Reread: Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones

Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones

The Goon who showed up at Howard's family's kitchen table, huge legs stretched out to take up the whole room, said he was from Archer, and that Archer wanted his "two thousand." But according to Howard's father, the two thousand Archer wanted was not money but words. And it wasn't just Archer who wanted it: all seven of the family of wizards (or whatever they were) who farmed the town wanted those words, for purposes of their own. And they were prepared to make things quite uncomfortable if they didn't get them....

This was the first Diana Wynne Jones book I ever read, and while I've always been bad at picking favorites, this might be it. (That's your warning that this review is mostly an encomium.) It's part of what I call DWJ's odd standalones—odd not meant as an insult but as a genre designator—a class which includes A Tale of Time City, Fire and Hemlock, The Homeward Bounders and Eight Days of Luke. I say "odd" because they're not quite like anything I've found by anyone else: they are all set in our world, with secret or hidden magic, and the secret or hidden magic manages to be simultaneously very mysterious and very mundane in a way that's difficult for me to explain but that delights me to no end. And then there's DWJ's distinctive dry sense of humor, which permeates this book particularly.

Anyway. Archer's Goon. One of the things that I love most about this book is the way that the plot is a truly satisfying, sense-making, interesting plot that springs fully from character. In fact, it springs so fully from character that, on my first read-through, I was fairly certain that the plot was just an excuse for the characters to be fascinating (and fascinating they are, and often likable too)... and then at the end everything slotted neatly and inevitably into place precisely because of the way the characters had spent the prior two hundred pages being fascinating. It's beautifully done, and it's something I appreciate because I read books for character first, and so a character-driven plot that works so well is immensely satisfying.

And oh, the characters! There's Howard, the main character, who is smart and wry and sensible and daydreamy all at once. There's his little sister Awful, who I love to pieces: she's one of the least-romanticized child characters I've ever seen (she lives up to her name, let's just say), and who is nonetheless quite charming in her own Awful way. There's the Goon, who I came to like a great deal almost against my will, on the first read-through, and who now on re-reads I like from the beginning (which works, too). There's Howard and Awful's parents, who are delightful and infuriating by turns, and who neither solve the problems themselves nor are particularly useless. (Well, Howard's father is kind of useless, but for reasons that are in character and not just 'it's a kid's book, he has to be useless.') And then there are Torquil and Hathaway and Ginger Hind and Archer and Dillian and Shine and on and on. The book has a ton of characters, and they're all distinct and interesting, and some of them I love and some of them I want to punch in the nose and it all works.

There are other things that I love and want to talk about, but they're, hmm, varying degrees of spoilery. Here, I'll give you two cuts: one for things that are mildly to moderately spoilery but that, IMHO, won't ruin your book-enjoyment, and another for things that I suspect you would not want to know before your first read-through. (If you click the first cut, have no fear; I will make it boldingly clear at what point the spoilers switch over.)

( Moderate spoilers )

( Big bad spoilers )

Anyway, this is a beautifully-plotted book with a lot of great characters, and I'm sad that it's out of print. Recommended.

EDIT: Spoilers welcome in the comments, so be aware of that if you are unspoiled!

Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Lia and Cassie were best friends, sharing secrets and books and milestones, and, as they grew older, also the bond of both wanting to be thin, thinner, thinnest. Then they had a falling-out, and a few months later Cassie died, alone, after leaving many many messages on Lia's cell phone. Now Lia is seeing Cassie's ghost (or perhaps they're hallucinations or delusions brought on by hunger and guilt and depression), luring her deeper into the icy liminal world of the mad, the dying, and the dead.

Wintergirls is a painful, intense, and beautifully lyrical book. (That word, lyrical, is badly overused, including by me, but in this case I think it's absolutely appropriate.) It's also not a book about anorexia: it's a book about a girl with anorexia, and there's a big difference. The main difference is that this isn't a Problem Novel. (If you don't know what a Problem Novel is, count your blessings; if you do, you're probably wincing along with me.) Lia has anorexia, Lia's anorexia is central to the plot and its realities are not shied away from, but the book is fundamentally about Lia. It doesn't use Lia as a puppet in a morality play. And that's crucial, to me.

