Falling in

I felt surprisingly good yesterday--no hangover, no sleep lost to reflux, and my cold no worse. As monshu was preparing the broth for the lamb gravy, I told him I wanted to come along on the Clark Street errands. I was almost as surprised at myself as he was.

We started off at Foster and worked our way north. That gave us an opportunity to check out the new pet shop, Jameson Loves Danger, which is finally open in the old Fast Frame space. What it lacks in size and selection, it makes up for in cleanliness, freshness, and convenience. Ruff 'n Stuff should be worried. I asked about a replacement clump of feathers for our cat's favourite toy; we were told those hadn't come in yet, but the clerk quickly found us a comparable substitute. They also carry his favourite dry food.

We also passed by the chain-bistro replacement for Prestige. A couple of bear pals of mine were inside about to order lunch; I told them to give me a report. On the way out, I looked over the menu and noticed that their croque monsieur is made with béchamel. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? It was another reminder that I'd blown off breakfast, so I talked the Old Man into letting me stop in the Jewish deli for a bagel. While there I saw a family unit leave disappointed that the New York-style bagels weren't actually flown in from NYC. (monshu heard them complain of "false advertising" on the way out.)

After that, we dropped into Gethsemane for mums. The caladiums aren't going to hold out much longer in this weather and it would be nice to replace them with something colourful for the last month or so of making use of the back deck. I saw a lovely container for the front yard at a nice price, but the GWO didn't want to put money down on it without consulting with the remaining members of the landscaping committee. I protested that they certainly never consulted with us before making their purchases, but that's just not how the man operates. Hopefully it will still be there later this week.

Once home, I called my mother and we talked for nearly two hours. Some of that was getting family news, notably an update on her visit to her cousins in Dallas, but much of it was stepping waist-deep into a kerfuffle between her and my sister over the genealogical materials collected by my deceased aunt. She'd been tight-fisted with them during her life, so Mom saw her opportunity to make off with a box and did it. Problem is my sister had already assumed responsibility for the collection and she didn't want it broken up before we could take inventory of what we had.

All of this touched a raw nerve of Mom's and exposed a much deeper rift than anyone was expecting, which led to a furious phone call last Thursday from my sister looking to vent. I told them they clearly needed to sit down together and look beyond the specific incident so they could air some of the grievances they've let fester. (My mom is a terrific one for doing that.) Today I heard that they'd done that and it ended without resolving anything. That's no surprise to me; I told them issues this big and emotional are going to take several sessions to deal with properly.

Meanwhile, the Old Man was roasting a leg of lamb, baking mashed potatoes, and sautéeing green beans and squash in sage butter. He washed his down with a Muga which I regretfully allowed myself only a sip of. Afterwards we sat outside on the porch to make short work of a honeycrisp apple, some roast almonds, and a healthy chunk of smoked cheddar (which he washed down with some Laphraoig). We also booked the tickets for our trip to St Louis in November for Dad's 70th, which briefly resulted in a near heart attack for me when I saw the prices and thought they'd doubled since last I checked them. (In my defence, I have never ever booked Amtrak tickets for two before, so it was natural that I would forget I was looking at combined fares.)

Thanks to my sobriety, I didn't suffer from reflux last night, but I did wake up around 4 a.m. all the same and struggle to fall asleep for over an hour. As a result, I had a sluggish morning and missed the shuttle. (I probably could've made it if not for the added handicap of having to rehang the shower curtain after letting the liner dry out.) Actually, the rub of it was that I probably could've left late and still made it, given how delayed the next one was (construction on LSD for the next six weeks). Fortunately, it was an easy day, even if it did involve sorting through twenty five applications for my open position, half of which seem to have been submitted by people who didn't actually read the description.

Who's afraid of the big bad witch?

Just finished Okorafor's Who fears death and I found it somewhat disappointing, so I logged on to look for reviews. I'm glad someone reminded me that she's primarily a young adult author, since that helps clear up a problem I was having with the diction. In general, the descriptive text has a poetic sweep appropriate to epic fantasy, and that can make the occasional casual colloquialism a bit jarring. I was trying to interpret these as conscious attempts to remind us the setting is postapocalyptic (i.e. today's slang is tomorrow's hoary archaicism) but it seems to more natural to regard them as bleedover from writing in a simpler register.

Really, the far-futurity was probably the least successful aspect in my eyes. I think I would rather not have known that and just taken the milieu for a fantasy Africa That Never Was. Electronics coexist with iron-age tech and a manner that's never adequately accounted for. At one point, for instance, it's revealed that devices from before the Collapse were less slim and compact than the models the characters buy in markets, but who's making and maintaining them in a world where "blacksmith" is a reasonable job title? There are echoes of modern Africa, where the local industries are agricultural and extractive and high tech necessarily comes from elsewhere, but if this is still the case, why do we never see or hear anything of the tech-bearing outlanders?

For anyone weaned on Tim Powers and Poul Anderson, like I was, the magic system isn't very satisfyingly coherent. Early on, she takes incredible pains to demonstrate that Great Power Has Great Consequences, only to seemingly ignore it at critical junctures. And it's simply risible to have one of the most powerful sorcerers on the planet--who can shapechange or step into the Otherworld at will--unable to come up with any other way to propel a sputtering motorboat than to start paddling with her hands. The outlines of a structure are there, but it never really jelled for me in a way that I could predict what each opponent's powers would be in a contest.

This last weakness was particularly detrimental in the final conflict, which was settled in what I felt was a macguffinny way. Again, particularly disappointing in light of the brilliant work she had done of escalating confrontations between the protagonist (naturally gifted, but lacking control) and the Big Bad (and I don't hesitate to call him that either due to his relative lack of development). The basic plot, incidentally, is Elf of Destiny, which I generally have very limited patience for, but the novelty of the setting and the details brought forth loads of goodwill.

The kudos she's gotten for incorporating very weighty political topics in a visceral and realistic manner are deserved, since she really manages to do so in a way that feels non-exploitative and integral to the novel. The sexism of the social system makes sense given her interest in exploring the sociopolitics of modern Africa, but it seemed quaint against the contemporary feel of the younger characters' interactions. Maybe I'm just more optimistic about the worldwide spread of feminist ideas, but what are the chances that centuries from now we'll be refighting more or less the same battles for equality that are going on now in backwaters of the developed world?

The numerous references to the Palm Wine Drunkard of Tutuola's eponymous work clued me in that there were some interesting conversations going on between this novel and modern West African literature that I was missing out on because I haven't really read beyond Achebe (another reason why I was Googling for commentary). Hopefully I'm in for some nice aha-moments when I do finally get around to reading him, Okri, et al. I'm also hoping to stumble across some of the terms she uses in other contexts--the language is something of a mish-mash, so I'm not even sure where to start looking (though "Onyesonwu" and "Nsibidi" are straight-up Igbo, and "Okeke" may come from Igbo oke "man; great").