Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Honorable mentions go to Cheyenne McCray, for her set of entries:

Taking it Public (I get off on being watched)
You’re Doing it Wrong (It goes in the other way)
Balcony Love (since we can’t have Sex on the Beach)
The Mummy Princess (try getting out of this dress)
Tie Me Up (and then tie me down)

Pardon Me. (Do you have any Grey Poupon?)

Ms Manna, for “Sorry, honey.  Not in my box.”

Andie G for She had a trick hip and liked an audience.

Together, they shared a magical, bend-y love that knew no bounds in their GILDED CAGE.

Galadriel for Even after squeezing the sandworm into the dress and clapping a wig on its head, Paul Atreides wasn’t sure the illusion quite hid its undulating form. Still, if dressing it up and taking it out was what was required, then so be it. After all, the spice must flow.

And Evabaruk for: It was only five minutes into his new burlesque ventriloquism act, that the audience turned their backs on Rory.

Special mention to Yvette Davis for making me say, “OMG! EW! HA!” out loud to my monitor with, “Meanwhile, out in the lobby, Romeo and Juliet discovered the secret ingredient that makes butter-flavored movie popcorn so slippery ... yet salty.”

Congratulations, and thanks for playing! 

Jane: I read Cavendish first, just for the fun of it and ultimately liked Cavendish better because I thought Amelia was slightly more interesting and thought Thomas’ dilemma better written (having a dukedom potentially torn from you had to be really horrible).

Jack’s life in Wyndham seems fairly satisfactory and even his past drama wasn’t wrought enough in the beginning to make me really root for him.  I thought Grace was toothless.

There’s a definite difficulty level in writing two stories that overlap the same time period and include the same scenes.  I thought that while this was innovative, reading the stories back to back showed some problems such as the repetition of significant chunks of dialogue.  I would have liked to seen a lot less of the overlapping dialogue and other ways of retelling the same story whether it was using some other characters or what not.

You?

Sarah: Ultimately I liked Wyndham better, but I thought the inner monologue of Jack the more interesting of the two men. That said, his attempts to subvert tension with unflappable humor and Thomas’ dilemma of having his dukedom ripped from him and his question as to what that leaves him with, and who ultimately he is, were equally fascinating. Grace was often toothless, but also as much a victim of circumstance as Jack, so their ability to relate to one another I found enticing to read about. And when Grace stood up for herself, such as the rare private moments where she teased Thomas, or made rather cutting jokes with her friends, her character was sparkling good fun.

What bothered me, as a result, was Thomas’ sudden realization of the degree to which Grace’s life sucks, because no one has put a limit on Evil Granny’s behavior.  While he was the duke, he could have done more - he admits it and he is ashamed of himself, but by the time the story rolls around, years of the status quo have made his admission a bit too small. Thomas holds Grace’s happiness in his hands to a much greater degree than he seems to realize - even as he treats her with extreme censure for not telling him about Jack’s existence.

I didn’t think the repeated dialogue was a problem, though. For one thing, the books aren’t going to be released simultaneously, so certain points that hinge the narratives together, like all parties present at the same scene, told from two different - or four different - perspectives didn’t bother me. But what I did want was more of the newer parts of the story when I read Cavendish after Wyndham. Granted I was reading them back to back as you were, so I knew what was happening and thus I wanted more of the newer perspective of Amelia or Thomas immediately following or during a matching scene that occurred in both books. So I found the ending of Cavendish very delicious, and was so curious what happened with Amelia and Thomas. The additional scenes in Cavendish revealed a very satisfying happy ending, which was doubly satisfying due to the fact that it was new, whereas the story told twice and read one after another was not as new by the time I was done. Wyndham‘s jump-forward into the merry rosy future bothered me because after all that neat-o innovation with romance storytelling, it was a very pedantic extra reinforcement of the happy ending.

Jane: I thought Jack being the happy go lucky guy with the smooth tongue was a great contrast with Thomas, but I felt that it wasn’t a contrast that was sharp enough unless you read both books.  I totally agree with Jack and Grace being victims of their circumstances, but the romance between the two of them (and between Thomas and Amelia) was tepid. 

I see your point about Thomas and I bet my preference is due to reading his book first and thus “bonding” with him in some sense. I thought the evil granny was wayyyyy more evil in book 1 than book 2.  In fact, the only evil-ness that I saw were the two scenes bossing Grace around.  I was really shocked when I read Wyndham as to how truly mean and degrading she was and did not understand AT ALL why Thomas hadn’t put his foot down.  I wished his evolution from being a self absorbed prig would have been more gradual.

