a-sporking-rat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
a_sporking_rat) wrote2015-02-23 04:54 pm
a_sporking_rat) wrote2015-02-23 04:54 pm
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BLACKWOOD FARM, CHAPTER SEVEN
I now have a second part-time job! It's with a pet-sitting company too, so it's something I'll enjoy.
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I'm going to be trying something different, specifically just doing a jot list rather than line-by-line summary like with Anita Blake (where it was much more necessary because every line really was full of lulz) and then talking about things that worked or didn't and why.
In this chapter, Quinn begans the tale of his life story, and here's what we learn:
- "Childhood for me involved two distinct polarities---being with Goblin, and listening to adults talk." It turns out I was right, and Quinn wasn't much around other kids. It was just him, Goblin, and the adults of the house. He details them--his great-grandfather Gravier, his grandfather Pops, his grandmother Sweetheart, and so on, and what they were like. He tells us who became a ghost, such as Gravier and his child who died in infancy and Manfred's son William, and who didn't, such as Gravier's younger brother Patrick and Patrick's wife Regina.
- The other adults were the staff and tourist groups, the latter of whom loved it when he talked about the ghosts or about Goblin, which makes sense to me and I sort of adore as a detail because, really, that is exactly the sort of thing people who tour haunted houses are there to eat up. As for the staff, he talks about Jasmine and her family, and there's some weird stuff there I think might be racist that I'll get to later. Long and short of it is that her entire family works for the Blackwoods and always seems to; her ancestors Ora Lee and Jerome basically raised Manfred's children, her mother Little Ida was Quinn's nanny until she died, and today her brother Clem is Aunt Queen's driver, Big Ramona (Little Ida's mother) still works at the manor along with Jasmine and Lolly, who is Jasmine's sister.
- He gives us the history of how Virginia Lee and Manfred met (she was a nurse at the hospital he was in when he had a bout of Yellow Fever) and how he built the house for her, and the Greek Revival style of the house, and what they both looked like, none of which I find relevant or significant enough to recount. He tells us what he was told of Virginia Lee's personality, that she was a quick sense of humor and was loving to her children. She had four, but lost Isabel and Philip to lockjaw and influenza; only William and Camille survived to adulthood. Virginia Lee herself died on consumption following malaria, and "if our house has a family saint, it's Virginia Lee. I'm not above praying to Virginia Lee." I really love the name Virginia Lee, it's so very Poe, though her saintliness makes me rather hope that she turns out to have been awful in some way that the family covered up, especially since she was followed by the cliché evil step-mother Rebecca and I'd hope Rice is more imaginative than to just play that sexist old trope straight, you know?
- Manfred went "out of his head" when Virginia Lee died and couldn't stand the sight of her grave being in the little cemetery that had been on the property when he had bought it, so he bought a big ol' crypt in New Orleans where the Blackwoods are buried to this day. Quinn describes the crypt unnecessarily and waxes on about how he'd always thought he'd be buried there but oh woe he can't but maybe he will be if he ever has the guts to end his own existence.
- Manfred started going off for days at a time into Sugar Devil Swamp and everyone was pretty worried because it wasn't exactly an easily navigated place and was full of dangerous animals. He also shot people who came on his land, and eventually found an island in the swamp where he would stay in a tent.
- Lots of rumors started going around about the island being cursed, Manfred being cursed, that his gold came from gambling, that he'd sold his soul to the devil, that his name came from the play by Lord Byron to message fellow demon-worshippers, that Virginia Lee had been his last chance at salvation, etc.
