamorna only looked at me, I should creep back like a slave to my former service. I should disgrace you as I have long since disgraced all my kindred. Think of that, my lord, and never say you love me again.”

Hartford confronts Zamorna and the two of them fight a duel. Zamorna is angry because Hartford has presumed to acquire a possession of his. It is quite clear that his rage is not due to any love for Mina, who, Bronte says, he only visits about twice a year. (Twice a year!) He sees Hartford’s love for Mina as a property crime; Hartford is poaching.

After the duel, which does not go well for Hartford, Zamorna rides to Mina’s mansion. He is unaware that a few hours earlier a carriage capsized in the road, and Mina has offered shelter to the passenger, a patrician woman. Mina has given the woman a false name and said she is the housekeeper, but since she was dressed for a visit from Zamorna and wearing the diamonds he gave her, she suspects that her mysterious visitor doubts her housekeeper story.

“Miss Laury could have torn the dangling brilliants from her ears. She was bitterly stung. ‘Every body knows me,’ she said to herself. ‘”Mistress,” I suppose, is branded on my brow.’” Here, nine years before Jane Eyre, is one of those moments in Bronte’s writing where the character’s voice rings out with immediacy and authenticity. While Mina doesn’t know it, the reader has immediately recognized her guest as Mary, Duchess of Zamorna, on her way to meet her husband as she promised she would do if he did not send for her.

Next on the scene is Zamorna himself. He is aware of Hartford’s proposal. Mina does not know that he knows. Zamorna says that he will “reward” Mina for her loyalty by marrying her off to an aristocrat. How about Hartford? This is merely Zamorna, who holds all the cards, testing Mina’s loyalty. Mina “passes” this cruel test by collapsing into a faint at Zamorna’s feet. Zamorna then sits and watches his unconscious lover for several minutes, doing nothing, until she rouses. The scene is not unlike Rochester’s discussion with Jane about his plans to marry Blanche Ingram, only colder and more viscious. Zamorna is not Rochester, although the two men share the same acerbic energy.

When Smart Women Make Stupid Choices

As a modern reader, I was hoping that Zamorna would get caught by his wife, and forced to confront the two women who love him without limits, but of course, that does not happen, and Zamorna escapes, having tricked both his wife and his mistress. Mary, earlier in the story, has exhibited the same fawning, passive, obsequious style of love as Mina. In fact, she has put herself at risk, driving her carriage on icy roads, to be at this side, when he has thought nothing of her since he took his leave. Unlike Rochester, who has redeeming qualities, Zamorna has nothing to offer except power, but both women came to his side before he was king. The Brontes enjoyed playing with the type of character that was described at the time as “Byronic;” in some sense, people who put themselves above social mores. Theoretically, it is Zamorna’s energy and his, for lack of a better word, “character” that draws women to him, but it’s hard to see what’s attractive about this controlling, lying, manipulative man.

To be fair, Mina’s life isn’t a bad one. She has a manor, jewels and clothes. Bronte is at pains to show us a scene of Mina working her accounts, quizzing the estate manager, and, in short, being a good chatelaine. Plainly she is bright and practical. In later stories, it appears she is not in complete seclusion since presumably she is seen at the theater and so on. Still, with “Mistress” branded on her forehead (symbolically, at least), she is scorned. Even Zamorna despises her, as we find out in a later section, Caroline Vernon, when he warns Caroline Vernon that Laury is someone she should not visit. It might be that, since he plans to seduce Vernon, he doesn’t want the two women comparing notes, but his off-handed comments about Laury, (He often “doesn’t think of her”) shows contempt, not concern.

The frustrating thing about Mina Laury is that both Mary and Mina are strong, capable, intelligent women. They aren’t passive victims, or dim bulbs drawn to anything in trousers. They are also self-aware, and this is particularly important with Mina. The comment about being branded on the brow is revealing, but when Mina leaves the room after rejecting Hartford’s proposal, she weeps stormily. Clearly she is aware that she has rejected the one honorable way out of her situation, much the way Jane, nine years later, will reject St. John, a man who is good, but cold.

