McKillip, Patricia A. - The Bell at Sealey Head

[oyceter]

A mysterious bell rings out at Sealey Head every sunset, but not everyone can hear it, and no one knows where the bell is or why it rings. Meanwhile, scholar Ridley Dow has taken up residence at Judd Cauley's inn, Gwyneth the merchant's daughter is being courted by the titled Raven Sproule, and Lady Eglantyne lies dying at Aislinn House, which seems to contain another world inside.

Like many of McKillip's books, the disparate elements end up coming together by the end of the book. I found myself interested in almost all the threads in this book, which is not always the case, and I very much liked her detail on every day life at Sealey Head and the different points of view we got. The mystery resolution felt a little too fast for me; I wanted more details of the world within Aislinn House and more of the history of how the mystery came to be.

While I liked that both Judd and Gwyneth were bookworms, Gwyneth's writing felt a little too self-insert-y for me, but that may be my own personal predilections speaking, as I tend to be bored by fictional representations of authors. Also, given that we were given snippets of her stories, I wanted them to be in a different style, or to contribute more to the story overall. Maybe some people liked the extrapolations of the story of the bell; I wanted more of the actual story, or more meta-commentary within the stories, or something.

Not my favorite McKillip, but pleasant reading nonetheless.

Links:
- gwyneira's review

Comments

[sovay]

Also, given that we were given snippets of her stories, I wanted them to be in a different style, or to contribute more to the story overall. Maybe some people liked the extrapolations of the story of the bell; I wanted more of the actual story, or more meta-commentary within the stories, or something.

Yes. In Song for the Basilisk, the opera being written by Hexel Barr necessarily comments on the action of the novel, since it is inspired by the same (not quite as safely) historical (as everyone thinks) events that form the story, and indeed as the opera evolves it comes uncomfortably close to the truth that the various characters have not yet put together—to its composer's dismay, it looks like an act of politics. Gwyneth's story was just sort of there. I would have preferred to see half a dozen different stories, each an entirely different explanation, or something that could be affected by the plot around it. And given the setting, her language should have read nothing like McKillip's.

[fireriven.livejournal.com]

I think this is partially because Gwyneth's story was the original explanation for the Bell that McKillip discarded because it didn't work for the novel. She liked it, though, and wanted it to appear in the story somehow. (From this interview (http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/interview_mckillip_2008.html).)

Speaking of McKillip, did you see the special edition of Green Man Review (http://www.greenmanreview.com/whats_new.html) dedicated to her? It was published this past Sunday.

[sovay]

Speaking of McKillip, did you see the special edition of Green Man Review dedicated to her? It was published this past Sunday.

I had not! Thank you.

[oyceter]

Yes, definitely agree re: the language and how it doesn't have to do with the themes or the plot. Or if it did, it went over my head...

I had actually forgotten about the opera in Basilisk! I was comparing the snippets to the book in Alphabet of Thorn, which I had the same problems with stylistically (i.e. I wanted it to be in a slightly different style from the rest of the prose) but was absolutely engrossing in terms of plot and relevance.