- Meanwhile, his kids William and Camille were brought up by Ora Lee and Jerome, the ancestors of the current housekeeper Jasmine. Just where step-mom Rebecca is in this picture is never mentioned; I guess she'd been dragged by Manfred into the swamp for the mysterious "he" by now. Manfred built Ora Lee and Jerome the bungalow that's out back (because I guess you can't have the help living in the house, especially not black ones---wait, that actually does make sense for his time period) and Quinn details how some members of their "clan" of descendants since have left for college and/or other professions but there are always some who stay there and "they have their own vegetable and flower gardens and their own company whenever they choose." GEE, QUINN, HOW GENEROUS OF YOU, LETTING THEM HAVE GUESTS IN THEIR OWN HOUSE
WHICH YOU STILL APPARENTLY HAVE THEM LIVING IN INSTEAD OF IN THAT MASSIVE FUCKING MANSION WHERE YOU YOURSELF DON'T EVEN SLEEP ANYMORE
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 2002, PEOPLE, AND OSTENTIBLY TAKES PLACE ABOUT ROUGHLY THAT TIME
YEAH
WOW
I was waiting to talk about racist shit in the below section for that and just do a general summary first but this just...wow. I couldn't wait. Wow.
- More about the bungalow, noting that it's "on a human scale" whereas the Blackwood Manor is "built for giants" and about its décor and then a very, very weird page-long recounting of each of Jasmine's living relatives and their exact skin-tones, including how well each can pass for white. Yeah.
-And how Little Ida, Jasmine's mother, was Quinn's nurse until she died and she was "sleeping with me until I was thirteen, and then dying in my bed." WHAT THE FUCK
I HOPE THIS IS *SUPPOSED* TO BE WEIRD
BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
- Stuff about Manfred riding his black horse across the farm pastures muttering and cursing to himself, declaring he would never die and join Virginia Lee but roam the earth for centuries honoring her memory instead...he sounds more interesting to read about than Quinn, at least. At least he DID stuff. He began to fund the construction of the Hermitage upon the island out there, using only non-local workmen who would go away once it was done, or that was the story, and Quinn wondered growing up if it was true, if there was really an island, really a hermitage, and why there was no swamp tour to take people to see it, though he answers himself by saying the swamp is nearly impassable. For those who have forgotten, we the readers know it is indeed real and there's a Hermitage (with a capital H) on it, since Quinn mentions in his letter to Lestat that's where he sleeps during the day. Pops, though, in his day, put no stock in the stories.
- Pops and Quinn used to hunt and fish in Sugar Devil Swamp, but then when Quinn succeeded in killing a deer, he "lost my taste for all hunting right there as I watched it die." But killing human beings, hey, that's fine, as long as they're icky bad women with skimpy dresses who speak Spanish and do drug murders, right? That makes it okay!
- However, they never went deeper than twenty feet into the swamp, and there are stories of poachers who got lost in there.
- And of course, in 1942, just as Aunt Queen told us previously, Manfred went in and never came out. They searched for him for two years, and since they failed to find him or the island, general belief became that there had never been an island and Manfred had just drowned.
- When his will was discovered, it included the commandment that no Blackwood or member of the Blackwood house was to ever hunt or fish beyond the mud banks, and that Sugar Devil Island was "a danger not only to flesh and blood, but to the immortal soul." I really like this line! I know it's an oldie, but still! A copy of the will is framed and displayed on the tour, and apparently guests love it and Quinn's tutor Nash downright laughed at it.
- Back in the day, Aunt Queen used to travel the world to places like Bombay and Rio and Rome, and she was already known as a great came collector. I think I'd really rather read about a young Aunt Queen having this adventure instead, maybe inspired to investigate because of the strange things Manfred said when he gave those first cameos to her. She seems a lot more fun and interesting and human than Quinn. Quinn describes her visits as being like the apparitions of a saint and thinking of her as a protective spirit when he was a kid, but he doesn't say why.
- There's a "Halloween Weekend" tradition where the rich Blackwood family and their rich guests all show up in their fancy costumes and it's lots of fun and Quinn loves it.
- Even when expert ghost hunters came around, they never noticed Goblin, who would dance around them and stuff. Goblin is not, according to Quinn, the ghost of a living person.
- He mentions the Christmas traditions again, and how the singing made him cry and how it's specifically the men joining in singing that makes him cry because he expects women to sing. I don't really know what to make of this. Also there's an Easter buffet and Mardi Gras and weddings, and Quinn occasionally met other kids at the Christmas and Halloween parties but mostly it was just him and Goblin, and he actually was kind of scared of other kids as "treacherous" for some reason.
