Starry River of the Sky by Grace Lin

Starry River of the Sky
by Grace Lin
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2012
288 pages

I have been very remiss in posting this review; I finished the book nearly twenty days ago. They were twenty very busy days, what with March Break being included in there, and family stuff, but twenty days! That's a long time to go between reading a book and writing down one's thoughts.

Happily, I did actually write them down. I just did it the Old Fashioned Way, in my Old Fashioned Moleskine, with my Old Fashioned Ballpoint Pen. And now I shall transcribe them using my Old Fashioned Fingers. Well, transcribe with embellishments, let's say.

I'll start out by suggesting that I don't think this book, written second but set hundreds of years prior to the story of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, is quite as good as the latter. Which is not to say that this isn't an excellent book; some of the places where I felt Mountain suffered were much better here, and some of the places where I feel that Starry River suffers are better in Mountain. It's a little hard to decide, too, which book it would be better to read first, because I did it in publication order and it works, though I think it would also work the other way. My parent-child book club will be looking at them in reverse order, so I may get their opinions once they've finished the two.

Also, it's weird for me to be writing about a companion book so soon after I read the first, and I suppose comparisons are inevitable because it's that much more fresh in my mind. I have such a large TBR that I don't typically read the same author even twice in one year, let alone twice in three months. So with that and the fact the books are related, I find it a little hard to detangle my feelings about Starry River from Mountain.

That said, they are two different books, noticeably different, even though they share many things, including the structure of the folktales interspersed with the main storyline. Rendi is a stowaway in a merchant's wine cart, and is discovered in the tiny, drought-stricken, impoverished Village of Clear Sky. Dumped out, he is immediately taken on as the chore boy at the village's inn, as the eldest son has disappeared and Master Chao is in need of help. But though the village's sky may be clear, it is moonless, and Rendi is haunted by the sound of groans and weeping every night. A beautiful storyteller, a seemingly senile old man, and the innkeeper's young daughter round out the close characters, and each have a specific part to play in Rendi's own tale.

I think the big difference I noticed was that the story is a lot slower. It is, unlike Mountain, set in one place, and I think this robs the narrative of momentum. On the other hand, I think I developed a deeper emotional connection to Rendi than I did to Minli. This is also because we spend the entire book in Rendi's head, with the exception of the folktales. He is not a comfortable character to spend time with, either, especially at first: Rendi is spoiled, bitter, and angry. He's running away from something, he's incredibly selfish, and he's apparently pretty much determined to make everyone around him as miserable as he is. That said, he's also stubborn and not above taking help where it is offered, both characteristics that stand him in good stead throughout the book. I did find him somewhat endearing, but not immediately. The mystery of his origins was enough to keep me reading at the beginning, and then when I realized who he was (a reader who has read Mountain will figure this out sooner, but perhaps not by much) I had to know how that played out. And soon after I discovered I actually had grown rather fond of the boy.

As with Mountain, some of the fun is thinking about what pieces of the narrative are important and connected to the folktales and vice versa, and there's even more to be had in finding the little connections between the two books, which are there for the noticing and as mentioned above may lead to the reader figuring out clues a little sooner. As for the folktale-narrative connections, I did find them a little bit less subtle, a little more predictable, and therefore I felt a little less amazed and excited by them as I did in Mountain. I do wonder how much of this was just familiarity with the structure and style, and might not have noticed this as much if I had been reading Starry River first.

I should make brief mention of the ending: I loved it. I was kind of amazed at Lin's guts, but I loved it. I am really curious to see how the kids in my book club handle it. It's hard to say anything without spoilers, but I think I can safely say that it ended in a very open way, and there is lots of room for speculation as to what comes next. I am very comfortable with this kind of ending, but I suspect others might find it abrupt. It did make me want to read Mountain to see if I can get any clues as to where Rendi ends up immediately post-narrative.

