>
>I recently finished Elisabeth Vonarburg's Reluctant Voyagers. I was a bit
>disappointed with it. Athana was an interesting character in that she is a
>young female "diety" who needs advice from Catherine, someone she "created."
>Catherine, herself, is a strong character who can take care of herself
>sexually and physically. I enjoyed Catherine, but I got impatient with her
>two lesbian friends and her two gay male friends. These couples seemed like
>token characters except for Charles-Henri, one of the gay men, who had a
>bigger role in the book than just "gay man."
>
>I've heard that Vonarburg's In the Mothers' Land--also published as
>Maerlande Chronicles--is a great book.
>
>I'd be interested in responses to either book.
>
>Joanna
Elisabeth Vonarburg is one of my favorite authors and _In the mothers'
land_ (original title - Chroniques du pays des meres) is one of my
favorite books. It's a feminist semi-utopia where, due to a genetic
defect, 90+% of the population is female. I particularly like it from
a linguistic point of view. It was originally written in French with
the feminine being dominant throughout the book. (French, like all
romance languages, is a gendered language. If you have a group of women
the word for they is elles, a group of men is ils, and a mixed group,
even with 30 women and 1 man, is always ils. In this book, a mixed
group, is always elles.) This was incredibly refreshing to me after
years of being told no native speaker would ever find a gendered language
sexist. The translator, I thought, did a very nice job of making up words
to get the idea across in English. I found myself forgetting, at times,
that there were in fact men in this world.
My experience with Reluctant Voyagers (or Les voyageurs malgre eux) is
somewhat unique, I think, so I can't really say very much about it. I
bought it in Quebec in French with the idea of reading it in a year or
so, when I would be ready. Instead I found myself reading it in the
coffee shop in the bookstore, missing about every third word, but still
more or less able to follow the story. This led to a very surrealistic
reading of a very surrealistic novel. I enjoyed it greatly, but it's hard
to say how much of it was excitement over being able to read a novel in
French. I also found myself very much identifying with Catherine, who
also often found herself not having any idea what was going on. I am
looking forward to rereading it one of these days.
Gabby
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:19 PDT