Rosie's Riveters: Aarti & Guinevere

I have spent quite a bit of time mulling over what I should do for the first Rosie's Riveters post. Should I be consistent and post about a female I really dislike? Or should I switch it up a bit and wax lyrical about one I adore? I really couldn't decide, and so I decided to go for one that just creates a very strong reaction in me when I think about her or get into conversations about her, consistently.

Rosie's Riveters is a weekly posting written by Booklust readers about
riveting females in literature. Many readers have strong reactions to
the women in the books they read- either very positive or very
negative. These are the characters we find riveting, for good reasons
or bad ones, and they form the population of Rosie's Riveters. Through this weekly post, we can discuss females we love to hate, or love to love. And maybe, just maybe - we can determine why we react so strongly to them.


If you are interested in participating, please comment on this post or
e-mail me and I'll add you to the line-up!

Who is your Riveter?
Queen Guinevere

What book does she feature in?
There are many versions of the tales of King Arthur, and I have not actually read the original one by Geoffrey of Monmouth or the most famous version by Sir Thomas Malory. However, the ones I remember most are The Mists of Avalon and Mary Stewart's excellent Merlin Trilogy. I am not sure of the entire history of Guinevere, from the start of Arthurian literature to now, but suffice it to say that when she makes a more-than-negligible appearance, she screws things up.

Do you love her or hate her?
Hate. Of course :-)

Describe her personality- how would you describe her to a friend?
"She's one of those really obnoxious girls that's beautiful and knows she's beautiful, and then goes around and messes up everyone's life because of it."

Can you compare her to a celebrity?
Hmm. I came up with this question and am having trouble answering it. I think it more likely that celebrities are compared to her. Princess Diana kind of leaps to mind, but besides the obvious comparisons here, I don't really know why.

What makes her riveting?
Honestly, I can't say. In most Arthurian retellings I've read (and so probably in the original? Just guessing here), Guinevere is pretty dull and static, as a character. She is also overly religious. How she managed to marry a pagan king and then get his best friend to fall in love with her, I will never know.

She is more famous for all the things she could not do. Most importantly, she couldn't have a child, and this set the course of British history on a very different track. She couldn't reconcile Christianity with the religion present in England before it came. She fell in love with the wrong man. She generally created a ruckus and then acted all pious and high and mighty as though she couldn't have been involved.

And even as I say she has no personality and does nothing but live off her looks, not her brain, I still am openly calling her a "riveting" female. Why? She is, in my opinion, the least interesting of all the characters in Arthurian legend, and yet she makes me so angry. Maybe that's why I think she's riveting- because it is not often that someone seemingly so bland and innocuous can be such a catalyst.

I am not completely sexist- I also think Lancelot is an idiot :-) But that is not for this post.

What do you most admire/despise about her?
The whole Guinevere-Lancelot thing is ridiculous. King Arthur is a genius who manages to unite a country and set up this entire roundtable of equality and is known for being fair and compassionate and fabulous to everyone. Lancelot is a man who can fight, and who looks good doing it. Of course Guinevere of the long-flowing hair and very little sense would prefer the Ken doll. And then mess all sorts of things up by going for him (yes, I know it takes two to tango and Lancelot is the one who went after his best friend's wife, but we are focusing on the females here). And then get caught. Honestly- the girl lived in a castle, surrounded by people. She and her lover decided not to show up at a feast headed by her husband and all his devoted knights. How could she ever think she would not be caught? Yet another example of her extreme lack of sense.

As if that were not enough, she then gets all holier-than-thou, saying that she's sinned (no kidding, genius) and thus must check into a nunnery (because that is the solution to everything). This would have been fine if she had been Hamlet's mother ("Get thee to a nunnery!!!"). But alas, she was not. I understand that in prior centuries, the nunnery was one of the only escape routes that women had from lives they did not want. I think that is perfectly acceptable when one is not the mess-creator. Guinevere, though, created her mess. She should have taken pains to fix it. Instead, the self-centered (and probably still beautiful) adulteress decides to flee the scene and make her peace with God. Apparently, her own inner peace was more important than the peace of the Realm. Can't say I'm surprised.