- He hints that something really bad happened at a wedding after he became a vampire, and I guess we know what that is now but Lestat doesn't and he says he'll tell him later.
- He traces the family lineage one more time, and we learn that Patsy had him at sixteen and he doesn't have a father. She doesn't remember anything about the week he was conceived, just that she was with her band in New Orleans at the time in a flat with other musicians and "plenty of weed and plenty of wine and plenty of company". Quinn wonders why she didn't get an abortion, as he's sure she could have managed it, and is "tormented" by the suspicion that she thought that if she had a baby, she'd be an adult and her parents would give her "money and freedom" and she didn't get either, just "a baby brother of a child" but since she had "no notion of what to do with me" she went on with her dreams of becoming a country-western singer and having her own band.
Well, good for her. She was a kid and made a mistake, but she didn't let it hold her back. To be honest, in a situation like that, I think she actually made the right choice of letting her parents raise Quinn. She was, as he said, sixteen, and had no idea how to care for him, and this way she knew what kind of a home and family Quinn would have (and it sounds like he was very happy and well-taken-care-of) and she still gets to have contact with him. That might not have been an option with adoption in her day; Quinn is 22 and it's presumably 2002, so he was born in 1980. I know that open adoptions are the norm today and they check out prospective families very seriously, but twenty years previous that might not have been the case. And it's certainly better than if she dragged him around on her tours *or* had to give up doing what she loved at such a young age when there were clearly better people to take care of the child anyway. The only factor not mentioned is whether or not her parents wanted Quinn. If they didn't want to take care of the baby, then, yeah, that might be an issue, a kid should never be with people who don't want and love them, but if they did want and love Quinn (which it certainly seems they did) then I don't really see the issue and I'd rather like to know what Quinn hates her for. She doesn't seem to have been around enough to abuse him or anything, so perhaps there's something else there. I suppose he could resent her for not being around, despite the love he was getting from everyone else, but wanting to murder her seems more than a bit overblown if that's the case.
"I wish I could stop feeling pain every time I think of her. I'm ashamed to say it again, but I would like to kill her."
Yeah, there must be a story here. But Quinn apparently is more interested in telling us about "me and Goblin and how I was educated and how I educated him." So that'll be next chapter I guess.
I'm interested in Goblin, not so much in Quinn's education.
GENERAL CRITICISM
- A lot of description could have been cut. Again, florid Gothic prose is one thing, a flipping ton of irrelevant and distracting details is another. I don't mind Quinn recounting that Sweetheart was plump (er, "inclined to embonpoint") or how Manfred looked or things like that, since it's the sort of thing you might throw in while telling a story of your family, but stuff like two paragraphs detailing the family crypt is excessive, and it sounds unnatural coming from someone who is not a tour guide...of course, since Quinn grew up around tours being given, maybe that's on purpose by Anne Rice as something he naturally picked up. But yeah, little notes about oh guests at the Blackwood bed and breakfast never stole (oh, of course not!) and how the ghost of William is not only scene rifling through a desk but specifically a Louis X with cabriole legs and whatever is just...I dunno. And I really don't need to know about each specific holiday celebration at the manor and to what degree Quinn enjoyed them as a child. And I think a lot of the stuff that *is* arguably relevant or useful to know, such as the family tree and who's a ghost or not, would have been better revealed in a more organic manner than Quinn just talking about it. It's a massive info-dump, and that, for me, makes the information harder to remember.
- Quinn and his oh if I ever have the courage to kill myself stuff...again, I don't see Quinn as someone who has any reason to want to die. Unlike many vampires, he still has the life and people that he did as a human, and will likely have them for awhile, for as long as he can just pass himself off as aging very well. Even if Aunt Queen dies soon, he's still supposedly very fond of the staff and vice versa. He may just be thinking about "well I might want to in the future when all that is gone" but it sounds more like he's immediately wishing to die and just not brave enough yet, and I don't buy it, especially with the whole 'you want to live forever you just don't want to kill for it' thing being brought up earlier and why that's patent bullshit, Quinn is A-Okay with killing as long as he's judged his victims as deserving it. Ditto for that bit about him being oh so upset about killing that deer but not HUMAN BEINGS.
