Broken Light - Joanne Harris
I’m not counting books I bought in 2024 as beating the backlog. They’re creating the backlog.
Joanne Harris is a writer with range, but unlike, say, Stephen King, the genre she’s writing in really dictates whether I like it or not. I read most of the books set in France in France, but I read them in English because there’s a mystical magic to them that I think relies on being an outsider. Obviously the thread that runs through all of her books, as far as I’ve read, is the voice of the outsider, but that’s not quite what I mean. Anyway, I love them. She doesn’t seem to employ the same magic in her books set in the UK, but possibly that’s because Lasquanet is fictional whereas I can picture getting on the bus to Archway or walking round the backs in Cambridge.
A thing I really dislike with books written in first person is when they’re written with the over-familiar exuberance of someone running an induction session. I don’t feel the need to be addressed directly as a reader; it’s a trait of YA books and that’s where I think it should stay. I found this weirdest of all with a book about Loki and I didn’t get past the first page. But the books about the boarding school are also written in first person, and much more calmly and remotely. More like a memoir than a pitch. This one has a tone more like the boarding school ones. It’s adjacent to the boarding school ones, although St Oswalds has become an Independent instead of a grammar school.
I also love when authors are unafraid to make their characters dislikable. I genuinely think the Gossip Girl books are remarkable because so many, if not all, of the characters are utterly irredeemable and there is never any attempt to redeem them. I think it must take such a strong mind as a writer. Joanne Harris is always good at that, even when her narrators have a pretty good opinion of themselves.
It’s really similar thematically to Weyward, which is strange because I didn’t have a clear idea of what Weyward was about before I started reading it and no idea at all what Broken Light was about. Men mistreat women and get their come-uppence with a little magic. There’s more overt political commentary and I also found the male behaviour in this book to be much more frustrating, much more recognisable as someone who is fortunate enough never to have been domestically abused but does live in the world as a woman among men. The two great tropes:
1. Two women are murdered by their partner a week, but, most importantly, NOT ALL MEN KILL THEIR PARTNER and why can’t women focus on that?
2. Male depression is caused by the erosion of gender roles. Women, won’t you get back into the kitchen? You could save a life.
Also the third, although I think this is in the process of being eroded:
3. If only women had the sense to stay in the kitchen, they wouldn’t be raped and murdered (unless the rapist or murderer was in the kitchen too).
More or less my whole adult life, I’ve refused to take the precautions I’m meant to take because I’m a women and I’ve got very annoyed with my mum, who is only worrying as mums do, whenever she’s worried about me coming home late, etc. I’m now at the point where I’ve pretty much forgotten it’s supposed to be a thing, but I do have echoes of identifying with her running defiance. Besides, I’m a big fan of exercising for mental health, as much as a person is able to.
As we know, exercise does not equal thinness and body positivity is a warmly embraced part of the book. Being positive about a body that doesn’t match gender expectations, a body that doesn’t match sporting expectations, a body that doesn’t match sexual expectations, yet these bodies are bodies that are full of gender, activity and sex. Loving bodies that are strong, loving bodies that have been put through the wringer but still house spirit, loving bodies that are tired but still persisting, loving bodies that make their kids sprint after them through the Alton Towers crowds at 35 degrees because the extensions of their bodies have an accelerator.
Now to read something completely different.