I actually never totally bought into Thomas’ love for Amelia and I wondered if Amelia’s feelings weren’t just an extended crush on someone she thought she should have a crush on.  These women lacked grativas for me. 

The stories were very centered on Thomas and Jack and I think it would have benefited both stories to see a slower and deeper evolution of their co dependency.  I thought a co-dukeship would have been wonderful and I agree with you that the baby filled epilogue (that had no real purpose) was missing the point.

Sarah: Grace and Jack had a very limited time of exposure to one another, contrasted with a lifetime of forced encounters for Thomas and Amelia, who knew of each other their whole lives. I had to make a bit of a jump mentally to buy their whirlwind of a “OMG I want to be with you for EVAH” but because I liked Grace (and totally and deeply empathized with her being in an unpleasant position out of necessity and lack of acceptable alternatives) and I liked Jack, I was willing to do it. But then I question lately how much I as a reader overwrite - or underwrite - a romance I am rooting for, adding details and accessories to the relationship that the writer may not specifically include. I bet a whole shiny button that I have that tendency, but I don’t think I did it here. With four perspectives on the same story, there was plenty to chew on.

I am tickled that we have the same experience - I like Wyndham better than Cavendish because I read it first. However, I wasn’t feeling Wyndham‘s angst as much as Cavendish’s.

Jane: But then I question lately how much I as a reader overwrite - or underwrite - a romance I am rooting for, adding details and accessories to the relationship that the writer may not specifically include.

I totally do that, particularly when I am recommending a book that I think others won’t like.  I work extra hard to find reasons to support it.  But I think it’s somewhat of response to generating a defense.  I.e., how are you to justify liking a book if you can’t provide examples.  Is there something wrong with inference?  And perhaps that is the difference between liking and not liking a book.

Or it could be that our personal “bonds” with the characters turn those inferences positively or negatively.  Both these books are adequate and they get props for being overlapping, but both books suffered in detail so I would give them the same grade - C+ or B-

Sarah: As far as inference and supporting characters we like with details in our minds not written in the text, I am rather indulgent about it and thus second guess myself constantly on that basis. For example, as pertains to these books, I’ve worked in jobs that were in companies so small they fell below any regulation of labor or employee conduct, and that lack of oversight left me and other coworkers unprotected and subject to ridiculous expectations and abuse from management – often literally. That experience made me relate to Grace and access those feelings of being so very stuck and trying to make the best of it, and thus I rooted doubly hard for her, especially the upstairs/downstairs self-doubt that in the end Amelia told her was silly. And it was, really. I love how there’s this expectation of horrific holy shit stormfire gossip if a gently bred lady of no title marries a great big title, and that’s reason enough to stand in one’s own way toward happiness, but courtesans! Marrying their protectors! Oh, it’s So Romantic and utterly no one would ever snub their children, of course not! What?! The?! Fuck?!!.

What I liked about Grace’s predicament in Wyndham was that she was perfectly acceptable in her conduct and her family history except that she’d been working as a lady’s companion. Her knowledge of the “below stairs” culture and the working life suddenly made her “unacceptable” for some very flimsy reasons. I could easily support and believe their happy ending was possible with minimal exclusion from society - whereas other books that feature reformed hos marrying titled dudes left me thinking, “No way, dude.”

The other thing I liked about Grace was her restraint and her poise. I’ve been in Grace’s shoes in the distant past, and found myself managing my temper and never standing up for myself until it was time to declare that enough was long past enough. So because I read into Grace’s experience my own experience, I liked her a whole pile of Swarovski-crystal-encrusted a lot.

But if I think back on her dispassionately, I loved her more when she was with Thomas, and how she gently needled him, and I wish their friendship would have been more developed - because it’s a brave thing to have the hero befriend another woman who doesn’t turn out to be a villainess, but merely someone who’s in love with someone else. That’s a rather courageous decision to create in terms of heroine and heroine’s new friend creation (and leaves me wondering what will happen to Elizabeth). So big ups to Quinn on that score.

Gradewise, the combined books merit a B-. Wyndham I give a B, and Cavendish I’d give a C, so the average for both would be B-.

In this corner: Suzanne Vega discussing the remixes and interpolations of her song Tom’s Diner (duh duhduh duh, duh duhduh duh, duh duh duhduh na duhduh na...) and how she’s embraced them, even released compilations of various artists’ versions of the same song:

15 years later, “Tom’s Album” continues to sell. People think it is a bootleg and sidle up to me whispering, “Have you seen this? Someone put this together.”

