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Yellow Crocus |
So I’ve joined a book club. I know, exciting right? No, but
it actually is because you do not
even know how long I have wanted to be a member of a book club so I’m super
delighted. It’s a small club, and it’s ladies I know already which is A Good
Thing because oh my goodness am I shy, and I think it’s going to be lovely.
Except that.
And I have to
be super comfortable with you before I’ll offer up my own opinion, speshly if
my own opinion is not the same as yours and I’ve read the book club book and….I
didn’t love it. I didn’t love it and I’ve been super scared the other ladies
did and I didn’t want to show up for the first time and be all ‘yeah, I’m not
sure…’
My friend Ang told me on holiday in March that I needed to
be less of a mouse and more of a gerbil, and maybe this is a time to practise
that but I feared that everybody will sing this books praises and I would be
just sat there and smiling and nodding and agreeing when inside I was thinking but what about that one part where –
which I am aware is not the point of a book club at all and that I should
always put on my big girl pants and OWN MY OPINIONS.
Anyhow, the first meeting was supposed to be tonight – or
rather my first meeting; the club has
being going a while I think – but it clashes with my Dad’s birthday which is a
terrible shame. I was always going to blog about the book before the meeting
because figured if I talked about the book here first then I might be brave
enough to squeak about how whilst this book was ok, there were others I loved
more. As it happens I can just do the blogging and postpone putting on the big
girl pants til next time.
The book, because I can tell you’re on tenterhooks waiting,
is (was, is?) Yellow Crocus by Laila
Ibrahim. Which you already knew because it says it in the post title and there's
a photo of the cover up there so probably not on tenterhooks at all. OH well.
It’s set in America in the 1800’s and is about slave called Mattie who
is the wet nurse for a white baby called Elizabeth. The story is their story,
told in switching viewpoints, over a period of about 20years and it’s right up
my street. Seriously. I did a small happy dance when I read the blurb because
this is the kind of thing I love. I mean The
Help, The Secret Life of Bees, Fried Green Tomatoes, The Color Purple, TKaM – these
are books that I loved and Yellow Crocus looked
like it might slip right on in next to them.
But it didn’t. HERE BE SPOILERS BY THE WAY. SPOOOOOOILERS.
If you read past here and get spoiled then YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
It’s just…it’s not as good. And you know what, that might
just be me. It probably is just me. Sometimes I think I might be hard work because I expect a lot and I
go into things with these possibly unrealistically high expectations and then I
get all sourpuss when those standards aren’t met.
It’s just, I wanted to love this book, I promise I did and I
read it fast – I flew through it. Finished it in an evening really because the
setting and the story: that’s all stuff I like, I just wanted there to be more
of it. I mean, details, I am all about
the details. I want all the ins and outs; I want the deep thoughts; I want to
know the colour of the sky and Yellow
Crocus was vague.
The story was interesting but it was vague, there weren’t
enough of those details I crave to the point that I was confused because it
felt somehow childlike; you could have told me the target market was young
reader, 8-12, and I wouldn’t have been surprised except that some of the themes
were decidedly adult so who was it aimed at, this book. I don’t think it was
me. And that sounds catty; I don’t mean to sound catty. I just….I don’t get it.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD.
There were too many unanswered questions – I have a lot of questions, I’m sorry – and
too much that felt too convenient and too prettily tied up in a ribbon.
And the characters: we’re meant to like Mattie, cos she’s a
slave and A Good Person and we’re meant to like Elizabeth cos she loves Mattie
and…it really kind of is that shallow, and then the people we’re not supposed
to like felt like caricatures and gimme more character development dammit and
also, ALSO, there are far too many massive jumps forward in time here and that
bugged the ever living hell out of me because I WAS INTERESTED IN THIS STORY
and all of the interesting bits were missed out and I know the POV of 2 people
over 20years is a lot to cover and this book was short but I FELT CHEATED.
I feel like either it should have been some sweeping Gone With The Wind epic of seven million
pages or it should have focussed in
on the more important points – oooh, like, Lisbeth’s teenage years.
I wanted more of that please because those years are
important years and we jumped from her being 14 to 19 or something all of a
sudden and so suddenly she’s gone from child to young adult and we know nothing
about who she is or what she’s doing or what she’s about and so we can’t
connect or engage and she comes across as a bit of a brat and then she’s
suddenly engaged to this dude who once again we don’t know much about except
that he’s a dick.
& I think we’re supposed to want her to be with this
other guy.
Except you don’t get to know enough about either of these
guys to really care much.
& then she (SPOILER) catches this guy she’s engaged to
with a slave (and the implication is rape, and we know enough to not need it to
be said outright I suppose but it’s sort of skirted around which pissed me off,
not because I wanted some gratuitous violent scene but because I feel like the
atrocities are important here. This is not a nice story so stop making it
nice.) and just like that she’s an abolitionist and NONE OF THIS WAS CONVINCING
BECAUSE I KNOW NONE OF THE THINGS I NEED TO KNOW TO BE CONVINCED. Just, no.
Show don’t tell. That’s totally a thing. This book did too
much telling and not enough showing.
Show me Elizabeth and what makes her tick and how she really
feels about the slaves and about her family and about her peers and show me why. Show me things that she’s seen and
felt and experienced. Let me see her parents, let me see these two men. Let me see,
actually, some real honest to God interaction between her and anybody, but especially Mattie and her
Mother. Show me, please, why I am supposed to buy into this story.
Then there’s the story that runs alongside this one in the
book, which has the same issues: Mattie the nurse’s story - her son and husband
escaping to (relative) freedom in Ohio and Mattie eventually breaking free and
spending weeks travelling to find them and that sounds so fascinating does it
not? Fuck that’s a good story. Except it’s
kind of ‘Mattie escaped. Mattie was hungry. Mattie slept in the cellars and
barns of some kind people. Mattie made it to Ohio’ and I wanted to tear out my
hair because the stories here were in the nitty gritty and the nitty gritty was
not shared with me. I think it was…it was too nice. You can’t write this kind
of book and make it nice. If I want to read a nice book then I’ll read Anne of
Green Gables.
But I didn’t hate it. Even though reading that back it
sounds like I did. I didn’t. I’m just greedy. Always I want more.
