LAMENT by Maggie Stiefvater
I got off to a bad start with this book. In fact I got off to a bad start twice.*
I’ve started following more links and reading more sample chapters on line, and that’s how I found LAMENT**. So I ordered it. From Waterstones. You may remember Waterstones: it’s the source of the fascinating customer service response, “The item showing as still outstanding from the warehouse from order number **+#!?! has not been updated on your online status.”***
I ordered LAMENT from Waterstones months ago. Eventually they decided they didn’t have it and weren’t going to get it, and cancelled it. Hmm. So the next time I was cruising Waterstones anyway I had another look for LAMENT. Available. So I ordered it again.
A few weeks later they cancelled it again.
But it’s available on their frelling site. So I ordered it a THIRD time.†
They cancelled it a third time.
And it was still available on their (frelling) site.
It was at about this surreal moment that I received an email from Maggie Stiefvater asking if I would sign a bookplate for a (writer) friend of hers whose writing life apparently had begun with an early, injurious reading of my BEAUTY. Blerg. I did sign the bookplate. I almost asked Maggie if she knew anything about the dark UK conspiracy to prevent readers from laying hands on LAMENT, but this is the sort of question—as I have cause to know—that is likely to cause instant blood-pressure headaches and screaming, so I didn’t.
Instead I went on AbeBooks, and ordered it from America.
About three days after I ordered it from AbeBooks, a Waterstones bag dropped through the mail slot. Containing a copy of LAMENT. Cue blood-pressure headache and screaming.††
So by the time I actually sat down with it to, you know, read, I was braced for adventures. Which is perhaps no bad thing.
There is a scary and atmospheric prologue which I will leave you to discover for yourselves.††† The beginning of chapter one is another of those great openings that make you very happy with your decision to read a particular book:
‘“You’ll be fine once you throw up,” Mom said from the front seat. “You always are.”
Standing behind our dusty station wagon, I blinked out of my daze and tugged my harp case out of the back, feeling nauseated. It struck me that Mom’s statement was just about the only reason I needed to avoid a career in public music performance. “Keep that pep talk coming, Mom.”’
One of the best things about this book is its sense of humour. Here’s another line that made me laugh:
‘“Don’t wear something trashy,” Mom advised, shutting my bedroom door behind her. . . . I was still holding her last suggestion, a dress that made me look like a runaway from a nursing home. . . . ’
And this meeting between our heroine, Dee’s, aunt, and Dee’s best friend James, tells you everything you need to know about both of them:
‘Delia surveyed his kilt, his unkempt hair, and his hands scrawled with various messages to himself.
‘“You’re the piper, aren’t you?” she asked coldly.
‘James smiled firmly. He had already identified her as a piper-hater. “Yes, but I do it against my will. The aliens won’t let me stop.”’‡
Dee is a hugely talented musician. In chapter one she’s throwing up in anticipation of a competition the summer before her junior year, held at her high school. And—hurling into a toilet in the girls’ restroom—she feels a cool hand smoothing her hair back from her sweaty face.
The hand belongs to a mysterious young man named Luke. A mysterious young man who pulls out a flute and suggests (after she stops throwing up) they play together. A mysterious young man who inspires her to play and sing better than she ever has in her life before and, as a duet, they win the competition: ‘The room was completely silent . . . and then the audience leapt to its feet, clapping and whistling. Even the judges in the front seats were on their feet. . . .’
But I haven’t told you yet about my second bad start with this book. Here it is: OH FRELLING CRAP IT’S ANOTHER OF THESE HUNDREDS-OF-YEARS-OLD OMNIPOTENT FRELLING BOYFRIENDS WHO LOVES ONLY YOU/THE HEROINE FOR NO REASON EXCEPT THAT THIS MORONIC AND DEBILITATING PLOT DEVICE SELLS BOOKS.
It isn’t.‡‡ But if anyone else has a wavery moment near the beginning when you begin to suspect some form of the truth about Luke—don’t worry. It’s true he’s old, and he’s mixed up with some seriously unpleasant faeries, and he falls in love with Dee. But she has her own powerful destiny, and he needs her help.‡‡‡
One of the things Stiefvater gets particularly well, I think, is the cost of power—the cost and the difficulty. The fact that you can do something—even that you can do something astonishing—doesn’t mean that it’s easy.§ You may have to throw up before you go on stage. Or you may have to face down Them, the Good Neighbours, the Fair Folk—you don’t say the word ‘faerie’ for fear of drawing their disastrous attention. The long final climax of the book is a series of confrontations between Dee and various minions of the Faerie Queen, who by then holds both James and Luke prisoner. Here is one of them:
‘My voice shook. “Go back to her and tell her I want my friend back. And I want Luke.”
‘The Hunter’s eyes were fixed on me as if they would will the knife from my hand. “I will not leave my quarry.”
‘“You will,” I said, holding the knife steady with sheer force of will. “Go tell her what I said.” I held out my other hand, the palm toward him, and imagined it was a huge giant’s hand . . . .
‘The Hunter stumbled backward. . . .
‘“Go, or I’ll crush you,” I lied. I barely had the strength to hold the dagger, much less to threaten him. . . .
‘He gave me a long look and then he lifted a hand. “Hounds, come.”
‘They streamed after him. . . . I waited, my hand outstretched and shaking, until they had been gone two long minutes.
‘“Is he gone?” I finally whispered.
‘Thomas nodded, disbelieving. “Yes.”
‘“Good,” I said, and collapsed.’
And that’s only a lesser minion. Dee has to meet the Faerie Queen herself, of course.
‘. . . “You were ordinary once yourself.”
‘The Queen looked at me incredulously. “You compare the value of your life to mine? You’re nothing. . . . Your story has been written a thousand times, and in every version, you and your lover die. . . . ”
* * *
* It’s okay. This story has a happy ending.
** Which is also how I found DEMON’S LEXICON and the one I’m going to do next week. Stay tuned.
*** If I click on ‘my account’, it says ‘this title is still being picked at our warehouse’. It has been saying this for over a month.
However this story has a happy ending too. Someone sent Sarah the link to my LEXICON post and she has sent me a copy of DEMON’S COVENANT. So now I get to sit back and smile and see just how long it takes frelling Waterstones to send me the copy I ordered. No, I’m not going to cancel it. I’m going to order a second copy of LEXICON and give them away. Meanwhile I’m going to read COVENANT exactly when I want to.
† You’re right. I have to investigate The Book Depository.
†† Yes, the AbeBooks copy arrived about a week later. But fortunately it’s not a problem. I will give it away too.
††† Because you are going to read it, aren’t you? Although you probably already have. I’m so far behind the wave here I’m standing on dry land. But that’s just mostly going to be the case with me and books, so you’d better get used to it.
‡ I love James. Someone who’s a faster reader than I am says that the next book, BALLAD, is mostly about James. I’ve ordered it . . . from Waterstones. Oh dear.
‡‡ Perhaps in my defense, I’d just read/thrown against the wall several in a row of irritating immortal boyfriends with maddening useless dweeby heroines, and was in a jumping-at-small-noises mood.
‡‡‡ Also, his old wreck of an automobile is named Bucephalus. You have to like a guy who names his ruinous monster of a car Bucephalus.^
^ You also have to love a heroine who, turning up early at a gig, says this about the big fancy house where she’s playing for a private reception: ‘I hoped that if I ever got rich and famous, I wouldn’t be so warped by my gobs of money that I thought [stone fountains in the shape of] little peeing boys counted as acceptable lawn ornaments.’
§ Writing stories, say.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.