As before, too, this book is beautifully put together and the art is lovely, and fitting. I wanted more of the artwork, but I'll take what I can get. The imagery and description in this book is beautiful, and there was a particular part that I can't talk about without spoilers that was that perfect combination of imagery and narrative "click" that makes me a very happy reader. I'd read the whole book over again just for that part. (And almost certainly will.)

Recommended. Starry River of the Sky is stand-alone, as is Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, but I do think reading them [relatively close] together has been a good experience. If you're only going to try one, I'd say go with Mountain, but neither are difficult or long reads, so you might as well meet and spend some time with prickly Rendi too.

Eldritch Manor by Kim Thompson

Eldritch Manor
by Kim Thompson
Dundurn, 2012
176 pages

Days after finishing this, I am still trying to pin down exactly what it was that irked me so much about this book. I am trying, too, to separate out what was just irritation because I had higher expectations than was fair, and what legitimately did not agree with me.

It's not that I'm about to tear this book apart. I just can't do that, and I don't get any joy out of that sort of thing. Especially when this is a first novel, and the author is Canadian, and I wanted to like the book. Furthermore, Eldritch Manor has some really excellent things going for it, so let's talk about those first. There is a reason that this was chosen to be on the Forest of Reading nominees list for 2014, after all.

The concept? Is awesome. It was the reason my expectations were so high. How can one not be taken with the idea of a book where the main character is hired on as a housekeeper in a house where the inhabitants are retired mythical and fantastical creatures? And of course things will start to go wrong, and of course Willa, our heroine, will be called on to save the world, with a little help from her new elderly, crotchety, mythological friends. I love the idea of this book so much. I thought the cast of characters was creative, I thought the way the world worked made sense, I thought that the ideas and the setting worked. The world-building, albeit brief, was totally satisfying.

And yet... and yet. Something went wrong for me with this book, and if I had to pinpoint it I would say that I don't think the execution was up to the premise - for me as an adult. This is an important point, and I will get to why in a moment.

I think things went flat in a couple of places: the style of the writing didn't work for me, and that can be a very subjective thing, so this sometimes happens. But I also found that there were things packed in to the book that felt unnecessary, which meant that things that should have had more time (especially Willa's relationship with the sphinx Horace) missed out because we were spending time on other things that didn't need attention. Or else those things should have grabbed more attention. There was a family situation that could have meant quite a lot to Willa's character-building, and some of the other characters as well. It wasn't a surprise when it popped up right near the end of the book (I mean, in the last chapter) because there had been some foreshadowing. But it was extraneous to the story, or could have been if an editor had done something about it. It was dealt with so quickly and so ineffectively that it was a non sequitur.

Overall I felt that character development was fairly perfunctory and typecast. There just wasn't a lot there, and characters mean pretty much everything to me in a story. Action and dialogue was even a bit typecast, and that can bug me, especially where expressions are used that frequently appear in pop culture, but when actually read they make no sense.

All of this said, aside from the problem with the ending, which I don't think will be ignored by children either, I suspect the things that bugged me actually won't bother kids as much. The writing is simple - that isn't a dealbreaker for kids. The characters are quickly-drawn, but at least they are interesting - again, not going to bother kids. I ate up The Babysitters' Club books and Nancy Drew as a kid and I'd say this is at least as good as anything in either of those series, and way more imaginative. It's leaps and bounds ahead of the perennially popular Fairy books by Daisy Meadows that we can't keep on the shelves at the library.

And while I might occasionally roll my eyes at those Fairy books, I think there is a place for books that appeal more to kids than adults. Something about those simple storylines, the simple writing, and the action-filled plots with characters that are clear and easy to grasp, really appeal to kids even as they drive adults to distraction. Those are often the books that kids start to read all by themselves once they can read chapter books, and the process of reading them helps develop literacy and fluency. They are easy to read, and they are fun, and they are satisfying, and so kids want to read more. The process of decoding written language is already challenging enough for many kids without having to keep track of layers and complexity that the kind of children's books I love contain.