Would you recommend reading the book in which the Riveter features?
Ah, sadly, therein lies Guinevere's twisted genius. If not for her completely unnecessary drama, we would not have the fascinating and wonderful Arthurian legends we have today. Yes, I think anyone who has not read any Arthurian books should do so- there are so many of them out there and there are so many wide interpretations of what really happened that they are a delight to read. My favorites are Mary Stewart's trilogy above, but I have several more on my shelves that I haven't gotten into yet. Soon :-)

Any parting remarks?
Just for the record, I think a lot of women in Arthurian legend are portrayed in a strong and positive light. They all do their part to shape history and I like all of them much more than Guinevere.

Fire and Hemlock

Title: Fire and Hemlock

Author: Diana Wynne Jones

Publisher: Harper Trophy

# of Pages: 420

Favorite Line: Bright, sharp streaks of sound, Polly thought. If you were able to hear lime juice, it would sound like violins.

Rating: 7/10

Product Description
In the mind of a lonely, imaginative girl, who can tell where fiction ends and reality begins? An epic fantasy, spanning nine years...The fire and hemlock photograph above Polly's bed sparks memories in her that don't seem to exist any more. Halloween; nine years ago; she gatecrashed a funeral party at the big house and met Thomas Lynn for the first time. Despite the fact that he's an adult, they struck up an immediate friendship, and began making up stories together -- stories in which Tom is a great hero, and Polly is his assistant. The trouble is, these scary adventures have a nasty habit of coming true...But what has happened in the years between? Why has Tom been erased from Polly's mind, and from the rest of the world as well? Gradually Polly uncovers the awful truth and, at Halloween nine years on, realizes that Tom's soul is forfeit to demonic powers unless she can save him.

I have only read one other book by Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle, and I loved it. Ironically, at the end of that review (written in October 2006!), I say that I will snatch up the sequel, Castle in the Air. Almost three years later, and that snatching has not occurred. I don't know why, but I seem not to read sequels right after one another, unless in a huge passionate burst a la Dorothy Dunnett or George R. R. Martin.

Anyway, since I adored the one book I'd ever read by Wynne Jones, I've always been compelled to pick up any others when I feel they are to be had at a bargain, with the result of me getting quite a few books on my shelves purchased with no idea of the plot, only on the strength of the author. Fire and Hemlock is one of those.

The book is based on the Scottish myths of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin. I am not very familiar with these stories (what is with the Brits and fairies?!), and I think that definitely worked against me here. Generally, they deal with men being sacrified to fairy queens, and the one or two that were able to make a break and get away.

I will freely admit that I have absolutely no idea what happened at the end of the book. I read it, and could feel myself sinking quickly, and then all of a sudden the book was done (please don't ask me to summarize how it ended) and my hopes of everything making sense in the last sentence were dashed. I think it will require a re-read for me to make sense of the conclusion. Or, to be honest, the entire last quarter of the book. Happily, however, most other readers seem to be in the dark as to the end, too, so I suppose I am in good company.

In any case, the story is certainly interesting and hits on several different levels and themes, even if I may have missed The Big Picture. The characters are all very vivid and realistic, the plot moves quickly, and there are numerous allusions to quite a few books that will now go on my wish list. It is also very real for a fantasy book, including many painful scenes of Polly's broken home. The entire romance aspect of the plot disturbs me a bit as well. I feel certain there must be a reason Wynne Jones wrote it as she did and I have a feeling it has to do with The Big Picture which I so woefully lost track of at the end of the book. However, be that as it may... at this point in my reaction to the novel, the whole 10-year-old girl, middle-aged man thing just doesn't sit well.

