"Green" - two days late
Jun. 11th, 2009 01:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magentaThis was going to be "a day late but not a dollar short", but life happens, so it's two days late, because it came out two days ago.
I was blessed to acquire an ARC of Jay Lake's new book Green at Wiscon. Once all the laundry was done, I settled down to read it. It turned out to be one of those books you savor, not letting yourself read it too fast, because then it will be over, and you can never read it for the first time again.
This is an incredible book for a bunch of reasons. Jay, who I have met, is a large white man; he wrote in the first person the character of a small brown girl completely believably. Right there, I think this book deserves to be on the short list for the Tiptree. I have seldom read any book about a little girl growing to womanhood that felt so true. It's a difficult story, a tear-jerker for me a few places.
How do I review it without spoilers? The point of the book is the development of Green from the age of 3. She has lost everything she had at the beginning of her life, which admittedly wasn't much. She longs for what she has lost, because everything she has gained is not by her choice. Her fate is to be driven by other people's wants and needs. Much of the book is directed at her seizing control of her destiny, and by doing so, changing everything around her, and creating a new god in the process.
Yes, that's vague. But so much of this book is the unfolding, the revealing, of the main character, the girl who becomes Green. Don't look at the back cover or the inside flap. Just read it.
I was blessed to acquire an ARC of Jay Lake's new book Green at Wiscon. Once all the laundry was done, I settled down to read it. It turned out to be one of those books you savor, not letting yourself read it too fast, because then it will be over, and you can never read it for the first time again.
This is an incredible book for a bunch of reasons. Jay, who I have met, is a large white man; he wrote in the first person the character of a small brown girl completely believably. Right there, I think this book deserves to be on the short list for the Tiptree. I have seldom read any book about a little girl growing to womanhood that felt so true. It's a difficult story, a tear-jerker for me a few places.
How do I review it without spoilers? The point of the book is the development of Green from the age of 3. She has lost everything she had at the beginning of her life, which admittedly wasn't much. She longs for what she has lost, because everything she has gained is not by her choice. Her fate is to be driven by other people's wants and needs. Much of the book is directed at her seizing control of her destiny, and by doing so, changing everything around her, and creating a new god in the process.
Yes, that's vague. But so much of this book is the unfolding, the revealing, of the main character, the girl who becomes Green. Don't look at the back cover or the inside flap. Just read it.
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Date: 2009-06-11 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-12 02:44 am (UTC)