The Gate To Women's Country (a book review post)

Generally speaking, post-apocalyptic books aren't my thing. Post-apocalyptic stories tend to revolve around one thing: how horrible everything is after the apocalypse. This book is not like that. Refreshingly so.

In fact, I didn't know I was reading something post-apocalyptic at first. Yes, that means I didn't know what the book was about. My wife told me I should read it, and I did, and I did that without reading the back cover blurb or anything. Yeah, I trust my wife that much. Her reading standards are much higher than mine, and mine are already pretty darn high. Basically, if she tells me I'm going to like something, I can believe that that is true.

So, yeah, I started reading it without knowing it was post-apocalyptic, so when I got to the part of the story that revealed it was a future society, not just some alternate or fantasy society, it was really an "oh, wow" moment. And, yes, I do realize I ruined that for any of you who might decide to pick the book up, but, really, how many of you were actually not going to read the back cover? That's what I thought, so get off my case. It's right there on the back, so I'm not spoiling anything!

I'm going to make a comparison, now. Everyone loves Ender's Game because they were caught off guard by the ending. Everyone is always, "Oh, wow! I didn't see that coming!" But not me. Not only did I figure out what was going on before the reveal, I knew what was going on almost as soon as it started happening. I liked the book, but there was nothing surprising about the ending to me, and, what's more, at the time I read it, I didn't know the ending was supposed to be a twist. It just seemed the natural outcome to me. I was surprised to find out that other people were surprised by the ending.

The Gate To Women's Country was more like The Sixth Sense in that regard for me. All of the clues as to what is actually going on in that movie are right there in the movie, but you don't see them for what they are. It makes the movie even more brilliant, because you can go back and watch it again and see how all the pieces are laid out and see how you just missed putting them together because you were too caught up in the story. It's rather like missing the forest for the trees.

There is a thing going on in The Gate To Women's Country that's rather brilliant, but what makes it more brilliant is that Tepper lays it all out in front of you -- she basically tells you what's happening -- but you don't see it. I did manage to work it out before the big reveal in the book, but it was rather late, only a few chapters before the reveal, and a definite "oh my God!" moment.

Considering the secret at the center of the novel, a case could be made that this is a dystopian novel. [When I say that, I mean it in the context of the original definition of the word, not the warped view we have of it currently. So, for your cultural edification: The current popular view of "dystopian" amounts to the same as "anti-utopian" or "the opposite of utopian" (which is anything that is not an actual utopian society (so any society currently on Earth (yes, we are all dystopian))). The actual definition of a dystopian society is a society that looks as if it's utopian but has something wrong or flawed at its core. An example would be the society in Brave New World which looks and acts like a utopia except that the population is largely controlled through the use of drugs.] I suppose that depends upon which side of the morally ambiguous question you fall. It's an interesting question, but not one I can go into without spoiling the entire book. But, trust me, I'd love to go into it.

It's a good book. A very good book. It's well written and will probably keep you wondering what it's actually about for quite a while. In a good way. Because you can probably pick up on it not being about what it appears to be about fairly early on. The characters are really good, too, and many of them are not exactly who they appear to be, too, but also in a good way, in the way of getting to know someone, say, away from work when you have only ever known them as a work acquaintance.

The only warning I would give is that the book has a definite feminist slant and, if you can't go in for that, you should probably skip the book; it will probably make you mad. And that, more than anything, will be quite revelatory. If the book makes you mad, it's probably about you.

It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 3)

It has been my general policy since I started doing reviews and stuff to only review books that I've finished. Mostly, I made that decision based on the reading of one book many years ago. It was a horrible book (an author requested review), but the very end was just good enough to take it from a 1-star to a 2-star rating. Because of that, I figured I ought to see a book all the way through before reviewing it. So I've slogged through many terrible books, the L'Engle time quintet, for example.

However, for the most part, a book that is a struggle to read is not going to redeem itself at the end. I mean, a step up from a 1-star to a 2-star doesn't mean that I liked the book. It was still bad, and I would never recommend it to anyone. And, honestly, as a whole work, the book was probably still just a 1-star, but I was surprised enough that the author pulled his threads together at the end that I bumped the rating up to 2.

