
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear– Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire releases new episodes of the Wayward Children series every January around my birthday. Set at a therapeutic school, they follow up what happens to children who have had a classic fantasy portal adventure in a magic land and then have to return and adjust to cold hard reality. They’re a mixed bag, some parts are fantastic, some are filler. Often the ones that follow a child or teenager who disappeared into a magic land (usually presaged by some social, family or medical issue to explore) are much better than the episodes set at the school, which suffer from too many characters and often feel rushed and superficial. All of the books are very short and can be read in an afternoon.
This one was an unexpected delight of imagery and setting. Nadya is a Russian girl adopted by some American evangelicals, who seem to see her as an object that signifies what good Christians they are rather than a real person. She falls into a pond and ends up in a submerged river world where different specific gravities of water form different strata and humans work with turtles, where she grows up, gets a job and gets married before finding herself swept away back to Earth, where she finds herself a child again, Narnia-style, and has to go through puberty again.
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known– Seanan McGuire
Every Heart a Doorway– Seanan McGuire
Beneath the Sugar Sky– Seanan McGuire
Where the Drowned Girls Go– Seanan McGuire
I then went back and re-read some of the previous parts, because I couldn’t remember what happened in some of them. I knew there had been a Russian girl at some point, who was given little development, but I couldn’t remember which episode, as the school-set sections blurred into one a little. It took me a couple of afternoons, that’s how short these books are.
Chess Novel– Stefan Zweig (re-read)
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian writer who was an international superstar in the 1930s, until the Nazis forced him into exile and then suicide. He was somewhat forgotten about in English until his work was used as the basis for The Grand Budapest Hotel. The English version was translated by the renowned Anthea Bell, who also did the English versions of Asterix. (The cover image of this post is a still from the recent film version).
The narrator is on board a passenger liner from New York to Buenos Aires with world chess champion Mirko Czentovic, who despite being a genius at chess (and at making money from his chess fame) can barely read. The narrator becomes fascinated with this oafish yet brilliant village boy who has shot to fame, but his initial attempts to get to know him don’t go anywhere as Czentovic is so insular and focused on chess.
After musing on the nature of chess and games, and what makes chess grandmasters “geniuses in their specific field who unite vision, patience and technique in just the same proportions as do mathematicians, poets and musicians, but in different stratifications and combinations”, the narrator decides the simplest way to get to know Czentovic is to get him involved in an on-board chess competition.
Another passenger unexpectedly turns out to be Czentovic’s equal at chess, and he then tells the story within a story of how after being arrested by the Gestapo and psychologically tortured, he attempted to keep his sanity by playing imaginary chess games in his head until he drove himself to a breakdown. A story of obsession, power and totalitarianism.
Zweig posted the manuscript, typed by his second wife Lotte Altmann, to the publisher the day before they both committed suicide in February 1942.
The Last Unicorn– Peter S. Beagle (re-read)
The Way Home- Peter S. Beagle
In Calabria– Peter S. Beagle
See the post here
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