Retro Reads discussion

Chapter 1 opens with a map of the main island of Zanzibar.

Please be careful with spoilers. For this, and subsequent chapter threads identify the chapter the spoiler occurs in and then hide the actual spoiler comment with HTML coding (click the some HTML is okay link to the right to see how to do this).

For example: In Ch.1 (view spoiler)[we meet Hero Athena's parents and learn why the poor girl was saddled with such a name! (hide spoiler)]

I know 'swashbuckler' is considered derogatory, but after the essential prologuey bits (where she comes from, who she is, why she's grown into a meddling, determined prude) I am thrilled to be plunged (heh, heh) into an adventure on the high seas. (view spoiler)[And I like that Hero has landed neatly in Captain Jack Sparrow/The Dread Pirate Roberts/Sir Daniel Spark--er, Captain Emory Frost's lap. (hide spoiler)] Best of all, the writing is intelligent, and I'm picking up interesting bits of history and enjoyable words: pannikin, prodigious (this one really makes old-fashioned-talk real for me). Since I'm being frivolous, I'll admit that I think Emory Frost and Hero Hollis are fantastic names--and Biddy Jason. I think I have to like a story with a Biddy in it.
Do Hero's enormous blind spots and her fascination with a faraway place remind anyone else of Winter in Shadow of the Moon?

An errant thought, sorry . . . I brought this up in the Mary Stewart group read of Wildfire at Midnight. (She had a chapter titled Cloud Cuckoo Land, which I thought originated in the Lego Movie, but when I looked it up, discovered was actually coined by Aristophanes). Well, M. M. Kaye has cloud cuckoo land too! Chapter 4, when (view spoiler)[ the Norah Crayne is becalmed. (hide spoiler)]. I'm sure there's some kind of word for this--the experience of finding something (or some person) and it seems that it keeps cropping up after that?

End of Chapter 1:

(view spoiler)[
To be sold. A negro woman and four children. The woman 23 years of age, of good character, a good cook and washer. The children are very likely from 6 years down to 1 1/2. Can be sold separately or together, to suit purchaser.

The advertisement was only one of many. But to Harriet, always a passionate opponent of slavery and herself shortly to become a mother, the callous inhumanity of that concluding sentence was like a blow in the face. Can be sold separately or together, to suit purchaser...
She had paled alarmingly and cried in a high, strangled voice: "But surely they cannot take her children from her? Not her own children? They have no right! It is vile- horrible! It should be stopped!...Oh God why doesn't someone put a stop to it?"



The notice above is real. Words fail...
(hide spoiler)]

Hannah wrote: "End of Chapter 1:

To be sold. A negro woman and four children. The woman 23 years of age, of good character, a good cook and washer. The children are very likely from 6 years down to 1 1/2. Ca..."

Chilling!

Wait, what? It's not November 15 yet! Lol. Guess I'll start the book tonight.

Sorry. Got tired of Les Mis. Again.

Tadiana wrote: "Wait, what? It's not November 15 yet! Lol. Guess I'll start the book tonight."

I haven't started it - just thought I'd post some photos beforehand.

Hannah wrote: "I haven't started it - just thought I'd post some photos beforehand."

Oh good - I thought you'd started because your post above has the spoiler tag for the end of Chapter 1. I know Jaima has left us all in the dust, but if no one else has started I'll wait for a couple more days. I've got some library books I want to try to finish off.

Same here - I've got a book I'm gonna try to finish by Saturday morning, then I'll start TW.

Tadiana wrote: "Hannah wrote: "I haven't started it - just thought I'd post some photos beforehand."

Oh good - I thought you'd started because your post above has the spoiler tag for the end of Chapter 1. I know ..."

I've been marking my book with tape flags and taking notes--so I'm ready when you are :) But Chapter 28 (just read last night) is still rattling around in my brain. Had to comment there.

I probably won't see my library copy until Saturday at the earliest. IIRC, most MMK books have a glossary at the very back that might come in handy whilst reading.

Whew, I was worried there too.

I'm finally getting started with this one! Hannah, that notice in your chapter 1 comment gave me chills. I've been reading a fair bit about slavery of late and the horrors were all too real. I was interested that Hero is from Boston, which was a center for radical abolitionism.

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass includes his experiences in Boston--which had segregated trolly cars in his day (roughly the same time that Hero lived there, I think). For all their liberal and religious pretensions, Boston's upper classes had plenty of racial prejudice and often misunderstood the issues the South was facing.

I'll be starting Trade Wind this afternoon, now that I've finished Silent in the Grave. :)

I read Trade Wind in Chinese a few years ago, and picked my free copy of auodible book on Audible last week. I don't know if going audio is good for something I haven't read, but in this case it's certainly good for me, for I have some idea about the plot and could afford to be distracted a little in the process.

As soon as I began listening, I was looking forward to the part of fortune telling...and it's not disappointing at all! The dramatic atmosphere is enhanced by the reading of Karen Chilton.

Like many of our characters, I'm finding Hero a little on the insufferable side. I assume that's going to change sooner or later . . .

Tadiana wrote: "Like many of our characters, I'm finding Hero a little on the insufferable side. I assume that's going to change sooner or later . . ."

She's pretty obstinate, isn't she? It reminds me of Winter in Shadow of the Moon when she insists on Marrying what's his name. Conroy? It's been a while. Or is that just me?

