sacred country

[threeplusfire]

So many things to say, but I feel everything fly out of my head each time I sit down to write them. We left the house yesterday because I couldn't stand the silence in my own head and it was a good thing because an electrical substation just north of us caught on fire and all the power went out in the area. We got to spend a good evening hanging out with Stacy & Eric, eating sandwiches and watching Riff Tracks. I'm not sure I can scrub my brain enough to get rid of the utterly moronic mess that was The Happening. But I really loved the guys singing about pork and apparently people used to think it was a good idea to wash clothes in gasoline at home!

A couple days ago I read Sacred Country by Rose Tremain. This is a fascinating story about Martin Ward and his struggle to find his way back to the right body. I suppose after a lifetime spent reading science fiction and fantasy it doesn't seem so hard for me to relate to someone living in a completely different time and setting than my own. Martin is born as Mary and grows up on a farm in the English countryside. When the story started shifting perspectives to other family members and even other people living in the village, my first reaction was "No, no, no, I need to be with Mary/Martin." I didn't want to have to empathize with the drunk father or the awful little sibling. But I found it gave me a fuller picture of Martin, and Martin's world, without forcing me into some painful reconciliation with the others. In the end I was glad for it, because it allowed the story to happen.

There's a lot of sadness and missed things, a lot of cruelty to the life in the pages. But it comes round to something like peace and a greater sense of happiness.

Reading Sacred Country has made me think about what I want for myself.

Comments

[splix.livejournal.com]

It was a difficult book for me to read once the shifting perspective happened, as I recall, and the ending left me slightly melancholy, but I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm glad it had some resonance for you.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I really loved this book. Thank you so much. I think it is hard to tell these kinds of stories without melancholy.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

I actually liked the shifting POVs because they put Martin's own life in greater perspective: Everyone around him was trapped in one crisis of identity or another, it's just theirs, even severe mental illness, bisexuality, etc., were more societally "acceptable" than his. Though I'm glad I wasn't the only one who came away absolutely loathing Timothy--in my head Pearl ultimately leaves him for Martin (not just because I detested Timothy in his own right but because the final Martin-Pearl confrontation was so heartbreaking).

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I am also relieved, because I wondered if my own distant and unpleasant sibling relationship colored my reaction to Timothy. I never actually tried to kill my sister though I certainly wished she would leave of her own volition many times.

Poor Martin. That moment with Pearl was the saddest, saddest thing.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Oh God, Timothy was awful, just an awful nasty self-righteous self-pitying disgusting little prig. I realize he was mistreated by their father too, but it was absolutely no excuse for doing what he did to Martin. (Did you get seriously scared when their father decided Martin was literally casting evil spells to blight the farm? I did.)

"Poor Martin. That moment with Pearl was the saddest, saddest thing."

And he's saying "precious thing" like he always thought of her and she's screaming back that she isn't a thing and I can totally understand why she's saying it, even as she misapprehends him, and--God. Just absolutely awful.

BTW, I thought it was sort of a brilliant touch that Martin's girlfriend, the agony aunt, could be so sensitive and compassionate when she thought "the transsexual" she was advising was a stranger, and then lose it completely to find out he wasn't. It just felt really real.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I was really scared by the father's ideas. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here, but my father threatened to shoot me and my girlfriend when my parents caught us having sex during my teen years. It was just another visceral, incredibly realistic detail to this story. I felt like all of these characters were people and situations I knew so well, that I was never surprised by their existence but by how faithfully reproduced it was in a different setting than my own.

The part where Timothy rats out Martin on the bandages killed me. I wanted to punch him right through the book.

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

"I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here, but my father threatened to shoot me and my girlfriend when my parents caught us having sex during my teen years...I felt like all of these characters were people and situations I knew so well, that I was never surprised by their existence but by how faithfully reproduced it was in a different setting than my own."

I think I remember your writing about that a while back. :-( I'm fortunate enough not to have experienced stuff like that firsthand but, the book was still so visceral and real that I sure as hell felt it while I was reading.

"The part where Timothy rats out Martin on the bandages killed me. I wanted to punch him right through the book."

I just kept thinking, "Timothy, he will kill Martin, HE WILL KILL MARTIN AND IT'LL BE ON YOUR HEAD." (Not that I think that would even have registered with Saint Timothy, he's one of those types where everything he does is always someone else's fault.) I was really scared when the father tracked Martin down to that schoolteacher's house.