A Fountain Filled with Blood by Julia Spencer-Fleming

[lightreads]

A Fountain Filled With Blood by Julia Spencer-Fleming

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Hey, I liked this one too!



And the thing I liked, most particularly (still not the mystery) is how this relationship is between two really different people. The most obvious way is in their politics – she’s a bleeding heart liberal, he’s a head-in-the-sand social conservative in the way some people are by virtue of pretending that a lot of problems aren’t problems. And they argue about this stuff! Like grownups! In ways that make neither of them look stupid in the long term! That is so refreshing. I had no idea how tired I was of the sameness of romantic relationships – we love each other because we think the same way about everything important.



(Although points off for trotting out one of the more damaging liberal clichés: the “I know you’re not a homophobe because you care enough to worry about the question.” Uh, no. That’s what we call self-congratulatory crap. Knowing enough to ask the question is not an inoculation against being a homophobe/racist/whatever, because the isms are systemic and subconscious. “You can’t be a homophobe, you’re worried about being a homophobe,” is a correlate to the lovely thought that brought us hipster racism. And it does not belong in this otherwise thoughtful, deeply humane book.)





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Comments

[cahn]

Mostly I just want to say... I am totally going to read these books now, and it will be Your Fault! I think your description of the romantic relationship sounds really interesting to read (says the person married to a conservative, where politically we disagree on many topics but do try to argue like grownups).

(A little bit I wonder... in the mostly-het sometimes-conservative world I live in, the word "homophobe" has started to get these connotations of "very overtly insulting/hating/being afraid of/being ugly to/threatening violence to gay people," instead of the "in the possession of fear of the Other or the Not-Like-Me, which may be, and often is, subconscious and/or systematic and often results in non-overt but substantial biases even though the person may consciously believe she is not biased" which I think you mean. I wonder if she meant it in the first way, which would make a bit more sense. (Though I also wonder if part of the reason it's a damaging cliche is that it's easy to try to have one's cake and eat it too -- pat oneself on the back in the knowledge one is not the first kind of homophobe, and sort of elide it to not being the second kind of homophobe even if one is.) But since I haven't read the book yet, I obviously don't know what she meant.

Interesting. You always make me think! :P :) )

[lightreads]

I think you'll really like these. They're also interesting to me in that she's Christian, obviously, and he's an atheist. And it's not a nonissue, but it's just . . . one more way they are such completely different people who just happen to be connected somewhere really deep down.

Definitely talking about the second kind of homophobia -- the internalized kind. I mean, this book is superficially about violently expressed homophobia, but the conversation I was thinking of was all about this guy who is fifty and ex-military unpacking for the first time his latent internalized homophobia and being like "....I had no idea I thought that way." Interesting stuff.

[readerjane]

Is this the same couple as Bleak Midwinter?

Given the titles, I'm guessing they're part of a series. Just wondering -- I'm always on the lookout for new series, but if it is I want to make sure I start at the beginning.

[lightreads]

Yup, same couple. there are *counts* seven books out now, and it's ongoing. It's one of those series that expands with every book, so that by the seventh book you have this really extended footprint in a small town. But the main couple remains the same.

I think you'd really like these.