I didn’t entirely switch that faculty off with Mists, either. I could level a number of criticisms at it from a literary point of view, and I wouldn’t hold it up as an example of great literature to be compared on equal terms with the likes of Kafka, Sartre, Dostoyevsky and so on. Its one great claim to academic achievement, I think, is in the way it takes the standard themes of the classic Arthurian Romantic canon and re-tells them in a different and much more believable way. And it does so from the point of view of the women in the story, not the men.
The fact is, however, that none of this is the point as far as I’m concerned. What makes Mists unique to me is that it’s more than just a novel; it’s an experience. It’s an experience so rich, poignant and powerful that, for once, I stopped thinking of it as a novel. It drew me in like no other book has done. I stopped being a reader and became a close observer of something strangely real. It provided an alternative world to live in for a while every night, a world in which I came to genuinely care for the people playing out their lives, loves, pains, pleasures and adventures. I cared what happened to them, and that’s why I’m sad at the prospect of them leaving me. I almost don’t want to read the last hundred pages.
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On a more downbeat note, the developing saga of my dealings with the new land agent took more twists today. It’s becoming ever more disquieting, and is occupying vast amounts of my waking thought. It even disturbed my sleep last night, which is most unusual for me. And there’s plenty more to come yet.
2 comments:
You've just described exactly how I felt when coming to the end of The Mists of Avalon, JJ. My mother had had the book in our house for years but even though I've been a big fan of Avalonian myth since I was a kid I never bothered with it. To be honest, from reading the little blurb on the back, I'd always just dimissed it as feminist propaganda (I'd no time for feminism when I was younger, still don't to a point).
Anyway, it wasn't till I was in my late teens that one day I found myself with nothing else to read and decided to give it a go. I was instantly hooked and read it in about two days!
You know, there's a bit you're coming up to at the end now which sums up the only small thing about Catholicism that I actually identified with growing up, and in a weird way it helped me hate the religion a little less. Not exactly what you'd expect to get out of it, but that's what it did for me!
I'd love to read it again, but I gave it away years ago as I do with all books I truly love. The way I see it there's so many books out in the world waiting to be read, why waste time rereading? I'm changing my mind on that now because this isn't the only old friend I long to revisit.
Well, hope you're enjoy the closing pages and I'm glad to see you've been sucked in like the rest of us. Do you know you're the only man I've ever known to read it and actually enjoy it?
Finished it about an hour ago, Roisin. Putting it down felt like laying an old friend to rest.
What can I say that wouldn't take all night? I think there are two reasons why, despite being a mere man, I enjoyed it so much:
1) I left exoteric Christianity behind in my teens. I worship no gods these days, but I do venerate two things: Buddha mind as the guiding principle, and the Divine Mother as the more intimate relationship. Consequently, I have much respect and fondness for the Goddess.
2) Although I find male company generally easier to understand, I've long found the more complex and mysterious feminine dynamic more interesting than the masculine one. One of my minor criticisms of the book is that Marion Bradley makes the male camaraderie too stilted and artificial, but her women are fascinating and eminently believable By the end I loved them all.
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