![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieFinished All Clear last night. On some level, I had guessed the ending; on another level, I really hadn't. It was all a matter of how rather than what.
At first I was a little horrified that Eileen/Merope chose to stay in 1941 and spend the rest of her life, apparently, mothering delinquents and not even keep her name instead of returning to her own time and continuing to travel to all kinds of other times and places.* And then I realized, duh, that was kind of the point, wasn't it? The whole book was about sacrifice, and ordinary people or acts being heroic in this context. So I am no longer all ARGH about it. Plus I guess she had to be Colin's great-grandmother.
(I did harbor a faint hope, when older!Binnie said that her son's name was Michael, that Michael Davies had also stayed behind, found them after the war, and had been the one Eileen married, but it was not to be.)
I realized somewhere along the way that Willis's writing in general, and these two novels in particular, epitomize what I'd like my own writing to look like (and even, in a few small ways, what it already looks like). First, she obviously researches the hell out of whatever she writes, which is something I strive for. (The hours I spend looking things up for just one line of narration. Seriously. I spend at least as much time researching as writing.)
Second, I really like that she picks a few themes--ordinary heroism, sacrifice, hope in uncertainty, making meaning from chaos--and structures almost everything around them, as with an argument's thesis and all the evidence and interpretation that supports it. Not only do the setting and plot dovetail--both time travel and WWII are chaotic systems from which meaning must be made--but so do the characters' journeys, especially Eileen's and Mike's. And she weaves in her chosen symbolism so very thoroughly, connecting it back to her themes: The Light of the World and everyone's different interpretations of it, the constant view of St. Paul's throughout the Blitz and even in 1944, when Ernest and Cess drive the German colonel so that he sees it from the correct direction, the Agatha Christie mysteries and looking at things the wrong way around, Polly as Viola, pretending to be someone she isn't, all the references to Shakespeare's fortunate tempests and storms... I liked the Shakespeare references in general, really. I appreciate it when I can see threads continuing throughout a piece, especially something as long as this, and am always trying to do it myself. There's something very..."elegant" is not quite the right word, and "neat" sounds too patronizing, but it'll have to do, I suppose...anyway, nothing is out of place. Every word, every incident, has a purpose. I admire that. I especially admire it as a former grad student, since we're taught (or at least I was taught) not to waste a word on anything that doesn't support your argument.
Willis is also damn good at knowing when to end a chapter. I knew I was being played, and loved every minute of it. ;)
* Of course, if I had looked up the Merope of classical mythology, perhaps I wouldn't have been so surprised that she stayed...
At first I was a little horrified that Eileen/Merope chose to stay in 1941 and spend the rest of her life, apparently, mothering delinquents and not even keep her name instead of returning to her own time and continuing to travel to all kinds of other times and places.* And then I realized, duh, that was kind of the point, wasn't it? The whole book was about sacrifice, and ordinary people or acts being heroic in this context. So I am no longer all ARGH about it. Plus I guess she had to be Colin's great-grandmother.
(I did harbor a faint hope, when older!Binnie said that her son's name was Michael, that Michael Davies had also stayed behind, found them after the war, and had been the one Eileen married, but it was not to be.)
I realized somewhere along the way that Willis's writing in general, and these two novels in particular, epitomize what I'd like my own writing to look like (and even, in a few small ways, what it already looks like). First, she obviously researches the hell out of whatever she writes, which is something I strive for. (The hours I spend looking things up for just one line of narration. Seriously. I spend at least as much time researching as writing.)
Second, I really like that she picks a few themes--ordinary heroism, sacrifice, hope in uncertainty, making meaning from chaos--and structures almost everything around them, as with an argument's thesis and all the evidence and interpretation that supports it. Not only do the setting and plot dovetail--both time travel and WWII are chaotic systems from which meaning must be made--but so do the characters' journeys, especially Eileen's and Mike's. And she weaves in her chosen symbolism so very thoroughly, connecting it back to her themes: The Light of the World and everyone's different interpretations of it, the constant view of St. Paul's throughout the Blitz and even in 1944, when Ernest and Cess drive the German colonel so that he sees it from the correct direction, the Agatha Christie mysteries and looking at things the wrong way around, Polly as Viola, pretending to be someone she isn't, all the references to Shakespeare's fortunate tempests and storms... I liked the Shakespeare references in general, really. I appreciate it when I can see threads continuing throughout a piece, especially something as long as this, and am always trying to do it myself. There's something very..."elegant" is not quite the right word, and "neat" sounds too patronizing, but it'll have to do, I suppose...anyway, nothing is out of place. Every word, every incident, has a purpose. I admire that. I especially admire it as a former grad student, since we're taught (or at least I was taught) not to waste a word on anything that doesn't support your argument.
Willis is also damn good at knowing when to end a chapter. I knew I was being played, and loved every minute of it. ;)
* Of course, if I had looked up the Merope of classical mythology, perhaps I wouldn't have been so surprised that she stayed...
