Month: March 2011

Thoroughly Modern Marple

I just read that Jennifer Garner (of Alias fame) has been cast as Miss Marple in new Disney film.  For those of you who aren’t familiar with Agatha Christie’s books, Jane Marple is supposed to be an elderly spinster who lives in the small English village of St. Mary Mead.  Apparently Disney, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to ‘reboot’ the Miss Marple franchise by turning her into a hot thirtysomething.

This takes the cake for the most absurd thing I’ve read today.  When one thinks of Miss Marple, one thinks of George Orwell’s old maids bicycling to Holy Communion, not someone who could appear on the cover of Maxim.  Miss Marple’s sublime ordinariness is part of her charm.  She’s not a high-powered secret agent, she’s just a run-of-the-mill English lady who happens to have a gift for piecing clues together.

At first I thought this was going to be a prequel, but then I read that it’s going to be set in the modern day.  So not only are they shaving decades off of Miss Marple’s age, they’re also catapulting her decades into the future.  It looks like Disney’s just trying to cash in on the Marple name, but I have to wonder if that’s a winning strategy.  Presumably, the changes they’ve made are designed to appeal to a younger demographic, but I doubt that many people under the age of 50 know who she is.  And the people who already do know who she is probably won’t care much for the changes they’ve made.

Since this is a Disney film, we probably won’t be forced to watch New Marple thrash around in bed with some buff boytoy.  Nor will she be called upon to solve a disgustingly gruesome crime.   For that we should be thankful.  The Miss Marple stories were never about gritty, realistic dramas.  They were the coziest of the cozy mysteries.

Sigh.  I wonder how long it will be before Justin Bieber is cast as a young Brother Cadfael?

First person narrators

I’m not really a fan of stories told by a first-person narrator.  I know that, to some people, they make the story seem much more personal, but I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to accept a narrator who can somehow remember the ins and outs of every single conversation he/she has ever had.  There are a few books where the story is so compelling that I’m willing to overlook the first-person narration: N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles are the ones that spring immediately to mind.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m not really a fan of H. P. Lovecraft.  But I don’t see his frequent use of the first person as one of his problems.  In fact, he’s usually able to pull it off a lot better than other writers because he doesn’t use a lot of dialogue, so his narrators’ reminiscences seem more believable.

What do you think of first-person narrators?  Am I alone in my distaste?

Forward!

Now that the first Ptahmose book (tentatively titled Evil in Thebes) is in the hands of my lovely beta readers, I’ve decided to start work on book 2 of the series.  I know it’s a bit risky to start work on a sequel when the first book hasn’t even been submitted to agents yet, but I’m so excited about this universe that I’ve created that I feel compelled to keep writing.  I have an enthusiasm for this project that I don’t have for the Andrewverse (for those of you just tuning in, the Andrewverse refers to the setting of my first book A Theft of Bones).  Don’t get me wrong, I still have fond feelings for Andrew and his friends, but at this point in time I don’t feel a strong urge to write anything more about them.  That may change someday, but for now they’ll have to sit on the sidelines.

Back to book 2: I’m pleased to report that I just finished a rough plot sketch tonight.  Following the precedent set by Evil in Thebes, it’s in table form (an idea I borrowed from J. K. Rowling, as you may recall).  I think it’s a great way to keep track of the various subplots as they develop throughout the book.

When writing a plot sketch, I basically write down the first semi-coherent ideas that pop into my mind without worrying overmuch about their quality.  A lot of stuff is promptly erased by the delete key, but some of it sticks and eventually I have a decent foundation for a story.   Once I actually start writing in earnest, the plot usually undergoes a few more changes and I always love to look back and see how my work has changed over time.

I think that the initial plotting of a novel is probably my favorite part of the writing process.  I love sifting and winnowing through endless possibilities to come up with a coherent, entertaining plot.  It wasn’t always that way.  When I first started writing, I got frustrated with plotting very quickly.  It galled me when a great idea fell apart once I started pursuing it.  But my attitude changed once I accepted such mistakes as an unavoidable part of the writing process.  Now when an idea doesn’t pan out, I just shrug my shoulders and try to think of something better rather than getting bent out of shape.

Review of The Broken Kingdoms

Today I finished reading The Broken Kingdoms, the second book in N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy.  You can read my review of the first book in the series here.

Rather than simply pick up where The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms left off, Broken Kingdoms jumps ten years into the future to tell the story of Oree Shoth, a young blind woman living in the city of Shadow beneath the World Tree.  Freed from their servitude, godlings cavort around the city.  But when Oree finds a silent godling in her muckbin one day, she gets pulled into a dangerous conspiracy that threatens not only her life but the very fabric of the universe itself.

As I mentioned in my earlier review, one of the great things about Jemisin’s work is the rich mythology that underlies it.  Broken Kingdoms does an excellent job of elaborating on what we already know.  In particular, we learn a lot more about Itempas, a full god who was seen briefly at the end of Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.  Jemisin does a great job of humanizing her deities so that they actually have distinct personalities instead of just being insanely powerful cardboard cutouts.

Jemisin also continues to take risks with her writing and it continues to pay off.  Rather than play it safe and write a direct sequel, she chose to give top billing to a new set of characters (though some familiar faces do appear as ‘guest stars’).  In doing so, she emphasizes that her world doesn’t just revolve around one small group of people, which makes it seem that much more realistic.  And even though I’m not really a fan of first-person narrators, I have to admit that Jemisin is able to pull it off.   She’s also quite adept at the short scene: some of her scenes are only a paragraph long but she manages to pack a lot of power into a few lines of text.

The only thing that I didn’t like about Broken Kingdoms was the sex scenes.  The breast fondling and lady-part stroking veered a bit too close to romance novel territory for my tastes, but your mileage may vary.

The final book in the trilogy, The Kingdom of Gods, is due to come out later this year.