Sometimes the same kids who eat those up also love the more complex, more "literary" books written for kids, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they only want to read Nancy Drew. And you know what? That's okay. Maybe someday they will move on to things that are a little more complex, writing- and structure-wise. And if they don't, that's okay too. Lots of adults love James Patterson, or Julia Quinn, or Danielle Steel, and some of them won't read anything else either. At least reading is an enjoyable part of their life, and every book has value in one way or another.

So, in the end: not a book for me. But I do hope it finds its audience, and I think being nominated for the Silver Birch category of the Forest of Reading will help it do that, because its audience is kids, and should be. I wish the book and Kim Thompson all the best, and I hope she finds an editor who can help her tighten things up a bit -- there is potential here for some great children's books down the line.

A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong

A Short History of Myth
by Karen Armstrong
Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2005
159 pages

I took a long time to read this book. It occurs to me that maybe this is not a bad thing. While it might have been nice to read it much faster, and I might have been able to absorb more if I'd read it more than two pages at a time, it still worked. That is to say, I didn't have a lot of time for reading this past month, and so it was good that I could put down this book and walk away and then pick it back up either minutes or days later and not really miss too much.

It is indeed a short history. Armstrong covers human myth from prehistory to contemporary times in less than 200 pages, and this causes some difficulties. Particularly in the early part of the book, Armstrong makes some claims and wild generalizations that I found too broad to be easily swallowed, and sometimes she offers no references or arguments to support her statement. The most egregious example of this would be when Armstrong suggests that the brutal, demanding, bloodthirsty "Great Goddess" persona likely dating back to many paleolithic myths was born of male resentment ("Why should a goddess have become so dominant in an aggressively male society? This may be due to an unconscious resentment of the female." pg39.) Maybe so, and maybe there is lots of data to back this up elsewhere, but a claim like that ought not be offhand and unsupported if you expect me to take it, or anything you're saying, seriously. I'm a lay reader, not particularly versed in human culture in paleolithic times. In a couple of cases, Armstrong's claims about people and cultures in the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages seemed over simplified and under supported, which made those sections of the book rather frustrating.

That said, she did say it was a short history, so I forged on, thinking perhaps that I should get a more in depth history sometime. Something I would likely have to read more than two pages at a time.

I'm glad I kept reading, because Armstrong does a good job with the ages post-Neolithic, or maybe that's just because I do have a little more background knowledge. And her final, overarching argument, however brief (as befits the book) was convincing enough to be unsettling. She makes a strong case for myth as primitive psychology, for myth as a way humans have made sense of the big questions and the angst of being humans in a big, scary, uncontrollable world. In conjunction with a belief system and ritual, myth becomes the internalized way we deal with our deep fears and insecurities. Myth and its accompanying rituals help humans face death, destruction, change, and our insignificant place in the world.

Finally, Armstrong argues that with the onset of humans privileging science and technology over our collective myths, and refusing to identify anything that cannot be objectively proven "true" as valuable in our understanding of the world, we have lost our connection to the deeper things that make us human. By discounting myth as "just a myth" we have lost an integral part of what allows us as individuals and societies to cope with the unknown and the unknowable. We become disconnected and disillusioned, and Armstrong argues that Western society has sunk into a general malaise due in large part to our inability to understand and to value a collective mythology. She is not necessarily arguing for religion here -- she points out flaws in that structure, though also clearly believes it has value -- but for literatures and arts that get at the deeper, universal truths of being human, that can become transformative experiences for contemporary people and societies.

I don't necessarily think it's quite so simple, but I do think that Armstrong's arguments -- for the purposes of myth, and for the hazards of losing it -- make a great deal of sense. Her suggestion that literature and the arts are part of our deeper psychological sense-making, and therefore hold an incredibly and increasingly important position in contemporary, myth-less lives, is also agreeable to this reader. As an introduction to the Myths Series (including Atwood's The Penelopiad, Jeanette Winterson's Weight, and A.S. Byatt's Ragnarok) A Brief History of Myth does an excellent job of making a case for why the series should exist.