Anyway... All of that to say that I have read some bad books over the past several years. Really bad. When I start a book, almost always, I will finish it.

But there have been two books during this same time period that I have not finished. Yes, two books that weren't even as good as Many Waters, which stands out to me as the worst book I've read (all the way through) in years. Or maybe that was An Acceptable Time; they're both so bad it's hard to tell which is worse. At any rate, having made my way through both of those, I think it's significant when I say that there are books that I actually couldn't make myself read.

One of those, I will share with you.

Initially, I decided to pick up Where You Belong by Pat Dilloway because he said it was the very best of his books. He said he was inspired and that he would never write anything better than that novel. I think that's what he still says about it. I figured that sounded like a good place to start. I mean, if an author says about one of his books that it's the best thing he's capable of writing, you may as well start with that, right? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

It didn't take me very long to realize that if this was the best that Dilloway had to offer, then I wouldn't be reading any of his books.

First, it's written in first person. I'm sure you all know by now how I feel about first person. But it's worse, because it's written in first person omniscient and, well, that's just not a thing. I mean, unless your protagonist is God (or, maybe, Charles Xavier), omniscient and first person do not go together. That's the whole reason for writing in first person, to have a limited view of what's going on. A view limited to only what the protagonist knows and observes. That's why first person works so well in detective fiction, because the whole point of that is the protagonist trying to work out what he doesn't know from his rather limited perspective. This issue of allowing the first person protagonist to know too much is very pervasive in first person stories, but I'd never seen full-on first person omniscient before. Yes, it set me against the book right from the start, because, again, first person omniscient is not a thing.

[Note: Dilloway has spoken on his blog and various other places that the book was originally written in third person and that he later went back and converted it. I think he must have done this through a simple replacement of pronouns, because he didn't do anything to adjust the viewpoint. I'm saying this based on my experience with my middle schoolers. There have been many times when I have given writing assignments to write from a particular perspective. It is not infrequent that I will get stories that were originally written from a different perspective so the student just went in and changed the pronouns. That's not enough when making a perspective shift and, anytime I have asked, for instance, "Did you originally write this in first person," the answer has always been "yes."

So that would explain the omniscience problem. He originally wrote it in third person omniscient but didn't narrow the viewpoint to first person when he converted it to a first person story. I'm just going to call it what it is: a middle school mistake.]

The next issue with the book is that it shifts back and forth from past to present tense, but not in a way that makes sense. For instance, it would make sense if part of the story was being told "now" and part of the story was being told "then." However, what we have are clearly places that are "then" that are being told in past tense, followed by a section that is still "then" but now in present tense, followed by a section that is still "then" but back in past tense. These are chronological events, so the shift in tense didn't work for me.

[Note: This is a thing I am extremely sensitive to, because it's an issue my middle schoolers struggle with a lot. The most common reason I hand a story back to a student is because of an issue with tense shifts. My comment is generally, "Pick one, past or present, and stick to it."]

Then there's the issue of the voice, and this, also, is probably related to the shift the author made from third to first person. When you write in third person, the voice can be whatever you want it to be, because it's the narrator's voice, not the character's. When you write in first person, though, the voice needs to be the character's voice and, thus, reflective of the character. The protagonist starts out at age three or four, but the voice is definitely that of an adult. That would be okay if it was clear that it was an adult reflecting back on his childhood, but the feel of the story is that it's being told by the kid, especially since some of it is in present tense, but not in a kid's voice.  Now, I get that writing from a child's perspective can be difficult but, if you can't do it, don't choose to do it.

I put the book down. At the time, I decided it wasn't worth the effort to wade through it when there was no indication that it would get any better. Sure, the kid grows up to fit the voice, so to speak, but it was already messed up for me by that point, and none of the other problems were going to work themselves out. And I haven't even talked about the editing issues (and being years ago that I read this, I don't specifically remember what they were; I just remember being bothered by things). [Note: It should tell you something that these other things stood out to me so much that I still remember them now. I did not go back and re-read this so that I could do this review.]

