Hi, everyone. I'm sorry to start posting so late here. Hope you enjoyed your holidays, if you've had them yet.
First impressions on "Steps": What did you think? Did it meet, exceed, fall below your expectations? Did it read like a fantasy? (I think I harbor back to days when fantasies included dragons or hobbits or whatnot. This was more like quality literature to me.)
I found myself eager to jump into each "dream" sequence and was surprised by how quickly the stories unfolded.
How did the dream premise work for you as a paranormal element?
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I enjoyed reading it. I really liked the author's clear style and his scene-setting abilities. I thought he truly captured that weird, faintly creepy and suspenseful feeling of being in a dream, where things can be simultaneously real and not real, where expectations are routinely defied. (It kind of reminded me of David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" in how you had the sense that a bright dreamscape was being interwoven with a darker reality).
ReplyDeleteI hate to quibble, but hobbits, I'll have you know, are practically the pinnacle of literature!
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, I didn't think this was fantasy, although maybe it does technically fit in that genre. I was hesitant when I first saw it described as "surrealist" because I'm usually not keen on books where I can't tell what's going on or what's real and what isn't. But I wound up really enjoying it. The stories were exactly the kind of "spooky" stuff I loved when I was a kid.
The dream theme was neat. I liked how the stories worked as a set. I think the comparison to "Mulholland Drive" is a good one. Talk about dreamlike and spooky.
Hehe. Sorry, Erin. I know hobbits are the stuff of great literature. Maybe I should have cited dragons instead ... fantasy just hasn't been anything I've looked at since childhood, and I don't know why, because I'm sure I'm missing out on a lot of quality storytelling.
ReplyDeleteKim, "Mulholland" is a superb comparison. There was the dreamlike quality and the sense of unease. Plus the suggestion that these dreams had the troubling quality of the road not taken as each of the women had to make a choice that determined someone's fate.
And, like "Mulholland," it was a story about women. There were men present but, like in the film, the women were the power players, making the decisions.
I'm glad you seemed to like it -- it felt risky to go with a different author, especially after the superb Jane Austen!
You know, Erin, for that totally inadvertent insult, I should say that I never read "The Hobbit," and I think that should be on my 2010 reading list! I know it's quality lit -- and if you love it, I would, too!
ReplyDeletecl, good point that this was a story about women. I hadn't really thought of it like that. I liked that the frame of the story was an all-girls school, where the girls are a certain age and kind of dreamy, and the school mistress is cantankerous. Very "Picnic at Hanging Rock."
ReplyDeleteAlso bears some resemblance, minus the supernatural, to one of my all-time favorite (and incidentally short) books, "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie."
What is it about those prep school settings that is so inherently intriguing?
(FYI, I think Shanxi is also fantastically fond of Hobbits. Hehe. I love it, too, not least of all for the brilliant descriptions of food! Hobbits are serious eaters.)
I was on the edge of my seat during that prep school story.
ReplyDelete("The Hobbit" is delightful. Put it on your list before the movie comes out in 2011! But um, you should know, it has a dragon in it.)