Megan Chance's Blog, page 37
July 24, 2012
Cover for Bone River
July 22, 2012
Florence and the Machine and Sundry Other Topics
Florence and the Machine has my vote this last year as most inspiring band for a writer (or for anyone else, for that matter). They've been necessary listening for both my last manuscript and the one I'm currently working on, and so I was really looking forward to seeing them at the Whiteriver Ampitheater last night.
I was not disappointed. Florence has an absolutely glorious, operatic, blasting voice, and it's taylor-made for an outdoor ampitheater. The show was like all great band shows: music and more music, without a lot of fancy sets or props or costume changes. Just Florence Welch obviously loving every moment of what she does. It was a fantastic concert. My only regret is that the venue has a reputation for being difficult to leave (like, two hours in the parking lot difficult), and I was advised to leave a the beginning of the encore, which I did. It got me out of the parking lot in record time, but I ended up missing the song I'd waited the whole concert for. So here it is--the song that's been a major inspiration for this newest manuscript:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGH-4jQZRcc&feature=player_embedded
Besides seeing Florence and writing feverishly, I've been devoting myself to classic French literature this last year. I'm not quite sure how that got started--probably with "A Very Long Engagement," which has rapidly become one of my most-watched favorite movies. Or perhaps it began before then, with a guilty pleasure of a movie: "The Lover." Or perhaps it was reading Colette's "Cheri," a few years ago, which was a revelation. In any event, I've now read Flaubert, Zola, Balzac, Duras, Colette, Laclos and have several others on my TBR list. I love Duras--there's something about her work that resonates with me, though I don't know why, and Balzac is fantastic. Really, I love that over-the-top, bigger-than-life, emotional melodrama, along with their matter-of-fact realism about sex, romance and love--all colored with a healthy dose of cynicism. I'm finding the inherent fatalism (almost nihilism) of the French actually very comforting. :) I've also been watching a lot of French film, which I've always enjoyed in the past, and which I'm liking even more now. I'm not even close to the end of this particular obsession. Currently, I'm reading the novel of "A Very Long Engagement," and loving it too.
In publishing news: my newest novel, Bone River, is scheduled for a December 4, 2012 release, and I should have a cover soon to show you. Keep watching this space!
Now, back to listening to Florence...
July 15, 2012
Book Review: Black Cat
Black Heart by Holly BlackMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have really enjoyed this series by Holly Black. This is the final book, and probably my favorite. It's edgy, morally ambiguous, set in a world where "curse workers"--those who can work specific spells on people just by touching them, are demonized. I love that working the spells has consequences for those who work them, and I love that Black doesn't back away from hard questions, or the lesson that may not be palatable for everyone, that we are who we are, and it's okay to embrace that, good, bad or ugly.
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Book Review: Angel of Highgate
Angel of Highgate by Vaughn EntwistleMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is an accomplished Victorian thriller, and Entwistle writes eloquently, with a descriptive, atmospheric style reminiscent of Dickens, one that puts you right in the heart of London in the 19th Century. Dealing with grave-robbers, strange doctors, spirtualists, unsavory characters and all things macabre, the story begins with a bang and never slows. It follows the exploits of the Byronesque main character, Geoffrey Thraxton, a man with seemingly no fear of death because he has nothing to lose, and his best friend, Algernon Hyde-Davies, a botanist at the Kew Gardens. Entwistle's research is expertly woven throughout, and though he covers a lot of ground here, those with a fascination for all things Victorian will very much enjoy all the places he goes.
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July 10, 2012
Book Review: Dangerous Liaisons
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de LaclosMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was a bit of a revelation. While I'd seen the movie with Glenn Close and John Malkovich when it came out, and liked it very much (it's a very good adaptation), the book is much more layered and complex. It's written in epistolary style, with letters going back and forth between the characters, and it's fascinating to see what each is telling one person and not the other. The characters are engrossing--some more than others, though all have their moments. I both liked and disliked Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. Their level of casual cruelty, undertaken simply for their own entertainment, is astounding and disturbing. To see them so easily ruin lives without realizing or--more importantly--caring about the consequences, is a marvel. What's even more astonishing is the fact that I both wanted them to get their comeuppance AND to get away with it. I really liked them in spite of their wickedness, and felt sorry for them. It requires so much skill for a writer to achieve that depth of characterization, yet Laclos does. The book is worth reading for letter 81 alone, where Merteuil reveals to Valmont the skills she has had to develop to control her own life and live fully within the limitations given to women of her class and time, and for letter 110, where Valmont relays to Merteuil his seduction of the innocent Cecile, and his rather casual admission of what a life of pleasure and conquest has made him: "I know not why, but it is only bizarre things which give me any longer pleasure."
