What are you reading?

Tony Ellis · 12 Mar 2014, 21:10 · from 2014-March.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 21:10:45 +0000
Subject: (urth) What are you reading?
Message-ID: <CA+WO8_6-qaa_MY_MYHm1s3FiXwp+w0b5HLgFKmNPA8qUZUvSrg at mail.gmail.com>

Yeah, let's do this.

I'm halfway through The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff, which splices a
modern murder mystery set in a polygamous Mormon-spinoff community
with the story of Ann Eliza Young, infamous 19th wife of Brigham
Young. I'm enjoying it, especially the historical sections, but it's
disappointingly lightweight.

Before that it was Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. I didn't find
it better than Wolf Hall, as a lot of people said, just more of the
same. But since 'more of the same' in this case means 'an
electrifyingly vivid and original reinvention of the historical
novel', that's fine by me.

There's a lovely passage about torture that immediately reminded me of
the Guild:

The faces of your torturers loom up like giants or they become
impossibly distant, small, like dots. Words are spoken: bring him
here, seat him, now it is time. They were words attached to other and
common meanings, but if you survive this they will only ever have one
meaning and the meaning is pain. The iron hisses as it is lifted from
the flame. The rope doubles like a serpent, loops itself, and waits.
It is too late for you. You will not speak now, because your tongue
has swelled and filled your mouth and language has eaten itself. Later
you will speak, when you are carried away from the machinery and set
down on straw. I have endured it, you will say. I have come through.
And pity and self-love will crack open your heart, so that at the
first gesture of kindness - let us say, a blanket or a sip of wine -
your heart will overflow, your tongue unstop. Out flow the words. You
were not brought to this room to think, but to feel. And in the end
you have felt too much for yourself.

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