You know the Dodger from Oliver Twist, but this is a different side to him. One night, he's scavenging in the sewers (which is how he earns his living) when he witnesses a girl being beat. He comes to her aid and is immediately drawn into a different world. For Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew see Dodger rescue the girl, and help further, by finding her food, medical attention, and a place to stay. Dodger wants to find the people who did this to her, and why, but the answers draw in the biggest political names of the day. Dodger is called Dodger for a reason, and these skills have allowed him to survive on London's streets thus far. Will they also help him survive in the city's finest drawing rooms?
I love Prachett's Dodger. His Dickens is also great. Some of the book is a little Shakespeare In Love but the mystery and action won't let you dwell on that for long. It's a fun read. Knowing your Dickens and your Victorian London personages will be helpful to fully appreciate it, but not necessary. I love the way Prachett paints Seven Dials, it's rough and tumble and a hard life, but the people who live there are real, and just trying to best they can. I also loved his take on Sweeney Todd and what was really going on there.
It doesn't speak to the LARGER TRUTHS that a lot of Prachett's work does, but it's also not as zanily weird, as it's firmly set in and grounded in historical facts and realities.
All in all I loved it. It's a great book that reminds me that I really do need to be reading more Prachett.
Book Provided by... my local library
Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Terry Prachett, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 3 of 3
By: Jennie,
on 3/5/2013
Blog: Biblio File (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Terry Prachett, YA, Fiction, Charles Dickens, Add a tag
.jpg?picon=1806)
By: Ellen Renner,
on 11/30/2011
Blog: An Awfully Big Blog Adventure (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Keren David, Ellen Renner, Roald Dahl, writing for boys, Terry Prachett, Add a tag
A few days ago, Keren David wrote an excellent ABBA post querying why women writers sometimes choose to use their initials rather than full names. She felt that women need to stand up and be counted. It's a subject I've considered for a while without coming to a conclusion. My thoughts on reading her post were too long and complicated to fit in the comments section, so I’m returning to the topic here.
I'll start with a confession: I wanted to be published as E. L. Renner, but my then agent convinced me to use my first name. I'm still uncertain that was the right decision.
Why? Partly because initials are more anonymous. My books are about my characters, not me. I want my stories and characters to stand alone, with as little 'author-as-brand' hype as possible. As a child and teen reader I didn't want to know anything about the author of books I loved except when their next book was coming out. I wanted to experience the magic of transformation into another person, another world, another experience. Author photos were a definite turn-off: I wanted magic performed by some unknown alchemist, not a real person. Terry Prachett has the wisdom to wear a magician’s hat for his publicity stills.
Then there’s the delicate question of the critical glass ceiling. It's a perennial topic in adult fiction and it would be naive to believe that children’s books are exempt. It would also take a large dollop of willful obtuseness not to notice that male authors attract more critical attention per capita than their female counterparts. It's not a conspiracy; critics don't exercise their bias consciously any more than did the editors of the publications who recently voted for Sports Personality of the Year and neglected to put a single woman on the list.
I believe that almost all of us, however pro-female we believe ourselves to be, are so conditioned by the constant bombardment of overt and subtle messages in every aspect of our society about the relative value of the male versus the female that we subconsciously take a story written by a man more seriously than we would the same story written by a woman.
I don't think J.K. Rowling's books would have been as successful had she published them as Joanne. I doubt George Eliot would have garnered such a strong place in the canon if she had written as Mary Ann Evans. If Sylvia Townsend Warner, one of the greatest stylists and most original writers of the twentieth century, had been a man, I am convinced that her books would be much better known today. Arguably, Virginia Woolf made it into the public eye not because she had a room of her own, but because she had a publishing house of her own.
Is it, therefore, a cop-out for a woman to write under her initials, in an attempt, however feeble, to combat the anti-female bias that pervades every aspect of our culture? Possibly. It’s a difficult question and one I’ll continue to ask myself. But I also know I'll use whatever tools I can fashion to give my books and my characters, both male and female, every chance I can.