Laclos states that he intends the book to be a moral piece, but the eroticism of the work, along with the sadness and poignancy of the characters, makes one suspect that Laclos really meant only to provide an excuse for writing a book about sex and desire and the way it rules everyone in one way or another. It's without the two-dimensionality of so many 18th and 19th Century works of moralizing fiction, a tragedy steeped in irony. It's subtle and graceful and altogether remarkable.
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June 19, 2012
Update and Book Review
City of Shadows: A Novel of Suspense by Ariana FranklinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
The story is set in Berlin between the World Wars, and it expertly conveys the claustrophobia, helplessness and fear of the depression in Germany at the time and how it led to Hitler's rise. The research here is outstanding, the mood and tone of menace is palpable. The plot revolves around Anna Anderson--a real life woman who claimed to be Anastasia, the daughter of the czar of Russian, who was supposedly murdered, along with her entire family during the Revolution. City of Shadows begins as a tale of fraud and then morphs into something quite different, a murder mystery with an unusual and compelling depth. Great characters who are completely flawed and sometimes not very likeable, but who you root for nonetheless. Ariana Franklin/Diane Norman was a great writer, and I've really enjoyed all her books, but this one may be my favorite.
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June 9, 2012
And still another...
Thérèse Raquin by Émile ZolaMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fascinating character study of a crime of passion and the ensuing madness. Easy to read and full of nightmarish, enervating despair--both because of the life lived before the crime and the one lived after. Zola's exploration of the human psyche is detailed and always interesting.
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May 25, 2012
Yes, I'm reading a great deal these days...
The Lifeboat by Charlotte RoganMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was an interesting book, while not quite as compelling as the reviews have made it out to be. It's also a very quick read. The central question: whether it is possible to be good and still survive, and what society thinks of those who do survive, is pretty fascinating. One of the characters in the book makes the point that it's the witch-trial conundrum: if you sink and drown, you're not a witch, but if you survive, you are. You can't win. Given the enormity of that dilemma, I expected a bit more drama, but the book is quiet and pretty subtle in its pulling together the character of the narrator. It leaves you wanting to know more, and then, at the end, pokes fun at you because you do. But sometimes ambiguity is not clever or cool; sometimes it just means that the author hasn't done his or her job well enough. Ultimately, while it's a really good debut, and I look forward to more from this author, I wanted it to be a little more intense.
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May 22, 2012
Book Review: The Ravishing of Lol Stein
The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite DurasMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
An interesting book. Engaging without being truly ... engaging, though I think I won't soon forget it. Some of the other reviewers call it dream-like, and I think that's true. It was rather like being in a dream, and it had that subtle and constant anxiety that wends through most dreams, so I was constantly off-balance, never quite settled in. Though it's not my favorite of Duras' work (so far, that would be "The Sea Wall"), I find Duras' style endlessly fascinating. I'm not entirely sure why. She sets a distinct tone that is very difficult NOT to fall into, and this book was no different. She's a master at presenting uncomfortable truths in a very straightforward and matter-of-fact way, as if she's saying "Well, here it is. Deal with it and like it or go away." "The Ravishing of Lol Stein" was very much that kind of work.
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May 19, 2012
This and That
However, having said that, I have rather enjoyed a few things lately. I just finished Book 5 in Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series--City of Lost Souls--which I liked, but I have to admit is not my favorite of the series. Usually I love the main couple in these books, Jace and Clary, but in this book they were a bit one note to me, and it was the secondary characters who grabbed my interest. But it's all building up to what I'm sure is going to be a pretty fantastic finale in the final book. I also saw The Avengers, which I really liked, especially after the first half hour or so. Tom Hiddleston, who plays Loki, was just fantastic, and though I went in expecting to be underwhelmed by Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, I actually found her pretty compelling and really interesting. Robert Downey Jr., was, as always, perfect. And the rest of the cast were equally mesmerizing.
I've been watching Game of Thrones, which gets better every week--I cannot believe we're nearly at the end of this season--and Vampire Diaries, which took me by surprise in the last episode, as always and rather breathlessly, easily making up for seemingly killing off one of my favorite characters in the penultimate episode. I've been watching The Borgias again this year too, but I'm finding it a little slow going. I keep watching it because I love Cesare, and I keep waiting for Lucretia to come into her own. And it has these really great episodes interspersed between those that are, for me, a bit boring, so I never know which I'm going to be watching from week to week.
And I've been immersing myself in French literature, which I'm finding strangely and alternately fascinating and comforting. All that fatalism is somehow compelling. Not entirely sure what that says about me, but I've really enjoyed Duras and Cocteau, and am looking forward to some Zola in the next few weeks. Also on my TBR pile are The Lifeboat, by Charlotte Rogan, and the latest fantasy series by Carol Berg, who I love. And I'm looking forward to Kristin Cashore's newest YA, Bitterblue.
And now, back to enjoying the few hours I have before I must start thinking again...
