Books read last week:
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (paperback, finished, 3 stars).
What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About, edited by Michele Filgate (audio book, finished, 4 stars)
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang (audio book with Nicole, in progress)
Eclipse by Erin Hunter (audio book, in progress)
this post contains spoilers for Dune Messiah
A theme that stood out to me in the books I read last week was secrets. Why do we choose to keep certain things to ourselves? Is keeping a secret the same thing as lying? How do secrets impact our relationships? Although my posts are often influenced by what was going on in my life on a particular week, last week no dark secrets have come to light, (un)fortunately. In general, however, honesty is very important to me. There are parts of my life that I don’t share with particular people, because I suspect they would rather not know or would not make an effort to understand. If asked directly, though, I would answer truthfully. Sorta like “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Is that considered secret-keeping? But I do find this exhausting. In my truly close relationships with people, I always default to honesty, and expect the same from others (unless we’re talking about things like surprise parties, of course). In my relationship with my spouse, I appreciate that both of us see being open with each other as the foundation of intimacy. So far we thankfully don’t feel like we have to hide things out of shame, and we trust that the other will be able to handle our truth.
What works in a marriage might not always work in child-rearing. So many essays in What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About were about things that parents keep (or fail to keep) from their children. For example, Bernice L. McFadden writes in “Fifteen” how it took her mother 45 years to talk about the suffering her own mother, McFadden’s grandmother, put her through. Deciding when (and if) something is appropriate to share with your child is a parenthood challenge that I don’t envy. On the one hand, denying your child the truth about an event or a person has the potential to destroy your relationship with them if they ever learn about it from a different source; I am also a strong believer in equipping children with all available information so that they can make their own informed judgements and decisions. On the other other hand, there is only so much your child can handle at each stage of their life. How can you tell if they are ready to process the truth and not go into denial or overreaction? In another essay, “Nothing Left Unsaid”, we learn that Julianna Baggot’s grandmother was raised in a brothel, the fact that was meticulously hidden from Baggot’s mother, seemingly with no plan of her ever finding out. Parents also have to grapple with the possibility that what they share is likely to impact their children’s relationship with other people. As Nayomi Munaweera recounts in “Her Body, My Body”, she felt deeply conflicted about her father and their relationship because her mother openly expressed hatred for him. And then there are stories that our parents might want to keep private simply because they are their stories; and those are the stories we, as their children, are most curious about. Dylan Landis captures this push and pull in her essay “16 Minetta Lane”, in which she tries to piece together her mother’s life before she became her mother.
Dune Messiah is full of secrets as well. I understand why many readers were disappointed by this installment of the series, because where Dune was fast-paced and ever expanding, Dune Messiah is all about court intrigue executed in vague conversations. I struggled with the book at times, because I wasn’t sure how much of each encounter I was expected to follow, how much of it would be explained later, and how much was just creating mystical ambiance. One particularly heartbreaking secret is that Paul knows his beloved Chani will die in childbirth; he is forced by grand-scale factors not to reveal this or try to change the course of events (I talked about not envying his prescience for this reason in an earlier post). But Chani, and the universe, kept a secret from Paul too–twins were born instead of just a daughter, as he had foreseen. At the end of the novel, Paul, now completely blind after giving up prescience, walks into the desert, per Fremen custom. We are led to believe that he will perish there, but I have my suspicions. Per sci-fi conventions, I don’t believe someone is truly dead until I see their body (although that doesn’t work for this series, since Duncan Idaho got to come back in this book!). As I was requesting the next book from the library, I saw that it was about Paul’s children, and Paul is not in the book blurb. I will do my best not to spoil it for myself, though, and wait to find out his fate by continuing with the series. It’s a secret I will keep from myself 🙂
Robin, the protagonist of Babel, also has a heavy secret to keep. When he arrives at Oxford to learn silver-work–the process of creating magical silver bars–he is convinced by the Hermes Society to steal artifacts from Babel, England’s translation and silver-work hub, to be redistributed among marginalized communities. Robin soon breaks ties with Hermes because he feels that his life is endangered, but things became infinitely more complicated when he learns that two of his closest friends–Remi and Victoire–were recruited by Hermes too. Babel‘s central theme is imperialism, and Robin, Remi, and Victoire are its embodiment. The magic of silver bars lies in related words in different languages; the part of the meaning that is not captured by the translation of the word on one side of the bar into the word on the second side is what gives a bar power. The trick is, the person who activates a particular silver bar must know both languages as or like a native speaker. Pairs rooted in European languages had been losing their potency, so Babel turned its attention to scholars from Britain’s colonies. Robin is brought from China, Remi–India, and Victoire–Haiti. They were separated from their communities at young age and raised in Europe until they were ready to enter Oxford and become cogs in the silver-working machine that ensures Britain’s world dominance (silver-working and the use of its products, as you might guess, are reserved for first-class citizens of the empire). So when Remi and Victoire realize that Robin knew about an organization working to empower the subjugated for years and didn’t tell them, they are furious. Robin’s defense is that although he believes in the cause, he has nothing but Babel–his whole family died of plague, and his guardian (and biological father) is a professor at Babel. If Robin betrays his guardian, he has nowhere to go, while Remi and Victoire have families back home. He therefore feels loyalty for Babel, and he also wanted to keep his friends safe, because he knew they would not hesitate to join Hermes’ dangerous endeavor. Remi and Victoire, of course, point out that he should have trusted them to make their own decisions. Nicole and I haven’t gotten far past this scene yet, but I am curious whether this break can be healed. I personally understand Remi and Victoire’s dismay; I too would struggle to trust anyone who considers themselves my best friend yet would keep something so momentous from me.
I am continuing to work my way through the Warriors series, a series from my childhood that has been bringing me comfort. If you are unfamiliar with the series, it focuses on a group of fours clans of cats that live in the forest; the cats of the forest are constantly navigating issues within their own clans, trying to keep peace with other clans, and occasionally unite to face external threats. While I started re-reading out of nostalgia, I am genuinely appreciating these books. A common way to add suspense to children’s books is to introduce a prophecy, and Warriors is not an exception. Each clan has a medicine cat, who, apart from healing their clan mates, communicate with Star Clan, the souls of their ancestors. Almost every book starts with a scene of Star Clan discussing the events to come, and there is usually a prophecy that the protagonists are led and/or haunted by. Eclipse is fourth book of the Power of Three arc (aka the third installment of the series), and the three in question are Jaypaw, Hollypaw, and Lionpaw. At this point, all three know about the prophecy concerning them: they will hold the power of stars in their paws. In the course of this book, they are keeping the prophecy a secret from their clan mates and mentors, while trying to figure out what their ultimate power might look like.
Did any books come to mind as you were reading this post? What themes came up in your reading last week?
I look forward to what next week’s books bring.
Queer Desire and Kvas 