Turtles All the Way Down

I have pneumonia.  Who gets pneumonia in the summer?

I do.

That’s who.

Tonight I went to the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s production of Princess Ida, at the Seattle Rep.  It was good, and only the third Gilbert and Sullivan that I’ve been to; I also went to The Mikado at UPS and The Pirates of Penzance at Lakewood Playhouse, both a few months ago.

And I am now very, very tired.

The last Harry Potter book came out at 12:01 AM, last night.  I read it straight until about 6:00 AM, by which time I had to read each page approximately three times, in order to comprehend what was printed on it.  I went to sleep until about 11:00 AM, then I woke-up and finished the book.  It’s a wonderful story, “Deathly Hallows” is, and the ending is happy, but… I’m sad.  Harry Potter has been a big part of my life.  I’ve read these stories since they first came out, gone to midnight release parties (at independent booksellers, natch) for each new book.  And I keep forgetting that this will never happen again.  This was the first time that I took a nap, in the middle of reading a new Harry Potter book; I still find myself thinking things like “I won’t do that, with the next book.”

There won’t be a next book.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the last in a wonderful and surprisingly political series of novels.  I can still make predictions for what will happen, what has happened, off-page, but a new book will neither confirm nor deny my guesses.

Thank you, Jo Rowling.  You have given me one of the greatest joys of my childhood, which is now over, anyway.  The excitement of waiting for a new Harry Potter book is comparable, for me, only to the excitement that an actor has, just before stepping onstage on opening night.

I bought the novel The Garden of Ruth, by Eva Etzioni-Halevy, at Costco, and it took me two or three weeks to read.  It was $8, instead of $14.  Tell me that I’m getting a book for nearly half off, and I’ll snap it up.  That said, tell me that I’m getting a book for nearly twice its usual price, and I’ll probably get it, too.  I’m like that.  Books are just addictive.

I had commenced reading as soon as I got home, read about the first quarter in one sitting, and thought, at that time, that this may be one of those rare books that I can read all at once.  Sadly, this was not to be.

The overly-wordy dialogue was annoying from the get-go.  (By page 10, we’ve already learned that the heroine, Osnath, does not blush; rather, “her cheeks [assume] the color of red roses.”)  Despite that fact that modern literary convention has “loins” meaning the male genitals, it is also frequently used by Ruth to describe her own anatomy, which irked.  That said, the treatment of sex and sexual organs was fairly well-done, for a romance novel.  The hymen is only mentioned once; it is never referred to as a “maidenhead.”  This may be countered by a character referring to her vagina as her “cleft,” but, at least, that one was fairly original.  This deserves points.

Another thing that deserves points is the fact that virginity is not too highly stressed.  I don’t mind virgins (I am one, myself), but the fact that nearly every romantic heroine is pure as the snow on a unicorns horn, while the hero is far more experienced.  In The Garden of Ruth, Osnath looses her virgnity to the hero, but then goes out (and sleeps with) his brother, the Other Man.  She ends up with the hero, and has only ever slept with two men, but that’s more realistic (yes, even for biblical times, folks) than the usual womanizing hero/one-man-woman pairing that is usually seen.  Kudos.  Ruth is already a widow when she meets and has an affair with her Other Man, before eventually meeting the hero of her plot thread, sleeping with the Other Man some more, sleeping with her hero, going back to the Other Man, realizing that the Other Man is a dickhead, and eventually marrying the hero.  The fact that the secondary heroine actually has sex with three men in her life (virtually unknown, in the world of romance, even most contemporaries) earns The Garden of Ruth extra points.  As does that fact that Ruth is, you know, the virtuous ancient Judean-Moabite version of a saint.

Whether the peculiar pacing of this book saps those points is debatable.  The plot deals with two intertwining, and charmingly parallel plots– the story of the biblical Ruth, and of the girl whom two of Ruth’s decendents are hitting on.  Part One deals with Osnath, said girl.  Part Two deals with Ruth.  While the two woman are sufficently different as to hold the reader’s attention, the book would have been more interesting with more interspercing.  Part One is just the third-person tale of Osnath, with a few sentaces, every couple of chapters, that were written by Ruth.  Part Two is just Ruth’s first-person narration of her life, with breaks, every chapter or so, to tell us what Osnath is doing.

The plot does not twist.  It is a straight road, disapearing over the horizon.  As you go, you get to see more of it, and most of that road is just as you would have expected.  Sometimes I would take a step forward and be greeted with a view that I had not anticipated.  I was sure that an expendable character, while giving birth, was going to die; I was undecided as to whether the baby would pull through.  Instead, Osnath saves the day with modern medical practices– the staple of late 20th and early 21st century historical fiction, especially in regards to midwifery.  Etzioni-Halevy found a better way to get this character out of the way.  It wasn’t really any more creative, or less predictable, but it wasn’t what I predicted, so it pleased me.

The main flaws in the novel, other that the wordy style (as evidenced by the Historical Note, Etzioni-Halevy can write like a normal person) were sappy emotion, refusal to further investiage the rape vs. sex vs. “not saying no but not saying yes” angle, overly-dominant males, and too much sex.  Before Osnath and her future husband get together for good, their relationship is varied and involves intellectual discussions.  After?  Just sex.  This is a major step down, and one that trivializes deep, if non-platonic, relationships.

All in all, it’s a good book, but not great.  With a decent editor and a helpful seven-year-old to tell Etzioni-Halevy to cut the bullcrap, The Garden of Ruth could have been even better.  A minor tragedy in publishing.  And one that makes the book only average.