I do think the plot gets very wrapped up in itself and becomes a bit overly complicated for young adults. Or maybe it's fine for young adults and just totally over my head, I don't know. I think Wynne Jones tried very hard to keep her story as true to the original as she could, but all that served to do was to make a fairly simple story into a mind-bender. That said, I really love the author's way with words. She uses simple words in really wonderful ways (see quote above) and it's a delight to read them. I would say, though, to read Howl's Moving Castle if you want a fun, more heart-warming read, and keep this one on the shelf until you want to dig yourself really deep into mythology and gender wars!

Also, if anyone can recommend a version of Tam Lin for me to pick up and read, I would greatly appreciate it!

I am taking an exam on Saturday, but I hope to post the first of Rosie's Riveters soon! Thank you to everyone who commented and who contacted me privately with interest in participating- I think it's going to be a lot of fun :-)

Rosie's Riveters (?)

I have been mulling over the idea of a weekly themed post for some time now. I admit, it's mostly because everyone else seems to have one or do one, and while I don't think I blog regularly enough to take part in something like Teaser Tuesdays or Mailbox Mondays or all the others, I thought it would be fun to have a weekly or bi-weekly guest blogging event. I feel like it may be bi-weekly because I am not sure how many people actually read this blog, so if it were weekly, it might not last long at all ;-)

My idea is to have each guest blogger answer a set of questions about Females in Literature. As most people reading this blog know, I find a great many female characters to be completely ridiculous and unsympathetic. Therefore, when I find one that I really like, I feel thrilled and want to share my new friend with all the world. I am sure (well, at least I hope)there are others out there who feel the same. So, on a somewhat regular basis (depending on how many people want to participate), I propose to have people post on here about women in books that they either really adore or really hate- both are totally acceptable. All that need happen is that the woman is riveting, for some reason, like our WWII friend Rosie above. I can make up a form of questions to answer, or it can be a more free-form post, if people wish it. But basically, it would just entail talking about a certain character and why you love or hate her. It can be as impassioned or tongue-in-cheek as you'd like :-)

Please comment on this post if you'd like to participate, or e-mail me at the address on the upper right-hand side of this blog. You don't have to have a blog to participate, as I think I will probably copy and paste your responses from an e-mail here, anyway. All you have to do is feel strongly, one way or another, about a Female in Literature :-)

Hope some of you decide to join in! I think it would be fun and interesting to see how people react to different characters.

Review: Footsteps in the Dark

Title: Footsteps in the Dark

Author: Georgette Heyer

Publisher: Buccaneer Books

# of Pages: 310

Rating: 9/10

Favorite Line: "A remark more calculated to provoke a peaceful man to homicide I've never yet heard."

Product Description
The Priory may be ramshackled in appearance, but Peter, Margaret and Celia, who have inherited it from their uncle, love it for its rambling charm. But there's more to this house than is at first apparent: for years hardly a single person has set foot in the place, and even their uncle chose to live in a different house, far away from this particular property.

Local wisdom says that the house is haunted. And when things start going bump in the night, it certainly seems as if something ghostly is walking the Priory's halls. Then a murder is committed. Does the key to solving the crime lie in the realm of the supernatural? Or is the explanation much more down to earth?

Well, after Behold, Here's Poison, I got on a Heyer mystery reading kick. Here are all these books, sitting on my shelves and gathering dust when all three of the ones I've picked up have been good reading! I'll have to get through all the rest soon. I have actually been waiting (quite patiently, I feel) for David Liss's The Devil's Company to arrive in the mail. I've read both previous books in the Benjamin Weaver series and I'm really looking forward to reading this next one. However, it is still not here! This has given me the opportunity, though, to go more thoroughly over the books already on my shelves, which is fortunate.

It's funny sometimes, how books packed with so much excitement and memorable characters can just sit placidly on your shelf, waiting to be read. Footsteps in the Dark is a thriller mystery of the first order, complete with secret passageways, priest holes, skeletons and a cowled monk. Of all Heyer's historicals, it reminds me most of The Reluctant Widow (one of my absolute favorites!) with its full cast of characters, most of whom are related to each other. The book is full of hilarious one-liners and wonderful character interplay, Heyer's trademark. I find in books like this that I get so wrapped up in the chemistry between characters that the plot becomes secondary. It's unfortunate that character interaction is so hard to review, really, since it is such an integral part of books. For example, in The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy, I don't think there was any chemistry between Darcy and Lord Byron, and it made the book hard going. Conversely, in Footsteps in the Dark, the characters (Charles in particular, playing against Peter) all deal splendidly together, and the book is a great romp because of it.