- "You can just picture this guy tearing birds apart with his teeth." This was said by Quinn as he's describing Manfred living on the island he found in Sugar Devil Swamp, and it so UNLIKE the voice and diction Quinn uses throughout the rest of the chapter and the book thus far that it YANKED ME RIGHT OUT IN UTTER CONFUSION. Like...does this sounds like someone who says his grandmother was "inclined to embonpoint" rather than calling her fat or who waxes about "the well-carved granite guardian angels beside its bronze gates" at the crypt and how Manfred "could find no locale suitable to his visions of splendor" until he located the Blackwood Farm property? No. No it does not. It is a JOLT to read, let me tell you want. Maybe Anne Rice thought Quinn breaking his flowery way of speaking all of a sudden was good for shock value but it doesn't have the shock she wants it to if that's the case. I'm not shocked by the idea of Manfred hunting live birds, I'm shocked by why the hell is Quinn suddenly talking like a normal person? It just seems weird, random, unnatural, and nonsensical. I hate it every time I look at the line.
- I really did like some of the descriptions of the big spooky cypress swamp!
RACIST/SEXIST
- Again, the idea that black people just like serving, specifically serving white people. We've not heard of a single person on staff who isn't black, not to mention the entire family of black people working for an old white southern family just because they LIKE to. Not because they need money, remember, the staff are all so rich they don't need to work, this is apparently just FUN for them because...reasons??
Here's something that isn't fun: The idea that black people just love serving was used as justification for slavery, and for the low wages of black servants employed in white households after slavery. The idea was that this is something they love, they loved it because it's what they're meant for, so they don't need higher wages like you would pay a white person for whom it might actually be considered real work. Like this entire thing is just really, really uncomfy. The whole "staff are so rich they don't need to work" thing was weird, but when you throw in that said staff are a black family that have worked for a rich white one for generations in the old South, it's just...holy Toledo, I can't even.
- Quinn mentions that Jasmine wears cast-offs from Aunt Queen, and again, I'm reminded of the poor treatment that black domestic workers received in the antebellum South. Much like the "oh, but they just love to work!" thing, giving gifts to their black staff (usually leftover food and clothing, aka nothing nice they'd gone out and actually bought without using first) was something used as an excuse by white employers to not pay shit to black workers (the idea was that the gifts were a form of payment in themselves, even though the black staff had no say in that) and to claim it was okay because they were "practically members of the family" with the fact they got to wear their crappy old worn-out shit as proof of this because look how "well" they're treated. This is even more fishy because if the staff are so rich, why does Jasmine NEED cast-offs? Surely she can buy her own things, and in her proper sizes too!
- Oh, and that bungalow Jasmine and her family live in? Because, you know, I'm sure they just don't WANT to move into the mansion proper, of course, that wouldn't be nicer or more convenient or anything. Yeah, about that bungalow: "Aunt Queen is famous for refurnishing the front rooms and giving all the old items to Jasmine" for the décor there." I am having a more and more difficult time believing that this staff is so rich if they are entirely reliant on old shit from their employers and are never mentioned as owning anything, not even the clothes on their backs, that didn't come from the Blackwoods. I really hope that this ends up being revealed as a lie told to Quinn that he was naïve and privileged enough to never question.
- So, yeah, there is seriously a part where, when naming all the members of Jasmine's family who works for the Blackwoods, he goes into details about skin color of each of them and whether they can pass for white. Now, it would make sense to refer to their specific skin tone if he internally describing them to us upon seeing them, that's fine, but keep in mind he was telling this to Lestat in conversation. Imagine someone talking to you about their life and they found it relevant to describe the skin of various black people they know in that kind of detail? It's WEIRD.
-You now what's also weird? Little Ida, Jasmine's mother, sleeping in his bed till she died/till he was thirteen. I just...what? Also, is it normal these days to have a nanny at that age? Granted, the Blackwoods are clearly not normal...
