Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton

[mrissa]

This was a review copy from Tor for the reissue, which is a lovely reissue. And when people send me free books, I review them! But I'd already read Tooth and Claw when it came out, so I wanted to do something a little different.

Off to the library! I had never read Framley Parsonage, from which a lot of the inspiration for Tooth and Claw was drawn. I had wanted to. This seemed like a good excuse.

I didn't intend a direct comparison, but I have to say I like Tooth and Claw better than Framley Parsonage, and I don't think it's because Anthony Trollope has never once made me dinner. I don't think it's because discussions of eating people make me a great deal less nervous than discussions of debt, either, although that's part of it. No, what struck me about Tooth and Claw was that I didn't feel like any of the characters were allowed to be placeholders. In Framley Parsonage, I liked Fanny and Lucy and the little Crawley girl, and the others were all less interesting to me. In Tooth and Claw, all of the siblings and all of their associates felt distinct and vivid to me, including--and this seems maybe important--the servants. In the previous bit of discussion on this lj about Framley Parsonage, papersky wondered aloud, "Why did I change that [detailed references to debt] when I wrote T&C?", and it's an interesting question. But despite my greater ease with chomping than with financial woes, I think the change that stuck out for me most was that Trollope's concern with the lives and livings of poorer clergymen was explicitly class-based: that these were not a class of people who should be expected to live in such dire circumstances. In Tooth and Claw, Jo and her characters broadened that concern to the rights and well-being of all dragons, not just those who seemed nice enough to have nice things.

If you didn't read Tooth and Claw when it was first out, all this stuff may distract you from the main point in reading it. I don't recommend Tooth and Claw because it is or is not like Framley Parsonage. I recommend it because it's like itself, it's not a lot like anything else, and what it's like is great fun. Dragons! Very proper dragons! Very properly eating each other under the very proper circumstances, and only while wearing the right hats! Go. Devour.

Comments

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I would REALLY like to read this. I keep meaning to pick it up. My "to read" pile, however, stretches to the moon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, it deserves to jump the queue over most things. papersky, like many of my friends, knows that "fun" and "serious" are not antonyms. And that goes in her books. So.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

Ooooh.

I have to finish 3 things before I move on to ANYTHING else, but I have some book gift cards burning holes in my pockets, so maybe next week I will go get Tooth & Claw and the new Cat Valente.

Hee! I'm happy to buy books I'm not going to get to for awhile. I just like to feel them and look at them and know they're there, waiting for me, when the work lets up.

[txanne.livejournal.com]

And it's *short*. Two hours, three if you gleefully reread the good bits.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

LOVE that book. Love. How Walton takes off in orthogonal directions, yet connects with the main points in the Trollope made me glad to read both. Also, how the dragons and their eating better express the underlying savagery in Trollope's book. Mrs Gaskell, a kind, good, compassionate woman, said there was no villain in it and she wished it would go on and on and on. That has made me reflect on just how much is invisible to us.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My golly. I didn't want it to go on any longer than it did. (Er. FP, I mean. I thought T&C was the right length but would not have objected to more.)

And villains don't have to be people any more than any other character does. I may have hated Return of the Native, but I think my high school English teacher was absolutely right about place being a character in it. Milieu, in the case of FP.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think -- it's been a long time -- I changed it because I found Mark co-signing the bill to be so idiotic as to be practically idiot-plotting and I didn't feel I could pull it off. And also I wanted to start where I started, which pretty much isn't in FP at all, it's all implicit. T&C turned out to be the story about five siblings, whereas FP is really only about two of them.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, FP is about two siblings, and one of them is a silly ass.

I don't actually object to Mark Robarts. He's just a silly ass, is all.

[aedifica]

I mostly enjoyed it a great deal, but I'm still a bit concerned who ate the villain. I was reading quickly by that point because I was wrapped up in the story and so I may have missed it, but I didn't notice anything happening to his body, and I thought the family should have eaten it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"How did it go?" she asked, smiling.
"Very well, but surprisingly." He gave her a brief account of the proceedings, speeding up as he noticed she did not seem terribly interested. "Then once Daverak was dead and they'd decided in my favor, Sher said I could help myself. So Penn took the eyes and the jury took their share, and then Haner and I divided his body, right there in the court. Sher and Selendra just took token bites. It was as if we'd gone back and were doing it properly after all."

[aedifica]

Reading that feels familiar. I'm glad it was there and I did just miss it, and glad they got to eat it! (Thanks for pointing it out.)