I am thoroughly enjoying rediscovering Heyer, this time from the perspective of reading her mysteries set in Britain between the wars. She is light-hearted and fun, but the plots are all interesting and well planned. I prefer this one to Behold, Here's Poison, mainly because the characters are far more likeable and the plot develops in a more compelling way. Highly recommended!

The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy

Title: The Private Diary of Mr. Darcy

Author: Maya Slater

Publisher: W. W. Norton

# of Pages: 324

Rating: 5/10

This review is based on an advance reader's copy.

From Booklist
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy is one of the most fascinating heroes in literature. Other writers have tried, with varying degrees of success, to capture some of that old Darcy magic. This time around, we are made privy to Darcy’s secret diary. Though the story presented in the diary entries adheres to the structure of Pride and Prejudice, the Bennets, even including Elizabeth herself, are very much in the background, while other characters, such as the Bingleys and Darcy’s sister Georgiana, play a larger role. While trying to fend off his growing attachment to Lizzie, “an undersized young lady of doubtful family,” Darcy recounts his day-to-day activities—managing his estate, looking after his sister, engaging in pastimes with his disreputable friend Lord Byron that would make the ladies at Longbourn blush. Austen knockoffs should always be judged on their own merits, and if the Darcy presented here isn’t quite her Darcy, or yours, the book is still a smart and entertaining period piece.

I respectfully disagree with Booklist on this novel. I have always been very wary of fan fiction novels, and there is an overabundance of published Jane Austen fan fiction. But what can I say- I love Mr. Darcy! At least, I love Jane Austen's Mr. Darcy. I don't really care for Maya Slater's one way or another.

Mr. Darcy has always seemed to me a brooding and mysterious man who, very much against his will, falls in love with a bright and lovely young woman who is his social inferior. He is not boring. He certainly is not the sort of person who would be friends with Lord Byron. He is not unfashionable, and he certainly doesn't spend his days cataloging his library. However, that is who he is to Maya Slater, which is unfortuate. I am not entirely sure why Maya Slater even likes Darcy, based on her portrayal of him.

One thing that annoyed me, period-wise, in this book: Darcy refers to Bingley's sisters as Mrs. Luisa and Miss Caroline. This is incorrect for Regency language; they should have been Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley (unless there is another older, single sister present. This was not the case). I know it is a small detail, but detail is very important in historical fiction!

Also, I just do not understand how Mr. Darcy (and to an even greater extent, Mr. Bingley) could have possibly been friends with someone like Lord Byron. They spend a great deal of time together in the book, and it just does not work, chemistry-wise. I feel that Slater introduced Byron to the novel so that she could share some of the more risque aspects of Regency life. However, I don't think Darcy was really the sort who would do such things. He is, after all, very proud of how proper he is. I am not saying he went to his wedding night a sainted virgin, but I can't imagine that he was nearly as dissolute as Slater makes him out to be in this novel.

My biggest complaint, though, is that Darcy in Slater's novel is just boring. He is not a three-dimensional character at all. In the novel, he barely even interacts with Elizabeth Bennet, so it is very hard to see how he falls in love with her. He spends a lot of time mulling things over (which, granted, goes well with his brooding character). Most of his diary entries, in my opinion, are quite dull. He talks about going shooting, cataloging books, feeling guilty about Charles Bingley, and remembering Elizabeth Bennet's eyes. It is interesting insofar as we get a glimpse of his relationships with his sister, with Lady de Burgh and with Caroline Bingley, but we do not really get to know Darcy himself. Even in his diary, he seems to hold himself just aloof enough to withhold any information we really want to know. And since the plot, really, follows the same timeline as Pride & Prejudice, and we know, generally, what will happen... this book didn't really add much to my experience of Jane Austen's novel. If you want to read Pride & Prejudice, then read the original. If you want to read it from Darcy's point of view, I have it on good authority that Pamela Aidan's series is the best. And if you want to see a fantastically brooding Darcy... then go find Colin Firth!

