lightreads (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightreads) wrote2018-02-11 02:44 pm
lightreads) wrote2018-02-11 02:44 pm
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The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein
The Pearl Thief
4/5. Prequel to Code Name Verity. Before the war, before France, before Nazi interrogations, there’s just Julie. She’s turning sixteen, helping dispose of the few remaining assets after her grandfather’s death, and embroiled in a local mystery. But mostly, she’s coming into her (queer) sexuality.
Lovely. This is one of those coming of age stories where you really can see a person becoming themselves. Julie is just beginning to flex her powers of intelligence and interpersonal manipulation. She’s not always good at it yet. And she’s playing with gender, too; she cross-dresses for plot reasons, and plays with her presentation and the various freedoms and constraints it imposes upon her.
Also, and I really just am listing things I like now, but also, this is a book about Julie’s privilege, and how she learns to see it. But how the learning doesn’t just come to her, it has to be called out over and over and over again. That’s how it is.
What breaks my heart is the fact that we’re never going to get the long series of Julie books I want. Julie solving mysteries. Julie politicking for her brother. Julie, after the war, teaching spy craft to women. Julie in the sixties. Just imagine the books.
Content notes: Attempted sexual assault; attempted sexual coercion.
4/5. Prequel to Code Name Verity. Before the war, before France, before Nazi interrogations, there’s just Julie. She’s turning sixteen, helping dispose of the few remaining assets after her grandfather’s death, and embroiled in a local mystery. But mostly, she’s coming into her (queer) sexuality.
Lovely. This is one of those coming of age stories where you really can see a person becoming themselves. Julie is just beginning to flex her powers of intelligence and interpersonal manipulation. She’s not always good at it yet. And she’s playing with gender, too; she cross-dresses for plot reasons, and plays with her presentation and the various freedoms and constraints it imposes upon her.
Also, and I really just am listing things I like now, but also, this is a book about Julie’s privilege, and how she learns to see it. But how the learning doesn’t just come to her, it has to be called out over and over and over again. That’s how it is.
What breaks my heart is the fact that we’re never going to get the long series of Julie books I want. Julie solving mysteries. Julie politicking for her brother. Julie, after the war, teaching spy craft to women. Julie in the sixties. Just imagine the books.
Content notes: Attempted sexual assault; attempted sexual coercion.
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