The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden

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It's a hit!

I have to admit the tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale format took some time for me to get used to, especially when I kept putting down the book and ... (show more)

I have to admit the tale-within-a-tale-within-a-tale format took some time for me to get used to, especially when I kept putting down the book and picking it up a few days later. When I was able to get some time to read uniterrupted, however, the spell fell and I could barely bring myself to stop reading.

I am wondering, however, if many of the exotic locations and people were nothing more than decoration in the background, and the supposedly exotic characters not explored as thoroughly as I would have hoped - like, could white characters have been substituted without major change? How do all these different countries and leaderships have different cultures and societies? I'll have to reread the book, in any case, which is not too hard a task.

I did like the format, and the imagery and the stories - there were plenty of women and female monsters who were the main characters, and that's always good to see. Overall pretty good, but I'll be thinking about it a bit more. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook User

No, it's a flop!

Read this on a recommendation from the library's list of award winning books. Overall a good book however I wearied of the feminist flavor of the s... (show more)

Read this on a recommendation from the library's list of award winning books. Overall a good book however I wearied of the feminist flavor of the stories and of how every story ends up telling another story until it all gets mixed up together and you forget which story you started from. (show less)

 

 

by Facebook-användare

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  I wanted to love this book so badly. I read the positive reviews and I really tried to like it. Instead of enchanted, I found myself bored. The first half of the book reads a lot easier than the first and I actually did get caught in an fantasy world at first - but the magic ended quickly and I often found myself dreading reading this book and not being interested in what I did read. The writing style was great and the author does have quite a vivid imagination but some of the stories in the ... (show more)

  I wanted to love this book so badly. I read the positive reviews and I really tried to like it. Instead of enchanted, I found myself bored. The first half of the book reads a lot easier than the first and I actually did get caught in an fantasy world at first - but the magic ended quickly and I often found myself dreading reading this book and not being interested in what I did read. The writing style was great and the author does have quite a vivid imagination but some of the stories in the work are just a chore to read. (show less)

   

   

  by Facebook-användare on Aug 13, 2009 at 03:28PM

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  I purchased <i>The Orphan's Tales, Vol. I: In the Night Garden</i> by Catherynee M. Valente because some blurt or another said it was full of stories. I do that, I buy books full of stories -- anthologies, collections, themed or not, best of the year and best stories of the author. I set them on the table beside the bed and when I have the urge, I pull out a tome, leaf through the pages, pick a story, any unread story, or a particular story I've had my heart set upon reading a... (show more)

  I purchased <i>The Orphan's Tales, Vol. I: In the Night Garden</i> by Catherynee M. Valente because some blurt or another said it was full of stories. I do that, I buy books full of stories -- anthologies, collections, themed or not, best of the year and best stories of the author. I set them on the table beside the bed and when I have the urge, I pull out a tome, leaf through the pages, pick a story, any unread story, or a particular story I've had my heart set upon reading and that is my end of the day or my beginning of the day depending upon the time of day it is. Now, I'd read a couple of stories by Catherynee M. Valente, very bold and very lyrical pieces that created new fantastical tales from well-known, well-told fairy tales, and I loved the bite of them, the weight of them and the difference, the novelty of their language.

  To tell the truth, I fully expected to find the tales of that nature, perhaps, even those very tales, within the pages of this book. But, no, those tales were not there, in fact, tales of that particular challenge, that particular individually and that particular focus were not included. A strange thing happened as I flipped the pages to the Table of Contents (a thing I do to choose a story within a book of many stories), there was no Table of Contents. None. Just a Prelude. So, I read it. And I was captivated. I read <I>In the Night Garden</i> from Prelude to Acknowledgment, start to finish, with very little other reading material in between. And, yes, this is a book meant to be read page following page, story leading to story, fictions returning to themselves, connecting to one another, expanding and influencing their effect as a whole for the work as a whole. Not the same as I had read before, but just as wonderful. And a masterpiece in structure.

  Well, if it is not a masterpiece in structure (and I am speaking to this and future volumes, as this story and its main characters have not yet completed its and their fictional arcs), it is an extraordinarily complex endeavor that encompasses the creation of a mythical, magical, fantastical world through mythology, history, religion, through its cities, its plains and marshes, oceans and islands, its citizens, its stories.

  Oh, but doesn't that sound daunting? Doesn't that sound like C. S. Lewis' <I>The Chronicles of Narnia</i>, or J. R. R. Tolkien's <I>The Lord of the Rings</i> or every book of L. Frank Baum's Oz series lined in rows upon your shelves and even to begin one such series is a task you aren't not sure you are up to? But, oh, it is really so simple, it is just stories. Stories, mostly about children. It is about how one person, or one animal, or one Goddess, or one being of a magical nature arrives at a particular place. The stories lead to one another, or lead from one person to another. There is nothing difficult about that and even the lyrical tone is not heavy handed; descriptive yes, expansive yes, seldom failing in its ability to create an image, almost never drawing the reader away from the story with its prose.

  I want to take a moment to discuss the novel's structure. This is Vol. I. It is broken into two parts: The Book of the Steppe and The Book of the Sea. (I'm going to make a guess here, the land is connected to eight chambers of a heart, so I foresee an additional six parts in the future, but I could be wrong.) Both of these parts are framed by the stories being told by a child in a garden to a young prince who has befriended her. The girl must tell these tales because of a task, a trial, was laid upon her when she was a baby. But the story within the novel's parts stands complete as it is told. (If there is a weakness, in the novel, a point where I struggled, this would be it -- going from one book to another, where the next story is new and different and as a reader, still enamored with the first story, I wanted more of the same.) With each of the two parts to the book, a story is told to a child, and within that story are various other stories, which often lead to other stories and more additional stories. At one time, I counted from the girl and the prince in the garden an additional line of six stories being told. And, no this chain of stories was not confusing. But it is more than just a simple chain, it was more than one story following its way down from another story. For the character telling the child their story, there is more than this, this is an unfinished story that must be completed.

  I think I've failed to present to you the magic of these stories. It isn't only the variety of characters (for example, children, mothers, grandmothers, fathers, kings, queens, princes, princesses, saints, wizards, pirates, bears, herons, wolves, crows, magyr, firebirds, griffins, witches, crones, shape-shifters, monsters, beasts, gods and goddesses), but the passions within the stories. These are love stories where love is often found and occasionally lost. Lost forever. These are stories of destinies and quests, struggles and betrayals, greed and revenge. These are stories of family and friendship, isolation and community, distance and home. These are stories that are very magical and yet very human. Well worth reading. (show less)

   

   

  by Pam McNew on Jul 16, 2007 at 09:41PM

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