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Oct. 1st, 2003 03:30 pmI finished Egalia's Daughters a few days ago. It was moderately interesting, although definitely not something I would have chosen to read for myself. I tend to favor books that are very character-driven, which this book certainly was not. It reminded me of books like Animal Farm and Brave New World, where the characters function strictly as symbols, and the author makes no attempt to go any deeper than that. This is all perfectly fine, and typical for this type of satire, but is nonetheless not really my style.
The book had quite a few flaws but was a pretty quick read, which is good, because I think it's the kind of book that I wouldn't have been able to get through unless I did it all at once. I found that while I was reading the book, I was basically wrapped up in it, and it wasn't until after I put it down that I would begin to see the problems with it.
I think this book is very much a product of its time, and unfortunately, it doesn't do a very good job of transcending that. It speaks to the kind of world that Betty Friedan wrote about, and I suppose that it does so fairly effectively, but the world has changed a lot since then. The book would be much more interesting if it reflected our current society, in which discrimination against women certainly still exists, but is much subtler than the outright oppression Brantenberg describes. It would have been a much more complicated, and therefore more interesting book, if it had done so. But of course, the point of a book such as this is not to be complicated and interesting from a literary perspective, but rather to advance the author's political argument. In fact, one of my biggest complaints about this book is the fact that it is so simplistic. The only thing that Brantenberg is interested in is feminism, and she's willing to dumb down all the other aspects of the society that she's creating in order to focus exclusively on the gender relations in that society. I'd prefer her to entirely ignore the economy and class structure of Egalsund, rather than to present them as impossibly simplistic. It just makes the society seems even more absurd and hard to believe that it already is.
The other thing that bothered me about this book is the way in which Brantenberg would write about an incident that occurred in the lives of her characters, use that incident to illustrate a point, and then completely drop it as though it had never happened. The episode in which Petronius and Baldrian go to the "Pallurian" bar is a good example of this. There's all this buildup beforehand, and then they go and run into all sorts of people that they know, and even make out with each other, and by the next chapter it's like nothing even happened. Again, I think this is related to Brantenberg's narrow focus. She's so wrapped up in her feminist mission, that she doesn't want to get sidetracked by silly little things like following up on her characters' lives. That's fine for what this book is, but it's the kind of thing that really bothers me as a reader. I tend to care a lot more about the human elements of any story than I do about its themes and politics and any statements it may be making, and Brantenberg's priorities seem to be utterly the opposite of mine in this regard.
Aside from those problems, there were a few little nit-picky things that bothered me. I found the made up words like "wim", "manwom", "fele", and "mafele" to be just ludicrous. They were a little bit funny at first, but basically just ridiculous. And I'm not looking forward to sitting around at our book club meeting talking about what the woms said to the manwims and nonsense like that. Same with the names she uses. Why do some characters have perfectly normal names like Ruth, Christopher, and Liz, when other characters are named totally absurd things like Ba, Gro, Egg, and Fandango? A petty little annoyance, to be sure, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Bah. At least I got through the book, and it was only when I put it down and stopped to think for a few seconds that I began to realize that it wasn't very good, or even particularly intellectually sound. I can't really explain why this happened... If our book club meeting this weekend prompts any interesting thoughts about the book, I'll post them.
Since finishing Egalia's Daughters, I've been reading Real Time a book of short stories by Amit Chaudhuri. I've only read the first two stories so far, but both were good, although very understated.
The book had quite a few flaws but was a pretty quick read, which is good, because I think it's the kind of book that I wouldn't have been able to get through unless I did it all at once. I found that while I was reading the book, I was basically wrapped up in it, and it wasn't until after I put it down that I would begin to see the problems with it.
I think this book is very much a product of its time, and unfortunately, it doesn't do a very good job of transcending that. It speaks to the kind of world that Betty Friedan wrote about, and I suppose that it does so fairly effectively, but the world has changed a lot since then. The book would be much more interesting if it reflected our current society, in which discrimination against women certainly still exists, but is much subtler than the outright oppression Brantenberg describes. It would have been a much more complicated, and therefore more interesting book, if it had done so. But of course, the point of a book such as this is not to be complicated and interesting from a literary perspective, but rather to advance the author's political argument. In fact, one of my biggest complaints about this book is the fact that it is so simplistic. The only thing that Brantenberg is interested in is feminism, and she's willing to dumb down all the other aspects of the society that she's creating in order to focus exclusively on the gender relations in that society. I'd prefer her to entirely ignore the economy and class structure of Egalsund, rather than to present them as impossibly simplistic. It just makes the society seems even more absurd and hard to believe that it already is.
The other thing that bothered me about this book is the way in which Brantenberg would write about an incident that occurred in the lives of her characters, use that incident to illustrate a point, and then completely drop it as though it had never happened. The episode in which Petronius and Baldrian go to the "Pallurian" bar is a good example of this. There's all this buildup beforehand, and then they go and run into all sorts of people that they know, and even make out with each other, and by the next chapter it's like nothing even happened. Again, I think this is related to Brantenberg's narrow focus. She's so wrapped up in her feminist mission, that she doesn't want to get sidetracked by silly little things like following up on her characters' lives. That's fine for what this book is, but it's the kind of thing that really bothers me as a reader. I tend to care a lot more about the human elements of any story than I do about its themes and politics and any statements it may be making, and Brantenberg's priorities seem to be utterly the opposite of mine in this regard.
Aside from those problems, there were a few little nit-picky things that bothered me. I found the made up words like "wim", "manwom", "fele", and "mafele" to be just ludicrous. They were a little bit funny at first, but basically just ridiculous. And I'm not looking forward to sitting around at our book club meeting talking about what the woms said to the manwims and nonsense like that. Same with the names she uses. Why do some characters have perfectly normal names like Ruth, Christopher, and Liz, when other characters are named totally absurd things like Ba, Gro, Egg, and Fandango? A petty little annoyance, to be sure, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Bah. At least I got through the book, and it was only when I put it down and stopped to think for a few seconds that I began to realize that it wasn't very good, or even particularly intellectually sound. I can't really explain why this happened... If our book club meeting this weekend prompts any interesting thoughts about the book, I'll post them.
Since finishing Egalia's Daughters, I've been reading Real Time a book of short stories by Amit Chaudhuri. I've only read the first two stories so far, but both were good, although very understated.
