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Desires and Stories
Apr. 10th, 2024 04:41 pmWhen I reinstated my Audible membership earlier this month, one of the books that got highlighted to me on the home page was The Narrow Road Between Desires by Patrick Rothfuss. I, like many, have been waiting for the third volume of The Kingkiller Chronicles for some time - however, having met Patrick Rothfuss some years ago, I am no longer annoyed about this delay because he is a lovely man who is struggling with some difficult issues and people should be nicer to him about it.
Anyway, in the meantime, I was more than happy to spend a few hours in the company of Bast, my favourite character from the series. In this novella, we follow Bast about his day - and that's it. And it's glorious! He makes deals with children, offering them lies or answers to questions in exchange for secrets and favours. He spies on girls while they're bathing (though it's not as creepy as that makes it sound). He loses books and carrots, and has an apparently very fun (off-page) encounter with a shepherd. And he solves a big problem for a young man who initially doesn't seem worthy of help. All the while, he is funny, playful, manipulative, clever, cold, ruthless and, ultimately, deeply concerned with justice being done. I loved it.
I also finished reading The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page, which is about a cleaner named Janice who gets much too involved in the stories of her clients, while desperately trying to diminish the importance of her own. It's one of those books where you know everything is going to work out in the end, but there's interest, entertainment and satisfaction in finding out how.
The range of characters was really great, especially Decius the dog. I mostly enjoyed spending time with Janice as the viewpoint character, and I liked how the story progressed in terms of the disparate lives of her clients gradually coming together. I really loved elderly ex-spy Mrs B and her arc.
The dialogue was a bit stilted in places - not enough contractions to be realistic. And the telling of the various stories at various points put me at a bit of a remove because they were reported rather than being direct action in the narrative. Then, there was the big reveal... We're made aware of some kind of secret in Janice's past early on, but it's not referenced enough to be a consistent throughline, the times it is mentioned, it's done very heavy-handedly. Then it all comes out towards the end in a big, unexpected rush and I don't think it was prefaced with enough foreshadowing to be particularly effective. And don't even get me started on how Janice's financial troubles are solved at the end...
All that aside, it was a fun read and I mostly enjoyed it. But I definitely preferred Sally Page's other book I read last year - The Book of Beginnings.
Anyway, in the meantime, I was more than happy to spend a few hours in the company of Bast, my favourite character from the series. In this novella, we follow Bast about his day - and that's it. And it's glorious! He makes deals with children, offering them lies or answers to questions in exchange for secrets and favours. He spies on girls while they're bathing (though it's not as creepy as that makes it sound). He loses books and carrots, and has an apparently very fun (off-page) encounter with a shepherd. And he solves a big problem for a young man who initially doesn't seem worthy of help. All the while, he is funny, playful, manipulative, clever, cold, ruthless and, ultimately, deeply concerned with justice being done. I loved it.
I also finished reading The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page, which is about a cleaner named Janice who gets much too involved in the stories of her clients, while desperately trying to diminish the importance of her own. It's one of those books where you know everything is going to work out in the end, but there's interest, entertainment and satisfaction in finding out how.
The range of characters was really great, especially Decius the dog. I mostly enjoyed spending time with Janice as the viewpoint character, and I liked how the story progressed in terms of the disparate lives of her clients gradually coming together. I really loved elderly ex-spy Mrs B and her arc.
The dialogue was a bit stilted in places - not enough contractions to be realistic. And the telling of the various stories at various points put me at a bit of a remove because they were reported rather than being direct action in the narrative. Then, there was the big reveal... We're made aware of some kind of secret in Janice's past early on, but it's not referenced enough to be a consistent throughline, the times it is mentioned, it's done very heavy-handedly. Then it all comes out towards the end in a big, unexpected rush and I don't think it was prefaced with enough foreshadowing to be particularly effective. And don't even get me started on how Janice's financial troubles are solved at the end...
All that aside, it was a fun read and I mostly enjoyed it. But I definitely preferred Sally Page's other book I read last year - The Book of Beginnings.
