Susan Mundahl wrote:
>
> I have just finished "Gibbon's Decline and Fall" It was incredible! Does
> anyone know how to get in touch with the author? I believe that her books
> are so insighful. They have helped me focus on what is important in this
> liminal age when we are trying to overcome the shackles of patriarchal
> bondage. Anyone care to discuss the book? Please contact me at
> isisbear@aol.com.
I am a Tepper fan as well. I think you'd probably have to write her
publisher (info should be on the copyright page) to contact her.
I haven't read her newest (_The Family Tree_ or something similar to
that), but I thought that _Gibbon's Decline and Fall_ was the best book
she'd written in years.
I admire Tepper tremendously but I think she also has some serious flaws
as a writer. One of these is that she gets so carried away with her
politics that she tends beat the reader over the head with them. Even
though I generally agree with her message, the heavy-handedness makes me
wince. I thought that she did a fine job of *not* doing that in
Gibbon's. (Did you read _Shadow's End_? All the female characters were
good and all but one of the men were bad--and the one good man was
pretty much an honorary woman.) Her politics were there, but they were
deftly woven and crucial to the story. (Also, while her passion and her
politics is one of her greatest faults, it is also one of her greatest
strengths and what keeps me coming back to her. She cares passionately
about what she's writing. You know she's not just tossing it off.)
Her other bad fault (as I see it, of course) is that she has a problem
ending her novels. She tends to rush the ending and throw in all sorts
of things. She does this particularly in _Beauty_, with her rant on
horror writers, and _A Plague of Angels_, which had some really
interesting concepts in it otherwise, such as the archetypal village.
Still, if she were perfect, she would be much less interesting to
discuss.
Berni Phillips
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:20 PDT