People have been recommending this book to me for quite a while. They've been saying that given my taste in authors I'm sure so to love Charles de Lint, and that this is his best book to date. I'm about 200 pages (of 500) in already. I didn't realize that it was part of a series, but I don't think that's detracting from it at all. There are allusions to other books, maybe little bits of plots that if i had read others I'd understand better, but I don't feel lost without having read the previous novels.
Here's the publishers blurb.
"Charles de Lint has brought an entire imaginary North American city to vivid life, Newford: where magic lights dark streets; where myths walk clothed in modern shapes; where humans and older beings must work to keep the whole world turning." "He has peopled this city with extraordinary characters - people like Joseph Crazy Dog, also known as Bones, the trickster who walks in two worlds at once; Sophie, born with magic in the blood, whose boyfriend dwells in the otherworld of dreams; Angel, who runs a center for street people and lives up to her name; Geordie, creating enchantment with his fiddle; Christy, collecting stories in the streets; the Crow Girls, wild and elusive; and many, many more." "At the center of these entwined lives stands a young artist named Jilly Coppercorn, whose paintings capture the hidden beings that dwell in Newford's shadows. Jilly has been a central part of the street scene since de Lint's very first stories. With her tangled hair, her paint-splattered jeans, a smile perpetually on her lips, she's darted in and out of the Newford tales. Now, at last, we have Jilly's own story, and it's a powerful one indeed...for behind the painter's fey charm there's a dark secret, and a past she's labored to forget. And that past is coming to claim her now, threatening all she loves." "I'm the onion girl," Jilly Coppercorn says. "Pull back the layers of my life, and you won't find anything at the core. Just a broken child. A hollow girl." She's run from the past and the truth for so long. She's very good at running. But life has just forced Jilly to stop.
1 comment:
I finished this up a bit ago, but I don't think I posted my opinion. I wrote it, I can remember little bits of what I said, nut I can't find it now.
So the short version..
I was luke warm on this book. I didn't like the plot that much, and I never found myself caring about the characters. Their actions didn't seem real. Like they are characters from a fizzy-wine commercial.
Here's a quick example. There is a group of friends sitting around talking, each drinking the latte, or coffee or tea that best expresses their personality. One of the circle of friends is missing. Because she's in a coma, the victim of a hit and run. She may not come out of the coma, and even if she does she'll most likely never paint again. Which is unfortunate, since she's a painter. Some one has broken into her apartment, trashed the place, and destroyed many of her paintings.
One of the friends mentions something about seeing a pink cadillac near the apartment on the day of the break in. They all remember a song by an artist that they all love about a cadillac, and they all break into siumltaneous laughter.
There are little scenes like that scattered through out the book, scenes that just don't feel right.
On the other hand, i think that this book has my favorite envisioning of the "dream world" so far. And I've read a lot of books that try to tackle the dream world.
This one does a good job. Other authors trie to impose too many rules and laws on their dream worlds. This one plays it loose and somehow it all works out.
In the end though, I'd give this about a 6 out of 10. It wasn't terrible, but I won't reccomend it to people.
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