Fall TBR Reading

 Here are some titles from my official TBR list that I just haven't written about yet!

 Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I saved this one for October, for an official RIP read. 

And wow, this is a spooky story!  It's the 1950s, and Noemí is a debutante out for a good time in Mexico City.  Her father sends her down to the countryside to check on her cousin Catalina, who married last year in a romantic whirl.  Noemí arrives at a classic Gothic scene: a mouldering family mansion on a misty mountain, and....this is a strange place.  The silver mine that gave the Doyle family their wealth has been closed down for years, the house is festooned with mold, and everyone is very strange.  Catalina seems to be ill.  Her husband Virgil is creepy, but not as creepy as his elderly father is.  Just one family member, Francis, seems friendly, if shy and something of a weak character.  As Noemi unravels the dark family history and the secrets of the house, we wonder if she and Catalina will be able to escape at all.

This is a nightmarish story.  It is so good.  Just beautifully written, Noemí is a great protagonist, the whole thing is fantastic.  I should have read it years ago but it always takes me a long time to get around to anything.  A perfect RIP read, for sure!

 

Ransom for a Knight, by Barbara Leonie Picard:  This really charming middle-grade novel is on the long side for a modern audience, but it's a great story.  It's 14th century England; Edward II is king, and Alys de Renneville is mourning for her father and brother, lost at Bannockburn.  An old soldier turns up, wounded and ill, and tells Alys that her father and brother are in fact held hostage in Scotland and waiting to be ransomed -- and then he becomes delirious.  Nobody believes Alys, so it's up to her and the servant Hugh to run away and travel up to Scotland with a ransom.  They are ten and 14, and they're starting from the southern coast of Sussex.

It's a tour of 14th-century England, to a large extent.  Alys and Hugh see it all as they make their way -- excruciatingly slowly -- through the country.  They meet kind people, cheating innkeepers, thieves, farmers, and even a village witch.  It's beautifully done.  And, to my delight, Alys is not only a real little girl, who has trouble behaving -- she's a realistically medieval person, not a 20th century one.  And she enjoys embroidery!

 

The World of Odysseus, by M. I. Finley:  Finley published his classic study many years ago, but it still makes good reading.  His goal was to explain the world that Homer was describing, which is one that is partly historical and partly fiction, and that has to be teased out from the text.  It's an era known as the Greek Dark Ages, when there was no writing and we have no history, but some archaeological remains.  We know they had bronze armor and helmets often made from tusks, but the palaces Homer gives the various rulers existed only in imagination.  All economy rested on the oikos, the extended household owned by a prominent man and run by his wife, and much depended on networks of generous gift-giving to guest-friends.  It was a web of interconnecting debts and favors owed.  Finley spends a lot of time on the situation at Ithaca, with Penelope fending off lots of predatory young men who want to marry her in order to control Odysseus' property, and on the way these kings governed; there were intricate rules about council meetings and who could speak or make decisions.

It's very interesting!  Recommended to anyone interested in ancient Greece.

The High Book of the Grail (Perlesvaus), trans. by Nigel Bryant: Oh, I do love a good medieval Arthurian tale.  This one is new to me!

Perlesvaus was written in Old French somewhere around 1210, and is a very different account than you usually get.  Maybe the name is telling you that; it's a riff on Perceval.  We don't start with Perceval, but at the court of King Arthur, which is in serious decline.  Nobody is doing any great deeds or going on adventures, and Arthur needs to repent of his neglect.  This kicks off a massive set of adventures, usually featuring Gawain, Lancelot, and Perlesvaus, but they're not retellings of the usual stories.  They're a whole new set, centered very largely on the Fisher King and the efforts of the knights to enforce the New Law of Christianity across the land.  They are all just fine with slaughtering anyone who refuses to accept the New Law, and Perlesvaus, the perfect knight, is the most zealous punisher of both refusal and of plain old evil.

As is proper in an Arthurian tale, the land has almost no cities.  It's all forest, through which knights venture at random to meet innumerable maidens with jobs for them to do, or hermits, or castles that need defending.  (God sends the adventures; it's no good just deciding to travel to a certain place and then doing it.)  Perlesvaus has a mother and a sister who need his help; they've been holding off his evil uncle, who has gradually been taking over their castles, for years, and now they're down to just one castle that they're about to lose.

We don't meet Perlesvaus until after he has already met his uncle, the Fisher King, and failed to ask the all-important questions.  In fact, Gawain visits the Fisher King (who is actually fishing), hears all about it, promises to do the job correctly, and then despite many reminders, is so awed by the Grail that he fails to say anything at all.  The poor Fisher King is left to hope for another knight, who never does come.

A really interesting addition to the world of Arthur, and an unusual one.