Because the larger point is that, although gender shouldn't matter in life, it does. And the only way I can see to address this issue as a writer is to attempt to be as genderless as possible – a writing androgyne. I enjoy writing both male and female characters. I don't set out to write about a girl or a boy; I choose the gender which seems to fit the story best. And the reason I write at all is because I want imaginative experience. While it's true that I can’t experience what it’s like to be a boy or man in real life, I can imagine it as a writer, and I have never felt closer to any character than I did when writing Tobias Petch in City of Thieves.
‘Only connect.’ E. M. Forster knew that books teach empathy. Between the pages of a book a reader can become another person. Boys can become girls, and girls boys. Men can see the world, however briefly, through the eyes and emotions of a wom
Blog: Day By Day Writer (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Underland Chronicles, Michelle Styles, Terry Prachett, Percy Jackson books, Peter Pan in Scarlett, third-person, omniscient narrative, switching pov, switching point of view, harry potter, j.k. rowling, point of view, Eragon, Writing, pov, Christopher Paolini, Rick Riordan, Suzanne Collins, Add a tag
What I’m referring to in the name of this post is not actually this post but another I just found on eHarlequin. Author Michelle Styles writes about POV in a really great way, I think, in her blog post Switching Point of View v Head Hopping.
I went in search of a good article about this because I needed a kind of kick in the pants that says, “Go on, try it. It could work. It’s ok to break the rules.” Michelle gave me just the right way of thinking about it. Although switching point of view isn’t, shall we say, encouraged, especially with middle-grade books, if the writing isn’t confusing (i.e. the reader always knows whose head he’s in), then switching POV is fine as long as it works for the story. Besides, as Michelle points out, Terry Prachett does it brilliantly, and he’s one of my favorite authors.
I love this last part of Michelle’s post:
There is NO hard and fast rule. The only rule is the story. If the story flows and the tension is high, you can shift as the story dictates. If the tension is low, not even slavish devotion to one point of view will save it.
Techniques are there to be mastered, rather than followed blindly.
(But the whole post is great, so click here and read it.)
Once again, story is king!
I wrote about switching POV a couple days ago and got some fabulous, encouraging comments about it. What I really need to do next is start typing and try it, but I was kinda busy today. It was always on my mind, though, and I decided to do a little research and flip through the books on my shelves and remind myself of how they handled their POVs.
I just finished the fourth book in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series (fantastic, if you haven’t tried them), but they’re all first person, and I’m not feeling that style for me as a writer. I’m currently reading the second book in Suzanne Collins’ Underland Chronicles (also fantastic), and that’s solely in the third-person protagonist’s POV, like my first book. Both of these styles work really well to bring the reader totally into the character’s world.
A book I read a while ago, Peter Pan in Scarlett, is in omniscient narrative, and although the book is very entertaining and has some delightful throwbacks to the original classic, I must admit it was a bit of a struggle for me in the first half. I never really felt like I was in the head of Peter, Wendy or any of the characters. I really was just kind of floating above and didn’t feel as though I was in the story, part of the story.
In the Eragon books, Christopher Paolini deftly switches pov every chapter or so (especially in the third book), but he does something interesting: His characters are given a sort of heirarchy, with Eragon at the top. Whenever Eragon is in a scene, it’s in his POV and we see the other characters through his eyes. But when there’s a scene with one of the lesser characters when Eragon isn’t around, Paolini chooses which character has the most to gain (storywise) from the scene and that’s whose POV it’s told in. Again, it works very well. There’s no switching within scenes, and each scene begins with some action, thought, something from the character whose POV we’re seeing through, so no confusion.
