palace of winds

Next up: Sign of the Labrys, by Margaret St. Clair. I picked this one up in a fantastic used book store in St. Louis. I can’t remember the name of it now, but it’s built in an old house and up in the children’s section had a set of old books for the nursery in a fantastic house-shaped slipcover, complete with roof. I should’ve taken a picture.

Anyway, in bookstores I’ll often check for things by a handful of favorite authors, and have a list of books I’m on the look-out for saved in my phone — but mostly I shop by title and cover, and might read the first page or something random from the middle to make sure the style’s not going to drive me up the wall. I was sold on this one the instant I pulled it from the shelf and turned it over:

Really, guys? Original publication date, by the way, is 1963. In case you can’t read the above image (bad cell phone pic, sorry!):

WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION!

ORIGINAL!BRILLIANT!!DAZZLING!!!

Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel.

Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites…

FRESH!IMAGINATIVE!!INVENTIVE!!!

Admit it: you’ve already run over to Amazon to search for your very own copy, or you’re mentally composing the email you’re going to send me asking to borrow it. Worth it? I think so. I haven’t read any other sci-fi from this era (I’m more of a fantasy gal than sci-fi, so I’ve actually read very little sci-fi, full stop), so I can’t comment on it vs. others of the type, but overall I was pretty entertained. It’s a weird little book, definitely a different tone than anything else I’ve read. The setting is a future dystopia, after wild yeasts have decimated 90% of the world’s population. People are living mostly in man-made underground caves, and have developed an aversion to one another. There’s the Evil Government, and the main character who undergoes a journey and an awakening, and a lot of strange talk about yeasts and fungi. In other words: AWESOME! WEIRD!! ADJECTIVE!!!

In February, I also finished listening to the audiobook version of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society; by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows; read by Paul Boehmer, Susan Duerden, Rosalyn Landon, John Lee, & Juliet Mills. I don’t remember where I read the recommendation for this one; it was on my library list for quite a while before I actually got it, and by the time it arrived I’d completely forgotten anything I’d ever known about it. I just popped it into my cd player, trusting I’d had a good reason to request it in the first place, and discovered that it’s a narrative told through a series of letters. And I have to admit, for the first while — a half an hour? a few hours? — I was on the verge of giving up on it. I’m a bit of a tough sell on first-person narratives, especially outside of young-adult fiction, and correspondence fiction is even worse. But sometime during that first disc, I got a bit hooked. And then a bit more, and by maybe halfway through I was totally on board, totally in love with the little cast of characters from Guernsey.

The book takes place in England, shortly after WWII. The main character is an author who strikes up a correspondence with members of the title Society, who write to her about their experiences during the war. The characters are endearing, and the story is by turns charming, sweet, and sad. Nothing too surprising in it, but I did find myself lingering in the car to hear just one more sentence, and being thankful for long stoplights. For the audiobook aspect: they have different voice actors reading each letter-writer’s part, and it works well.

2010 Book Count: 6 (+3 fluff)
January: 2 (+3 fluff)
February: 4