This book is not without its bumps, but it does what it advertises. If you're looking for meat, go elsewhere, but if you're looking for a lighter primer on myth and its functions, this is a good start, mostly well-written and enjoyable.

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich

Books & Islands in Ojibwe Country
by Louise Erdrich
National Geographic, 2003
92 pages

Being among books is only half about actual reading, after all. The other part is talking about books with other people, a rich topic, and yet another is enjoying their presence.

Just to be clear about the labels on this post: I'm not claiming Louise Erdrich for Canada, as much as I'd love to do so. But a somewhat large chunk of the book takes place this side of the border so I've added the tag.

This was one of those serendipitous browsing things, though not in the sense of shelf grazing; more in the sense of I had looked up something in our library ebook catalogue and this popped up instead. I've always wanted to read Louise Erdrich (more so now) and I love the idea of the National Geographic Directions series, and ... well, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this: it was short. I wanted something short. Also, about books! So I downloaded this and here we are. A little ironic, as this book is at least partially about the love of books as physical objects. And rarely have I come across such a perfect defense of books as objects as the quote above. Hence, I'd love to have an actual physical copy of this.

The condensed version: as with all books in the Directions series, this is an extremely accomplished author taking a trip that investigates something dear to her heart, and then writing about it. In Erdrich's case, she's gone to do a tour of the rock paintings on the islands of Lake of the Woods, taking along her 18-month-old daughter, and then to visit the historic island home of Ernest Oberholtzer and his immense collection of rare books. Throughout the book we get discussions of books and their very personal appeal and importance to Erdrich, briefer discussions of islands and their importance, and lots of discussion of the meaning of the rock paintings and Ojibwe culture and especially the language, and occasional digressions into mothering.

I really loved this book. It's an important book, because of the notes on Ojibwe culture and language and because of the recognition that, in many ways, we're lucky either still exists -- she never harps on the role governments and the Catholic church (particularly the Canadian government) have played in the damage, but she doesn't shrink from pointing it out where necessary either. It's also a beautiful book, where it meditates on books and writing and language and the importance of all of these things, particularly to the author. And Louise Erdrich? Knows how to write.

The chapter on the language, Ojibwemowin, is intense, and it is beautiful, and fascinating. Six thousand different tenses of single verb are possible. Imagine the books you could write in that language. Imagine the poems! English is a fine language, never going to knock it except maybe an affectionate jab here and there. But imagine how much more precise, how much more vivid, a language like Ojibwemowin must be.

I also particularly enjoyed her description of Oberholtzer's island ("Ober's island") and its cabins and quirks of architecture, its library, the people and the food while she is staying there. Erdrich has an incredible grasp on descriptive language, and it shows to its best advantage here. I could visualize everything. And yet she is never purple in her prose, just perfectly eloquent. Makes for an absolutely delightful travel read.

More favourite bits:

We have a lot of books in our house. They are our primary decorative motif -- books in piles on the coffee table, framed book covers, books sorted into stacks on every available surface, and of course books on shelves along most walls. Besides the visible books, there are the boxes waiting in the wings, the basement books, the garage books, the storage locker books. They are a sort of insulation, soundproofing some walls. They function as furniture, they prop up sagging fixtures and disguised by quilts function as tables. The quantity and types of books are fluid, arriving like hysterical cousins in overnight shipping envelopes only to languish near the overflowing mail bench.

I want that house. I am working towards it. Yes, I work at a library. This is not enough.