Then I spied the last Harry Potter book and something told me to go back and read the opening of the first book, Sorcerer’s Stone. Wow! I hadn’t remembered (and when I read this book I wasn’t dissecting it like I am now), but J.K. Rowling begins the initial scene in Mr. Dursley’s head, then when he goes to sleep, the POV switches to McGonagall as the cat, then to Dumbledore, and finally baby Harry. There are some narratory sentences (”How very wrong he was”), but it doesn’t read like omniscient narrative. It reads like third person switching from head to head, but it’s written so well that as a reader, you’re never confused about who you’re following, who’s head you’re in. And ultimately, it tells the story very well, which is exactly what Michelle was talking about in her excellent post on POV.
Ok, now I know what you’re thinking: Stop analyzing it and go write it! And you’re right. I will. But first, I must get some sleep. I’ll set the alarm for early, even on a Saturday — shudder.
How are you guys coming along?
Write On!
P.S. No word count from me today because all I managed to have time for was 11 words, but lots of research. I’ll post a word count tomorrow.
Thank you for giving us the chance to discuss this further, Elen - it's a challenging question.
'Because the larger point is that, although gender shouldn't matter in life, it does. And the only way I can see to address this issue as a writer is to attempt to be as genderless as possible – a writing androgyne.'
I'm not at all sure about this. *I* think the way to address it is to challenge it by writing good books openly as a woman rather than being bullied by the status quo into hiding behind an ambiguous name. If a writer genuinely thinks their work will get a better or wider reception if they pretend to be a man (or pretend not to be a woman), isn't that perpetuating the iniquitous situation?
It's a bit like people who claim state education should be improved but send their own kids to private schools - the more rich kids with influential parents who leave the system, the less likely it is to change. The more successful authors who don't come out as women, the harder it is for everyone to say 'look at these successful women authors'. It's the old conflict of personal benefit versus common good. So I'm very glad that your success to date has been under the name 'Elen' and not under initials.
I do see the problem with writing a different type of book and not wanting to lead younger readers to it by being the same person - that's a rather different issue. (Every now and then, I get requests from the Library of Congress to distinguish myself from the 'other' Anne Rooney who has the same birth date and writes very different books. Durrrr.)
An excellent post and a good argument for your choice for your next book. I was keen on initials as a neutral name but think my decision against was because my particular run of sounds felt awkward to say.
Now it's a matter authors do need to think about early on because of the author brand marketing approach. I groan when I see how many series exist under made up and heavily gendered male and female names.
I'm afraid I'm with Stroppy on this. You make a hugely powerful case for why we should fight back against gender stereotyping (towards both boys and girls) in our main characters, in book marketing etc, and I wholeheartedly agree - so why doesn't the same apply to the name that goes on the book cover?
Who gives them that message? We do you say. What message does 'I don't want you to know a woman wrote this' give?
I absolutely see why you'd want a different name to distinguish titles a different audience (though I'd hope covers, blurbs etc would do that job for you), but that's a separate issue, I think.
Its not abut disguising gender but presenting oneself as gender neutral - as some male writers also do. I write for boys and girls and while I have written as 'Nicola' am about to write as' Nick' I do not see I'm betraying anyone by writing as 'N M' . My books are about brave girls and courageous boys and I want both to pick up my books. My stories are all about boys and girls saving each other, often written in part from the girl's point of view. I want to seduce boys as well as girls into reading and if keeping my gender ambiguous makes that easier why wouldn't I? My books say - 'it doesn't matter who you are, you can be a hero' I like to think that the neutrality of my name reinforces that.
Since when do we women have to choose to label ourselves in ways that other women have decided is more appropriate? I find the view that there is only one acceptable way to do that deeply irritating.
Whoops - sorry about the punctuation mistakes!
Funnily enough if you called yourself L N Renner you'd hardly notice the difference.
I'm convinced by the urge to remain anonymous. I've been a journalist all my adult life, so it's natural for me to see my name in print, and if I want to disappear I can use my husband and kids' surname (there's another feminist naming dilemma). I can see why an author might want to use initials to let their work speak for them. But I do think it can be harmful, and I doubt it's as useful a marketing ploy as we think.