Review: Behold, Here's Poison

Title: Behold, Here's Poison

Author: Georgette Heyer

Publisher: Sourcebooks

# of Pages: 336

Rating: 8/10

Product Description

Experience Georgette Heyer's sparkling dialogue in one of her most popular mysteries.

It's no ordinary morning at the Poplars - the master is found dead in his bed and it turns out that his high blood pressure was not the cause of death. Heyer uses her attention to detail and brilliant characterizations to concoct a baffling crime for which every single member of the quarrelsome family has a motive, and none, of course, has an alibi. Heyer's sparkling dialogue is a master class in British wit, sarcasm and the intricacies of life above and below stairs.

Meet the Matthews - before the next one dies...
It's no ordinary morning at the Poplars - the master is found dead in his bed, and it seems his high blood pressure was not the cause. When an autopsy reveals a sinister poison, it's up to the quietly resourceful Inspector Hannasyde to catch the murderer in time to spare the next victim. But every single member of the quarrelsome Matthews family has a motive and none, of course, has an alibi.

I hate this particular cover of the novel. It has absolutely nothing to do with the novel. Why is there a woman a weird mask drinking a small glass of wine? I just finished reading the book and I can assure everyone that there are no masks in the book at all. And I have no idea who the woman on the cover is. She looks a bit possessed.

I am certainly not unbiased when it comes to Georgette Heyer. I adore her. She, probably even more so than Jane Austen, turned me onto my Georgian and Regency era obsesssion. I have read almost all of her historical novels, but this is only my second mystery. It is almost jarring to me to read her mysteries as they take place in the 20th century, and characters have cars and say such things as, "Oh, yeah." It makes me shudder- Heyer's characters, in my opinion, belong firmly to the era of curricles and post-chaises and phrases such as, "I knew he was a right one!"

But I digress. My favorite part of Heyer's novels is her sparkling wit. Her characters and the situations in which they are involved are hilarious and mostly unforgettable. (Well, they are the first time round. She does have a propensity to replay the same plots.) This same wit is definitely present in Behold, Here's Poison. There are hilarious lines in the book that just don't make sense taken out of context (hence no favorite line above), but will make you laugh out loud. I don't find any of the characters very likeable at all, but the interplay between them is fantastic. Randall, above and beyond, takes the cake. He is perfectly drawn- like the villain in a spy flick, he has the best lines. I highly recommend the book just to laugh out loud at his lines.

As far as the mystery goes- well, I don't know. It was a bit helter-skelter at the end, and even further muddled by a very shoddy (and, in my opinion, extremely ill-advised) romance between my beloved Randall and a very dull-witted young woman. And I don't really think it was possible to figure out the "bad person' until the very end. However, I've never been one to read a mystery for the... well, the mystery part. I like the tension and the character development. I can't say that many of the characters =developed= in this book; all of them finished the story with the same personality they had at the start. But the dynamics of being the end of a line of landed gentry living in a country home on the cusp of WWII are great, and I think Heyer shines in that regard. If you read this book for the mystery, you may be disappointed, but if you read it for the dialogue and the character interplay, you'll be rewarded.

Note: Females in the book are not portrayed in a very positive manner at all. Just something to keep in mind :-)

Review: The Wet Nurse's Tale

Title: The Wet Nurse's Tale

Author: Erica Eisdorfer

Publisher: Putnam

# of Pages: 256

Rating: 8.5/10

This review is based on an advance reader's copy.

Product Description
Susan Rose isn’t the average protagonist: she’s scheming, promiscuous, plump, and she is also smart, funny, tender, and entirely lovable. Like many lower-class women of Victorian England, she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it . . . with some help from, well, her breasts. Susan, you see, is a professional wet nurse; she breast-feeds the children of wealthy women who can’t or won’t nurse their own babies.