Regarding summer trips, and don't I recognize this too:

Used to be, I'd pack six preteen girls, two dogs (large Aussies), and myself in along with a week of food, clothes, games, and drawing materials, for a trip to a whole other island in Lake Superior were I did research while the girls swam, screamed, ate, screamed, roasted marshmallows, screamed, read "Wonder Woman" and "Catwoman" comics, slept, screamed, and woke, screaming happily, for a week or two. I don't really know how I have accomplished anything, ever.

Lovely little book, well worth the time to find it and read it. Travel, culture, and lots of book talk. Highly recommended.

Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell

I. Heart. This. Book.

It has been since the last Harry Potter, folks. It has been that long since I was so wrapped up in a story. I loved this, and then I went online and proceeded to read the rest of the story, and loved that too. And now I am stuck because Siddell publishes updates every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I desperately need to know more. It's like waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows except that it's released one page at a time. I knew, when I finished the book, that I should have controlled myself and just waited for the next published copy so I could read it all at once. But self-discipline is not one of my strong suits.

I'm not sure how to summarize it, either, especially since the story is ongoing, but I guess I can stick to the first published on-paper volume. Antimony Carver is sent to Gunnerkrigg Court, nominally an English-style boarding school, after her mother's death. Antimony had been living with her mother in the hospital, and it was her mother's wish that she would attend Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony's father is completely absent, in a way that makes the reader angrier the more we know. We meet Antimony when she's first breaking school rules, less than two weeks into her stay, by helping a shadow creature escape the school. We meet her friend Kat as Antimony meets her, and start to untangle various mysteries about the school that all seem to be leading to one overarching mystery beginning in the Court, or perhaps beginning in Gillitie Wood, which is forbidden territory across the bridge from the school.

I can't be much clearer without getting into spoilers and/or taking up several hundred more words. This is an extremely complex story, with themes of love, betrayal, friendship, grief, humanity, technology, and magic all tangled up in it. Suffice to say, seeing it through Annie's eyes is helpful, as she's clever, witty, dry and trying her best to stay neutral while being extremely loyal to the few friends she has. Annie's a bit of an outsider, on account of her coming to the school a bit late, and especially on account of the fact that she has the ability to see spirits and interact with them and doesn't seem to care to hide it. It means that we see quite a lot of the picture, while still being mostly limited to Annie's perspective. And did I mention the wit? Annie's generally really funny, and there's a really wonderful mix of very moving moments, frightening moments, and very funny moments throughout the story. I laughed out loud a couple of times. I also got a little teary at points, too.

The supporting cast is just fantastic. They're also complex; I'm 31 chapters in and still completely confused about most of their motivations, but not in a bad way. I'm also thrilled to report that we're not that close to solving the big mystery yet, nor even really knowing fully what shape it takes (or even if it's one big mystery, or two or three loosely connected mysteries), so there's likely to be more of Annie and Kat to keep me enthralled in the future. I certainly don't want to let these characters or this story go any time soon. Each chapter can usually stand alone as its own story, but we're building towards something. My concern is that it will be pretty anticlimactic when we get there.

Anyone with an open mind about graphic novels and fantasy will find something to love here. The art is just lovely, the story blows my mind. If you can't find a paper copy, be prepared to spend a couple days in a row sneaking a peek at the website every time you have a free minute at a computer. And be prepared that your mind will wander its way into the story when you're not reading it, too. Many thanks go to darla for the heads-up on this one. I wouldn't have even known it existed otherwise, and her enthusiastic review encouraged me to recommend it for purchase at our library sight unseen.

The Secret Ministry of Frost by Nick Lake

On a winter's day when you don't have to go to school, snow is a beautiful thing: white and other-worldly, it falls gently to the ground in unique, fragile flakes, covering the earth in a softening layer that can make even the ugliest landscapes breathtaking. In the Arctic, though, the beauty of snow is underpinned by deadly danger -- in the same way that a beautiful bunch of flowers becomes something more terrible and more devestating when you see it propped against a lamp post at the side of a busy road, with a note pinned to it.

