Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Early 90's DWJ about an earth child seeing some odd happenings in the wood near her house, which are somehow connected to a machine belonging to our unknown galactic overlords.

I was expecting something silly and probably too young for me. I got a startlingly ambitious tale of nonlinear time, fluid identities, and the overthrow of feudal power. Over-ambitious, maybe – this got a little muddled and crowded here and there.

But mostly I think this book was hobbled by being too precisely a transformative work. By which I mean I was like, "oh, we're mucking about with a bit of Arthuriana here and there, yes I see, that plays well as a lens for this reimagining of – oh. Hmm. I think that might actually be Arthur. You know, that's less interesting, it turns out." The notion of Arthur et al giving one a great deal more story room in their penumbras, as it were, whereas the actuality of Arthur locked things down and made me start thinking about how this whole feudalism metaphor collapses in on itself, and you know, DWJ you're making some very questionable choices in re the ladies, etc. etc.




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A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power

A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Grinding, grueling, exhausting account of a series of genocides and the United States's response – or generally lack thereof.

Other people have criticized this book at length for failing to address the ways the United States was actively complicit in genocidal violence through support of its perpetrators. The criticism is accurate, though I think it's a product of the focus of this book very specifically on passive complicity.

I had read excerpts of this over the years, and I'm glad I finally sat down and went through all of it, cover-to-cover. But this is a first generation book, and now I want the fifth generation, or the seventh generation, if you know what I mean. Because Power spends a lot of time documenting American disinterest in mass death, and some time talking about the reasons, but the reasons are very . . . cerebral. This economic interest, that political exigency, a few general comments about racism.

This book made me think a lot about pain, and being the observer of it. I mean, most of us catch glimpses of indescribable anguish out of the corners of our eyes all the time, but we've developed defensive emotional blinders. But once in a while, someone looks at the newspaper headline that ten thousand other people read and forgot, and that one person is seared. Irrevocably changed just by knowing that five thousand people halfway around the world were "disappeared." I've known some people like that, and worked with them. One of them was the first person to make me read excerpts of this book.

I want the book about those people. And the contextual, psychological, physiological, etc. differences between them and the rest of us. And the book that takes a deeper, more honest look at the psychology of passive complicity, not just its economic logic. Because Power wrote mostly about when and where and who, and left me pretty messed up over why.




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