Tiffany Aching
Oct. 1st, 2015 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34I am really enjoying my reread of the Tiffany Aching arc. I am so impressed by the sense of place, of belonging to the land, of needing the land and it needing you back. I would give my eye-teeth to have come up with even one of Pratchett's sentences about the Chalk.
I love that in these books, the most important kind of magic is the ordinary, everyday kind--the kind that's mainly hard work and perseverance and compassion for one's fellow man--and the most significant thing about the deepest sort magic is that it probably shouldn't be practiced at all.
Now I'm reading I Shall Wear Midnight. In Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany thinks that when she's older (when she's a crone like Miss Treason or a grandmother a billion times over like Nanny Ogg), then she'll wear midnight; until then, she'll wear green and blue. By the time we get to I Shall Wear Midnight, seven years have passed since the first Tiffany Aching book; she might only be 16, but she's clearly feeling old. She has no nearby support system; unlike in the mountains, she's not just a short broom flight away from the next witch's steading. She's the only witch for the Chalk and for miles and miles around; it's been months since she's seen her fellow witches. She's spent seven long years cutting the toenails of people who mistrust her. She's tired and worn thin.
I think the quality of Pratchett's writing has not diminished in the least; the language is still beautiful. The characters are still spot on themselves. But there's been a definite tonal shift. I'm not laughing out loud anymore. And I'm more than a little horrified that the book begins with child death. Those chapters were really difficult for me to read, not least because I tend to fixate on stories about child death because they feed into my anxiety disorder and create a terrible feedback loop that's hard for me to turn off. This book is much more serious than the others, and I think that's because all the books have been about terribly serious subjects that wouldn't necessarily be parsed as such by a nine year old or an eleven year or a thirteen year old.
I'm not done with the book yet, about halfway through, but I love the moment when her dad tells her that she shouldn't have to do it all, that the village ought to carry some of the weight. I wonder if this is going to be the central thesis of the book--that it's all well and good for Tiffany to be the social worker and confessor and home health nurse for her steading, but some things (like your neighbor beating the shit out of his pregnant daughter until she loses the baby) ought to be handled by everyone at large and nipped in the bud before they even get to that point.
I love that in these books, the most important kind of magic is the ordinary, everyday kind--the kind that's mainly hard work and perseverance and compassion for one's fellow man--and the most significant thing about the deepest sort magic is that it probably shouldn't be practiced at all.
Now I'm reading I Shall Wear Midnight. In Hat Full of Sky, Tiffany thinks that when she's older (when she's a crone like Miss Treason or a grandmother a billion times over like Nanny Ogg), then she'll wear midnight; until then, she'll wear green and blue. By the time we get to I Shall Wear Midnight, seven years have passed since the first Tiffany Aching book; she might only be 16, but she's clearly feeling old. She has no nearby support system; unlike in the mountains, she's not just a short broom flight away from the next witch's steading. She's the only witch for the Chalk and for miles and miles around; it's been months since she's seen her fellow witches. She's spent seven long years cutting the toenails of people who mistrust her. She's tired and worn thin.
I think the quality of Pratchett's writing has not diminished in the least; the language is still beautiful. The characters are still spot on themselves. But there's been a definite tonal shift. I'm not laughing out loud anymore. And I'm more than a little horrified that the book begins with child death. Those chapters were really difficult for me to read, not least because I tend to fixate on stories about child death because they feed into my anxiety disorder and create a terrible feedback loop that's hard for me to turn off. This book is much more serious than the others, and I think that's because all the books have been about terribly serious subjects that wouldn't necessarily be parsed as such by a nine year old or an eleven year or a thirteen year old.
I'm not done with the book yet, about halfway through, but I love the moment when her dad tells her that she shouldn't have to do it all, that the village ought to carry some of the weight. I wonder if this is going to be the central thesis of the book--that it's all well and good for Tiffany to be the social worker and confessor and home health nurse for her steading, but some things (like your neighbor beating the shit out of his pregnant daughter until she loses the baby) ought to be handled by everyone at large and nipped in the bud before they even get to that point.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-02 12:26 pm (UTC)Is the Wee Meen book the first one about Tiffany?
no subject
Date: 2015-10-03 02:02 am (UTC)It goes Wee Free Men, Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, and The Shepherd's Crown