“Yes. That someone was me.”

However, it was a logistical nightmare to administrate. I had to go back to all the people who had taken the song without permission, and ask their permission . . . to use their version of my song!

While still a defender of copyright protection - Vega met with the original remixers of the song, DNA, and arranged for a flat fee agreement after DNA had remixed the song in 1990 and sold it out of a corner store - her perspective is interesting, particularly in the context of isolation in which she wrote the song itself. (Also, the part about Vega’s role in the invention of the mp3 is freaking fascinating.)

And in this corner, we have Annie Proulx, who is pissed as hell about fanfic regarding her characters in Brokeback Mountain, particularly when they send her the product of their fanfic labors. Her response is rant-tastic, because she’s horrified that readers would rewrite her story with a happy ending, stating that:

There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story....

Most of these ‘fix-it’ tales have the character Ennis finding a husky boyfriend and living happily ever after, or discovering the character Jack is not really dead after all, or having the two men’s children meet and marry, etc., etc. Nearly all of these remedial writers are men, and most of them begin, ‘I’m not gay but….’ They do not understand the original story, they know nothing of copyright infringement—i.e., that the characters Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are my intellectual property....

Proulx then states that she thinks that the fanfic rewrites are motivated by the male writers’ feeling that they can write the story better than she, a woman, could. I don’t know about that, as it seems like a huge leap of guesswork to assume the motivations of a fanfic writer, but her perspective as to the ownership of the characters and the ending of their story is different from Vega’s eager collecting of variations, covers, and remixes of her song. I’d love to hear a debate with the two of them discussing intellectual property, and how fans interact with their artistic creations.

What do you think? Would you be irritated with someone taking your characters and writing fanfic about them? Do you think someone who seizes your characters and rewrites the ending is “exploring their fantasies” in a manner which you find objectionable? Or would you collect them for your own amusement? Where do you fall on the Vega/Proulx continuum?

Thanks to Karen and December for the links.

I mentioned while I was reading the book earlier this month that Mohammed ruled and Aisha was a bit of an idiot. That opinion did not hold: Aisha remained an idiot, but Mohammed’s character became less heroic as the book continued.

Aisha in this novel is very young, starting from about age 6. For that reason, Aisha has a lot of growing up to do, which was completely understandable, but there were plenty of times I wanted to march into the desert and beat her with the wooden spoon of GetaClue because MY HOLY FREAKING COW could she act like a complete freaking idiot. She makes the same mistakes over and over and over again. Speaking without thought, putting herself first over everyone else, jumping to conclusions: name an immature behavior and it’ll be in there somewhere. I couldn’t figure out if I was holding her to a much higher standard given the life expectancy and relative age of maturity at the time, but she remained stubbornly doltish long after I’d expected her to at least wise up a bit.

The narrative begins with Aisha as a young child playing with friends, including the object of her youthful crush, Safwan, who even then was a completely selfish tool. She finds herself in purdah from age 6 as the intended wife of Mohammed, and is shut in her home from that day until her marriage. Then the story shifts after her marriage to her life as the second wife of Mohammed, as she grows up in his household, living in a very uncertain time as Mohammed’s teachings began to spread, and as his fame and prominence brought more wives to his household. Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, Aisha holds onto a fantasy of personal liberty, riding, fighting, and living the life a man would - without any explanation as to why she felt it could possibly be an option for her.

Aisha also spends much of the novel desperate to catch Mohammed’s attention. Despite a revelation from Allah that he only have four wives, he keeps marrying and demonstrating a marked tendency to let lust cloud his clear judgment, if the narration of Aisha and the comments of his other wives are to be believed. If Aisha’s status as a virgin is revealed within the household, she would lose her status as head wife and would suffer for it, to say nothing of the undermining of Mohammed’s alliance with her family. She loves him but is frustrated that he seems to see her only as a child. She is increasingly resistant to the requirements of Mohammed’s wives, which she views as increasing imprisonment, and thus she fantasizes about running away with Safwan. They’ll run to the Bedouin tribes, and she’ll be free - at least, she will in her imagination. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out why she expected this raging freedom, when certainly as a runaway wife of a religious prophet with a slowly growing collection of followers, she’d be immensely vulnerable to any number of factions. Aisha, in short, spends a great deal of the story acting like a complete freaking bonehead, and her lack of ability to learn from her bad decisions made it increasingly difficult to root for her.

