(no subject)

[winterbadger]

x/50: Red Branch by Morgan Llewellyn: It doesn't often happen that I give up on a book entirely. It is even more rare for me to give up on a book, then try it again once, or even twice, and drop it for good. But this is one of those times. I have had this book for many years, and because people I knew whose opinions I respect (and who will not be named here) said they thought it was good, I have kept plugging away, trying to get into the book, trying to like it.

But it is no use. After 300 pages of misery (out of a 400+ page book), I am punting this one with extreme prejudice. It's hard to imagine someone taking the ferocious, blood-soaked, and (some would say) romantic cycle of stories that feature Cuchulain and the warriors of the Red Branch of Ulster and making a dull, uninspired, frankly boring book out of them, but that's just what Llewellyn has done here, in my opinion. She listlessly retells the tales, reinterprets the settings, tries to conjure up the past, and crafts her own perspective, trying to make her mark on a timeless and enduring set of legends. And what comes out is a bland tale of anonymous people, struggling through great troubles but with no appeal, no character, no real life to them at all. Conor mac Nessa and Fergus Roy butt heads like two banal managers from The Office. Maeve and Skya and Aillel and Emer squabble and plot like characters from Desperate Housewives. Cuchulain and Ferdiad's fellowship seems bland and characterless. Even with the story of Deidre and the Sons of Naisi, Llewellyn fails to do more than drag out a painful and tawdry affair, like a modern politician's sex scandal. And her innovation, her voice an eternal, otherwordly god-like being that takes the form of a crow and follows Cuchulain through his life, seeking to feed from the violence of his battles, is downright preposterous. Hint to authors: don't try to write the part of an immortal being from the first person unless you are terrifically skillful. In which case you'll probably know better anyway.

At this point, all I can do is mourn the time I wasted trying to find something worthwhile in this book. I've spent less than a week on Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker prize-winning novel about Thomas Cromwell, and the 175 pages have been more profitable, more enjoyable, and more enlightening than the 300 pages of Red Branch that I've spent years choking down.

In process

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
The Sultan's Seal by Jenny White
The Williamite Wars in Ireland, 1688-1691 by John Childs
Islam by Karen Armstrong
Hostile Skies: A Combat History of the American Air Service in World War I by James J. Hudson
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
Understanding China by John Bryan Starr
Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 by Thomas Desjardins
Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
Theoretical Criminology by George B. Vold et al.

(Yes, I start reading new books before I finish the ones I've already started. No, this is not a good habit. :-)

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I recommend The Hound of Ulster by Rosemary Sutcliff.

[winterbadger]

You are a man of good taste sir. That book (and her book on Finn MacCool) have been constant companions since childhood.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It was recommended by my great aunt, Johanna, who was a scholar and teacher of Irish history as well as a member of the Cumann na mBan in the 3rd West Cork brigade of the IRA from 1916 through 1922.