Nov. 14th, 2012 07:31 pm
I needed to babble about it, I guess
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justboltsToday, I finally read "Aunt Maria" by Diana Wynne Jones after having it for six months, which is a long time to leave a DWJ book sitting by my count.
It wasn't one of her stronger books, certainly, but I enjoyed it a great deal. Probably because Aunt Maria herself makes for a particularly compelling antagonist. I think most people have experienced that relative (or romantic partner) who controls everyone around them through guilt and passive-aggression and emotional manipulation. It's tiring and depressing and makes you miserable, but trying to point it out has them turning it around to how awful you're being to them, until you're left feeling bad for being angry or upset in the first place.
The entire first half of "Aunt Maria" was painfully true to that experience, and it was surprisingly nice to read the POV character -- Mig's -- feelings and thoughts as she struggled with being caught by it, and how she eventually came out the other side to realizing that it was wrong to treat other people in that way, no matter who you were.
Of course, a magical mystery made it's way into the story in the second half in much the way it tends to in DWJ's stories; unexpectedly and like it had been there all along. For me, it never seemed to play more than second fiddle to Mig's own personal journey -- which makes sense, given she's nominally the one writing it.
In some ways, "Aunt Maria" was like the canon-compliant fanfic to a much bigger story. "Enchanted Glass" had that same sort of spirit and it's kind of a thing that DWJ was good at. She seemed to like main characters that would've been slotted as side characters in other types of stories. Since Mig was constantly having to relate information that the other active characters had shared with her after-the-fact, it shifted the dramatic tension so that her personal struggles carried more importance than the events that were nominally more plot-relevant.
There was still the drama of the big confrontation and I liked that when Anthony Green turned the same guilt-inducing techniques against Aunt Maria and her crew, it simply didn't work. Trying to guilt them into stopping or changing their ways hurt the Good Guys way more than it could ever touch Aunt Maria. And not just because she spent the entire time finding ways to turn it back against them.
Ultimately, good read. Recommended to other fans of Diana Wynne Jones, though if you've never read her stuff before, get yourself over to the Chrestomanci and Dalemark Quartet series first.
(well, there's always "Howl's Moving Castle", of course, but I liked the books from those series better. Judge me)
It wasn't one of her stronger books, certainly, but I enjoyed it a great deal. Probably because Aunt Maria herself makes for a particularly compelling antagonist. I think most people have experienced that relative (or romantic partner) who controls everyone around them through guilt and passive-aggression and emotional manipulation. It's tiring and depressing and makes you miserable, but trying to point it out has them turning it around to how awful you're being to them, until you're left feeling bad for being angry or upset in the first place.
The entire first half of "Aunt Maria" was painfully true to that experience, and it was surprisingly nice to read the POV character -- Mig's -- feelings and thoughts as she struggled with being caught by it, and how she eventually came out the other side to realizing that it was wrong to treat other people in that way, no matter who you were.
Of course, a magical mystery made it's way into the story in the second half in much the way it tends to in DWJ's stories; unexpectedly and like it had been there all along. For me, it never seemed to play more than second fiddle to Mig's own personal journey -- which makes sense, given she's nominally the one writing it.
In some ways, "Aunt Maria" was like the canon-compliant fanfic to a much bigger story. "Enchanted Glass" had that same sort of spirit and it's kind of a thing that DWJ was good at. She seemed to like main characters that would've been slotted as side characters in other types of stories. Since Mig was constantly having to relate information that the other active characters had shared with her after-the-fact, it shifted the dramatic tension so that her personal struggles carried more importance than the events that were nominally more plot-relevant.
There was still the drama of the big confrontation and I liked that when Anthony Green turned the same guilt-inducing techniques against Aunt Maria and her crew, it simply didn't work. Trying to guilt them into stopping or changing their ways hurt the Good Guys way more than it could ever touch Aunt Maria. And not just because she spent the entire time finding ways to turn it back against them.
Ultimately, good read. Recommended to other fans of Diana Wynne Jones, though if you've never read her stuff before, get yourself over to the Chrestomanci and Dalemark Quartet series first.
(well, there's always "Howl's Moving Castle", of course, but I liked the books from those series better. Judge me)