storytelling

This is one of those novels I haven't thought about for a good while. It came back to mind because (of course) of LibraryThing.

The Girl in a Swing is absolutely nothing like Watership Down, no talking animals at all. Instead this is a story about love and obsession and ghosts, and it's really spectacular. The main character is a young man from a stable family who has taken over his father's fine china business in a small town in England. He has the slightest bit of extrasensory perception, which shows itself only rarely in his boyhood and young adulthood.

Traveling on business to Scandinavia, he meets a beautiful woman and falls in love. She is bright and funny and evocative, and she brings him out of his shell. She's also secretive in ways that are vaguely alluring and disturbing both. In a matter of weeks it's decided that they will marry. She will quit her secretarial job and join him in England. They marry in the spring, and the rest of the novel takes place over the summer.

This was a truly frightening and sad story, and it's also a very well written one. There are several layers of things going on at any one time. I had read the book three times before I felt I had caught most of the subtle interwoven connections.

I recommend this book very highly, unless you really can't stand to be frightened. There is no gore, you see no violence -- anything like that happens well off-stage and is only approached from an angle, after the fact.

Oh and: this is one of the few novels set in contemporary England where I felt ... I suppose the word is, at home. It felt real to me, as real as my husband's home town and his friends and the extended family, in the way people talk to each other (and don't). Also, I blame this book for a minor obsession with the history of fine china and porcelain. And if you're wondering who the girl in the swing is -- that's an excellent question. I have thought about it alot, and I'm still not sure.

Posted by at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Apparently I haven't mentioned this in a long time and most people don't know what I'm talking about.

This is a novel that is about one third done. And which, I promise, I will finish.

It's about a woman who picks up and moves (drives) from New Jersey to a small island in Puget Sound after a trauma that makes it impossible for her to carry on her old life. It's about her relationship with her father, who is nearing the end of his life, about a stuffed and moth eaten bear, about friendship and trust.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

---------------------------------------------------- all rights reservd

Part I

When someone asks what it means
to die for love, point:
                        Here.

Chapter 1.

For a few months now, Kate Buongiovanni has been wooing a car
thief.

Nobody would think it of her. Kate strikes most people as a woman of more persistence than daring; subdued by good fortune,all her sharp edges worn away by contentment. Happily married,
successful in a business she loves, money enough to buy what she
likes: Mephisto walking shoes, Peruvian sweaters, Dakota pottery;
her kitchen walls, hand stenciled, are hung with antique copper
molds in the shape of roosters, half moons, leaping fish. She
pays handsomely for housecleaning and ironing. A boy from down
the street mows the lawn, stacks the firewood; they have an accountant, a broker, an attorney. She is on a first name basis with the fund raisers at Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, CASA.

And yet Kate contemplates the larcenous heart. She puts a great
deal of thought into attracting a car thief: on a Friday afternoon
she drives into downtown Trenton and leaves the car on a side
street, gift-wrapped children's books (Where the Wild Things
Are; Curious George; The Borrowers) piled on the driver's
seat. Unlocked. The window rolled down a few inches.

The books disappear along with the tire gauge and a half pack
of mints, but the car is waiting for her when she comes back.
On her next solo trip (The Phantom Tollbooth; Half Magic; Harriet
the Spy) Kate ties a hank of red yarn to the key in the ignition,
but even such a bold invitation goes unanswered. It seems that
nobody is desperate enough to take on this crate of a car, this
thirty year old, mustard-colored Volvo with a temperamental clutch
and three hundred thousand miles.

Under other circumstances she would talk to Mike about this
challenge, but the fact is this: her husband loves this monument
to automotive engineering as another man might love a senile and
smelly dog, and Kate loves her husband.

Posted by at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Some people have commented that the shift from one type of cover (the landscapes for the first four books in the series) to this very different approach is a little disconcerting.

Bantam is thinking -- that means, this is by no means a sure thing -- of repackaging all the books with new covers in this style. I love this idea and hope it comes to pass. I have specific ideas for the covers of each of the books.

Posted by at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)