SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Welcome to the buddy read of Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.

Except for general first impressions, please use spoiler tags and indicate chapter/percent so we can follow along the discussion.

I first heard about this book when Neil Gaiman mentioned it as an inspiration in an interview about his book Stardust.

And I just found a quote by Gaiman where he lists Lud as one of his top ten favorite books and calls it "My favourite fairy tale/detective novel/history/fantasy."

So, I'm really looking forward to this buddy read!

I'm looking forward to this as well. This is one of the rare occasions where I bought a book only because of the cover. I'm in love with it and admit that I haven't got the slightest idea what the book is about.

I'm in!

Gabi, which edition? I want to see this cover!

The one that's showing up here in the thread. I love the 'naive' style and clear lines of the towers; the angle from above; the composition with the peaceful scene in the circle against the blurred swirls of the background and I love the breaking of the circle borders.
It's a bit like if it's a children's book. I instantly had a good feeling when I saw this.

Oh yeah. It's gorgeous!

I bought this edition a few years ago. Just a warning: I noticed a lot of typos.

I have my copy! I am prepared and hyped!

Just got my copy from the library. The cover is not nearly as nice as the one shown here. It’s a cartoon-ish depiction of a village and a rainbow, which gives me a totally different vibe about the content. Looking forward to the discussion!

Lesley wrote: "Just got my copy from the library. The cover is not nearly as nice as the one shown here. It’s a cartoon-ish depiction of a village and a rainbow, which gives me a totally different vibe about the ..."

That might be the same one I have Lesley. . I definitely went "hmm," when I saw it.

That’s the one! It makes me think “children’s fairytale meets the Simpsons”.

My cover has a figure who looks like Jesus wearing pointy elf shoes. And the back cover copy has grammar errors and incomplete sentences. ;)

Travis wrote: "My cover has a figure who looks like Jesus wearing pointy elf shoes. And the back cover copy has grammar errors and incomplete sentences. ;)"

Okay ... That sounds not very reassuring ... XD

I'm reading the Simpsons version!

Comments on Ch 1

(view spoiler)[ First, I'm learning so many words! Pleached! Plangent! Plectify (okay I made that one up but I had a theme going.) What an excessive vocab she had, I love it!

Second, goddamn she's acerbic! Or am I just reading it that way because of the change of modern sensibilities?

Third, I completely get what she's saying about the nostalgia for a thing that's still there but I feel like the more she explained it, the less sure I became that I understood the character. Anyone else feel that way or want to try to clarify things? (hide spoiler)]

@Allison (view spoiler)[ Totally agree about the dryness in the prose. Once I managed to get through her ridiculous compound sentences, there were several laugh out loud moments in later chapters.

I must have completely missed the thing about nostalgia. Are you referring to the Note? If so, I sort of took that to mean something (it reads a bit like mental illness to me) that actually set him apart from his community, so he tries even harder to recapture what it’s like to be “normal.” (hide spoiler)]

Through Chap 5 (view spoiler)[ I’m finally getting into the story now. I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right frame of mind for her long, descriptive passages, but things are clipping along now. And there’s a slightly menacing/mysterious undertone that is keeping my interest.

Anyone have any theories on what the fairie fruit is supposed to represent? Emotion? Chaos? Forbidden love? /spoiler> (hide spoiler)]

Travis wrote: "My cover has a figure who looks like Jesus wearing pointy elf shoes...."

I thought he was trying to sell me a used car. That's... wrong on so many levels (and it tells you that I haven't started the book yet).

I'm through the first 60 pages and really enjoying it.

(view spoiler)[

Yes to the unexpected diction.
Yes to her not learning the less-sometimes-more lesson.
Yes to the acerbic narrator.

I'll keep thinking about what the fairies fruit represents, but those all seem right on so far. (hide spoiler)]

about 25% in (just starting Chapter 6).

(view spoiler)[ It took me a little bit to get into it, whether it was the tone, the writing style, or it just got more linear about Chapter 3. I am enjoying it, particularly the idea that talking about Fairy related things is the worst sort of cursing and vulgarity to them. There's definitely some folks who know more about stuff than they are saying and I'm waiting for them to start spilling some information. (hide spoiler)]

Allison wrote: "I'm reading the Simpsons version!

Comments on Ch 1."

(view spoiler)[ I totally enjoy the intricate prose. Sometimes I have to return to the start of a sentence, cause I lost it at the end, but I'm having fun with it.

Regarding 'acerbic', this may well be. I'm in a strange mood at the moment, so I read it more as melancholic and am strangely touched by his prevailing nostalgia which seems to make him unable to enjoy the here and now. (hide spoiler)]

Imagine my surprise when I opened up my copy of the Simpson's flavor book and found yet another cover inside: . What is going on here?

