wednesday books not in translation

[landofnowhere]

Consuelo, George Sand. I finished this! The ending didn't resolve the protagonist's character arc but also it comes with an author's note saying "If you've had enough of Consuelo's adventures, you can stop here. The small minority that want to know more should read the sequel." So I will be reading the sequel! But not right away.

Consuelo got to spend some time performing in the Vienna Opera before leaving -- there's a really evocative depiction of the backstage, along with various melodramatic plot happenings. Sadly we have to leave Teenage Joseph Haydn behind in Vienna -- but on Consuelo's travels she encounters both what can best be described as the 18th century version of a theme park and an incognito Frederick the Great before the book's denouement, which did not go quite as I expected but makes a lot of sense as it did. I'm really not sure what to expect in the sequel, other than more music. Maybe I'll write a more coherent and possibly spoilery review later.

Translation State, Ann Leckie. Yay it's another book in the Imperial Radch universe with more Presger Translators! ursula's review is an excellent description of what this is. I got to the bit with monodromy and was like "yay monodromy!" Despite being set on the edges of various major political conflicts, the stakes of this book are mainly cozy and personal. I hope we get more in this universe!

Small Admissions, Amy Poeppel. I think this was an Ask A Manager recommendation. Our nerdy protagonist, whose plans for grad school were derailed by a bad breakup, tries to put her life back together by taking a job as a private middle school admissions officer. Some charming/amusing social commentary here. The family situation reminds me a bit of the play Proof: the protagonist is the kid of academics, and in her parents' absence her more worldly older sister tries to fix her problems.

Comments

[ursula]

Yay monodromy!

[abangaku]

Hi Alison, it's Lawrence. I recently stumbled on this book blog of yours while looking at my own DW, which I transferred over from LJ, and I've been finding it interesting reading! I've been really into reading books in general in the past several years (probably even more than I was before), and so this is the kind of content I'm happy to see online! I'll comment on a few entries of yours from the past too, about specific books. Hope you're well!

[landofnowhere]

Sure! I really enjoy how DW is a wordy space for booktalk.

[cahn]

I've read Small Admissions now -- the same AAM rec :) I really liked it! I do have a weakness for prep school books, especially admissions focused :)

[landofnowhere]

Do you have other recs in the genre? (I don't think I've read anything else, though I once saw Jane Austen in Scarsdale on a free book shelf and was somewhat intrigued.)

[cahn]

The only other admissions-themed book (and the one I was thinking about when I said that, I guess) is Admission by Jean Korelitz, which I liked a lot, but I read it a long time ago and also (as I said) love these kinds of books, so I have no idea what another person would think (or even what I would think if I reread it :) )

In the genre of more straight prep-school books, the two that come to mind right now are Prep (Sittenfeld) which I remember liking but thinking was a little more sharp-edged than I ideally enjoy, and The Fortunate Ones (Tarkington), which had fun prep school and dysfunctional rich people stuff, but also had some really odd pacing which didn't work well.

ETA: In the vein of boarding-school books, you've read the Antonia Forest books about the Marlow family, right?

[landofnowhere]

No, I have not heard about the Antonia Forest books about the Marlow family, tell me more!

[cahn]

Ohhhh they are these awesome UK kids books -- three of them are boarding-school books, which was my entry point, but branching out into adventure books and family-centric books as well -- written by Antonia Forest from the 1940s to the early 1980s. (As a result, sometimes the later books are oddly anachronistic.) The Marlows are a family of six girls and two boys; the girls all go to a boarding school, Kingscote, and the first book (Autumn Term) follows the two youngest, who are twins, as they start their first year at Kingscote at age 12. (Nicola, one of the twins, is the main POV/sympathetic character for most of the books.) If you like boarding-school books along that age range, I very highly recommend these. There is also one of the books (Peter's Room) where they, along with their neighbor/friend Peter, participate in a role-playing game (although of course they don't call it that), modeled on the young Brontes, which I also loved. I turned up this article, which I think does a pretty good job of talking about the series.

There's a community on DW, trennels, which isn't particularly active (the LJ community it replaced was more active), but there are a lot of people on DW who love these books (and in fact it was one of my LJ/DW friends who got me to read them many years ago). It's often represented at Yuletide and so on.

The problem is, the books are out of print (I don't know where you are geographically; maybe they're in print in the UK? Definitely out of print in the US though) and hard to find. However! You can contact coughingbear who has access to electronic copies. (I'd offer to send you what they sent me, but I don't have Autumn Term or End of Term in e-copy as I managed to snag hard copies of those quite a few years ago, and you probably want to start with the former.)

[landofnowhere]

Thanks, this is massively helpful! I see that Autumn Term is available on Faded Page, so I'll have a place to start when I want to try.

[cahn]

OH! I did not know that, thank you!