Basically, if I want to read stuff with these kinds of... issues, I get plenty from my students, and they don't cry and go on a rampage when I tell them they have things that need to be fixed. They take the manuscripts back and, mostly, do the best they can to fix the problems. And, honestly, some of the stuff I get from my middle school students is of a much higher quality than I see from a lot of adults. Not much of it, granted, but I have had a handful of very gifted writers over the last few years. The point, though, is that if you can't handle criticism of your manuscript with at least the grace of a middle schooler, you have no business putting your manuscripts out for public consumption. And I have never had any student, to be blunt, lose his/her shit over me handing back a story and saying, "It needs work." Sure, the middle schoolers I teach aren't trying to make a living at writing, but some of them are very invested in their stories, and middle schoolers are emotional volcanoes, and, yet, all of them have taken criticism better than Dilloway does.

Now, Dilloway will probably take this as a "revenge review" for what transpired in this post but, really, it's not (which is not to say that I won't take some amount of satisfaction in posting it; I am only human). This is an example of "my medicine," a review reflecting my experience of a product with the actual reasons for the response that I had. The reasons have nothing to do with how I feel about Dilloway nor did my dislike of the book. For instance, from what I know of Orson Scott Card, I would not like him as a person, but Ender's Game is, at the very least, a very good book. On the other side of that, I like the person of John Scalzi quite a bit. I like the things he has to say and I follow his blog; however, I did not enjoy either of the books I read by him despite the fact that I really wanted to like them. The product is not the person and should be evaluated separately from any feelings having to do with that person. At the time I tried to read Where You Belong, I had no particular feelings of antipathy toward Dilloway. I did know that he was petty and disliked my notion of honest reviews, but I didn't, yet, know he was one to go around down-rating books out of some erroneous stance of righting the wrongs done to him, real or perceived. [Because, as in the case of Alex Cavanaugh, there was no wrong done to him other than that Alex is more successful and more liked than Dilloway.] I just knew that I did not want to fight my way through Dilloway's book, so I made the decision to not finish it.

Now, it's not that I think it's only authors who have maturity issues, because, actually, I think people in general tend to have maturity issues. Or maybe it's just Americans. I can't really speak for the rest of the world. However, the writing profession does seem to have more than its share of people who can't maintain a professional detachment from their work. Rather than go into it again, though, I'll just refer you back to part one of this series. If you feel offended at any part of it, you probably need to grow up.

Being Round Table (an IWSG post)

Pizza is a pretty miraculous thing. It comes in so many shapes, sizes and forms, but, yet, it is pretty much always recognizable as pizza. Even dessert pizza, which is in no way actual pizza, is recognizable as pizza and counted as such.

Possibly the best thing about pizza, though, is that kids are just as enthusiastic over cheap pizza as they are for expensive pizza. In fact, they often prefer the cheap pizza. Until just recently, my younger kids would generally choose Little Caesar's over anything else. Which, you know, is nice for the wallet. Not that we get pizza all that often, but, when we do, it is usually just for the kids (which has many causes but is frequently because there is something happening that will cause some kind of delay to dinner but they, my daughter especially, can't make it without something before the delayed dinner). Grabbing a couple of $5 pizzas is kind of a great thing.

And Little Caesar's is great for birthday parties and play dates and stuff. I mean, basically, every kid will eat either a Little Caesar's cheese or pepperoni pizza, but, if I get something more expensive, there are always kids that respond with "I don't like that kind of pizza," even if it's cheese or pepperoni.

So, see, cheap is good. It's... mass level pizza (it's good for the masses, see?). Even adults, who may not prefer it, are generally willing to eat it. Well, except my wife. She has standards. She won't go for anything less than Round Table. But I'll get to that in a moment.

