Magic Under Glass

[starlady]

As Samwise said, well, I'm back--before I head out again on Friday, to Berkeley, on the redeye. Is there anything really awesome in San Francisco that I shouldn't miss when I'm there on Saturday?

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Dolamore, Jaclyn. Magic Under Glass. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.

I read this book because dmp liked it. I liked it too. ETA: bookshop reviews the book here as well, with the new cover! /eta

Dolamore's novel (the original U.S. cover of which depicts the brown-skinned main character as white and was the rightful subject of controversy, and which was redone) focuses on Nimira, an immigrant from the cod-Asian land of Tiansher to the cod-European country of Lorinar--she came to make her fortune as a "trouser girl", dancing in the style her mother was renowned for at the Tiansher court, only to find that fashions in Lorinar had moved on. When a wealthy sorcerer named Hollin Parry hires her to sing duets with a piano-playing automaton he has recently purchased, Nimira thinks her future is assured, but she quickly finds that there's more to the automaton than clockwork, and herself involved in the politics and possible war between Lorinar and the fairy realms it borders along the Wall.

So, while urging everyone to read dmp's review, because she raises slightly different, equally important points, I'm going to reiterate the major points that we both liked. Nimira's pride in herself and in her heritage, and her certainty despite the insistence of all Lorinar society and its prejudices that she is as much a human being as anyone else, are great, as is her refusal to tolerate any insult to her dignity. The challenges she faces as a dark-skinned immigrant in a white society aren't even the point of the book, though, which is even better; they're simply more she has to deal with. And despite her near-total lack of power, Nimira is by far the most active character in the book, which was also great. Indeed, the fact that she originally chose to set out to make her fortune abroad says a lot about her.

There are several other notable things about this book, too. For me personally, the first is that the fact that the fairy realms are divided from Lorinar by a Wall clearly places Magic Under Glass in the lineage of Lud-in-the-Mist, though there's not enough detail in the book to tell whether Dolamore gets there directly from Hope Mirrlees or is coming via Neil Gaiman's Stardust and/or Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Still, that's cool.

Second, the portrayal of the fairies, and the portrayal of the way the Lorinaran characters generally think about the fairies, is also quite interesting; it's clear that Lorinar regards the fairies as another primitive race, not people who count. And interestingly enough, the justification for this prejudice is fairy ideas about land rights and land usage:

"The trouble is, fairies have a different view of land than we do. You couldn't get any business done or progress made with fairies around. And they'll tromp all over a man's land--hunt on it, even--without any regard for property rights. They say we can't just own land, but can you imagine a world where men can't claim land to farm on? Could you imagine, having a picnic and suddenly a whole dozen fairies are roaming around, as if this were a public park? Thankfully, my father helped drive the heathens back past the river and erected the Western Wall before I was born."

Heathens--I bristled at that word. I'd had it hurled my way one too many times.

I don't think it's possible for a U.S.-ian (or at least, me) to read this and not think, Damn, the fairies are Native Americans! Because damn if that isn't one of the many spurious reasons used by white colonists to drive Native Americans off their land all over this continent. So, the linking of the fairies with the non-white peoples of Nim's world strikes me as different and interesting--and indeed, Nimira's instinctive sympathy for the fairies, as an outsider and purported "heathen" herself, becomes crucial.

The speaker in the quotation above is Hollin Parry, who makes a poor Mr. Rochester substitute but whose increasingly obvious infatuation with Nim makes for some rather Jane Eyre-esque dynamics--Parry even has his mad wife locked away in the attic and is telling people and Nim that she's dead. But thankfully the book isn't a Jane Eyre rehash; in fact it's as much Wide Sargasso Sea as it is Jane Eyre, since Nim herself is as much Antoinette as Jane. And even better, not only is Parry's wife Annalie not dead, she's not even mad! She's not mad! She's perfectly sane, she just can't tolerate daylight since Parry's semi-bungled attempt to save her life with dark magic left her able to speak with spirits. In fact, Annalie is ridiculously awesome, particularly in the face of her husband's continued passivity and being an asshole, and the fact that she has a key role to play in the story (at Nim's instigation) filled me with happiness.

dmp said that she found Parry sympathetic, but I don't have that much sympathy for someone whose stock response to every problem is "Let's run away!" and who fails to live up to both competing ideologies presented in the book (Nim's, that people who aren't white and fairies are human, and that women are adults, not children; and Lorinar's, which holds that only white people are people and that women are perpetual children). And letting another sorcerer use his wife to speak with dark spirits, as well as keep his wife confined and under constant surveillance, is inexcusable. If anything, in my opinion the narrative and Nimira (and Annalie!) let Parry off too lightly.

So, all in all, Magic Under Glass manages to pack quite a lot of matter into not a lot of length. I'd be happy to read the probable sequel.

P.S. I find it really hard not to think that Karstor and Garven were in love.

Comments

[shvetufae.livejournal.com]

It's a definite sequel now (just announced on Publishers Marketplace). :) The title's Magic Under Stone.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info! I'm kind of not surprised, given how inconclusive the ending is in some respects.