Friday, March 16, 2012

Web site work etc.




I have been a reader since I first learned. My sister and I would walk to our town's fantastic library. We were fortunate to have a children's librarian that loved the books as much as we did. She would get to read them first, then I would take the maximum number allowed (4) and spend the summer days lost in other worlds beneath the huge elm tree in our front yard.

Last night I finished reading Chime by Franny Billingsley. It took me a while to get used to the voice and the language but once I got into it, I was hooked. I don't always like first person POV but I'll give it a chance. In Chime, the narrator is a 17 year old girl, Briony, in a strange swampy place with mythical creatures called Old Ones. Briony has the Second Sight and she can see and communicate with them. She's also convinced that she is a witch and will hang for it.
Gradually the reader gets to understand the place and the situation. I imagine the setting as the Fens of England sometime in the early 1900's, though witches are still hanged. And it is a bit of a mash up, because draining the Fens was begun in the 1600's, I believe. Draining the swamp is a major part of the story, however so is the arrival of a new train line and the first cars. It's not quite a real world, I'd call it magical realism, which is my favorite kind of book.

Briony has a twin sister, Rose, who is mentally disabled and the narrator does a great job of making us see Rose just through the language. It's a complicated, haunting story and the writing never fails or gets weak.

1 comment:

  1. I want to go to the place in that picture. Either picture, really. =)

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