The Mistress of Nothing: A Novel, Kate Pullinger

David Roberts, Luxor, Decr 1st, 1840

(August 17) I read this because it won the 2009 Governor General's Award for Fiction and I got several "live" recommendations for it... but I found it banal.

Pullinger uses a familiar device: taking up the point of view of a minor member of a cast (e.g., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Thomas Cromwell) of a well-known story (Hamlet, the execution of Anne Boleyn) and telling the more famous story from that point of view. I don't find Pullinger so clever with it. The book is not convincing from any standpoint -- class, time period, whatever. Sarah Waters has spoiled me forever for fictitious Victorian narrators, I guess. Sally's voice is too educated and nuanced for a girl brought up in service.

The actual historical details that spawned this "novel," the bare-bones source, are interesting, but I don't think Pullinger did much with them, and, furthermore, I don't get the feeling of having "seen something" of Victorian Egypt despite this being the time and place of the story.

However, I am now mildly enthusiastic about reading Duff Gordon's letters from Egypt, and Katherine Frank's biography of her.

Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell

Paul Murray, Cutshin Creek, 2008

(July 19) Really gripping. At first, I thought, “Oh, no, a raw, earthy conflict... somebody’s gonna get raped or brutally killed, or I am gonna be horrified in some unknown way.” Yet such is the talent of the writer that I couldn’t stop reading anyway. And things were a bit brutal. It’s modern hillbillies, running meth and other drugs instead of moonshine, and with all their crazy codes of honour and toughness. But again, it’s love that drives them onward and to do good and evil, and it’s their love that makes me want to keep reading about them. Also, the whole thing was like a trip to an exotic world.