ramtops

He sent his life forth as the crippled tree
puts forth white flowers in April every year
upon the dying branch. He knew the way.[loc. 93]

A birthday gift from a dear friend: it comprises Le Guin's 1982 'The Art of Bunditsu' (a “tabbist” meditation on the arranging of cats, with Le Guin's sketches of her cat Lorenzo); two sets of poems, some of which brought tears to my eyes as they dealt with the deaths of beloved cats; and various cat-letters, anecdotes and blog posts. Even in these small pieces her prose is perfect and precise: I share her love of cats and her preference for treating them as individuals. Beautiful.

The heart of culture is taking the time to do the unnecessary in the most picturesque manner possible. [p. 204]

Reread, after reading Olive and the Dragon... my original review from the 2023 Nine Worlds rabbithole is here. This is a delightful novel with mystical bees, a baking competition, and a dragon (which may or may not be the same dragon met by Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive). There is also an inheritance, an Imperial Duke, and Jemis beginning to relax.

After this I obviously needed to reread the first in the series, Stargazy Pie... especially as there is a new Greenwing and Dart novel, Bubble and Squeak, coming in the next few months! (Also, these cosy fantasy mysteries are perfect for autumn... though they always make me want to eat cake.)

“But also,” said Barbara, “if he hadn’t disappeared.” She did not finish the sentence.
“Then what?” said Tracy.
“Then I wouldn’t have been born,” said Barbara. “That would have been better, I think.” [loc. 4153]

Told from multiple viewpoints in two timelines, this is the story of the Van Laar family and their children: Bear, who goes missing aged eight in 1961, and Barbara, who goes missing aged thirteen in 1975. Are the disappearances linked? Were the children abducted? Murdered? Did they run away? One could make a good case for the latter: the family, though extremely wealthy (they own the woods, and the neighbouring campsite from which Barbara vanishes) is riddled with secrets and dysfunction. Barbara has been 'acting up', using makeup and painting a wild mural on her bedroom wall: her mother Alice is addicted to Valium and alcohol, and still doesn't quite believe that her son Bear is dead. Peter, father to Barbara and Bear, has high standards and little time for his wife.

This is a complex thriller, with themes of misogyny, class and scapegoating. I liked female cop Judyta (who's very much belittled because of being a woman, but who is key to solving the mystery) and TJ, who runs the summer camp and is distinctly queer-coded. Louise, the counselor who first notices Barbara's absence, is a working-class girl with a rich fiance and a history of abuse. Tracy, who's 12, is befriended by Barbara and asked to keep her secrets... Each of these women, as well as Alice, and Maryanne Stoddard whose husband died of a heart attack during the search for Bear and was subsequently blamed for the boy's disappearance, has to deal with sexism, powerlessness and injustice.

It's also a very interesting comparison of parenting values: between the 1960s and the 1970s, as well as between working class and upper class families. (There's a really chilling line in Alice's narrative about 'part of a mother’s duty was to be her daughter’s first, best critic'. This resonates...)

Ultimately, while I was caught up in the story and its complex relationships, I didn't find the resolution wholly satisfactory. Barbara's conclusion just wasn't credible, even for 1975. But the ways in which blame is apportioned and withheld, the ways in which gossip and bias affect everyone in the story, were very well done: and the multitude of narrators, in two different timeframes and out of sequence, maintained their individual voices and never became confusing.

I'm still thinking of the title, The God of the Woods, which refers to Pan and thus to panic. Though there are scenes of panic, it's not a defining characteristic of the novel. But a lot of people do lose their way, mostly metaphorically: and not all of them find the right path again.

Sometimes he’ll be mopping the floor and listening to a couple of the regulars, and he knows it’s not from now. It’s from before. What’s more, time is supposed to be sequential, right? One thing happening after another. Things further back receding, more recent things feeling, well, more recent. Not for Wayne. [loc. 1637]

The Matter of Britain meets Jilly Cooper! The setting is the medieval town of Abury, in Wiltshire: the characters drink at the Green Knight, where Vern the landlord has an odd agreement -- 'anything you gain you give to me' -- with Wayne the barman. Arthur is a tech billionaire, Lance is a veteran with PTSD, Gwen is an influencer, Mo was adopted from a Bangalore roadside, Morgan is ... vengeful. 

Olive had dreamed of the next days a hundred times, for all it was no necessary tragedy for any of them, seeing fragments play out of a hundred different choices.
No necessary tragedy, if she chose aright.[loc. 61]

A novella set well before the beginning of the 'Greenwing and Dart' series, Olive and the Dragon focuses on Jemis Greenwing's mother Olive (deceased before the series proper) and her gift of seeing possibilities and probabilities. ( Read more... )

...what I am doing is only leveling the playing field. I have claimed my power for myself just as these wealthy people have done time and time again. And I will not feel bad about it, even if I am bending the rules to my will. [p. 319]

Brielle Petitfour is seventeen, Haitian-American, a gifted cook who's planning to start up a supper club in order to pay the bills. Her mother Valentine is in constant pain, and her health insurance won't pay out for the medication she needs. Brielle's father is out of the picture, and isn't the father of her half-sisters in Haiti, who form a Greek chorus (they're named after the Muses) to contextualise Brielle's family history. Brielle's best friend Marcello, also a chef and helping with Brielle's supper club, is expected to go into the family business: his grandmother runs a funeral parlour, which for complicated reasons is popular with the wealthy of Miami.

'I was finished. I wanted time to stop, and to let me stop with it. And I wanted revenge.
I ... said to the land, 'Bury me, and rise up. Rise up and crush them all.' [loc. 5131]

Rereads, after reading Kings of This World -- which is set in the same alt-Aotearoa-New Zealand, rather later than the Dreamhunter duet, which begins in 1906. My original reviews from (OMG) 2005 and 2007 are here: The Rainbow Opera and The Dream Quake.

The link points to the first of two volumes: the second has only just become available on Amazon.