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Vase / Conrad's Fate
Nov. 6th, 2019 09:01 pmPegasus, drat you, you managed to sell me a vase! I go into second hand bookshops expecting to be seduced into buying books, and I have been successfully resisting random ornamental objects for ages, but now the first time I see you stocking anything other than books you manage to stock too lovely a vase to resist. I just filled my room with boxes again, and cycling gear I'm not using, and roller skates I have never used, and an empty spice-rack. I did not need a vase!
--thank you Pegasus Books you are excellent.
Also, while I'm writing up books, I just reread Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones for the first time in years. There are plenty of her books I'm middling to neutral keen on -- I definitely think of her in tiers: favourites, non-favourite really good ones, lukewarm ones -- but up until now I thought Conrad's Fate was the only one I actively disliked and wished she hadn't written. Now it isn't. I don't know what happened. I don't think it's one of my favourites, but it almost feels like one just now because of the unexpected jump. It's definitely a book full of patterns she uses elsewhere, and it has a mild main character (he isn't even as passive as some of her passive characters get, he's just a good soul, rather quashed, who unquashes), and the main characters end up having surprisingly little to do, because the deus ex machina comes on with an even heavier whump than usual... But I really like it. It is highly congenial in its mildness, and funny as Jones ever is, and it also (I had completely forgotten this) has one of her best houses in it. The story starts when circumstances and an officious uncle send titular Conrad chasing after his titular fate to investigate the misuse of magic at Stallery, the great mansion on the hill, in the role of a servant; and Stallery is such a bustling great mansion, maintained gilt and glorious in its ludicrously labour-intensive state of perfection by a platoon of skilled, busy people. During Conrad's first tour of it he's passed from hand to hand between people who have allocated six minutes to showing the newbie around, but keep being interrupted by something very urgent at minute two. I love the moment when Conrad and his fellow ulterior motived servant Christopher look at each other and go, "...we were both intending to have plots, in this book, but we are going to have to do do all the plot in a two-hour slots on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, because all our other minutes have been allocated." Of course the book ends up having a lot of plot in it, but it remains centered on how much house the characters are in, and how much individual work goes into it.
The one thing I remember specifically disliking last time I read the book was Christopher. Since the first Jones novel I remember reading (being read) was The Lives of Christopher Chant, where the character turns up younger, and then for a long time the series jumped straight to the adult Christopher as Chrestomanci in his authority, I think I'd got attached to the idea that Christopher's life was very smooth between those points and also that he was not obnoxious in the least. In this book Christopher is a teenager, viewed from outside, and he is rather obnoxious, but in a plausible and essentially benign sort of way that now seems completely in keeping with the rest of him to me. And it makes me happy that he's been put in a book about doing domestic work. His having his nose pointed at the kind of work which, as an enchanter, he can do most of by thinking, is probably important for his long-term development into a person one would want to see managing the magic of a number of worlds.
Oh, speaking of which, I also remember thinking the probability-magic was out of keeping with what we otherwise knew about the Related Worlds, but now I don't. Again, it feels of a piece.
Saint Jerome is looking at me from where he leans against the bookshelf. He's disappointed I haven't hung him up yet. Jerome, thematic as it would be, I shall neither hang you up nor find a place to put the cycling gear nor clean the bathroom. I shall go to bed.
--thank you Pegasus Books you are excellent.
Also, while I'm writing up books, I just reread Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones for the first time in years. There are plenty of her books I'm middling to neutral keen on -- I definitely think of her in tiers: favourites, non-favourite really good ones, lukewarm ones -- but up until now I thought Conrad's Fate was the only one I actively disliked and wished she hadn't written. Now it isn't. I don't know what happened. I don't think it's one of my favourites, but it almost feels like one just now because of the unexpected jump. It's definitely a book full of patterns she uses elsewhere, and it has a mild main character (he isn't even as passive as some of her passive characters get, he's just a good soul, rather quashed, who unquashes), and the main characters end up having surprisingly little to do, because the deus ex machina comes on with an even heavier whump than usual... But I really like it. It is highly congenial in its mildness, and funny as Jones ever is, and it also (I had completely forgotten this) has one of her best houses in it. The story starts when circumstances and an officious uncle send titular Conrad chasing after his titular fate to investigate the misuse of magic at Stallery, the great mansion on the hill, in the role of a servant; and Stallery is such a bustling great mansion, maintained gilt and glorious in its ludicrously labour-intensive state of perfection by a platoon of skilled, busy people. During Conrad's first tour of it he's passed from hand to hand between people who have allocated six minutes to showing the newbie around, but keep being interrupted by something very urgent at minute two. I love the moment when Conrad and his fellow ulterior motived servant Christopher look at each other and go, "...we were both intending to have plots, in this book, but we are going to have to do do all the plot in a two-hour slots on Thursday and Saturday afternoons, because all our other minutes have been allocated." Of course the book ends up having a lot of plot in it, but it remains centered on how much house the characters are in, and how much individual work goes into it.
The one thing I remember specifically disliking last time I read the book was Christopher. Since the first Jones novel I remember reading (being read) was The Lives of Christopher Chant, where the character turns up younger, and then for a long time the series jumped straight to the adult Christopher as Chrestomanci in his authority, I think I'd got attached to the idea that Christopher's life was very smooth between those points and also that he was not obnoxious in the least. In this book Christopher is a teenager, viewed from outside, and he is rather obnoxious, but in a plausible and essentially benign sort of way that now seems completely in keeping with the rest of him to me. And it makes me happy that he's been put in a book about doing domestic work. His having his nose pointed at the kind of work which, as an enchanter, he can do most of by thinking, is probably important for his long-term development into a person one would want to see managing the magic of a number of worlds.
Oh, speaking of which, I also remember thinking the probability-magic was out of keeping with what we otherwise knew about the Related Worlds, but now I don't. Again, it feels of a piece.
Saint Jerome is looking at me from where he leans against the bookshelf. He's disappointed I haven't hung him up yet. Jerome, thematic as it would be, I shall neither hang you up nor find a place to put the cycling gear nor clean the bathroom. I shall go to bed.
