Baby Steps

Rather than make promises about how I'm going to try really, really hard and post on my blog all the time, let me just say here I am now, and here is a short review of the book I just read.

The Limits of Enchantment (2005) by Graham Joyce

Main character Fern has learned the ways of hedgerow medicine and folk magic from her adopted mother Mammy. Mammy is the local midwife and wise-woman, but Fern doesn’t really believe in it, and many people in the English Midlands village circa 1966 view the old ways with suspicion and scorn. When a girl comes asking for help with an unwanted pregnancy Mammy gives her an herbal potion to terminate the pregnancy, but the girl dies. Mammy is attacked by drunken louts in the village, and lands in hospital. Now Fern, at twenty, is on her own for the first time. The time for the “Asking”, a sort of visionquest where she will learn of her spririt animal, is upon her, but hostile forces in the village and possibly in the spirit realm are blocking her and other paths beckon. Will she stay loyal to Mammy and follow in her footsteps, enter a course to become a government certified midwife, or perhaps take up with the local hippy commune or her erstwhile suitor Arthur? A magical coming-of-age story packed with wisdom and humor.


Next book: Oh Gosh! So many choices. Maybe Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman or another Graham Joyce, perhaps The Facts of Life or Smoking Poppy. But there sits Black Hole by Charles Burns daring me to read it. And I just got a copy of The Martian Child by David Gerrold in the mail today, and the movie version is coming out in 2006, and I want to read the book first in case the film sucks. I don't know why. It's just a theory (more of a gut feeling really) I have about the Book/Movie Dynamic. Seeing a Bad movie ruins good book unless you have read the book first. Check back.