Recently Completed #8
Apr. 28th, 2014 04:47 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
I finished The Falling Woman with a deep sense of satisfaction. It's a different book, maybe offbeat would be the word? Not quirky. Quirky is the wrong word. If I say it's a woman's book, that's not right, either. It's not a book only a woman could write, but possibly it's a book more like the one a woman would write. Anyway, I really enjoyed it.
I think for me what stands out in the books I prefer tends to be compassion. Compassion of the author for her characters, however flawed. And there's certainly compassion in this book. We could easily hate Elizabeth Butler for abandoning her daughter, but we don't. She's drawn too fully for such a simplistic response. We can still think what she did was wrong--although surely her husband committed the greater wrong--but we understand what happened and why she acted as she did. There are no cardboard cut-out villains among the women. Maybe Marcos is a bit of a cipher, or maybe a cliche, but I think that's possibly because we're not used to women seeing through such men, or using them just as they like to use. He has one version of events but hers is another, different, not sad or desperate but something close to that yet more empowered.
Definitely worth a read. I'm undecided whether it's SF or Fantasy but I'm sticking the SF label on it for now.
I think for me what stands out in the books I prefer tends to be compassion. Compassion of the author for her characters, however flawed. And there's certainly compassion in this book. We could easily hate Elizabeth Butler for abandoning her daughter, but we don't. She's drawn too fully for such a simplistic response. We can still think what she did was wrong--although surely her husband committed the greater wrong--but we understand what happened and why she acted as she did. There are no cardboard cut-out villains among the women. Maybe Marcos is a bit of a cipher, or maybe a cliche, but I think that's possibly because we're not used to women seeing through such men, or using them just as they like to use. He has one version of events but hers is another, different, not sad or desperate but something close to that yet more empowered.
Definitely worth a read. I'm undecided whether it's SF or Fantasy but I'm sticking the SF label on it for now.