The Good Queen's Daughter

The Christmas read--were you like I was?  My favorite time began Christmas night, after all the
visiting and eating and gift exchange, when I retired to my room with the Christmas stocking candy cane and a wonderful childhood classic tale, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, fairy tales of Grimm or Anderson, the escape into other worlds either imagined or of another time.  Then I would read it for two days straight, in bed, in the bathtub, under the tree.  When I didn't get the right new book for this particular Christmas break escape, I just re-read the old ones every Christmas, it was just as good.

So I was delighted with the gift of the Christmas Day publication of Sylvie Vadimsky's novel The Good Queen's Daughter.   It is just such a luxurious 2 day read!

The Good Queen's Daughter begins with a girl's daring escape from her home on her wedding night, and into the moonlight where she practically falls into the arms of a rough but charming lad.   The bride happens to be Queen Guinevere 's daughter Astrelle, though because of gossip concerning her mother and the knight Lancelot, Astrelle feels unresolved about whether she is truly King Arthur's child.  The need to know who she is drives her on this quest with the aid of this boy, and Merlin's magical daughter Neriki, befriended at the scene of the Lady of the Lake.  Enlisting the aid of  a female unicorn, the advice of a fairie Queen and a ghost knight, the girl ultimately achieves womanhood and queenship, (confidence and love?) and wins a war against dark sorcery to boot.

Speaking of boots, I love Neriki's, and every shimmering detail of the funny or grand characters. I love this book for the vividly painted fairy tale characters made sensible and textured.  Neriki is my favorite, a witchy, changeling sort of Pippi Longstocking-type of independent bossiness and sass. Plus she has terrific fashion and obviously enchants our wistfully admiring heroine.  As a daughter of Merlin she lives time backwards, hence has seen the future and introduces her friends to various modernisms. Interestingly, notwithstanding her leadership in the adventures, she herself is clearly compensating for some insecurity and wistfulness. I also find it interesting and commendable that Astrelle recognizes that killing, even when necessary, is a fearsome wrong which will permanently scar the killer, and not merely a handy action deus ex machina to resolve a plot problem.

I treasure my mental picture wrought of the magically and lovingly described Castle Parien and its fairy inhabitants.  Another delight is the Lady of the Lake, who it seems is a "nymph" in another sense, as she is accused of indiscriminate couplings!  Her twin watery progeny speak in rhyme and are also favorite characters of mine for their utterly alien quality.

This is the holiday gift for which I've longed, and it wasn't until I read it that I even remembered that treasured holiday time of my youth!  Thanks, for pure pleasure.

A novel by my young adult suitable for young teens and entertaining for all ages.  Note that in the original Arthurian legends, (just as in Greek tragedy), there is a hint of dark magic's malicious trickery into incest to accomplish the downfall of a kingdom, and there is one oblique, not graphic, reference to such an act which will not be obvious to the youngest readers.  The heroine and her young lover also engage in an illicit romance, but the details are merely suggested and not illustrated.  As a whole the book is far more wholesome and fun than the prevalence of young adult problem lit force fed to our kids.

Old November mourning is an empty vase

Our old November mourning is an empty vase.

The roses are done.  Tenderness became crisp, the soft blooms drooped,  the leaves wrinkled, the fragrance lingered and the still sturdy canes are laid upon the autumn garden remains.

These are things I never say or think.  I just see the empty vase and dully recognize--
We hold the space.  The vase was cloudy; with care I washed and polished the glass.

We go about what we do, among our ordinary household things.  Our hearts enwrap an empty place.  Sometimes we think of the flowers and how they looked in the window with the lace curtains.  Mostly we feel the empty space, hearts like fingertips against thumb, holding the circled space like we held the blades picked for mother.

Dumb, we hold the place, waiting.

My Dog's Vacation

This is a picture of my dog's vacation.  I cannot be sure where this is because of all of our vacations, the dog and I share the same scene. I believe this was at Plimouth Plantation; I sent the kids to visit the living museum, and the dog and I climbed quite a hill overlooking the parking lot.  I could see a sea of cars and in the distance, even the sea.  After a bit my dog wanted to get back in the car for a nap, and I listened to a book on tape with her.     Now that I remember it, as children my brother and I visited Plimouth Plantation, and my parents stayed in the parking lot...a hot day for pilgrim cabins, and they spared themselves the entrance fee?  I obviously had fond memories.  We do it all to offer our kids the world on a plate, right?  I would share more pics of family vacations, but they all look like this picnic table.

My dog is very smart, even though she skips the museums.    She loves family vacations.  She especially loves rest stops; she thinks the stretch of grass at Wendy's is the point of the whole trip.  On a road trip, she will not eat or drink anything all day, I suppose to avoid carsickness, until we reach a hotel room; then she understands we are  done driving for the day.  Maybe poodles are so smart because they are descendants of an ancient advanced civilization of extraterrestrial aliens.  Don't you think she looks like an ALIEN, all eyes and brain? She certainly tries to communicate with me telepathically.

She can disguise herself as a dandelion.

She can make me think I see her everywhere.

Visit Vadimville

I recommend Vadimville, A Collection of Original Stories by Richard Vadim.  The collection's 300 pages of twenty short stories is sure to have something you'll enjoy for any occasion, whether your taste runs to science fiction, mystery, humor, strange tales or simple, sweet and spot on relationship stories.  