Chapter 1: (view spoiler)[This struck me as melancholy as well driven by some underlying sense of alienation. I don't know why yet but hope it becomes clear later. (hide spoiler)]

Chapter 2: (view spoiler)[I'm getting used to the language and starting to enjoy it but it feels (deliberately?) archaic even given the age of the book. There are some words that I recognize from growing up but that haven't been used the way they are here in a very long time.

There's at least one glaring inconsistency between these first two chapters that I wouldn't have expected to see in a book that's been around this long. Weird. (hide spoiler)]

Lesley wrote: "...Through Chap 5 (view spoiler)



(view spoiler)[ oops, here goes the plain reader. I wasn't even thinking about the fruit representing something. Now that you mention it ...

I have the feeling, that the father already had his encounter with the Fairy world and feels therefore so strangely out of place in his life. (hide spoiler)]

I'm listening to the audio, and didn't notice anything about the writing style, besides that it was written in the 1920s. I've probably missed some things because I'm not eye-reading, but I'm enjoying this very much, and the narrator is a perfect fit for me and this story. I don't want to stop listening, so I'll probably breeze through this in no time.

Lesley:

(view spoiler)[ There's a part in Chapter 1 or two where she starts explaining the Mayor's nostalgia for the things that he presently has. And I know what she means, that sort of sense that the present is ephemeral and this beautiful moment is a breath away from being out of reach. But she sort of flails about on the subject and I got very confused how what she was describing was related to what she was conveying. (hide spoiler)]

Through Ch 7

(view spoiler)[ It's picked up and become more cohesive now. I'm loving the honest to goodness fairytale feel. I can see a lot of this book in Feist's Faerie Tale and Neil Gaiman's sense of whimsy which is neat. The fruit, I do wonder if it's music. I also wonder if there's another play on words and it has something to do with the intermingling of the human and fairy races... if some Ludites (lol, that cracks me up. It must be another jab, right?) have married people who are all or part fairy, and that union bore fruit that carries the strain of fairy in them? (hide spoiler)]

Allison, (view spoiler)[I’ll have to go back and read that section again. I wasn’t a fan of the first two chapters, so I glossed over some of it. I like your interpretation of the fairy frui as fruit of a union between the two races! (hide spoiler)]

Ch 12: (view spoiler)[Was anyone else throw by the fact that the adults don’t seem overly concerned that their children have gone missing? There was some initial panic, but several chapters later, it feels like they’ve just written them off? (hide spoiler)]

Through Ch 16: (view spoiler)[ This is getting exciting! I love the intrigue and mystery. Very different feel than the first few chapters of the book. I could hardly put it down last night. (hide spoiler)]

Allison wrote: "
Through Ch 7

[spoilers removed]"

Yes, (view spoiler)[ in this chapter I, too, had the feeling that music could be the 'fruit' (hide spoiler)]

What are 'tuftaffities'? The word sounds so cute, but my dictionaries don't know it.

ETA: got it now, it's a kind of silk, so the translation is irrelevant.

I finished this yesterday and really enjoyed it, despite the rocky start (rocky for me, I know other people weren’t as put off by the first few chapters). I’m so grateful to this group for introducing me to these classics in SFF.

End of book:(view spoiler)[I think I’ve decided that the fairy fruit represents the unknown or the misunderstood. Sometimes that can be used against you (taking advantage of someone's ignorance or fear), and other times, it's something to be embraced courageously, to add to one's understanding of the world. (hide spoiler)]

I finished the other day and I've been mulling it over since then. Overall I liked it and am glad I read it. (view spoiler)[ In some respects it reminded me of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, with the loss of the connection to Fairy/magic and then fairy folk trying reestablish the connection to this world and not being entirely nice about how they do it. (hide spoiler)]

I liked seeing some familiar elements related to fairy lore that recent authors have also used. (view spoiler)[For example, the idea of the dead bodies being fakes with the real body stolen away. That was an element in one of the Toby Daye (Seanan McGuire) books, so it was cool to see the reference again. (hide spoiler)]

I still had a few mixed feelings about the book. (view spoiler)[It seems like most of the story was a build up, providing various pieces of information, so that the last several chapters were pay off for all that had gone before. This was done fairly well, especially as the bad actors were revealed, except the first couple chapters were clunky and didn't fit smoothly with main narrative which meant the book started off awkwardly and I had to get past that as I read. (hide spoiler)]

The other disappointment was (view spoiler)[ not enough time spent in Fairy itself! After all the teasing and even traveling in with Nathanial, we didn't get to see much of Fairy or the fairy folk after things were resolved. We got a lot of wrap up for the people, but not much resolution for the fairy folk and their role in all that had been going on. (hide spoiler)]

Fully agreed, Meredith! Well said.