But when her own child is sold by her father and sent to a London lady who had recently lost a baby, Susan manages to convince his new foster mother, Mrs. Norbert, to hire her as a wet nurse. Once reunited with her son, Susan discovers the Norbert home to be a much more sinister place than she’d ever expected. Dark and full of secrets, its master is in India, and the first baby who died there did so under very mysterious circumstances. Susan embarks on a terrifying journey to rescue her son before he meets the same fate.

In both fantasy and historical fiction, the two genres in which I feel most at home, I think it's critical for the author to know the world in which she is writing. One of my best friends is disappointed by epic fantasy novels that do not have maps of the world created by the author. I don't blame her- if you create a world and write a story that takes place in it (generally involving a journey of some sort), you should know it well enough to map it. I am much the same way with books that take place in the past, particularly in the 19th century. I know that century pretty well (or, at least, I know it well compared to how well I know other centuries), especially as it pertains to Britain, and so it is integral to my enjoyment of books that take place in the Georgian, Regency or Victorian eras that they are true to their time period.

Erica Eisdorfer nails the Victorian era. She is on top of the class divide, the race divide and the gender divide. Her main character, Susan Rose, speaks in a working-class dialect that is neither stilted nor affected. I value this highly as it is a nuance that many authors cannot master. (See my review on Royal Blood here). Eisdorfer also introduces some characters only for the brief spell of one or two pages, each one sharing his or her reasons for hiring a wet nurse. These people, too, come alive off the page and you get to know their personalities very well, even if you only interact with them for two pages. I really enjoyed these vignettes that Eisdorfer put in at the end of every chapter. They were fun to read and would sometimes be alluded to later in the story as well. In fact, I feel certain that one of the vignettes has a large bearing on the end of the story, only I can't quite put my finger on how the two are connected. I will have to mull over that some more.

Susan, though, steals the show. She is so wonderfully real and easy to identify with. She does not beg for sympathy from anyone, and does not have stupid affectations to get attention. She is strong and kind and (drum roll, please) is the newest member of my Heroines Who Don't Annoy Me list! There has not been a new member to this list since Sal in The Secret River, which I reviewed well over a year ago, so clearly, I have been unimpressed with women in literary offerings for some time. Susan isn't the most fabulous and exciting woman in literature- she doesn't shine like Anne Shirley or intrigue like Helena Justina. But she sets her mind on a goal and goes for it, and one can't help admiring a woman for that.

The only quibble I had with this book was its unexpected plunge into a somewhat Gothic storyline. I did not see that coming at all, from the start, and the book was a bit darker than I expected because of it. But the story is compelling and plausible, and Eisdorfer knows her Victorians. I'd highly recommend the book to any fans of historical fiction!

Review: Darkwood

Title: Darkwood

Author: M.E. Breen

Publisher: Bloomsbury

# of Pages: 273

Rating: 5/10

This review is based on an advance readers' copy.

Product Description

Darkness falls so quickly in Howland that the people there have no word for evening. One minute the sky is light, the next minute it is black. But darkness comes in other forms, too, and for thirteen-year-old Annie, the misery she endures in her Uncle’s household makes the black of night seem almost soothing. When Annie escapes, her route takes her first to a dangerous mine where a precious stone is being stolen by an enemy of the king, and later to the king’s own halls, where a figure from Annie’s past makes a startling appearance. All the while, reported sightings of kinderstalk— mysterious, wolf-like creatures that prowl Howland’s dark forests—grow more frequent. Eloquent, suspenseful, and imbued with fairy-tale motifs found in The Brothers Grimm, this is a riveting coming-of-age story of a girl who must learn to trust her instincts if she’s to lead the people she is destined to rule.

This book seemed right up my alley when I requested it through Amazon Vine- it is fantasy for young adults (and really- who would disagree that children's & young adult fantasy is not where it's at, these days?), involves a girl overcoming obstacles and has been compared to fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. It also has very nice cover art. However, as sometimes happens in life, all these separate, excellent elements did not come together to make a great story.