As I start this review, I'm sitting here at my dining room table, wrapped up in a blanket and shivering. There's a good three to five inches of snow on the ground outside, and some pretty stunning icicles hanging off the trellis. This book has made me cold; this is a cold-weather book, a book to be read in the wintertime when there is snow and ice everywhere and the chill menace of Frost can be felt in the air.

I should mention I live in Southern Ontario. We don't get Arctic temperatures down here. The sun still comes up every day and stays that way for at least seven or eight hours. But reading The Secret Ministry of Frost in winter, even here, just adds to the experience.

Light's father was an Arctic researcher, and he's disappeared. The book opens with his funeral at his estate in Ireland; his body has not been found, but it has been six months and he has been declared dead. Light is an orphan now, her mother having died years before, and the only person left to care for her is Butler, her father's friend and trusted servant. But things rapidly get complicated, and perhaps Light's father is not dead after all -- so Light and Butler set off on an infinitely desperate and dangerous journey to save him, and perhaps the world.

Let me just say, this book is hella difficult to summarize. It's complex and wonderful. It defies classification, which I'll talk about more in a moment. The whole thing has deep roots in Inuit mythology, which I will admit to knowing next to nothing about. I'd heard of Setna and that's about it, I'm afraid. I've got a much better grasp on it now. Lake's use of mythology and Inuktitut is central to the feel of this book, and it's a good introduction, I think, to a culture that is very different from mine. There are themes of grief, loss, death, revenge, morality, hope, life, and loyalty running strongly through the storyline, too. It's not as dark as it might sound -- but this book isn't light, either.

It is a great story. On these meaty concerns, Lake has hung some wonderful characters, among whom Light stands out. Light is a powerful, imperfect, and genuine girl. I like that she's tough and smart and a little sassy, but she screams when I would scream, and she makes mistakes that cost her, and she accepts the consequences of her decisions, and she just keeps going because she needs to even when she doesn't think she can. She's skeptical when she should be, but she moves through that realistically too -- when there's evidence to support what she thinks impossible, she doesn't waste precious time going "I see it, but I don't believe it!" She just rolls with it, not without comment but without obstinate self-inflicted ignorance. She was by far my favourite character, and I think she's a character who is going to stick with me.

Now, about classification. I checked: my library has this in the YA section. Simon and Schuster give it an 11+ rating. I could see putting it in the JFICs for sure -- the writing style warrants that, with short, snappy chapters and mostly very easy reading. But I think I know why the library's stuck it in YA: it's violent and scary. There is blood, guts, gore, and characters we grow to love dying in very unpleasant ways, which my library at least tends to avoid putting in the JFIC unless it's an Issues book based on contemporary or historical realities, or a "classic." I don't necessarily agree with this, mind you. But I do think that as a librarian I will be a little careful about which readers I recommend this to, because I know as a kid this book would have given me nightmares. The thing, of course, about classifying this as YA is that more people will read it and that's a good thing. Adults tend not to read in the JFIC (unless they're like me and several other librarians I know, or reading books with their kids) but many of them do occasionally browse the YA, and this is a book that adults will enjoy too.

Overall, this is an amazingly original book, with a fascinating premise, lots of tension, and great action. I love that it's based on a mythology and culture that tends not to show up in literature often, particularly in the fantasy genre, and I would recommend it just for that. Luckily, it's also just an awesome story.

I must thank Mandy for this one. She not only wrote the great review that got me interested, but she then proceeded to give me the book to make sure I did read it! It's taken me a while to get to it (I'm getting to all my Christmas reading now, is how bad the backlog is) but it was absolutely worth the wait.

Antigone by Jean Anouilh

I was partway through reading Jean Anouilh's Antigone when I realized that I knew exactly what came next. I've played Ismene, Antigone's sister, in some sort of shortened scene adaptation, in a past life. I can't remember which past life -- it might have been high school, or it might have been my first year at university, but I remembered Antigone and Ismene's discussion at the beginning of the play clearly. It leant an extra emotional punch to that scene, because I'd had to figure out what Ismene was feeling, and why, and how, in order to portray her effectively, and I remembered all of that too. It was one of my more interesting reading experiences in a while.