One part I missed and wished had been more thoroughly explicated, as it would have supported the integrity of Mohammed’s character, was the section wherein Mohammed teaches Aisha, starting nearly from the date of their wedding, how to defend herself with a sword. While later in the novel she and the other wives are ordered to be veiled in public and are required to be models of decorum and modesty, the idea of Mohammed teaching Aisha to be a master swordswoman is fascinating, and I wish it hadn’t been skipped in the narrative, particularly as it would have allowed a glimpse into Mohammed’s interaction with Aisha while she was married to him but still a child.

Mohammed’s nobility and honor suffer a good bit in this novel, and in my uneducated opinion, that element might be one point Muslim readers find most offensive. While Mohammed had several revelations from Allah in the course of his life, The Jewel of Medina only shows those which pertained to decisions that affected Aisha and the other wives, such as the requirement that they be veiled, or the establishment of Aisha’s innocence after returning to the caravan with Safwan. His revelations appear at very convenient times, allowing Mohammed to roll on the floor incoherent, then stand up and absolve himself of any responsibility, claiming that his next edict was the will of Allah. The use of revelations to limit the freedom of his wives underscored the degree to which women were subject to men at that time, and made Mohammed seem more of a shyster than a prophet. While in the beginning, his patient love for Aisha was rather wonderful to read about, Mohammed’s behavior reveals a character who could be interpreted as flawed, weak, potentially manipulative, and one whose honor may be suspect—not exactly what one wants in a religious leader. Using Allah’s revelations and his own reputation of faith to justify or strategically avoid consequences for poor choices does not a hero make. And the manner in which Mohammed’s revelations come about leaves a lot of room for doubt and misinterpretation.

The book disappointed me as a reader because it lacked the depth and nuance I expect from historical fiction, particularly historical fiction based on women in religion. The Red Tent is in my opinion a more sophisticated book that parallels current attitudes toward sex and autonomy, even though I know many readers who thought Diamant’s portrayal of Dinah was overwrought and utterly fluffy. The Jewel of Medina reads flatly and suffered from its lack of complexity, particularly as a vehicle for introducing readers to the foundation of Islam. Aisha doesn’t come across as a matriarch or a figure of female leadership - her leadership is barely exhibited. Instead, it’s a tale of a boneheaded girl who selfishly covets an iconoclastic fantasy life, and who wises up at the brink of “almost too late.”

Aisha realizes that by deliberately staying behind the caravan to run off with Safwan, she is setting up her family for ruin, and her husband for failure as a spiritual leader among very devoted followers. Her rashness, which she realizes literally inches from disaster, would cause her entire family to be in disgrace for the rest of their lives, and would mean her parents would have to pretend as if she were dead. Ultimately, it’s the realization that, if she did run away with Safwan and disgrace Muhammad, no one would revere the name “Aisha” after her death. Yet again, Aisha’s ego trumps her reason, even if this time her reasoning is finally, finally, omg FINALLY in the right direction.

The honorable aspects of Aisha’s history as discussed elsewhere in accounts of the founding of Islam reveal her skills as a leader in war, her role as a matriarch and as the most beloved of Mohammad’s wives. (I hesitate to use the word “harem” though the book does so, because I don’t believe it’s entirely correct in this context.) Those moments of leadership are not in this book, save for a very few, and when the narrative ends with Mohammed’s death, Aisha’s story ends as well. From what I’ve learned since the controversy of the book first appeared, Aisha’s status as one of the revered women of Islam is based on her life following the death of the prophet. The limited scope of the novel is therefore a disappointment because the depth of Aisha’s accomplishments are not realized in her role as Mohammed’s wife, but in what she does after Mohammed’s death. The book doesn’t mention any of her scholarship or her collection of the hadith’s of Mohammed, and the story itself lends little to the reader’s understanding of why Aisha is referred to as “the one who affirms the Truth.”

Ultimately, this is a story of a young woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances who gets in her own way as she struggles to grow the hell up already, and that story ends before the reader can truly ascertain that Aisha has indeed grown up. To answer Spellberg’s accusations that this was “soft-core pornography” and “deliberate misinterpretation of history,” I still think she ought to put a sock in it and send herself to the naughty and silent corner. It’s not porny, not by a long shot. It does, however, contain narrative flaws and a lack of depth and development of the characters that would have created a very satisfying read.  I kept reading to learn more about the setting, the time period, and the foundation of Islam, but not because the couple who featured so prominently in the narrative held my attention. Curiosity, not compulsion, drove me to finish the book. If the controversy didn’t surround this novel, it would have come and gone like Hoobastank: quiet and forgettable.