On page 1232 of 1243, the Count of Monte Cristo makes a joke.

So, the Summer of 2012 draws to a close. Where I live, the air is a very particular kind of crisp and cool, the sky is the most spectacular shade of blue, the trees are exceptionally green. September is a jewel among the months in its opulence. And it somehow seems fitting to have read a book so full of opulence as my last summer read. It was a very interesting experiment, reading books I had managed to miss in all my years of bibliomania. ^_^ Finishing off with a book I read ages and ages ago (quite seriously, before many of you, my dear readers, were born…) was a nice, if sentimental, touch.

Thank you to all who suggested the Penguin Classic edition of Count of Monte Cristo translated by Robin Buss. His translation was a pleasure to read. He captures not only the flowery delicacy of the language, but the masterful snark that makes this book such a delight.

I’ve always liked Dumas, and I am reminded again why. For one thing, he actually likes and respects women, in a way that many of his contemporaries did not. He wasn’t doltish about them, they don’t act like men in dresses, as our modern “strong female characters”are wont to do. In general, Dumas really “gets” character and voice. It makes reading those inevitable bits where we’re listening to someone tell a story that someone told someone else in order to set up a thing later, much more palatable. In fact, I managed to read those bits much more quickly than I might have in, say, a R.O.D. novel, purely because Dumas is such a good writer that he understands how to make the story easy to read.

Okay, but none of you really care about any of this, I know. You want to hear about Eugenie. ^_^

The Count was a master of snark, but Eugenie, my goodness, she was born to it! I wanted to hug Eugenie so hard every time she was rude.^_^

And Dumas wasn’t pulling any punches with her, he was as subtle as a Yuri club to the head in his descriptions of her, in which he mentioned, Athena, Sappho, “like a man”, “better suited to be the opposite sex” and every freaking other code for “Look, folks, she’s a *lesbian*” that he had in his repertoire. Of course I applauded as she and Louise made their escape together (and laughed like a hyena when he just couldn’t quite let them go without a final appearance. ^_^)

So, we can all relax and imagine Eugenie and Louise, famous enough to live in comfort, pleased to be able to come home to one another every night, living happily ever after. ^_^

Good book.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

With this, I declare my summer reading session over for this year. But don’t worry, I have a nice huge pile of good stuff coming up including, I kid you not, Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher. I read only the best for you. ^_^

And, after yesterday’s news (which pushed this review back a day), this review feels somehow even more appropriate. ^_^

I am sincerely sorry – I can’t for the life remember who suggested I read this. If it was you, please step up and tell me! (And then I probably should apologize for this review, too… ^_^;)

Okay, so, next up in my summer reading is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Lady of Quality. Anything by Burnett comes with a lot of baggage in this household, as her work is deeply beloved by the one of us who is not me. ^_^

But someone here, or on Twitter, or somewhere suggested this book, and I decided I’d give it a try. It’s left me feeling rather less than more happy, but not for the reasons you might presume. What will follow contains spoilers, so if you plan on reading this story, please do that first, then come back to read this review. Thanks.

The book is supposed to take place in the 1700s, following Clorinda Wildairs (note the cleverly allegorical name,) a child to a drunken lout of the lower nobility, who has been given every single possible blessing except money and good breeding. Raised by a wolf as she is, she still manages to be perfect. As you can imagine, that gets cloying after a while.

Clorinda begins life as a willful, unprincipled, yet beautiful and smart, child, who learns how to manipulate the household servants and, eventually, her father who on principle dislikes all of his children, because they are daughters. She grows up as one of the boys, and then manages to become one of the men of the household, going so far as to wear boy’s clothing. She is, of course, a better man than any man around her.

When Clorinda turns 15, she miraculously, suddenly, understands how also to be a better woman than any woman alive, despite having no role models or any guidance. She puts aside her boy’s clothes and turns to bettering herself as a woman. She is, of course, perfect. Ultimately she marries up….and when he dies, marries up again, and eventually has the perfect husband, and perfect children. There is only one imperfection in her life.

Her sisters were equally as unbeloved by their father, but of the two of them, Clorinda finds use for, then affection for, then love for, her sister Anne. (The other sister is ignored and eventually brushed off in a suitable, not terrible marriage.) About halfway through the novel, Anne starts to take up more space in the story.

And, about this time, we realize that there are, in fact, two imperfections in Clorinda’s life. One, we’re laboring under some misinformation. There was, early on, a rake and scoundrel introduced with the uncomfortable name John Oxon. For most of the story, we’re lead to believe that Clorinda had pretty much nothing but scorn for the guy and that his obsession with her is just sociopathic. Turns out, they were indeed lovers and that his obsession with her is indeed sociopathic. He’s a creep and I felt absolutely nothing at his death. Which is the other imperfection in Clorinda’s life. She was the hand of god that smote Oxon down for his sin of being a creep and getting in the way of Clorinda’s perfection.

As the pages of the novel come to a close, we suddenly realize that the title character was never Clorinda at all. It was always Anne. Oh, but don’t worry, Clorinda’s life remains perfect, except for that little manslaughter thing she did that no one ever needs to know.

Okay, so there were a lot of things that made this novel “not for me.” Burnett’s 19th-century version of 16th century English was convoluted and un-fun to read. It wasn’t nearly as constipated as Le Fanu’s sentence structure, just more RenFaire-ish. The ending was abrupt, the moral was…moral-like and the lesson I’m supposed to learn is what again? That the beautiful and willful get to have everything go their way always? For pity’s sake, would there be *anyone* reading this book who would rather be “shot sparrow”-eyed Anne who just dies at the end for no good reason rather than tall, strong, graceful, healthy, outspoken, lucky, powerful, beautiful and perfect Clorinda? Maybe there might be one or two people, but not more.

