Started: 30 Jan. 2013
Finished: 5 Feb. 2013
Pages: 260
How to earn your living if you have a Classics degree? Write mysteries, apparently. Steven Saylor,
Lindsey Davis, Ruth Downie....all three have published multiple books that have meticulous attention to historical detail, while also being entertaining stories with convincing characters.
House of the Vestals is a book of short stories, each of which illustrates some aspect of Roman culture. For example, "Saturnalia Silver" is the story of an investigation that happens during the mid-winter festival, while "King Bee and Honey" involves a mysterious death linked to Roman bee-keeping practices.
How successful are they? Frankly, they felt a bit didactic. Because these stories are so short, the educational/informational content of each one seemed to overwhelm the character and the plot. But perhaps I'm not the best judge: in general I find short stories unsatisfying. They're over before I can really engage with the characters, and they're too short to investigate their themes very extensively. So I suppose I shouldn't single these out as being any less successful than the ordinary run of the genre.
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label short stories. Show all posts
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Saturday, 11 August 2012
Points of Departure by Pat Murphy
Started: July 16th, 2012
Finished: August 4th, 2012
Pages: 316
Pat Murphy writes "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction", and her stories generally include both an element of the fantastic and an element of ambiguity. How did that battered woman escape her abuser? Did the trekker find a yeti when he retraced the footsteps of his long-lost father? And is the derelict old woman who lives in a residential hotel crazy, or did she actually find part of an alien spacecraft. Who knows? As she says "The government does not want people to know about the alien spaceships. They deny all reports of UFOs and flying saucers. The government is good at hiding the things people would rather not see: the old men and women in the lobby, the hookers on the corner, the aliens who visit our world."
Finished: August 4th, 2012
Pages: 316
Pat Murphy writes "speculative fiction" rather than "science fiction", and her stories generally include both an element of the fantastic and an element of ambiguity. How did that battered woman escape her abuser? Did the trekker find a yeti when he retraced the footsteps of his long-lost father? And is the derelict old woman who lives in a residential hotel crazy, or did she actually find part of an alien spacecraft. Who knows? As she says "The government does not want people to know about the alien spaceships. They deny all reports of UFOs and flying saucers. The government is good at hiding the things people would rather not see: the old men and women in the lobby, the hookers on the corner, the aliens who visit our world."
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