Code Name Verity reread
2/1/13 19:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomySince I'm presenting on Code Name Verity for Mock Printz, and I haven't read it since... March? April? It was before I moved -- well in any case, I'm rereading it.
Things I am noticing on a reread:
-How much of the success Maddie has as a new pilot is because of friends and acquaintances helping her out. I know this is partly for plot plausibility reasons -- to be a woman pilot in the late 1930s, you had to be privileged or lucky, preferably both -- but I'm reminded of a certain WisCon panel on magical girls, and I really do think there's something particularly feminist about women working together, as an alternative to the story where the hero is met with opposition on every side. There are so many stories where the hero succeeds even though everyone is against him; Maddie succeeds because so many people are for her, but also, there's a lot of irony there because she certainly doesn't get a happy ending out of it.
-The androgyny play! At one point Queenie says that she's not an English girl, she's a Scotsman; there's another point where Maddie is pleased to be referred to as a "lad"; and of course "Kiss me, Hardy." I'm not going to try to read overly much into it, and it seems like a consequence of being women in a very male field (and struggling for respect, accordingly) more than anything else, but... yeah. Interesting.
-OH THE FORESHADOWING. It hits you so hard the second time you read it. OH.
-Queenie the wireless operator who befriends Maddie is a very different person from Julie who gets captured by the Nazis. It seems like such a weird conceit, doesn't it, to have a narrative written by one of the participants in the story, but written in third person -- but I think it's just right, this sense of distance between them: the one who's really scared of getting old, and the one who really wishes she could get old. She's so arch and kind of mean in relating how cluelessly privileged she used to be!
-There's so much joy in it. In the descriptions of flying, and riding bicycles, and Queenie playing at being a spy. I read one reviewer who wasn't really convinced of the intensity of their friendship, and I -- thought we were probably not reading the same book? She's writing about someone she loves, full stop. (She is mean about her past self -- but she's not mean, ever, about Maddie, though she does stop to acknowledge that they're so far apart class-wise that they never would've met if not for the war.)
I have MockPrintz coming up in just one week, and I've been putting off the reread because it's too sad, but... I'm actually kind of putting a lot of pressure on myself to write so convincingly about it that people will vote for it.
Things I am noticing on a reread:
-How much of the success Maddie has as a new pilot is because of friends and acquaintances helping her out. I know this is partly for plot plausibility reasons -- to be a woman pilot in the late 1930s, you had to be privileged or lucky, preferably both -- but I'm reminded of a certain WisCon panel on magical girls, and I really do think there's something particularly feminist about women working together, as an alternative to the story where the hero is met with opposition on every side. There are so many stories where the hero succeeds even though everyone is against him; Maddie succeeds because so many people are for her, but also, there's a lot of irony there because she certainly doesn't get a happy ending out of it.
-The androgyny play! At one point Queenie says that she's not an English girl, she's a Scotsman; there's another point where Maddie is pleased to be referred to as a "lad"; and of course "Kiss me, Hardy." I'm not going to try to read overly much into it, and it seems like a consequence of being women in a very male field (and struggling for respect, accordingly) more than anything else, but... yeah. Interesting.
-OH THE FORESHADOWING. It hits you so hard the second time you read it. OH.
-Queenie the wireless operator who befriends Maddie is a very different person from Julie who gets captured by the Nazis. It seems like such a weird conceit, doesn't it, to have a narrative written by one of the participants in the story, but written in third person -- but I think it's just right, this sense of distance between them: the one who's really scared of getting old, and the one who really wishes she could get old. She's so arch and kind of mean in relating how cluelessly privileged she used to be!
-There's so much joy in it. In the descriptions of flying, and riding bicycles, and Queenie playing at being a spy. I read one reviewer who wasn't really convinced of the intensity of their friendship, and I -- thought we were probably not reading the same book? She's writing about someone she loves, full stop. (She is mean about her past self -- but she's not mean, ever, about Maddie, though she does stop to acknowledge that they're so far apart class-wise that they never would've met if not for the war.)
I have MockPrintz coming up in just one week, and I've been putting off the reread because it's too sad, but... I'm actually kind of putting a lot of pressure on myself to write so convincingly about it that people will vote for it.
(no subject)
3/1/13 00:54 (UTC)WHUT.