I have now read three of Burnett’s books and that’s it for me. Her fantasies are not my fantasies, her morals are not my morals. The beginning of this story is completely eyebrow-raising, but the end was very snoozy-making. Note to self, no odorless, tasteless poisons, no cousins that return from South America and no more perfect people not held accountable for their actions. This book left me with the exact same feeling that Fire of the Vanities left me with – a burning desire to go read a good book. As cross-dressing girls go, I enjoyed Ellen Kushner’s Privilege of the Sword more.

Ratings:

Overall – 5

Next up, I’ll be tackling the Count of Monte Cristo, so expect there to be a delay, while I make my way through its bulkiness. ^_^

Speaking of The Privilege of the Sword, it’s now available in audio starring, among other laudables, the author herself and Barbara Rosenblat who, if she recorded a reading of the phone book, I’d listen to it. (True story: I once called up Recorded Books on Tape and told them that I’d listen to her read the phone book and the woman on the phone just laughed and said, “We get that a lot.”)

Next to Alice in Wonderland and  Little Women, there probably isn’t  another piece of western girls’ literature that has been as picked over in anime and manga as Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery. And after reading it, I think I know why. I’ll get to that in a second.

Anne of Green Gables occupies a space smack in between The Little Princess, which is a purely wish-fulfilling Cinderella-like fantasy and the Little House series in which a smart, hardworking young lady makes good by being smart and hard-working. The story starts off as a bit of fantasy and ends with Anne succeeding through hard work and smarts.

But that’s starting from the end, let’s start from the beginning. Anne of Green Gables is about an orphan girl, Anne Shirley, who is mistakenly sent to a brother and sister in rural Canada. After some initial problems, Matthew and Marilla decide to keep her. The story follows Anne from 11 years old, when she arrived on the Cuthbert’s farm, to 16 years old, when she makes a decision to not leave to go to college, but stay and teach in a local school.

There were some tough bits at the beginning of the story, as Anne tries to not tell Marilla of any neglect or abuse she might have suffered, and there were some bits in the middle when Marilla, particularly, was pissing me off with her puritan stance on life, but of course, as this is a girls’ book, Anne comes out okay in the end.

As I said, I was able to see why Anne of Green Gables is (relatively speaking) so popular in Japan. It has all the qualities of Class S Japanese literature. A young girl, forging a deep emotional bond with another girl and, through the use of her own wits, skills and perseverance, rising to the top of her class and her society. For those of us interested in Yuri, although the book made light of it, the scenes where Anne and Diana vow their friendship to one another could be as romantic as anyone could wish.

This book was the last of the holes in western lit that I needed to fill for myself. If you have a suggestion of any late 19th – early 20th century western literature, that is relevant to Yuri or shoujo, go ahead and suggest it in the comments. I may well have read it already, but if I haven’t I’ll consider it. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – Really hard to say, I didn’t hate it, it wasn’t badly written, but I can’t say I liked it, either. Let’s go with my default average  – 7

Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by a quarter of a century, making it responsible for all sorts of horrid literary abominations that came after it. (The book is in the public domain and there are all sorts of hideous abominations of people who have decided to sell it anyway, so I’ve chosen to not use any covers or pictures of any of them. Ask your library, or use the link to read it on Project Gutenberg)

I have to disclaim before I review this novella – I do not much really care about vampires.

Long before shiny hollow-chested lads, vampires were pale and tragic. They were undead that did not go to high schools, but haunted large Eastern European houses, and had odd habits that somehow made no one suspicious. They were accompanied by long, complex sentences  that were nearly impossible to follow, but also, somehow, kind of funny.

Carmilla is this kind of vampire story. The story begins, as many Victorian stories do, with a letter found by one person retelling the correspondence of a third person to the person who wrote the letter…just in case someone might read it afterwards and wish to understand, of course. My memory is chock-full of this third-hand correspondence as a plot driver.

The correspondence is from a young woman, writing about extraordinary circumstances that occurred to her a decade earlier when she was in her mid-teens. Extraordinary circumstances that brought her into acquaintance with a pale, tragic and odd girl of (apparently) the same age called Carmilla. What happens is a very Victorian version of physical and sexual relations between the girls, accompanied by repulsion/desire that would be comfortable for many a manga/anime fan. Very Goblin Market-y.

The story works because the set up, as absurd as it is, fits the parameters needed – our unnamed protagonist lives in an alpine castle with her widower father, and has little contact with anyone in the nearest town, so she and her father are intelligent, but naive. The villagers are, as villagers must always be, utterly gormless. Warnings must be pointed, but obscure, and the end comes, as it must, in a catacomb or similar setting.

The one thing that really did not work for me was the use of the word “vampire” as a kind of climax. And, I realize that this is exactly why I don’t like vampire stories – the build up is just like pushing air into a balloon – tragic Carmilla, weird habits, nightly visits, dreamlike lassitude, kisses and embraces….each puts increasing tension into the story. But as soon as someone comes out and says, “It’s a *vampire,* it’s like someone pokes a pin into the balloon and all the tension just psssshes out. Oh well.

I’m rather more disappointed that there doesn’t really seem to be a good…anything of Carmilla. Carmilla shows up in Vampire Hunter D with bad hat syndrome, like an Amano Malificent. Looking around the web I’m seeing lots of unattractive 30 year olds with blood on their mouths, rather than pale, beautiful 16 year olds. Clearly the world needs this as a manga, not by Amano. ^_^ Maybe by Kouga Yun or, no, wait, Shimizu Reiko. Yeah, that’d work.

In conclusion, Carmilla is a GREAT idea. Now I wish someone would execute it better.