Reading Greer Gilman discussion

I'm several chapters in, and not into the mythology much yet except for the stone/tree sisters. Looking forward to discussing it.

By 'these silly sisters,' do you also mean the sisters in part II - the thorn/moon and the stone/dark of moon? Because if they are, then that chapter becomes about the separation of Sylvie and Ariane, and that is what's caused the endless autumn in Cloud.

I'm not sure. One thing I find both frustrating and realistic in the book is the imperfect echoes of major themes. So we have the thorn and the stone, which change places every 6 months -- but they are likened to the old and new moon, which change places every month, and echo Ariane and Sylvie, who seem to change places in the real world - one comes back and another leaves. Yet I don't know what these echoes are supposed to mean, or what each one is supposed to contribute to the overall myth.

This is what's always frustrated me about non-codified mythologies. All these threads that weave in for just a few inches and then go on their own way again, leaving you unsure whether they have added to your understanding or led you away from it.

I feel this frustration very strongly in the part where the faery child is trying to find her way home, and in the descriptions of their writing game. It seems completely arbitrary, with no underlying sense. Perhaps as I get further it will be clearer.

Don't forget that Ariane builds the ship out of the island she jumps onto.

One thing I really like is that it captures the feel of fairyland games we all may have played as children, and how surprising it would have seemed if they really panned out.

Now, I want to raise questions about the language. I know it's one of Gilman's major features, but whose language is this? Is it Ariane's, or the narrators? And if so, who is the narrator and where does she come from - because this is not the language modern girls think in, even modern girls steeped in the Oxford Book of English Literature.

It's on pages 62 and 63. She jumps onto an island that looks like the ship, and cleans off the rubbish washed up against it.

That part also clearly links Sylvie with the light and Ariane with the dark, which confuses me - because I thought the part about thorn - stone/ new moon -dark moon indicated that the dark sister was the one now controlling Cloud, and making it always autumn there. Yet Sylvie was the one of the two girls still in the forest, and Ariane had gone away to college... so how could Ariane be the 'dark' one affecting the forest in cloud? Feeling dumb.

I still have a hard time believing Ariane thinks in this language, because she is so often completely confused in it. I'll have to ponder on it more, though.

Gorgeous writing, but oh boy! is the writing oh so dense and I have no idea what a good portion of it means. Part of this difficulty is the beautiful yet strange and unusual syntax and word pairings Ms. Gilman uses, as if the world she were describing (or her perception of reality) held another sense or dimension only she can grasp/sense/experience.
It took me a little bit to realize that the male in "Hallows" (chapter 2) was speaking in dialect and that Ms. Gilman was not simply making up words and things... which would not exactly have surprised me. He appears to be timeless, or at least outside of time, though he can see the creatures and beings that are stuck in places where time flows and passes. Though difficult (I had to tell myself not to give up) it was a most amazing chapter to read and experience.
The silver ring is something this male character mentions, and it was mentioned right away in the following (3rd) chapters as being on Sylvie's finger as she's turning over the cards of their personal tarot deck. She lays down The Hallows Tree, which I am guessing is at least related to, if not actually, the character from the previous chapter and that he was somehow able to see one of them, or at least into this world of time.
I have just begun the third chapter.

The gorgeousness varies, though. I'm realizing that my irritation with the language is just irritation with the language used by Ariane, who thinks like someone in the first month of writing her dissertation -- lots of information in a jumble, with no organizing principles. Just compare the parts that describe her entry into Cloud vs. Sylvie's meeting with the witch - Sylvie just glides through it, accepting things and fitting them together as if she was meant to be there, while everything, including her own internal language, fights Ariane.

Now here's a basic question - when and what is Hallows? Is it always the same?

I don't know why, but I got Sofia's email with this link (to an interview with Greer Gilman) and can't see it in this discussion. So I'm reposting it.
http://sfsite.com/02b/msgg170.htm

Just from the chapter that I had read, it seems to remain in, or be and thus is constantly, autumn-like turning to winter, our All Hallows Eve.
"He walked in the Cloudwood that they were to fell, had felled long since; though where he walked was autumn still..." and "...though strange remembering green, since none were i't wood to keep..." and "he riddled at the wood, the tale the leaves told, falling: no end to their tale, no spring, however far he walked."
After describing traditions of harvest "so the sun would turn" and the farmers of a land where time passes, where people "danced the years and died" he describes that "in Cloudwood it was endless hallows. There no wren was slain, no seed scattered; though he cried the ravens from the turning wood, no winter ever came to green." And his always re-tattering coat makes me think Cloudwood is a place of eternal late autumn, or it *is* Hallows, of All Hallows Eve.

I'm having trouble posting - will try again!
Later in the book she uses 'hallows' differently. Frex, p 255 (hardbound), "The wren's crown, its cage of garlands, was her thorny hallows.' And p. 257, "It had been Mrs. Woodfall's, it had come from within hallows."
This is what's confusing me.

Some thoughts on finishing Moonwise:

The story is actually a pretty standard one that I've seen in lots of fantasy books. I won't say more for fear of spoilers.

What's different is that instead of using our language to bring the story into our paradigm, Gilman uses the language of the culture in which the story is set to bring us into their paradigm. Very cool! This works best with people like Sylvie and the tinker, who actually think in that language. After a while I found myself sailing right along with them. It was much more magical than a straight telling in our language, mainly because of the echoes and images it calls up. This was the closest I think prose can get to an illustrated story.

Ariane however is a different story. I continue to find her extremely irritating. While the others gave me a taste of what it's like to speak the new language, she gave me the feeling of NOT speaking it, or of speaking just enough of it to make a fool of oneself. Her pun-fests seemed self-indulgent and potentially offensive to people who actually spoke the language. There's a hint of this in 'Lightfast,' when Sylvie tells the tinker 'she's like this.'

And even at the end of the book, Ariane says she doesn't dance but watches. Is this a comment on the academic approach, the alienation that comes from being immersed, not in one paradigm or another, but in the self-conscious project of translating between them or learning them? At what point does one stop playing with allusions, and actually begin to speak the new language? Of course, this may look entirely different to someone who finds the process of learning languages enjoyable.

I think my major problem with Ariane is that while her role seems to be to fit things together, she just never fits them together well enough to resolve any of the tensions or to gain my confidence. That is, I can tell she's not competent in the book-language; but I'm not sure she's competent in my language either, so I feel the time spent in her POV is often wasted, and was often tempted to skip over her to somebody else who would tell me what was going on.

What do the rest of you think?

That's an interesting note about Ariane being as lost as we are. Normally, a 'lost as we are' character would be a touchstone for the readers, because she would be the one the author uses to translate the fantasy world into our terminology. Here, however, she never does that, and has the opposite effect. So obviously Gilman is using her for something else -- but what? What is the important role you think she plays?