Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In this inventive fantasy that re-imagines the Victorian era, members of a genteel family struggle to make their way in the world after the death of their father - and they happen to be dragons.

A short pitch for this book could be Jane Austen with dragons. If that isn't a great hook, I don't know what is! The cast of characters is a respectable dragon family whose patriarch has died, scattering his heirs into the uniquely dangerous world to make their fortunes. Each character seems to have an analog in the Austen universe: for example, the clergyman Blessed Frelt is both Mr. Collins and Mr. Elliot.

It's fascinating to see how Walton translates Victorian ideas about human nature into dragon society: female dragons are much smaller than males, and lack claws or fire (dragons vary wildly in size, ranging from servants who remain seven feet in adulthood to the giant nobles who achieve seventy feet or more). Females change color when they bond with a mate, and a female alone in the world is in real danger of being "pressed" (something much like rape) or simply killed and eaten. Yes, eaten. That brings us to a central point in this world: dragons eat their dead, for some very good reasons. It's an idea Walton uses to full potential, and as strange as it is to think of Dragon Mr. Darcy eating his dear dead dad, it works. Dragon society is genteel on the surface, but beneath every interaction lurks the reality that these are large carnivores, ready to fight tooth and claw to improve their social standing.

The characters are interesting, but some of the love stories between dragon couples lacked zest. I think it's because Walton doesn't have the knack for dialog that you see in the classic British authors - Dickens and Austen in particular. (It's unfair to make the comparison, but impossible not to.) Still, the concept and execution are so charming I'm happy to overlook this quibble. In fact, I want Jo Walton to write generations of dragon stories, progressing through every era of human civilization. Dragon Greatest Generation! Dragon hippies! Dragon yuppies! (A dragon Gordon Gecko would be fantastic: Greed...is good.) There are so many interesting directions this universe could take, and the way Walton uses her premise to reexamine human society is exactly what good fantasy should do.

The obvious ideal readers of this book are Jane Austen/fantasy lovers, so brush up on your Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility before (or after) Tooth and Claw. I would also suggest another alternate-history fantasy series, one I love: His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik (the first in the Temeraire books). Think Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander - with dragons, naturally. I'm pretty sure everything's better with dragons.

Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Moll Flanders tells the story of her checkered past as prostitute, con artist, serial bigamist, and professional fibber.

This is one of the big books that you hear about as an English major; Daniel Defoe's book that isn't Robinson Crusoe. Its heroine is a street-wise orphan with nothing but looks and an ambition to live as comfortably as possible. With nothing to sell but herself, she is unlucky in marriage five times, moves from England to Virginia and back again (twice), and then strikes out on her own in the mean streets of 1670s London. She becomes a pickpocket and scammer, and earns the working name "Moll Flanders" (she never divulges her real one).

She's usually one desperate step away from ruin, which in her case means poverty, disgrace, prison, or death. Moll faces her various circumstances with sharp intelligence and one sacred rule: look out for number one. She has multiple children from different fathers but they barely register (in fact, I suspect Defoe may have forgotten about a few of them as he wrote, or else he's purposefully made Moll herself a very forgetful mother). Here's my Moll Baby Watch:

Lover one: No children

Husband one: Two, left with his parents to raise

Husband two: One child, dies

Husband three: Two living, one dead

Lover two: One son living, two dead
Husband four: One son
Husband five: two kids (later, she says only one son, so either she forgot or the other died, and by this time she's 48 and past child-bearing)
The baronet: no children

And apparently I missed a few lovers in my count, because at one point mid-book Moll claims she's slept with 13 men, when I only count 7 or 8 - in Defoe's introduction he claims to have excised a few salacious details, which may account for the different numbers (though she never bothers to reckon up the number of children she's carried and unceremoniously dumped with relatives or strangers).

Moll makes all of the outward appearances of repenting her life of crime, but she manages to profit well by it and seems happy to do so. The best parts are where we get to watch her use her charm and intelligence to manipulate various men. There is a scene that struck me as being very similar to the opening of Sense and Sensibility (the exchange where Mrs. Dashwood argues her pliable husband to give his mother and sisters nothing of his own inheritance): Moll tricks a man into marriage after spreading a false rumor that she is wealthy. After he's secured, she acclimates him to her limited resources by slowly portioning out her savings like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Moll is a fantastic character, conscienceless but still charming. She enjoys sex early in life, but after an early betrayal, Moll uses sex as a means to her ends. She lies easily and often to everyone, even the people she claims to love. She's an ingenious crook: the most entertaining portion of her adventures comes when she talks about her con games; stealing from children, picking pockets, shoplifting, and even stealing valuables from a neighbor's burning house. She protests her regret over her crimes but tells the story with such evident satisfaction that it's clear she regrets nothing but being caught. When she ends up with a comfortable amount of money in the end she shows no sign of wanting to find her missing children. She even has an (accidental) incestuous relationship with a half-brother. No wonder this book has such a scandalous reputation!

It's a witty look into the difficulties of a poor woman's life in the 17th century, and it's amazing that Defoe's treatment of Moll is so even-handed. (Moll claims she is 69 in 1683, and the novel was published in 1722, to give you a sense of historical perspective.) No one's an angel in this book, particularly not Moll, but no one's a devil, either. The novel is a picaresque, so the events are episodic and it may seem meandering to a modern reader. It's packed with realistic detail (and was originally published anonymously as a fake memoir), and I found Moll's brief account of moving around the American colonies fascinating, though other readers may find the abundant details onerous.

In short, worth checking out if you're an English major or if you love worldly picaros who happen to be fallen women.

Tom Lefroy

Jane Austen's only love:

Pretty handsome guy (the white is undoubtedly powder, fashionable at the time). His brief non-courtship of Jane Austen is the subject of Becoming Jane, starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy. The real Lefroy married an heiress, had oodles of kids, sat in Parliament, and was appointed Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, his native country. He had a good life, it seems.

I'm reading Claire Tomalin's wonderful biography of Jane Austen, and this is what she has to say about Jane's brief and joyful flirtation with Lefroy:

"We can't help knowing that her personal story will not go in the direction she is imagining in the letter; that, as it turned out, it was not Tom Lefroy, or anyone like him, who became her adventure, but the manuscript [Elinor and Marianne*] upstairs. Not marriage but art: and in her art she made this short period in a young woman's life carry such wit and human understanding as few writers have managed to cram into solemn volumes three times the size."

It makes you wonder if the great female writers who are known to have remained single all their lives (I'm thinking of Emily Dickinson here, too) would have managed to produce their art if they had the added demands of marriage and motherhood. Would they have been happier? Maybe, maybe not. Would we? We would be unfortunate in the sense that we would never know what we missed. Imagine all the great works lost -  works that might have been created by men and women who were too burdened by other concerns.

Okay, stop thinking about it. It's too sad.

*Elinor and Marianne was later renamed Sense and Sensibility.