White Cat

I listened to this as an audiobook, read by Jessie Eisenberg, with the result that Cassel Sharpe, canonically so racially ambiguous that strangers on trains will address him in foreign languages, now looks like a Jewish kid to me.

Eisenberg is a pretty good reader, giving most of the characters distinct voices (acting!) and occasional accents, although I can't tell the difference between his parody-russian-accent and actual-russian-accent. It did seem a little awkward during the sexy bits, which I found odd; I enjoy sexy podfic, and I wonder if the difference is due to the fact that I know podficcers are, to me, insiders, doing this for love, and part of the community, whereas I see Eisenberg as an outside contractor. Several times I found myself wondering what Eisenberg thought of the story he was reading; is he enjoying it, or is he merely a professional, performing a service, allowing me to roll around in the delicious angst he is transmitting to me? (And why doesn’t it bother me when actors do essentially the same thing on TV?) In sum: probably my issue, not his.

Separately, but on the topic of audiobooks, it turns out I am much worse at putting down an audiobook I am enjoying than a text I am enjoying, with the result that I listened to this in a day, and didn't get much else done.

Actual book thoughts: Cassel Sharpe is an appealing fuckup, with a beautifully fucked up family. This is an odd thing for me to like, because I would normally rather stab myself with a pencil than read about about a dysfunctional family. I think what makes it work for me is that his family is not merely fucked up in human ways, but rather all their fuckups are materialized by the mutant powers in this 'verse: Cassel's mother is not simply emotionally abusive, she literally rewrote her children's emotions repeatedly during their upbringing, and still does because she sees nothing wrong with it.

It's a little hard to review this book without spoiling things. Cassel is trying to figure out what's going on, and a lot of the assumptions he begins with turn out to be false. About half-way through, I began to be frustrated with Cassel for not seeing what was obvious to me, but I have to be fair to him; kids in abusive situations frequently see their situations with less clarity than him, and Cassel is in a really messed up situation.

So, rather than talk about Cassel's problem, I will talk about the world Black has set up. In this world, curse or hex-workers can do something that might as well be magic, but always at a cost. You can change someone's memories, but you'll lose a fraction of your own; you can can change someone's feelings, but your own will become more and more uncontrollable. This approach to magic is appealing to me for the parameters it imposes. Magic becomes one more system with rules, which, obviously, will become part of a system for trying to exploit those rules and avoid paying the costs.

Curse-work is illegal, with the result that curse-workers usually find themselves made part of criminal organizations. Cassel's family is full of curse-workers, and is several generations into the mob. Organized crime is synonymous with curse-work and vice-versa. It's impossible to say to what extent the messed-up-ness of Cassel's family is because his grandpa was a hit-man on a mob retirement plan and what extent is because they're a family of con artists. Then add in the curse-work you get a glorious filthy tidal bore that Cassel can't escape.

(Speaking of materialized dysfunction: Cassel's family home is referred to as 'the garbage house' because it's so full of junk, and his mother seems to be a borderline hoarder. A minor plot-thread involves Cassel and his grandfather trying to clean out the family home by throwing out the crap, and other family members bringing the crap back. I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE.)

Final side-note: This fanfic flamingo is basically my entire life: I think I have been avoiding Holly Black for a while because she writes flat, emotionally unengaging characters? WHOOPS NO APPARENTLY THAT WAS SOMEONE ELSE.