R. A. MacAvoy, Tea with the Black Dragon
Sat, Jan. 10th, 2004 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI don't know how to talk about this book at all. It's not really an Asian-inspired fantasy, although there is an Asian dragon in it. It's not that much of a fantasy, despite the dragon. It's not really a mystery, or thriller, although it has elements of both, nor is it a romance, although it has that too.
I'm trying to paint what it's not to leave an outline of what it is, but it's not really working so far.
It's a very little novel, not very long, and nothing very big happens, although, I could also argue that everything that does matters happens. MacAvoy has a way with words that isn't an obvious style; it reminds me a bit of LeGuin for some reason. She (MacAvoy) writes so that everything is perfectly transparent and obvious, not quite like Diana Wynne Jones' matter-of-fact humor, but in a way that gets to the very essence of things. It feels like there is nothing extraneous about her prose.
It's about Martha MacNamara, who fears her daughter is in trouble, and Mayland Long, a man who is sometimes Chinese and sometimes English and sometimes neither, and how he became such a man.
It also is about Silicon Valley and computer crime in the early eighties, which amused me, because a lot of the action takes place in Stanford and San Francisco -- I got a huge kick out of reading about Rengstorff St. and University Ave, places I live around (do NY people get a kick out of stuff like this?).
And there's a dragon in it, a black dragon whose name makes perfect sense but took me even longer to get, because Oolong is automatically "tea" for me. And of course he was a five-toed dragon. Oh! And the dragon was in Taipei!! Sorry.
Anyhow, the book is still quietly steeping in my mind and sending little tea-scented tendrils everywhere.
Links:
-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwyneira's review
I'm trying to paint what it's not to leave an outline of what it is, but it's not really working so far.
It's a very little novel, not very long, and nothing very big happens, although, I could also argue that everything that does matters happens. MacAvoy has a way with words that isn't an obvious style; it reminds me a bit of LeGuin for some reason. She (MacAvoy) writes so that everything is perfectly transparent and obvious, not quite like Diana Wynne Jones' matter-of-fact humor, but in a way that gets to the very essence of things. It feels like there is nothing extraneous about her prose.
It's about Martha MacNamara, who fears her daughter is in trouble, and Mayland Long, a man who is sometimes Chinese and sometimes English and sometimes neither, and how he became such a man.
It also is about Silicon Valley and computer crime in the early eighties, which amused me, because a lot of the action takes place in Stanford and San Francisco -- I got a huge kick out of reading about Rengstorff St. and University Ave, places I live around (do NY people get a kick out of stuff like this?).
And there's a dragon in it, a black dragon whose name makes perfect sense but took me even longer to get, because Oolong is automatically "tea" for me. And of course he was a five-toed dragon. Oh! And the dragon was in Taipei!! Sorry.
Anyhow, the book is still quietly steeping in my mind and sending little tea-scented tendrils everywhere.
Links:
-
gwyneira's review
Re: As a Londoner, I must stick up for the other side
Sun, Jan. 11th, 2004 02:01 pm (UTC)And, more generally on the nature of the living city:
Lyn H. Lofland 'Urbanity, tolerance and public space: The creation of cosmopolitans' in L. Deben, W. Heinemeijer, D. van der Vaart (eds), Understanding Amsterdam: essays on economic vitality, city life and urban form (http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/9055891487/leslehallswebp07) (2000)
Re: As a Londoner, I must stick up for the other side
Sun, Jan. 11th, 2004 11:48 pm (UTC)Thanks for the quote -- reminds me of Giuliani's campaign to clean up Times Square. I love cities, particularly Tokyo and Hong Kong and New York, which are the three I've spent most time in... Taipei unfortunately doesn't have much of a personality, and I don't quite "get" San Francisco yet.
I miss Hong Kong the most.