I tagged this post with 'magic realism' because it's a rare example of a book where there's a fantastic element that may or may not be really present, and either interpretation is just as valid all the way through. Lia may really be haunted by Cassie, may really be in the process of being summoned to a beautiful and lifeless underworld of death and madness and rose-thorns and eternal winter, or she may be hallucinating, or she may be delusional from grief or hunger or depression or all of the above. If you need your fantastic elements to have concrete resolutions or explanations, this book is probably not for you, but I loved the way it hovered perpetually between both explanations without selling either short.

The other thing I loved was the fact that the mythic elements were there but weren't overplayed. The parallels between Lia and Cassie/Persephone and Hades are set up from page one, but they don't become heavy-handed or take over the book. They're just there, and they may be in Lia's mind (she is a fantasy reader, after all) or they may be real, or they may be both.

This is a very different book than Prom, which I also enjoyed very much, but I think the comparison actually makes them both stronger. Lia is different in almost every way from Ashley in Prom (Lia comes from a privileged background and Ashley is poor, Lia takes everything seriously and Ashley takes very few things seriously, Lia is obsessed with control and Ashley is mostly fine letting things come as they are), and yet they both struck me as entirely believable teenage-girl voices. And I was both like and unlike both of them, and I identified with both of them. It shows that Anderson has pretty impressive scope and range.

Anyway. This is an intense and lovely book, albeit not an easy one to read. But I finished it in an afternoon, more or less, and so I'd recommend it for sure.

(Those of you who have read other books by Anderson: are they also this good? After two-for-two I'm interested in getting more.)

Anime: FLCL

FLCL

This... I don't even think I can summarize it. It's so...

I'll try! This is me, trying to summarize FLCL:

Naota lives a normal life in a normal town before Haruko Haruhara shows up. (No, that's not true. Naota's eleven or twelve and is perpetually hit on by Mamimi, the high-school-age girlfriend his brother left behind when he—the brother—left for the United States to play baseball, which isn't exactly normal. And his town is dominated by the giant, smoke-spewing, iron-shaped Medical Mechanica factory. But we'll go with 'normal' for now, at least comparatively.) Then Haruko shows up on her motorbike thingy and whacks him in the head with a guitar, either to cause robots to pop out of his head or to prevent robots from popping out of his head, it isn't clear. Haruko may also be an alien; at least, that's what she claims she is. The first robot that pops out of Naota's head may also be a god; at least, that's what Mamimi believes. There's also Naota's father, who is crazy and possibly dead, and Commander Amarao, whose eyebrows are made of seaweed, and... you know, fuck it, this series is impossible to summarize.

If it wasn't clear from the summary, this is a deeply surreal anime. It's sort of reminiscent of the kind of art film where 'making sense' isn't a first priority or even a second or third priority. jmpava called it "what happens when Gainax lets go of any constraints or attempts at narrative cohesion," and if you're familiar with the TVTrope for the Gainax Ending, you'll know what that means.

This is a whole six-episode miniseries of Gainax Ending. It's Gainax Beginning, Gainax Middle, and Gainax Ending.

That doesn't mean it's bad. I was entertained from start to finish! It's interesting and comprehensible from minute to minute; it's just that if you step back and try to take any chunk of it longer than about ten minutes as a coherent narrative, it's not going to work. It's not so much that it falls apart as that it twists around and bites you.

It's absolutely bizarre.

But it's also entertaining, and it's only six half-hour episodes long. I think it's worth spending an afternoon on. As long as you consider it as sort of a hybrid between indie film, drinking game, and The End of Evangelion, that is.

(It's pronounced "Fooly Cooly." There's a vague stab at describing why it's called "FLCL" early in the anime, but like most such things in this series, the rationale is trodden on by elephants and then forgotten about.)

(Countdown to someone showing up to tell me that the series made perfect sense to them in five, four, three....)

EDIT: As is often the case, the TVTropes page for FLCL says what I wanted to say, but better. Although it is TVTropes, so don't go in without spelunking gear.