![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Reviews - Rachel Swirsky
Jun. 9th, 2011 01:04 pmA Memory of Wind (Rachel Swirsky)
When I saw a review of this book, and found out I could download it free from Tor.com (here), I was intrigued. I love stories about Greek myth -- actually, retellings of any myth -- and especially those which bring back the lost voices of women of these stories. So I downloaded it right away. It's a short story, really, so it doesn't take very long to read, and it drew me in from the first paragraphs: the way she describes Iphigenia going toward the sacrifice, losing everything she had before, is amazing.
There was one moment at the beginning which put me off, and that was the description of Odysseus as really wanting war. If I remember rightly, in the Iliad, he actually pretends to be mad to avoid going to war, and is only pulled into it when they prove he's sane by the fact that he won't run over his son with the plow he's using.
I liked the view of Clytemnestra this offered -- the moment in the cart when Iphigenia looks at her mother's hands, knotted by arthritis. That's a really powerfully real image, to me.
The writing is poetic, evocative. I really liked it, and especially the very last paragraph, which works so well.
The Monster's Million Faces (Rachel Swirsky)
This short story is available at Tor.com, here. I didn't like it as much as The Memory of Wind; Rachel Swirsky's writing is as effective, here -- more to the point, perhaps, sharper, somehow -- but it didn't sink its hooks into me. Perhaps because I didn't let it, because I've had therapy, and it is hard, and this situation just seemed... too easy. Even though it takes so many tries for him to get something that worked, it still seemed too easy. Perhaps if there had been more doubt, more emptiness at the end -- maybe if it had ended on the line, 'No reason at all,' where the reader is left to do that bit more work. If the story ended there, you're left to wonder if that scenario really did ever lay anything to rest, or whether the narrator was still left without any help. I guess because I believe that everyone is different, that no one thing works for everyone. I do believe there is a cure for everyone, but I don't believe in forcing everyone down the same path. I wouldn't even want my mind altered in this way.
Maybe the technology is possible, maybe it will be like that one day, but for now it felt like cheating. It didn't ring true.
Eros, Philia, Agape (Rachel Swirsky)
Eros, Philia, Agape is lovely. It's available, like the other short stories by Rachel Swirsky that I've been reading, on Tor.com, here. It's a lovely story, which reminds me a little of Isaac Asimov's The Positronic Man -- except more emotional, more evocative, more tender and more sad. Despite how short it is, it creates a world and characters I fully believe in, and the writing is lovely. My heart was in my throat while reading parts of it, just for the aching tenderness in it.
I think perhaps my favourite detail is that little Rose wants to be a robot like her father. Of course she does, it makes so much sense, and the way she insists on it is just -- ouch, my heart.
Oh, and I love that there's a gay couple in the background, matter of fact and loving.
(A warning, though: there are brief descriptions of childhood abuse and rape. They're very brief and not explicit.)
When I saw a review of this book, and found out I could download it free from Tor.com (here), I was intrigued. I love stories about Greek myth -- actually, retellings of any myth -- and especially those which bring back the lost voices of women of these stories. So I downloaded it right away. It's a short story, really, so it doesn't take very long to read, and it drew me in from the first paragraphs: the way she describes Iphigenia going toward the sacrifice, losing everything she had before, is amazing.
There was one moment at the beginning which put me off, and that was the description of Odysseus as really wanting war. If I remember rightly, in the Iliad, he actually pretends to be mad to avoid going to war, and is only pulled into it when they prove he's sane by the fact that he won't run over his son with the plow he's using.
I liked the view of Clytemnestra this offered -- the moment in the cart when Iphigenia looks at her mother's hands, knotted by arthritis. That's a really powerfully real image, to me.
The writing is poetic, evocative. I really liked it, and especially the very last paragraph, which works so well.
The Monster's Million Faces (Rachel Swirsky)
This short story is available at Tor.com, here. I didn't like it as much as The Memory of Wind; Rachel Swirsky's writing is as effective, here -- more to the point, perhaps, sharper, somehow -- but it didn't sink its hooks into me. Perhaps because I didn't let it, because I've had therapy, and it is hard, and this situation just seemed... too easy. Even though it takes so many tries for him to get something that worked, it still seemed too easy. Perhaps if there had been more doubt, more emptiness at the end -- maybe if it had ended on the line, 'No reason at all,' where the reader is left to do that bit more work. If the story ended there, you're left to wonder if that scenario really did ever lay anything to rest, or whether the narrator was still left without any help. I guess because I believe that everyone is different, that no one thing works for everyone. I do believe there is a cure for everyone, but I don't believe in forcing everyone down the same path. I wouldn't even want my mind altered in this way.
Maybe the technology is possible, maybe it will be like that one day, but for now it felt like cheating. It didn't ring true.
Eros, Philia, Agape (Rachel Swirsky)
Eros, Philia, Agape is lovely. It's available, like the other short stories by Rachel Swirsky that I've been reading, on Tor.com, here. It's a lovely story, which reminds me a little of Isaac Asimov's The Positronic Man -- except more emotional, more evocative, more tender and more sad. Despite how short it is, it creates a world and characters I fully believe in, and the writing is lovely. My heart was in my throat while reading parts of it, just for the aching tenderness in it.
I think perhaps my favourite detail is that little Rose wants to be a robot like her father. Of course she does, it makes so much sense, and the way she insists on it is just -- ouch, my heart.
Oh, and I love that there's a gay couple in the background, matter of fact and loving.
(A warning, though: there are brief descriptions of childhood abuse and rape. They're very brief and not explicit.)