A special delight introducing the work as a collection is the cover art by the author.  Hand drawn and colored classic cars, monsters and heroes, holding hands with a girl....A true indicator of the mood found within, there is something of the comic book and something of a school boy's doodles.  The stories are so true a recollection of boyhood, surely the author remains that "boy at heart", even with his aging hard-of-hearing pals in "What D'Ya Say?"

The residual feeling after a reading is definitely optimistic and upbeat, like the cover, where even the monster is laughing, notwithstanding the grave headstones in the churchyard on the back cover.  Like a youthful comic fan's or gamer's  perspective on life, the dangers in the world are deftly handled as a game, and the flip side is also true:  the game, the sport, feels like war, and therein lies the thrill of risk when it's your turn.  The dangers arise in morally ambivalent businessmen bearing the stomach churning pressures to increase profit, relentlessly pressing into service the individual talent they need, as in "Code" and "CorrectAll"; or from institutions threatening personal autonomy and substituting for family caregiving, as in "Peas in a Pod". Danger can also be inscrutably blameless, natural and environmental, rising and subsiding as suddenly as weather, but nevertheless testing a lone human's wits in a crisis, as in "Prey"; or the  predation on children by a trusted representative of adult institutional authority as in "Dark Onion".  The heroes of these stories are young and old, male and female, funny, smart and kind,  loners but ready friends.

Here are so many heart felt and truly rendered relationships, one knows the author must be a lover.  Many of the stories' adventures unwind around a centerpiece of first love.  In the murder mystery "Dark Onion", the young hero becomes the suspect and is disdained by the new girl with whom he is infatuated.  "The Betrothal" is a short charming remembrance of young love's distress on parting, with a punchline.  The students' flirtation and ultimate investigation of the mysterious "Dorchester House" has a Tom-and-Becky feel, even down to the page-turning edge-of-your-seat exploration of dark closets with long buried threatening secrets.  In the background in "Code" is the computer programmer's refuge in his private happiness with his girlfriend then wife, which lends to the double meaning of the title:  code writing, code breaking and the unresolved social question of the code of ethics or honor which governs the new young computer gods.  Even youth's love for his refurbished classic car serves up atmosphere in the noir styled "Convertible".  

As fondly as these first loves are rendered, my favorite pairing is in "Peas in a Pod", where an old man and a boy meet up on a hiking trail and cagily conceal from each other who they are and where they are going, while forging a family in the course of their wilderness adventure.

Vadimville's title and chapter organization propose a "ville"; the stories and their characters are  "residents" in a community, perhaps referring to the experience common to writers that their inventions take on lives of their own and are companions in the telling--that the author is merely a medium, a scribe for characters in where they will go.  

One headstrong character is the smallest, "Teeny Tiny Tina".  In perfectly consistent tone of simplicity and innocence a tiny doll tells her girl the history of unfortunate accidents and crimes in her new home. Vadim captures the voices of childhood and parenting precisely. The doll's tale is chilling in its guilelessness, and a super choice for Halloween or strange tales readalouds.

The town metaphor suits in another sense.  In any community, one favors repeat acquaintance with some inhabitants over others. I have beloved favorites in "the ville", but  just as in the office, school, or politics, there may be a few who vex on first meeting but ultimately reveal some redeeming quality, and leave you, on reflection, chuckling fondly.  A few of the stories lead off with or play off an oft repeated quotation (like Sea Spicer's page, you are thinking?) or familiar character from Sunday matinees about 60 years ago.   I think this partly reflects the oeuvre ofVadimville's romantic memory, but also reflects something akin to Raymond Chandler's "rejection of pretentiousness" (from Tom Williams's Raymond Chandler:  Writing The Big Sleep).  Chandler finally preferred writing what was considered "pulp fiction" because of the freedom, and noted, "do [Americans] not see the strong element of burlesque in my kind of writing?  Or is it only the intellectuals who miss that? ...There is a strong element of fantasy in the mystery story; there is in any kind of writing that moves within an accepted formula.  The mystery writer's material is melodrama..." (Tom Williams's Raymond Chandler:  Writing the Big Sleep, c. 2014,www.aurumpress.co.uk)

For burlesque, I refer readers to Vadimville's selections adapted from Vadim's stage plays "The 4-Sided Triangle" and "Love, Lost and Found", as well as the detective mystery's wink at Shakespeare in "A Glooming Peace".  These would make entertaining mystery dinner theatre indeed; I have to confess there is one sly and so subtle line in "Love, Lost and Found", that I laugh out loud every time I read it.  Dorky of me but we all know the healthful value of laughing out loud!  And "What D'Ya Say" is funny like an old-timey variety show skit--two old buddies put up with each other's hearing loss, but sure aren't diminished in physical strength or their talent as pleasant company.

An edgy favorite of mine is the compelling sci-fi opener "A Case of Unmistaken Identity",  where the protagonist has to decide whether to end his double life, having been cuckolded by his own double--from one of those multiple universes about which the physicists tell us?  That is the unresolved mystery.   I find it irresistible to be realistically put in the place of both men's lives once they have to accept what they experience without understanding how and why.  

And that after all is the human condition, is it not.  Meanwhile we step up to bat, fall in love, make friends who become family, teach children, escape limiting futures for the freedom of God's country.  For teaching children, the selection "Solid Foundation" is an example of the best home schooling.  For everyone, welcome to Vadimville, and enjoy your visit.