I'm finding Hero hard to like as well. On our recent Persuasion group read Mary Catelli quoted C.S. Lewis as saying "One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters."

M.M. Kaye appears to be creating a different kind of unpopular heroine with Hero, a virago who is deliberately meant to be unappealing because she appears to be so unfeminine. I'm going to venture into foreign and possibly shark-filled deep waters here and suggest that there is a bit of a feminist subtext here ;)

But as a romantic, I'm also hoping (view spoiler)[the guy who pulled her out of the water knows how to Tame the Shrew (hide spoiler)]

Hana wrote: "I'm going to venture into foreign and possibly shark-filled deep waters here and suggest that there is a bit of a feminist subtext here ;)"

I think we'll be able to evaluate that point once we finish reading the book and find out what happens to our Hero. :) Rory is also a little hard to like (unless you like the bad boy sort, which I often don't) but there is something appealing about him. He kind of reminds me of Rhett Butler.

Hmm. Yeah, Rory and Rhett both seem to have their own particular code of honor, and are both portrayed as keenly perceptive undeceived by popular BS.

Nice quote, Hana! Hero does seem like a bit of a likeabity gamble.

I couldn't help but wonder Kaye's intention of creating the character of Hero. The way she ignored other people's perspectives reminded me of how Kaye thought of her relatives' comments on her not being married during twenties. She simply didn't give a damn. It seems to me the character of Hero, though many find it hard to like, might represent Kaye's refusal of meaningless conformity.

So right about Rhett and Rory. I kept hearing Clark Gable's voice when I was reading the Rory chapter!

So good so far. Just knew that Rory would show up soon after his description by the Captain to Hero.

I finally got my copy yesterday afternoon. Rainy and windy Saturday in store here, so I plan. On digging in. Or I could clean house...not :p

Just a few pages in, but the descriptions of the slave ships and conditions, words fail.

Due to exams this has been a slow start for me. The fortune telling scene is excellent. Definitely not your average heroine.

The southern African coast is known for its storms. The West Coast on the Namibian side is known as the Skeleton coast due to the number of ship wrecks that are visible on the beaches. Cape Town itself is known as the Cape of Storms and in winter can be miserable. There are loads of ship wrecks on the eastern coast as well. You can actually see the storms arriving over the sea since the water colour changes as the front moves in.

"Numerous young men had looked and admired. But only from a distance, for a closer acquaintance had invariably resulted in dissapointment and a hasty retreat; the young sparks of Boston preferring dimpled and sweetly feminine charmers to Grecian goddesses who looked them squarely in the eye, had no patience with coyness, swooning or the vapours, and considered flirting vulgar."

I think I already like Hero Athena. Plus, I like her name :)

I like her name, too, Samanta, and the fact that her father named her for a racehorse :)

That's so amazing and scary about the Skeleton Coast, Carolien!

I couldn't resist googling for Skeleton Coast stories and came up with this one about one of the oldest wrecks discovered:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/pri...

Hana wrote: "I like her name, too, Samanta, and the fact that her father named her for a racehorse :)"

Yeah, that was hilarious! :D

At the end of chapter 3 I was a bit dissapointed with Hero's reaction to the possibility of her cousin Crissy meeting handsome African/black/Arab men in Zanzibar. Despite her progressive views on life she is still as equaly ignorant and prejudiced like all white people of that time. Every one is born free and everyone is equal but some are more equal than others. :/

Not all white people of the time felt that way. The real world Salame married a European; Frederick Douglass's second wife was white (he was an African American ex-slave and civil rights advocate); inter-racial marriage was quite common in New Orleans and more common throughout the US than people realize--it made perfect economic sense for a poor white girl to marry a prosperous freeborn black (see for example The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century).

I think Hero is just so naive at this point that her anti-slavery crusade is based much more on theory than on any practical knowledge.

I should have put most white people of the time. :/ I do know about inter-racial marriages but her reaction is still horrible. I agree with you on Hero. I hope that changes by the end of the book.

I'm sorry, Samanta--I didn't mean to bash you up on that, just to point out that there was much more voluntary inter-racial marriage than most people today realize.

Oh, don't worry...I didn't take it as such :) I'm just not into long writing tonight because I'm eager to get back to the book so it looks as though I've taken offense or something. Sorry! :D

Oh good! What can I say? I read too much history ;)

I understand you completely. One can never have too much history, IMHO. Too bad very few in my generation agree. :)

Hana wrote: "Oh good! What can I say? I read too much history ;)"

I'm with Samanta -- never can have too much history. And the more I try to learn, I just realize how much I don't know.

Yes, but history tends to be the record left by the victors. That's why it's so important to read history from many points of view--and fiction is one of those windows!

So what is M.M. Kaye bearing witness to that we in the 21st century do not want to hear?

True true

I'm finding Hero to be hard to like simply because her opinions seem to her to be fact. She's not leaving herself any room for growth, because she's so sure that she's right. In fact, she's a know-it-all.

I do get tickled at the American way of speaking...

Karlyne wrote: "I'm finding Hero to be hard to like simply because her opinions seem to her to be fact. She's not leaving herself any room for growth, because she's so sure that she's right. In fact, she's a know-..."

In another sense, though, her know-it-all attitude does leave a lot of room for personal growth ... though it’s likely to be a humbling process.

That's true - the worse you are the more you can improve. I'm not sure which chapter I'm on, but she did just have a moment of doubting what she had previously thought. Yay, Hero!