I'm only up to Chapter VI so far. I should think about reading fewer books concurrently. I've become oddly fond of the language in this one but am still finding the plot on the confusing side. (view spoiler)[In particular I'm really wondering how this sound-based fairy contamination thing (if that's what's going on here with the Mayor and his son) gets passed to offspring. I hope this gets cleared up at some point in the next XXVI chapters. (hide spoiler)]

Your final point sums up so many of my feelings too Meredith!

Travis wrote: "Your final point sums up so many of my feelings too Meredith!"

What makes it worse, (view spoiler)[ I felt that the cover of my edition implicitly promised that someone would travel into Fairy so I spent the whole book waiting for it.... (hide spoiler)]

Full book thoughts

(view spoiler)[ I agree, I wanted more about Fairy! She was so cutting in the early chapters, tackling law, the nobility, and marriage, and then left this vehicle for observation completely alone! What does it mean to have undergone the rites? Is delusion something we must all have in some measure? What happened to the kids?

She played with a lot of ideas and structures, so I don't begrudge her for not nailing all of them, but the lack of fairy and the wrap up felt like a real let down for me. (hide spoiler)]

Finished

(view spoiler)[This was... fine? It was inoffensive. (except for the parts that were actually offensive and misogynistic, but you know, 1920's) But it wasn't great. It kind of just existed for me. It won't leave a lasting impression but I'm not mad at it.

The whole fairy fruit scandals weirdly reminded me a lot of what we're seeing with the legalization of marijuana. The lower classes are vilified and prosecuted for it's use. Until the upper classes decide it's something that we actually should have. But those who were already punished get no recompense. I imagine that is not at all the commentary that was trying to be made here, but the parallels interested me.

Nat is kind of terrible at being a father. He doesn't care about his daughter AT ALL. He only starts caring about his son when he starts acting out and all of a sudden has a deep and abiding love for him. Enough for him to travel to Fairlyland to get him back, but not enough to ride a half day out of his way and actually CONFIRM that he's made it to the second farm that he was supposed to be sent to.

The adults in this book were pretty much all kind of a mess.
Also, The ending felt rushed for all the build up that we got. (hide spoiler)]

Oh, that's a great parallel, Kristin!

I'm joining in rather late, but I have already put on record my thoughts on the book, in two Amazon reviews, which I think covered most of what I would otherwise say here. One is from 2004, and the other, slightly different, is in response to the Prologue Books edition in 2012
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
and
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

If anyone hasn't finished the book: I don't think that either review has real spoilers in it -- I worked hard at avoiding them.

I suspect that the information I offer on Hope Mirrlees' other books, and a possibly related book by a close friend, will be the most useful part of the contents, although some of you may already have come across it.

For those who aren't concerned about spoilers, there is a Wikipedia article on the book, which includes the front of the Gervasio Gallardo wraparound cover from the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition of March, 1970, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lud-in-...

Now that I look at the cover closely again, I notice that it does contain a not-very-obvious (because not quite accurate) spoiler of its own -- and I'm sure it didn't register with me back in 1970, when I, and group of friends, fell in love with the book.

I would also suggest Michael Swanwick's "Introduction" to her work at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introdu...
and Philip Raines' review at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfict...

I had mixed feelings about this book. I liked the language once I got used to it. Some of the descriptions of the settings, in particular, were beautiful. It was also interesting seeing the source for some now common fantasy tropes. (view spoiler)[The long and twisting path to resolving the various mysteries in the book was fun to follow. While I found her ambiguous use of "fairy fruit" frustrating at times in the end I appreciated how it let me take what I wanted from that aspect of the book. (hide spoiler)]

On the less positive side: (view spoiler)[This book felt like a detailed social criticism of turn of the century (and earlier) English society but since I haven't spent much time there (even virtually) it fell a bit flat a century later. I wish, as others mentioned, that the author hadn't thrown up her hands when it came to Fairyland. I would loved to have seen what she made of that beyond what she described in the journey there. Finally, some of the misogyny early on felt very heavy handed even for social commentary and was surprising from a women who led what sounded like a very unconventional life. I'd have preferred more like her. (hide spoiler)]

I thought I'd add in something about a song quoted in the book, which plays a small role in plot development, but I'm wary of spoilers for those who might be reading this but have yet to reach it.

(view spoiler)[The "Lily, germander, and sops in wine" song can now be easily referenced on the web, but back in the early 1970s I had some trouble identifying it. It turned about to be from a chapbook (cheap pamphlet) from about 1626, about no less than Robin Goodfellow (a.k.a. Puck, according to Shakespeare). So it had a fairy connection from it first appearance in print! Mirrlees had to make one small change in the text to assimilate it to Dorimare.

What I did NOT find back then, but now know, thanks to the internet, is that "sops in wine" does not mean bits of bread soaked in the drink, but is a plant name, like the others. Turns out there are a couple of English varieties of apple by that name, after the color of their flesh. (hide spoiler)]