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Great Stories/Horrible Characters: The Sky is Yours and Yesterday

26 Dec

Two of my recent speculative fiction reads both focused on people I found myself disliking despite enjoying the books.  Check them out and see what you think!

The Sky is Yours
by Chandler Klang Smith
SkyisYours
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian post-apocalyptic works such as Oryx and Crake and The Heart Goes Last should enjoy The Sky is Yours.  The Sky is Yours is a very creative and beautiful written story with characters that I found myself disliking intensely.  Interestingly the author seems to have written them purposefully that way, comparing them in an interview to the characters in The Magicians series, which we had noted in the book discussion group here at the library are quite a contemptible bunch.  The Sky is Yours focuses on a former reality star, Duncan Humphrey Ripple V and his new wife Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg and Abby, a wild girl who Duncan met after he crashed in a garbage dump.  Duncan and Swan are wealthy and spoiled, but the city they live in is crumbling around them burned by the twin flames of dragons that ceaselessly circle the sky.  I thought it was interesting that Smith chose to focus on the characters she did.  Sometimes I found myself wishing I was following the exploits of more likeable individuals, but I thought it was an interesting change not to be focusing on people who are innately good and deserving as so often happens in speculative fiction especially those that feature the fairy tale like quality that The Sky is Yours sometimes has.  It made me wonder how I would feel about a story like say Harry Potter if it had focused on the Slytherins instead of Harry and his friends.

Yesterday
by Felicia Yap
Yesterday
In the alternate universe of Yesterday people are divided by how much they remember: monos remember one day and duos remember two.  The main characters of the novel are a mixed marriage of mono and duo couple, the husband’s mistress, and a detective attempting to solve the mistress’s murder.  Only the detective truly came across as sympathetic to me; he is a mono pretending to be a duo so that he can keep his job.  The vindictive mistress especially was unlikable, but she was one of those villains you love to hate.  I enjoyed the twists the mystery took and I thought the fact that the detective was trying to solve the case in one day so he would remember all the details he learned vividly added an interesting dimension.  I also always think it is interesting to see how society can be divided in ways that we currently do not such as with memory since it provides another lens to look at the divisions we have in our own society; another example of this would be Jasper’s FForde’s Shades of Grey series which divides people by the colors they see, which I had written about in a previous post.  When I was discussing the novel with one of the library’s staff, she recommended the movie Memento for those who are fascinated by the concept of memory.

What are some fictional characters you love to hate?  Recommend their books in the comments.

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Who is the Narrator of Our Lives?: William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying

5 Dec

As_Lay_Dying
Narration is a big thing not only in books, but also in life. Our actions are ways to which we narrate and navigate our way through our story. But what about inaction and silence? Aren’t those a form of narration as well?

Narration is not only used as a tool within the novel to develop the plot, as well as each separate narrator, but it also exposes the true narrator through the concealment that words put on language. Addie Bundren’s presence in As I Lay Dying, or lack thereof, seems to distract the reader from discovering her side of the story. The irony of the words in the title is though it is in first person narrative, we almost never hear from her point of view. But let me not give out too many spoilers.

The irony of this novel being about a woman who is “dying” but told by those around her who are “alive” is the exact distinction that calls to question the very narration that we are given within the title. As I Lay Dying – first person narrative – seems to reveal a secret hidden within the narrative. This secret would appear to be a story from the perspective of someone who is dying – as per the title – but, in fact, we are almost never introduced to this true first person narrator.

This intrigued me.

One thing to note is that I – the reader – often fall in love with the ironic. Recent blogs I have written were about novels – such as Pamuk’s My Name is Red – allude to this sense of irony within and surrounding that novel, the irony of title’s foreshadowing, and multiple narrators with their own story that still hold the same meaning – rather than different “sides to the story.” It’s ironic, and it’s beautiful to me.

I love this book because it sheds light not only on the fact that the title is strictly about what’s going on as she lays dying, but it also follows this remarkable truth of how what’s going on around us narrates just as much as we do in our own story. As she lays dying is calling to the beauty that even though the title is clearly in first person – which should mean that it’s about her perspective – it’s not. Her perspective is that of what’s around her. It’s what’s happening as she lays dying that’s important, that’s narrating her story.

And isn’t that how it seems – life?

Aren’t we all just lying there as the world just continues to go round, as our story continues on without us, but in reality with us still there?

You can borrow As I Lay Dying in print, as an ebook from eBCCLS or eLibraryNJ, a digital audiobook, and view a movie adaptation on DVD.

Written By:
Sherissa Hernandez
Adult Programming Assistant

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