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kilroyPrint date: 1986 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 2, 70s: 6, 80s: 6, 90s: 4, 00s: 11)
I find it somewhat interesting that I chose to read this book but put down The Demeter Flower without hesitation. I hadn't realized that this book too was going to have an all-female societym but I stand by my choice. TDF seemed very much in the vein of social allegory, where there's someone waving a flag going "WOMEN! WOMEN OVER HERE! DID YOU NOTICE WE'RE WOMEN?!?" every page. In ADIO, pretty much all the characters are women but it almost doesn't matter. The story unfolds because of who the characters are, driven by individual motivations and flaws without stopping continually to point out who has ovaries. To riff off of Ursula K. LeGuin, it's feminist fiction that's about the fiction, not the feminism.
It's a lush book. Shora is a world I want to visit, described with beauty through the eyes of Sharers who consider themselves a part of it. The story wouldn't work at all if we didn't believe in the planet, but thankfully we get to know it deeply in all its moods and seasons. Slonczewski uses the people to artfully mirror the world; she normally doesn't describe the surroundings, she describes people reacting to the surroundings. It attaches every picture of the world to an emotion, which in turn makes us readers feel things for a place we've never seen.
And then there are the Sharers, a culture that has no words for "kill," "payment," or "orders." From a certain perspective their way of life makes crystal-clear sense and draws logically from the world on which they live. From another perspective it makes them totally incomprehensible. Slonczewski makes sure that we understand them both ways, which is a difficult trick executed very well. Probably the best scenes in the book are the ones where the Sharers try to communicate with the colonials; neither side really understands the conversation they're having, but we the readers can see all the subtleties.
The only thing preventing me from shoving this book into the hands of random people on the street is the ending. It's... unsatisfying. There's a lot of emotion packed into this book, but the ending is just sort of there. It happens, life goes on. I had to read it twice even to really understand why it happened the way it did-- it wasn't obvious. It ends like the Sharers would have it end, without climax or explanation. Sadly I'm not a Sharer, and when I finished the very first thought in my mind was "Is that it?"
Verdict: Keep. (18.5/57 keepers)
Page count: 406 (11161 total)
Completed: 31 (15 female authors, 16 male authors)
Rejected: 26 (14 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Sat. 10/16
I find it somewhat interesting that I chose to read this book but put down The Demeter Flower without hesitation. I hadn't realized that this book too was going to have an all-female societym but I stand by my choice. TDF seemed very much in the vein of social allegory, where there's someone waving a flag going "WOMEN! WOMEN OVER HERE! DID YOU NOTICE WE'RE WOMEN?!?" every page. In ADIO, pretty much all the characters are women but it almost doesn't matter. The story unfolds because of who the characters are, driven by individual motivations and flaws without stopping continually to point out who has ovaries. To riff off of Ursula K. LeGuin, it's feminist fiction that's about the fiction, not the feminism.
It's a lush book. Shora is a world I want to visit, described with beauty through the eyes of Sharers who consider themselves a part of it. The story wouldn't work at all if we didn't believe in the planet, but thankfully we get to know it deeply in all its moods and seasons. Slonczewski uses the people to artfully mirror the world; she normally doesn't describe the surroundings, she describes people reacting to the surroundings. It attaches every picture of the world to an emotion, which in turn makes us readers feel things for a place we've never seen.
And then there are the Sharers, a culture that has no words for "kill," "payment," or "orders." From a certain perspective their way of life makes crystal-clear sense and draws logically from the world on which they live. From another perspective it makes them totally incomprehensible. Slonczewski makes sure that we understand them both ways, which is a difficult trick executed very well. Probably the best scenes in the book are the ones where the Sharers try to communicate with the colonials; neither side really understands the conversation they're having, but we the readers can see all the subtleties.
The only thing preventing me from shoving this book into the hands of random people on the street is the ending. It's... unsatisfying. There's a lot of emotion packed into this book, but the ending is just sort of there. It happens, life goes on. I had to read it twice even to really understand why it happened the way it did-- it wasn't obvious. It ends like the Sharers would have it end, without climax or explanation. Sadly I'm not a Sharer, and when I finished the very first thought in my mind was "Is that it?"
Verdict: Keep. (18.5/57 keepers)
Page count: 406 (11161 total)
Completed: 31 (15 female authors, 16 male authors)
Rejected: 26 (14 male authors, 12 female authors)
Next book due: Sat. 10/16