It's been interesting to watch my kids develop, to watch their tastes mature. Here's a basic rundown of how it went:

• At some point, all of the kids preferred Little Caesar's. (So we'll call that the "lowest common denominator pizza.)
• My oldest is at that age where he will eat almost anything (I think I could squirt some ketchup onto cardboard and sprinkle it with cheese, and he would eat it); however, he prefers this place called Mombo's, which I think is awful (I'm pretty sure they do use cardboard for their crust which is why I think I could get that past my son).
• My younger boy still loves Little Caesar's (because, hey, it's pizza), but, when he gets to choose, he picks Papa Murphy's. (I'd call Murphy's a good mid-range pizza place. Their most expensive pizza is still cheaper than Round Table's cheapest (at an equivalent size).)
• My daughter has moved all the way up to preferring Round Table (but, then, she is our child that is most invested in food). If not Round Table, though, she prefers Little Caesar's, while the boys would both pick Papa Murphy's (because Mombo's, although not as expensive as Round Table, approaches Round Table and, well, no one other than the oldest will eat it).
• My wife eschews it all if it isn't at least Round Table (I say "at least" because my wife prefers an even more expensive pizza from a place called La Vera, which is not a place the kids like at all (my younger son mostly refusing to eat any of their pizza) and, although I will eat it (it's good, just not that good), I prefer Round Table.)
• For a short while, the family liked, as a group (including my wife), Papa John's (my daughter, especially, loved it for the stuffed crust and dipping sauces), but the owner guy started spouting off at the mouth, and we no longer support them.

Here's the thing, though, everyone (in my family) pretty much agrees that Round Table is the "best" pizza even if it isn't the particular "favorite" pizza of that person. For instance, my younger son agrees that Round Table has better pizza than even his favorite pizza at Papa Murphy's; it's just that Papa Murphy's has a particular type of pizza that Round Table doesn't offer that my son really likes. My wife agrees that Round Table has better pizza because it doesn't cause moaning from the kids. My oldest agrees that Round Table is better because they have all kinds of extras that Mombo's doesn't have. And my daughter and I just like Round Table better anyway.

But, see, if we're going to the mass appeal thing, I can't do something like serve Round Table at a kid-oriented birthday party for one of my kids (as opposed to the family-oriented party), because 1. it's too expensive 2. not all the kid guests will eat it.

Which brings me to my point, some books are very "Little Caesar's." They appeal to a broad spectrum of people and, although many people may not think it's the best, they'll eat it. [Of course, you have people like my wife who just won't and people like me who sometimes might but, later, will wish they hadn't.] It's low quality but easy and cheap. And you have books that are "Mombo's" or "La Vera's," which appeal to a much thinner spectrum of people but people who really love it. And there are "Papa Murphy's" books which are bit higher quality than Little Caesar's but require more work (you do have to cook it yourself) and some people just aren't interested in that kind of time investment. And, then, you have the "Round Table"s which most people will agree qualify as "good" books but not all people are willing to read (because, we'll say, of the intellectual investment; those are more complex). And, of course, you get the "Papa John's" which people boycott because the author is a complete gashole (which is the hole you use to put the gas in a car, see) no matter how good the product is (like the controversy surrounding Ender's Game).

Authors have to decide where on that spectrum they want to be. Cheap and easy with mass appeal or higher quality which places them out of the intellectual price range of some people. Maybe most people. Or, even, some niche market where the author may develop very loyal fans but there won't be very many of them. Or be so high concept that most people just won't care (sort of like Moby Dick). I say it's a choice because it's very rare that a Rowling will come along and present something that is both high quality and have mass appeal. Her further endeavors have shown just how rare a thing like Harry Potter is. Of course, sometimes, the author doesn't get to decide, because the author just isn't capable of writing anything other than the kind of thing that the author already writes (like, I think it pretty unlikely we will ever have any high quality, literary work from E. L. James (so, yeah, that's a judgment, but I think it's a safe one)).

Personally, I'd like to be Round Table. It's quality pizza but affordable enough that people can, at least, splurge on it for special occasions. It's not going to turn most people away other than kids that are still stuck on the blandest of cheap pizzas (like Little Caesar's and, from what I remember (though it's been years since I had one), Domino's). I realize that means that I'm not aiming for some blockbuster, mass appeal novel, but you know what? I'm okay with that. I want to be the pizza that people remember and wish they had more of, not the pizza that people settle for.

Now, speaking of pizza...
I think I'm hungry...

This post has been brought to you in part by Alex and the IWSG.