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Thoughts on the 2012 Campbells
Jul. 27th, 2012 04:14 pmHaving read something by all of this year's Campbell nominees, I find myself trying to balance up a handful of a short pieces against a pair of novels and come to some sort of conclusion. Due to in-build bias I preferred the novels to the short stories, but even recognising that I though that the two novels, Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo and Stina Leicht's Of Blood and Honey were, in their own different ways, standout pieces of writing.
Redemption in Indigo tells the story of a young woman who has retreated to her parents' village to get away from her gluttonous husband. After her estranged husband shows up and makes a complete fool of himself, a pair of benign spirits give the young woman the power to control chance. But the former owner of the power isn't at all happy with his new position and arrives in the village to take it back. The book features a strong narrative voice which, like an oral story-teller often intervenes to clarify or add context or even to tell the reader what they ought to be thinking. It also features a particularly fine protagonist — it's nice to read something with a heroine who conquers all through good sense and character and intelligence and ability, rather than ass-kicking and super-powers.
Of Blood and Honey couldn't be more different. Set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, it follows 16 year-old Liam as he finds himself interned for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Long Kesh he discovers that he's different — absent his father was something more exotic than a mere protestant, as his mother claimed — and he starts to come to terms with who he is. The book does an excellent job of imagining the grimness of the 70s in Derry and the horror of a world where arbitrary detention is part of daily life, merging real historical events — Liam and his girlfriend get caught up in Bloody Sunday — with elements of the fantastic. The characters are well drawn, especially the women: Liam's mother, trapped in a loveless marriage and still in love with Liam's father; and Mary Kate, Liam's girlfriend, ambitious and intelligent and determined to find something better.
While all the short fiction pieces were good, I have to admit to preferring E. Lily Yu's Carterian surrealism to both Mur Lafferty and Brad Torgersen. In Lafferty's case, a single short story taken out of context didn't really leave me enough to go on, while in Torgersen's case the stories just weren't to my taste, despite being technically accomplished, making it hard to form an objective judgement.
Redemption in Indigo tells the story of a young woman who has retreated to her parents' village to get away from her gluttonous husband. After her estranged husband shows up and makes a complete fool of himself, a pair of benign spirits give the young woman the power to control chance. But the former owner of the power isn't at all happy with his new position and arrives in the village to take it back. The book features a strong narrative voice which, like an oral story-teller often intervenes to clarify or add context or even to tell the reader what they ought to be thinking. It also features a particularly fine protagonist — it's nice to read something with a heroine who conquers all through good sense and character and intelligence and ability, rather than ass-kicking and super-powers.
Of Blood and Honey couldn't be more different. Set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, it follows 16 year-old Liam as he finds himself interned for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In Long Kesh he discovers that he's different — absent his father was something more exotic than a mere protestant, as his mother claimed — and he starts to come to terms with who he is. The book does an excellent job of imagining the grimness of the 70s in Derry and the horror of a world where arbitrary detention is part of daily life, merging real historical events — Liam and his girlfriend get caught up in Bloody Sunday — with elements of the fantastic. The characters are well drawn, especially the women: Liam's mother, trapped in a loveless marriage and still in love with Liam's father; and Mary Kate, Liam's girlfriend, ambitious and intelligent and determined to find something better.
While all the short fiction pieces were good, I have to admit to preferring E. Lily Yu's Carterian surrealism to both Mur Lafferty and Brad Torgersen. In Lafferty's case, a single short story taken out of context didn't really leave me enough to go on, while in Torgersen's case the stories just weren't to my taste, despite being technically accomplished, making it hard to form an objective judgement.
