The Woman Who Loved the Moon

Author: Elizabeth A. Lynn
Year: 1981
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy

So.  I'm still working on how I want to format my reviews.  Where and how should I indicate what inspired me to read this?  Where I got it?  Why?  And what the final disposition is? In short, will I ever read this book again?  Recommend it to a friend?  Keep it in case I want to refer to a particularly adroit example of storytelling or skill? 

This book brings up all of those questions for me.  I'd never heard of Elizabeth A. Lynn before, nor have I read anything else or seen other books of hers lurking around.  I do remember deciding to buy it, however.  I was in our local book swap shoppe, checking out the fantasy section, and the title interested me.  Apparently the title story won the 1980 World Fantasy Award.  Cool.  That really got my attention: the other deciding factor was a blurb on the inside by Marge Piercy (no, I don't think she's related to the Piercys in The World According to Garp, although I don't otherwise recognize the name): "Her women have dignity and strength!"

OK.  I'd like to read stories where the women are not set pieces.  I wondered what the 80's version of female dignity and strength looked like, so I paid my money and took my chances.  Granted, it's taken me a while to read it - this has been sitting on my TBR pile for years. 

The stories are:

• Wizard's Domain - a sea wizard, with the help of a man who betrayed him, fights a fire wizard. 
• The Gods of Reorth - Jael impersonates a goddess by using the technology from her civilization.
• We All Have To Go - A television show records the last moments of the dying.  Strangely prescient of our current fascination with reality television.  One quibble; you knew more or less what the ending would be, although not quite how it would come about. 
• The Saints of Driman - Explorers are leaving a planet.  One is fascinated with the saints there. 
• I Dream of a Fish, I Dream of a Bird - A mother's discovery saves her injured son.
• The Island - A man sees his dead wife on a mysterious island.
• The Dragon That Lived in the Sea - A dragon unknowingly terrorizes a small fishing village until a child is born who has no fear.
• Mindseye - A retelling of "The Ice Queen" given the setting of planetary exploration.
• The Man Who Was Pregnant - A man becomes pregnant and hangs out in an orange caftan.
• Obsessions - A urban development board burns down old houses.
• The Woman in the Phone Booth - A stranger discovers that a woman sitting in a phone booth is an alien and the booth is her ship.  (Dr. Who, much? Although this alien is apparently taking classes, not fighting Daleks.) 
• Don't Look at Me - A dwarf magician on an interplanetary entertainment circuit solves a murder.
• Jubilee's Story - A group of women deliver a child as they travel through rough territory.
• The Circus That Disappeared - A small circus is hiding a big secret.
• The White King's Dream - A resident in a nursing home lives on despite her wishes. 
• The Woman Who Loved The Moon - One of three sisters fights, then falls in love with, the Moon.

The potential of these stories is enormous, and I felt that Lynn had a good grasp of craft; the stories were taut and the words were well used.  However, they were also curiously empty.  I can't say that I want to read any of these stories again, and only a few stood out.  I read this book over a span of two weeks (I think) and can barely remember what the stories were about. I'm not sure why they don't work for me: there's a definite remove in them - I never sunk fully in the world portrayed.  The characters were mostly interchangeable. 

A lot of the female protagonists end up with other women.  There's really very little said about it, and definitely no reaction from their society.  On one hand, I like the thought that these relationships happen with little to no commentary.  However, we're never really sure what attracts one character to another, and that may be one of the reasons why I find the stories so stale.
 
Much to my amusement, the first story doesn't even have a woman in it (unless you count the girl conjured by one sorcerer).  I thought the title story was OK, but it was nothing that particularly entranced me.  I can't say there was anything new about the women portrayed, or different - but it has been thirty years, after all, since this book came out, and I may be writing this from a vantage point of being exposed to "strong" heroines (although we could always use more).  At least these women didn't sit around and wait for anyone to rescue them. 

The best story by far was "Jubilee's Story."  In it, a group of four women are traveling together.  They are apparently from a society where women have power and control.  During their travels, they are asked to help deliver a baby.  The family they assist is very patriarchal, and opposes what these women represent.  I thought it was so powerful because we are told so much in details - we aren't beat over the head with explanation or back story.  This was probably the most moving story in the entire book as well, mostly because you can deduce what the mother's life has been like, and what horror she endured. 

"The Man Who Was Pregnant" reminded me of a much better pregnant male story: Daniel P. Dern's "Yes Sir That's My," which I read in the anthology Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves.  Dern's story touched more on gender and rights than Lynn's did, which really surprised me.  The anthology was printed in 1991; interesting the difference a decade can make.  Plus, Dern's story was slyly funny. Lynn apparently lacks humor. 

Speaking of changing times and humor: I did get a grin out of "Obsessions" as one character was a smoker, and was furious that he couldn't smoke in someone else's office.  Just you wait, buddy: today you wouldn't even be able to smoke in the building.  

I have a game with myself: which stories would I put in an anthology if someone were ever insane enough to offer me the opportunity?  "Jubilee's Story" might make the cut - nothing else would. 

I can't say I'm inspired to try to find more of Lynn's work.  I do wonder, though, if she has grown as a writer and has managed to connect to her characters. 


This book will go into the resale/give away box, and I'll move on. 

So whence the blog title?

It took me a while to figure out what to call this blog, as it is to primarily be a place for me to capture thoughts on things I've read, watched or experienced.  As I am a writer, I'm interested in dissecting the story, and what did - or did not - work for me.  Thusly, I have no plans to be coy and avoid discussing plot twists.  I'm always for a good plot twist, but it doesn't ruin the story for me if it's revealed before I have a chance to experience it for myself.  That, and I have a fuzzy memory, so by the time I get around to reading/watching/whatever, I will probably have forgotten all about it anyhow.

There was something else I needed to consider, however - the fact that I might well wander off topic.  After all, what fun is writing if you can't write what you want?  And that includes writing reviews.

I was inspired, in fact, by a book by Wislawa Szymborska (a Polish poet, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996).  What?  Never heard of her?  Me neither (despite my B.A. in Creative Writing), until her book nonrequiered reading: prose pieces came out.  I have no idea how I heard about that, although I think Entertainment Weekly, of all magazines, had a review on it and it caught my fancy.

So, two things: now I'm going to try to capture why I read the books (or saw the movie, or started watching the series, etc.) and how I found them.  Because I like to know those things.  I'm not sure it does me any good, but sometimes I wonder what made me pick this up.

I vividly remember finding nonrequired reading.  I had a gift card (a Christmas gift from a difficult boss) to our local independent.  The store had a sidewalk sale, and as I was wondering around I saw the book.  I think I squealed (I'm embarrassing like that).  I remember snatching it up and cradling it.

So, you ask, what is this book about?  The book I was so blasted exited to get my hands on?  Yes.  A collection of book reviews done by Szymborska over a number of years for her local newspaper.  Or that is what they purported to be.  She mostly addressed the topic of the book (most are non-fiction) and usually includes an anecdote form the work in question.  Mostly these are small essays in which intelligence and wit shine through.

I should mention they're translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh.  I think she did an excellent job - there's a flow and a wit to these pieces: they seem conversational. 

I do recommend this book (with the understanding that it may be almost impossible to find).  There's no way that I'm going to lend my copy to anyone.  It sits on my favorites shelf, and I pick it up and leaf through it, knowing that I'll never read any of the books reviewed (age and geography mostly conspire against that happening), but enjoying the command of language.

Only practice, of course, gives that command; I am not saying that my writing compares to Szymborska's, only that she inspired me.