Very interesting this. In the adult crime genre many of the best selling (Val McDermid) and critically acclaimed (Kate Atkinson) are women. Men seem to have no trouble picking up boo0ks by women there. The key here is why don't boys read? I think saying that they don't read because it's written by a woman is a cop out. They don't read because they don't read (a whole host of reasons for this - I speak having had a teenage son who simply stopped reading fiction for about eight years, Since the age about 22 he started again)BUT this is not us, the writers, fault. So nothing we do will change this. It's like changing the colour of a price sticker to make an item look cheaper. But it's the economic crisis that's stopping people buying not the colour of the price tag.
Having said all this I LOVE the idea of you using initials to indicate a different type of book. Good for you.
My husband, children's author Greg Leitich Smith, and I often travel and speak together.
It's become expected for people to frequently praise him for simply being a man per se who writes.(Or, for that matter, cooks.)
On a practical level, though, I think relying only on initials requires a particularly marketable last name, one that readers (and for that matter, fellow publishing pros) will be able to recognize.
C.L. Smith would be awfully generic, and C.L. Leitich would be awfully tough to pronounce.
That said, much terrific insight to ponder here. Thank you for a thought-provoking post.
I am going, of course, to disagree with Anne and Susie. If I choose to write under my initials I will do so without feeling in the least hypocritical. I have no desire to 'hide behind an ambiguous name'; merely to take gender out of the equation.
My main point being that I am a person first, a woman second (or tenth, actually, after parent, writer, artist, biker, musician, fencer, spinner of wool, weaver and knitter ...).
To tell me I have to put my full name on the covers of my books as an identifying female tag or I risk somehow letting the sisterhood down seems to me as proscriptive as telling a black or disabled writer that they must identify themselves as black or disabled first, and writer second, so I agree with Nicky on that one.
Anne C: good point about women crime writers.
Anyway, the best thing we can do about gender issues is exactly this: talk about them, express differences of opinion and air the subject. We don't have to agree for it to be a useful exercise.
So thanks for all those thoughts!
Well, some boys read. I've had three sons and they all read - not always novels and rarely my books, but they read and I'm not about to give up on boys as a lost cause just because they are a harder to reach audience.
To my mind it is more important to challenge gender stereotypes that suggest that boys will never read or will only read stories about pooh and/or zombies than to waste time worrying about what gender stereotypes we might possibly reinforce in our name choices. It's trivial: the problem of getting more boys to engage with books is not.
This is a really interesting discussion.
Ellen, I don't think that Anne and Susie said that you were 'letting the sisterhood down', or told you that you have to do anything.
I can't help agreeing with Susie's point - which is simply that your whole argument about why we shouldn't stop girls from being the main characters just to get boys reading then seems to be turned on its head with your argument about not identifying ourselves as female, because this might put boys off too! Not saying you should or shouldn't do anything - just that the argument seems a little contradictory.
But I totally agree with you that we must absolutely use whatever name we want, and for whatever reasons we want. I have struggled for some time about a book that I'd like to get published one day, and for lots of my own reasons (which I'm sure some people would argue with if I made them public!) I would most probably do this under a different name. And I have no responsibility to anyone other than myself and my books if I do this - like you.
I think it's perfectly acceptable for us to balance our ideals with a desire for commercial success, and it's up to each one of us where we draw the line between the two.
Good luck with your next book!
Lizx
It's a fascinating discussion. I publish as Katherine Langrish, and I know boys do read my books. In fact I once did a poll of all my online fanmail, wherever I COULD figure out if the writer was male or female writer's sex (not always obvious) and it worked out about 50/50 for boys and girls writing to me. Personally I think cover illustrations have much more effect on whether boys will pick up a book, than the known sex of the author: but I do have a suspicion that male authors get taken more seriously by adult critics.
Whoops, sorry about the mixed up sentence, but you get my drift.