Darkwood is the first in a series. It does not say this anywhere on the cover or in the book, so I went into the book thinking it was a stand-alone. You can imagine my annoyance when I got to the end- a cliffhanger, of course- and none of the storylines had really been resolved. I think the author tried to put far too many elements of the story into too small a book. It weighs in at less than 300, large-texted pages, and yet involves countless characters, seemingly random (and pointless?) plot twists and all sorts of other confusing things. The shifts in scenes were often jarring and had no sort of transition. All in all, I found it very muddled.

That said, I feel like some of my annoyances could be ironed out in future novels. This is Breen's first novel, and it's the first in a series, so it's possible that my utter bewilderment with some plot elements is temporary and all will become clear in future books. There are some characters- the king and his fiancee, and the loveable sisters Beatrice and Serena, in particular- that I would love to see develop and come into their own.

I don't know, though, that I feel vested enough in the series to continue. This isn't an author I am going to watch, and it isn't a series for which I will eagerly anticipate the next book. Personally, I think that if you are a fan of young adult dark fantasy (and it's pretty dark for its age group), then there are many other series out there that you could read instead for better enjoyment.

Double Moon

Title: Double Moon

Authors: Margo Klass & Frank Soos

Publisher: Boreal Books

# of Pages: 67

Favorite Line:
What's so bad about not knowing exactly where you are? To round the corner and be taken by surprise? To look out the window and find a new world is waiting outside? With my driver's license safely in my pocket, I have permission to get out and go, to find a place where I might learn better who I am.

I received this book for free to review.

Product Description
At the heart of this collaboration is the complex interplay between two spirited minds. Each of Margo Klass's box constructions is an invitation to enter among objects in space and make of them what one might. Frank Soos has taken up that invitation. Margo's constructions and Frank's responses talk to each other, sometimes agreeably, sometimes ironically, sometimes earnestly, and sometimes flippantly. This collection stands as a representation of five years of their aesthetic sparring. Whoever picks up this book is invited to play along.

I imagine a published collaboration between my close friend Beth Rooney and her sister Kathleen Rooney would be something like this book. Beth is a fantastic photographer and Kathy is a much-lauded poet. And, well, Margo Klass is an artist and Frank Soos is a writer. It's not too odd a comparison to make. In any case, when I was offered this book and read its synopsis- a collaboration of art and prose between two people- I immediately thought of the Rooneys and accepted the offer. I'm glad I did- this was fun!

I do not have much experience with either poetry or art, so I can't really rate those aspects- hence, I will not rate the book here. But in terms of creativity and interest, it ranks pretty highly. This book gives readers the ability to get inside someone else's head. It's like going to an art museum and having access to the internal reactions of the (very articulate and erudite) guy next to you, at each and every exhibit.

That was the most fascinating part to me. My approach to this book was as follows:

1. Look closely at the photos of Margo Klass's art, trying hard not to peek at Frank Soos' words. This, I admit, was sometimes a lesson in futility. Klass really, really likes egg-shaped stones. That's all I can really say for sure. All her works are interesting and fun to examine, though. Really fun uses of common objects.

2. Form my own, however hazy, thoughts and reactions to the piece.

3. Read Frank Soos' short paragraph/poem relating to the piece.

4. Be stumped.

5. Look back at Klass's art after reading the paragraph and attempt to find what led Frank down his path, so vastly different than mine. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

I don't know if that makes sense at all, but it is pretty fun to do! Really, it opens up a huge realm of possibilities. Often, with modern art, you don't really know what you're going to get. But I never considered the huge realm of possibilities that exist for interpretation. Two people can look at the exact same thing and have completely different reactions to it. And this book highlights that- you bring your own life experiences and memories and passions to art, and those are reflected in your experience of it. It's very interactive, and Double Moon gives you the ability to do it with someone else. Read it with your friends and family, and see how you all react to the art. If you're a museum nerd like I am, I think you'll really enjoy it.

Here is a very good review of this book.