I think it’s the product either of bad or clever structuring – the novel cannot stay hemmed into its early format of reporting one meeting a year, and must fill in Sobran’s life outside of those once-a-year trysts. The novel takes us over fifty-five years of this relationship, which moves from the awed and distant to the loving, with different phases in between and after. And in a year, Sobran is married, and waiting. (In no way is the previous sentence a metaphor.) Sobran and the angel converse, and the angel makes a promise – not literally, but who doubts the word of an angel? – to meet Sobran again in a year. The Vintner’s Luck spans the adult lifetime of one Sobran Jodeau, who in the year 1808 decides to drown his romantic sorrows in wine – his father, and therefore in time he, owns a vineyard – and instead falls into the arms of an angel. The few people whom I buzzed who had heard of Knox usually talked about The Vinter’s Luck, and I picked it up myself because my local library is on a “Gay Abandon” kick, and places “Gay Abandon” stickers on books with homoerotic themes in an effort, I daresay, to remind us all that Gay Sex Is Fun! We have enough trouble making sure people understand Our Fake Pointy Ears are Elven and not Vulcan. And We hear they make big-ass movies in the small ponds – We don’t want to look uber-geeky or anything. We don’t want to talk about the Small Ponds, do we, they’re kinda, you know, small. Elizabeth Knox, on minimal research, is far more famous than I had supposed her to be – I’m finding there’s lots of these Big Fish in Small Ponds sort of writers whom I never hear about but once I read them it turns out every one has read them already, but is just, I don’t know, just very shy.
0 kommentar(er)
