Genre

From wikipedia:
Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, and/or setting. The genre is usually associated with the overall look, feel and themes of the European Middle Ages (including architecture, dress and technology), while the actual setting is often a fictional plane or planet where magic and magical beings are commonplace.
Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three (collectively known as speculative fiction).

The characters in Little,Big continue to stay vague to me, and apparently if I can’t describe what a character is like (“character A was in her mid-30s living in New York in the 1930s and blah blah blah”) then I can’t find a reason to keep reading. Am I being narrow in my inability to find the rhythm of a fantasy? Lots of books move back and forth in time and place, but this novel seems excessive in that regard. I wish I just bounce along easily, reading a few pages about one slightly “off” character followed by another. A great deal of the writing is nice.

I’d like to pose some questions to the remaining reader(s), god knows a bunch of them pop up on every page, but I don’t care about the answers.

Here’s my new plan, developed as I sit here at the computer, 12:30 late Friday night, trying to find something worthwhile to say. I have arbitrarily picked page 230 (“It wasn’t until Auberon was past seven years old that….”) and read straight through for 10 pages. I’ll report back about those 10 days in my next post. Might be just another harangue.

We watched the movie Atonement tonight. Missed it at the theater. Very nice. So true to the book, which I like.

Pam