The Roads Not Taken

Station in society, or perhaps respect, is an important value for Jane Eyre nine years later. In considering Rochester’s plea to be his mistress, she ruminates on her lack of standing and power. That is, in fact a big part of her decision to say “No,” even if it means almost immediate poverty and the threat of starvation. Earlier in Jane Eyre, when Jane is very close to marrying Edward, Bronte describes him as being as sleek and self-satisfied as a pasha. This is because he is about, in effect, to create his own harem.

It’s as if we’re watching Bronte wrestle with, or experiment with, every alternative, kind of like a role-playing game, with Mina. The society of Angria mirrors the Britain of the time; Mina can’t go off on her own and get a job. In a later section, Henry Hastings, Bronte develops a new character, Elizabeth Hastings, who is much closer to Jane Eyre. She becomes self-supporting (a teacher) and rejects the offer of mistress-hood from the “Byronic” man who falls in love with her.

It’s risky to read too much into these sketches because every one of them was part of a larger work in progress. Charlotte broke some rules earlier by resurrecting Mary, who had been killed off by her brother Branwell in the saga. In Mina Laury, it does seem like she is tinkering, trying to find the way a woman can have sexual happiness with the married man she loves, and still maintain self-respect.

A Woman’s Place

Things are different nine years later, when Jane Eyre, a penniless, powerless orphan, comes to work for Edward Rochester. Some of the differences aren’t obvious on the page. Between Mina Laury and Jane Eyre, Bronte had gone to Brussels to teach, and had an infatuation of her own, with a married man, Monsieur Heger. In Mina Laury, Mina is content to live a solitary life, hoping to see her beloved every six months. Perhaps, in real-life, Bronte found that watching the man you pine for ignore you for his wife (there is no indication that Heger ever encouraged Bronte) was not so pleasant.

Mina Laury is an interesting window into a brilliant writer’s process. It’s filled with the same fine prose and eye for detail that will grace Bronte’s published works, and it works the same themes. A woman’s place? A hundred and seventy-five years later, we’re still trying to figure out where that is.

Between actual books –brightly wrapped packages tied up with string (well, ribbon) – and gift card books, we did all right this year. Above is the pictorial representation of our haul. They include:

Hide me Among the Graves, by Tim Powers. This is his latest vampire horror novel, set in the same world as The Stress of Her Regard.

Faithful Place by Tana French. French burst on the thriller/mystery scene with her highly original, if flawed The Woods.  This is the 3^rd book with the detectives of the Dublin murder squad as characters.

The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham. Spouse’s “big” Christmas gift, the new biography of Thomas Jefferson.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris. This was in my box from Linda, not as a gift, just as a book she thinks I’ll like. Sedaris is observant, acerbic and hilarious.

What Language Is, by John McWorter. One of my gift card purchases. Looks like an engaging discussion on language.

Live by Night, by Dennis Lehane. Another gift card book, this one for Spouse. Lehane has set this historical novel during Prohibition.

I Love a Broad Margin in my Life, Maxine Hong Kingston. Another book sent by Linda, by the author of The Fifth Book of Peace and Woman Warrior.

Hearts of Stone, by C.E. Murphy, a stocking stuffer. This urban fantasy features a gargoyle.

The Afghan Campaign. A stocking stuffer for Spouse. Steven Pressfield’s second Alexander the Great novel follows the experiences of one soldier during Alexander’s Afghan campaign. They call that country The Graveyard of Empires for a reason.

Tales of Angria, by Charlotte Bronte. Growing up, the four Bronte siblings, Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne (Helen and Maria died at boarding school), invented an imaginary country in Africa and peopled it with English characters. They wrote stories about Angria, as it was called. Charlotte continued developing “sketches” and novelettes set in this country until her early twenties. This book collected five samples of this brilliant writer learning her craft and experimenting (and commenting on) the fictional conventions of the time.

Not pictured but ordered is The Rise of Ransom City, the second book of Felix Gilman’s Half-Made World story.

My review of Priest’s latest in her Clockwork Century series is up at fanlit. I don’t have a firm date, but I expect to post an interview with her sometimes next week, or the week after.