Chime -- Franny Billingsley
10/1/12 17:30![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyChime by Franny Billingsley.
I am presenting a booktalk for Mock Printz at the library! I really really liked this book. The first time I read it I cried a lot. And then I read it again to write up my presentation and I cried a lot again. You can take that as a recommendation or not.
There are a lot of subtle ironies at work in Chime. Briony is an unreliable narrator despite herself, lying to everyone except the reader and yet incapable of telling the truths she can’t see; she is indeed a clever girl tricking her own self, though not in the way she thinks. “We witches don’t go in for self-knowledge,” she declares, and how right she is. By page 142 you’ll figure out the big secret that Briony won’t untangle till the very end, but this isn’t a book about that big secret. This is a book about a girl whose heart is too clouded with self-loathing to see herself clearly, and about how she begins to sweep away the lies she’s been told about herself.
There are two things that save this book from being mired in its own sadness. One is Briony’s own wicked sense of humor, as when she talks about a would-be suitor: “If there were such a thing as a vampire puppy-dog, it would be Cecil. Big pleading eyes, asking for an ear-scratch and a nice warm bowl of blood.”
The other is Briony’s dedication to saving her sister Rose from the swamp cough. Speaking to the mysterious Old Ones, she learns Rose will die of swamp cough if plans to drain the swamp go through; but she can’t reveal what the Old Ones said without revealing herself as a witch, doomed to be hanged. And yet, she’s determined that she won’t let Rose die.
I love seeing this broken girl who doesn’t believe she deserves to live or love, fighting, trying to hold onto a little spark that’s almost been put out. I love how Eldric, her eventual love interest, sees and kindles that spark. It’s Eldric who looks out at the swamp and calls it beautiful – and isn’t the swamp a little like Briony, wild and in danger of being drained dry?
See how alienated Briony is from her own self, that she speaks of herself in third person. See the contradiction in the space of two sentences – of course she does find the swamp beautiful, but then she backs off and insists she has no particular feeling for it. Billingsley’s prose makes you pay attention to how slippery the narrator is, in a story that’s all about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. The prose, the setting, and the voice are all masterfully done, but it’s the characterization of Briony as a girl very slowly coming in from the cold, stomping out new memory paths, waking up to her place in the world, that makes this book one of the best of the year.
I am presenting a booktalk for Mock Printz at the library! I really really liked this book. The first time I read it I cried a lot. And then I read it again to write up my presentation and I cried a lot again. You can take that as a recommendation or not.
How long can a clever girl trick her own self? It’s been three years since you learned you’re a witch. Perhaps you didn’t kill Stepmother, not technically, but that doesn’t mean St. Peter’s going to wave you through the pearly gates.
There are a lot of subtle ironies at work in Chime. Briony is an unreliable narrator despite herself, lying to everyone except the reader and yet incapable of telling the truths she can’t see; she is indeed a clever girl tricking her own self, though not in the way she thinks. “We witches don’t go in for self-knowledge,” she declares, and how right she is. By page 142 you’ll figure out the big secret that Briony won’t untangle till the very end, but this isn’t a book about that big secret. This is a book about a girl whose heart is too clouded with self-loathing to see herself clearly, and about how she begins to sweep away the lies she’s been told about herself.
There are two things that save this book from being mired in its own sadness. One is Briony’s own wicked sense of humor, as when she talks about a would-be suitor: “If there were such a thing as a vampire puppy-dog, it would be Cecil. Big pleading eyes, asking for an ear-scratch and a nice warm bowl of blood.”
The other is Briony’s dedication to saving her sister Rose from the swamp cough. Speaking to the mysterious Old Ones, she learns Rose will die of swamp cough if plans to drain the swamp go through; but she can’t reveal what the Old Ones said without revealing herself as a witch, doomed to be hanged. And yet, she’s determined that she won’t let Rose die.
I love seeing this broken girl who doesn’t believe she deserves to live or love, fighting, trying to hold onto a little spark that’s almost been put out. I love how Eldric, her eventual love interest, sees and kindles that spark. It’s Eldric who looks out at the swamp and calls it beautiful – and isn’t the swamp a little like Briony, wild and in danger of being drained dry?
Beautiful? The swamp stretched as far as the eye could see, a gray shimmer, bronzed with reeds and cattails. I used to think it beautiful, but I have no particular feeling for it anymore. I suppose the old wolfgirl Briony would have disliked the idea of draining the swamp, but why should I care? I could never visit the swamp again.
See how alienated Briony is from her own self, that she speaks of herself in third person. See the contradiction in the space of two sentences – of course she does find the swamp beautiful, but then she backs off and insists she has no particular feeling for it. Billingsley’s prose makes you pay attention to how slippery the narrator is, in a story that’s all about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are. The prose, the setting, and the voice are all masterfully done, but it’s the characterization of Briony as a girl very slowly coming in from the cold, stomping out new memory paths, waking up to her place in the world, that makes this book one of the best of the year.