The Camel Bookmobile
Feb. 4th, 2009 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThere's a book club meets in Borders in Norwich and their book this month is The Camel Bookmobile. Since I couldn't think of anything else to do this thursday I picked it up this morning. I have now read it.
Mostly it was a disappointment.
Then I got to within about twenty pages of the end and it was an offensive disappointment.
It starts off sounding like it's about books and libraries, maybe some detective work, a bit of learning how other people live. I started thinking that I read a lot of SF without knowing much about this world, and consider that I could read stories from lots of places and expand my knowledge.
The more I read the less this sounds like a story-from and more a story-about. It's little things like the white woman visitor being associated with the word 'magic' and stuff that works and the black local people being 'superstition' and stuff that only works if they do stuff to each other cause of believing it. And the thing where, while there's frequent mention that maybe these books aren't much use to people in those conditions (how to survive an avalanche as the most amusing example), there's zero times where the librarian ignores their rules and does something they'd think of as stupid and gets trouble for it, and multiple times where she ignores the rules and gets to do some kind of good thing. Like going past the fence at night doesn't lead to being attacked by dangerous wild animals, just rescuing a calf. I'm not saying that every local custom should turn out to be of the good - there's repeat mention of female circumcision, and no. But they are at least aware of the dangers in their own place, and she isn't and ignores it blithely, and the fact she gets away with it just undermines the side of local knowledge being valuable.
Then the book gets annoying because it turns out to be about who's shagging who and who wants to and who doesn't want to and all that stuff. Not books and building and crops and cows and water and useful things. All the motives are about m/f relationships. Every single one.
And then, nearly at the end, there's a paragraph where I lose all respect for the book because the stupid librarian woman decides that she isn't just there in Africa to bring literacy to the tribes, the real point for her personally is shagging this bloke. It uses a bit of poetic language, but that's what it's talking about. "she'd come to Mididima not only to bring books and encourage literacy, but for this, to learn about drinking honeyed rain from this African man in the bush, and to take that learning away with her."
The man in question is a teacher, reading and writing and maths and he studied in the city and has knowledge, but that's not what she thinks about when she thinks of him. She looks at him earlier and it's all about the stomach muscles. She 'learns' from him here but it's all about sex. And right there, thinking 'this African man' instead of thinking his name? That's just... this is exactly why using epithets instead of names is wrong, because it makes his category the important thing here, it depersonalises the whole thing, and it leaves you with the impression her whole journey and this whole book is about her shagging a black bloke and then going home.
There were some other plot threads. But they were all about m/f relationships, actually all about the kind of love triangles where one bloke with learning or art loves a woman and another bloke with muscles and tradition is admired by that woman and it all gets tragic and tangly and resolves with one bloke leaving and leaving the woman to the other bloke. It doesn't go back to the woman's pov after that to have her decide 'hey, I guess I'll leave and do what I want!' or even 'I guess I'll leave and follow that bloke I want!' It's just blokes deciding.
It's possible this is meant to add to the tragic and futile atmosphere around the ending. But it's mostly just annoying.
So now I feel like I wasted all day with a book that was about a whole lot of nothing much and a bit of yuck.
So I've either missed the point of the book or it's a stupid book.
Mostly it was a disappointment.
Then I got to within about twenty pages of the end and it was an offensive disappointment.
It starts off sounding like it's about books and libraries, maybe some detective work, a bit of learning how other people live. I started thinking that I read a lot of SF without knowing much about this world, and consider that I could read stories from lots of places and expand my knowledge.
The more I read the less this sounds like a story-from and more a story-about. It's little things like the white woman visitor being associated with the word 'magic' and stuff that works and the black local people being 'superstition' and stuff that only works if they do stuff to each other cause of believing it. And the thing where, while there's frequent mention that maybe these books aren't much use to people in those conditions (how to survive an avalanche as the most amusing example), there's zero times where the librarian ignores their rules and does something they'd think of as stupid and gets trouble for it, and multiple times where she ignores the rules and gets to do some kind of good thing. Like going past the fence at night doesn't lead to being attacked by dangerous wild animals, just rescuing a calf. I'm not saying that every local custom should turn out to be of the good - there's repeat mention of female circumcision, and no. But they are at least aware of the dangers in their own place, and she isn't and ignores it blithely, and the fact she gets away with it just undermines the side of local knowledge being valuable.
Then the book gets annoying because it turns out to be about who's shagging who and who wants to and who doesn't want to and all that stuff. Not books and building and crops and cows and water and useful things. All the motives are about m/f relationships. Every single one.
And then, nearly at the end, there's a paragraph where I lose all respect for the book because the stupid librarian woman decides that she isn't just there in Africa to bring literacy to the tribes, the real point for her personally is shagging this bloke. It uses a bit of poetic language, but that's what it's talking about. "she'd come to Mididima not only to bring books and encourage literacy, but for this, to learn about drinking honeyed rain from this African man in the bush, and to take that learning away with her."
The man in question is a teacher, reading and writing and maths and he studied in the city and has knowledge, but that's not what she thinks about when she thinks of him. She looks at him earlier and it's all about the stomach muscles. She 'learns' from him here but it's all about sex. And right there, thinking 'this African man' instead of thinking his name? That's just... this is exactly why using epithets instead of names is wrong, because it makes his category the important thing here, it depersonalises the whole thing, and it leaves you with the impression her whole journey and this whole book is about her shagging a black bloke and then going home.
There were some other plot threads. But they were all about m/f relationships, actually all about the kind of love triangles where one bloke with learning or art loves a woman and another bloke with muscles and tradition is admired by that woman and it all gets tragic and tangly and resolves with one bloke leaving and leaving the woman to the other bloke. It doesn't go back to the woman's pov after that to have her decide 'hey, I guess I'll leave and do what I want!' or even 'I guess I'll leave and follow that bloke I want!' It's just blokes deciding.
It's possible this is meant to add to the tragic and futile atmosphere around the ending. But it's mostly just annoying.
So now I feel like I wasted all day with a book that was about a whole lot of nothing much and a bit of yuck.
So I've either missed the point of the book or it's a stupid book.