Instead of falling prey to her seducer/employer, she gets to keep her virtue despite his increasingly ridiculous advances, writes increasingly hilariously overwrought letters to her family about the experience (it's an epistolary novel), and eventually she and Mr. B. actually fall in love and get married, then spend the rest of the novel making fun of the snobby neighboring gentry who look down their noses at her servant girl origins.
Oh my god, that sounds amazing. I need to get me a copy of that! I loved Charlotte Temple because it was so. very. dramatic. and not because it had an awesome plot. Plus, it's interesting to see what a bestseller is at different points in history.
Well, you know what, good for you. It takes a very particular sort of mind to be able to go for that.
I'm sadly not at ALL educated in LatAm lit.
Well, you're lucky, 'cause that's basically all I'm educated in. I'm not totally sure I can recommend Carpentier to you, though. (Anyone, really.) He's...hmm. Okay, I took grad classes in Spanish as an undergrad because I was too far beyond what my first college offered Spanish undergrads. And I was the only one in that class to finish that book, and I only did so through sheer bloody-mindedness. Everyone - and I mean everyone else (who were all grad students, by the way) stopped by chapter four and just stared at the professor as he tried to get something out of us. It was boring, it was unnecessarily complex - one sentence extended an entire fucking chapter, thankyouverymcuh, which is bad enough in English but when it's in your second language....no. Just no. Also? Literally nothing happened. I don't, didn't, and never will understand the point of this book. I love magical realism, I cannot recommend Marquez hard enough. I would shank Alejo Carpentier for what he did to magical realism. If you want really good, complex puzzles of stories, try Jorge Luis Borges or Julio Cortázar. Both excellent, both very good at insane mindfucks, and both beautiful prose writers.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2010-07-31 04:51 am (UTC)Oh my god, that sounds amazing. I need to get me a copy of that! I loved Charlotte Temple because it was so. very. dramatic. and not because it had an awesome plot. Plus, it's interesting to see what a bestseller is at different points in history.
Well, you know what, good for you. It takes a very particular sort of mind to be able to go for that.
I'm sadly not at ALL educated in LatAm lit.
Well, you're lucky, 'cause that's basically all I'm educated in. I'm not totally sure I can recommend Carpentier to you, though. (Anyone, really.) He's...hmm. Okay, I took grad classes in Spanish as an undergrad because I was too far beyond what my first college offered Spanish undergrads. And I was the only one in that class to finish that book, and I only did so through sheer bloody-mindedness. Everyone - and I mean everyone else (who were all grad students, by the way) stopped by chapter four and just stared at the professor as he tried to get something out of us. It was boring, it was unnecessarily complex - one sentence extended an entire fucking chapter, thankyouverymcuh, which is bad enough in English but when it's in your second language....no. Just no. Also? Literally nothing happened. I don't, didn't, and never will understand the point of this book. I love magical realism, I cannot recommend Marquez hard enough. I would shank Alejo Carpentier for what he did to magical realism. If you want really good, complex puzzles of stories, try Jorge Luis Borges or Julio Cortázar. Both excellent, both very good at insane mindfucks, and both beautiful prose writers.