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[CCBC-Net] Octavian Nothing
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From: Monica Edinger <monicaedinger>
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 16:01:40 -0500
I can totally understand how the period language could make OCTAVIAN NOTHING a difficult read for many. Yet, in my case, it is a significant reason for my admiration for the book and its author. To really try to bring us into that 18th century mindset in this way, particularly in a book for young people, struck me as remarkable.
I've been thinking lately about the use of vernacular, of attempting to mimic the sound of a particular period in a work of historical fiction written for 21st century readers. There seems to be a far amount of this in books set in the last 150 years or so, but less so if you go further back. Understandable as the language is indeed different and strange to our contemporary ears. But that is what, to my mind, makes this work so fantastic --- it is a different time and place, quite long ago, a time we think we know about, but don't really
--- and so here in this novel, we can hear it, sense it, read it in the phrasing of the speech as well as in the characters' actions and behavior. And for all the alien-aspect of this, Octavian is a teenager and reacts as emotionally as would a teen today. At its heart OCTAVIAN NOTHING is a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman of some power.
Monica
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 16:01:40 -0500
I can totally understand how the period language could make OCTAVIAN NOTHING a difficult read for many. Yet, in my case, it is a significant reason for my admiration for the book and its author. To really try to bring us into that 18th century mindset in this way, particularly in a book for young people, struck me as remarkable.
I've been thinking lately about the use of vernacular, of attempting to mimic the sound of a particular period in a work of historical fiction written for 21st century readers. There seems to be a far amount of this in books set in the last 150 years or so, but less so if you go further back. Understandable as the language is indeed different and strange to our contemporary ears. But that is what, to my mind, makes this work so fantastic --- it is a different time and place, quite long ago, a time we think we know about, but don't really
--- and so here in this novel, we can hear it, sense it, read it in the phrasing of the speech as well as in the characters' actions and behavior. And for all the alien-aspect of this, Octavian is a teenager and reacts as emotionally as would a teen today. At its heart OCTAVIAN NOTHING is a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman of some power.
Monica
-- Monica Edinger The Dalton School New York NY monicaedinger at gmail.com my blog educating alice is at http://medinger.wordpress.comReceived on Fri 05 Jan 2007 03:01:40 PM CST