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while will know that I'm not a big fan of things that don't have happy endings. Antigone does not have a happy ending: Antigone is a tragedy, true to Sophocles. But I still really enjoy this play.

Anouilh's Antigone follows essentially the same plot as Sophocles'. Oedipus of Thebes had four children: Eteocles, Polynices, Ismene and Antigone. Eteocles and Polynices have waged war upon each other, and killed each other; their uncle, Creon, must take the throne of Thebes in the aftermath. He had sided with Eteocles, and thus Eteocles gets a proper, regal burial; Polynices is left to rot, and no one must bury him on pain of death. Perhaps you can guess what happens next, even if you don't know the story. I don't really want to spoil everything for anyone who doesn't know the story.

But of course, the tension isn't so much in the story; everyone knows what must happen as soon as all the characters are introduced. Anouilh employs a chorus, the characters, and the plot, but otherwise this play bears very little resemblance to a Greek play. The language is poetic, but immediate, and the characters are not cutouts declaiming the words of the gods, or simple puppets of fate; they are very human and very passionate and very emotionally real. The language is beautiful, and the sentiments deep and conflicting.

There are a couple things in particular I like about this play, the poetry aside. Anouilh uses the chorus not just to tell the audience what is going on. He also uses it to discuss tragedy as an art form, to draw attention to the structure of the play itself. In this way, the chorus and the other parts work against each other, their purposes at odds: the chorus distances the audience from the emotion and action, but the other players draw the audience in. And the chorus and the other characters interact at points, the chorus serving to point out to the characters themselves both the absurdity and inevitability of the situation they are in. As the chorus tells the audience at one point:

The rest is automatic. You don't need to lift a finger. The machine is in perfect order; it has been oiled since time began, and it runs without friction. Death, treason and sorrow are on the march; and they move in the wake of storm, of tears, of stillness. Every kind of stillness. The hush when the executioner's axe goes up at the end of the last act. The unbreathable silence when, at the beginning of the play, the two lovers, their hearts bared, their bodies naked, stand for the first time face to face in the darkened room, afraid to stir. The silence inside you when the roaring crowd acclaims the winner -- so that you think of a film without a soundtrack, mouths agape and no sound coming out of them, a clamour that is no more than a picture; and you, the victor, already vanquished, alone in the desert of your silence. That is tragedy.

As you can see, the language is not the language of a Greek play -- it is contemporary, but it is also describing something very ancient and primeval. Tragedy has been around since the dawn of theatre as we know it, and our greatest plays are tragedies even if we think we like the comedies better.

The other thing I really like is that the tension between Creon and Antigone is not just between their characters -- it's also between what they each represent. The audience, at the end, ends up conflicted and wondering where their proper sympathies should lie. Antigone is the heroine, Creon the villain. But Creon, to me, is more noble, and more sympathetic, even though it was his heartless decision in the beginning (well offstage, before the play starts) that allegedly sets the events of the play in motion. That sets off an interesting tension in the individual viewing the play -- we know where our sympathies are supposed to lie, but we're not sure where they should.

I say that Creon "allegedly" sets events in motion, because it's hard to figure out, as the play unfolds, how things could possibly ever have happened differently. The ending is inevitable. The play isn't about its ending, it's about the beginning, and about the characters as they make their eloquent way to their inevitable fates. And here, this is why I like tragedy, as the chorus makes clear for me:

Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless. It has nothing to do with melodrama -- with wicked villains, persecuted maidens, avengers, sudden revelations and eleventh-hour repentances. Death, in a melodrama, is really horrible because it is never inevitable. The dear old father might so easily have been saved; the honest young man might so easily have brought in the police five minutes earlier.

In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquillity.