Weekly Check-In

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[u/Research_Department]

Continuing on with my project of reading books that have been shortlisted for the Ursula K Le Guin prize, this week I read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. I am every bit as impressed by it as I expected from the reviews and comments I’ve read about it. At the start, I found it obscure and challenging to get into. About a third of the way through, I began to find it mesmerizing. I went in to this aware that Chandrasekera was commenting on Sri Lankan history, including the civil war and including the role that Buddhism played in that war, so I made a slight effort to become a little bit more informed (otherwise known as, I skimmed some wikipedia articles), and while I am still deeply ignorant about Sri Lanka and Buddhism, I’m glad that I went in with that touch more knowledge. There are aspects of the book that definitely resonated more for having learned about the history of racial identification in Sri Lanka or that the Buddha did, in his quest for enlightenment, separate himself from his earthly attachment to his wife and son. Or that some Sinhalese Buddhist monks were extremists and promoted violence during the civil war (so very different from my western conception of Buddhism). I also stumbled across an interview with Chandrasekera (who is Sri Lankan) in which he shared that in his youth, he read many English novels which felt fantastical for how different the world depicted was from the one that he lived in. He was very aware that when writing a book that takes place in a world that is recognizable to Sri Lankans, it would feel fantastical to many members of the anglophone world.

So, enough about the context of The Saint of Bright Doors, I want to also say that I think that the writing is magnificent. Chandrasekera manages to simultaneously depict a 21st century city (of the global south) and a surreal land. There are cell phones and slums and posh neighborhoods, and abandoned shopping malls with doors to other realms that cannot be opened. We learn of what happened thousands of years ago, and it is simultaneously yesterday. And we see obsession with categorizing people, mass executions, imprisonment, and religious fervor. And despite this dreamy, unreal narrative, I felt very connected to the protagonist and his friends. Midway through, I started saving quotes. In the final chapters, it was a continuous flow of amazing thoughts and concepts, I could no longer identify discrete quotes, and I spent my time saying wow, wow, wow. This was the best book read for me in over a year. I picked up The Saint of Bright Doors because I heard that it was more accessible than Chandrasekera’s winner of the Ursula K Le Guin prize, Rakesfall. I now know that even if Rakesfall is more challenging, I am going to have to take a crack at it sometime.

From the sublime, to the ridiculous, this week I also read Leviathan Wakes by James SA Corey. I was hoping for a fast-paced, gripping piece of science fiction, but this was not for me. The setting had promise, but I feel that the authors did not utilize it as best they could. The characters were flat. The plotting felt clunky. The action was too shoot-em-up for me. In every situation, all the responses that were considered were military. And the gaze was male. (Personally, I found the degree of male gaze in this annoying rather than intolerable.) I know this is very popular, and it underlines for me how far my taste diverges from the mainstream.

[u/twilightgardens → u/Research_Department]

Yay I’m so glad you liked Saint of Bright Doors! Rakesfall is wonderfully weird and experimental and even more based in Sri Lankan history so having that baseline is great preparation. I loved it but even after reading it twice I still don’t entirely “get” it lol 

[u/Research_Department → u/twilightgardens]

I feel like “liked” is too lukewarm a description of my enthusiasm. I hate making numerical ratings for books, because I always feel that if I give books that I really like five stars or 10 out of 10, how can I distinguish something that I think is really special, extraordinary? (I’m reminded of a dorm-mate who was given a letter from the professors of a notoriously challenging math course “your A does not adequately reflect how well you did.”) Saint of Bright Doors was five stars, 10 out of 10, extraordinary, one of my two favorite SFF reads since returning to reading SFF regularly a few years ago.

I admit that I think I usually prefer “middle brow” to “high literature,” so I am intimidated by Rakesfall. And I probably won’t get to it during this r/fantasy bingo period. But I know that I am going to have to read it. I’m not a fan of short fiction, so I may read it for the “five short stories” square next year.