-I've noticed that every woman Quinn likes or speaks well of is maternal, be they black or white. The only bad or disliked women mentioned by name thus far are Rebecca and Patsy, and both were defined by lack of maternity (Rebecca was literally called an evil step-mother, Patsy picked career over raising son). It's still early in the book though, with lots of time for character expansion and development and new perspectives, so hopefully that will change.
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I'm going to be trying something different, specifically just doing a jot list rather than line-by-line summary like with Anita Blake (where it was much more necessary because every line really was full of lulz) and then talking about things that worked or didn't and why.
In this chapter, Quinn begans the tale of his life story, and here's what we learn:
- "Childhood for me involved two distinct polarities---being with Goblin, and listening to adults talk." It turns out I was right, and Quinn wasn't much around other kids. It was just him, Goblin, and the adults of the house. He details them--his great-grandfather Gravier, his grandfather Pops, his grandmother Sweetheart, and so on, and what they were like. He tells us who became a ghost, such as Gravier and his child who died in infancy and Manfred's son William, and who didn't, such as Gravier's younger brother Patrick and Patrick's wife Regina.
- The other adults were the staff and tourist groups, the latter of whom loved it when he talked about the ghosts or about Goblin, which makes sense to me and I sort of adore as a detail because, really, that is exactly the sort of thing people who tour haunted houses are there to eat up. As for the staff, he talks about Jasmine and her family, and there's some weird stuff there I think might be racist that I'll get to later. Long and short of it is that her entire family works for the Blackwoods and always seems to; her ancestors Ora Lee and Jerome basically raised Manfred's children, her mother Little Ida was Quinn's nanny until she died, and today her brother Clem is Aunt Queen's driver, Big Ramona (Little Ida's mother) still works at the manor along with Jasmine and Lolly, who is Jasmine's sister.
- He gives us the history of how Virginia Lee and Manfred met (she was a nurse at the hospital he was in when he had a bout of Yellow Fever) and how he built the house for her, and the Greek Revival style of the house, and what they both looked like, none of which I find relevant or significant enough to recount. He tells us what he was told of Virginia Lee's personality, that she was a quick sense of humor and was loving to her children. She had four, but lost Isabel and Philip to lockjaw and influenza; only William and Camille survived to adulthood. Virginia Lee herself died on consumption following malaria, and "if our house has a family saint, it's Virginia Lee. I'm not above praying to Virginia Lee." I really love the name Virginia Lee, it's so very Poe, though her saintliness makes me rather hope that she turns out to have been awful in some way that the family covered up, especially since she was followed by the cliché evil step-mother Rebecca and I'd hope Rice is more imaginative than to just play that sexist old trope straight, you know?
- Manfred went "out of his head" when Virginia Lee died and couldn't stand the sight of her grave being in the little cemetery that had been on the property when he had bought it, so he bought a big ol' crypt in New Orleans where the Blackwoods are buried to this day. Quinn describes the crypt unnecessarily and waxes on about how he'd always thought he'd be buried there but oh woe he can't but maybe he will be if he ever has the guts to end his own existence.
- Manfred started going off for days at a time into Sugar Devil Swamp and everyone was pretty worried because it wasn't exactly an easily navigated place and was full of dangerous animals. He also shot people who came on his land, and eventually found an island in the swamp where he would stay in a tent.
- Lots of rumors started going around about the island being cursed, Manfred being cursed, that his gold came from gambling, that he'd sold his soul to the devil, that his name came from the play by Lord Byron to message fellow demon-worshippers, that Virginia Lee had been his last chance at salvation, etc.
- Meanwhile, his kids William and Camille were brought up by Ora Lee and Jerome, the ancestors of the current housekeeper Jasmine. Just where step-mom Rebecca is in this picture is never mentioned; I guess she'd been dragged by Manfred into the swamp for the mysterious "he" by now. Manfred built Ora Lee and Jerome the bungalow that's out back (because I guess you can't have the help living in the house, especially not black ones---wait, that actually does make sense for his time period) and Quinn details how some members of their "clan" of descendants since have left for college and/or other professions but there are always some who stay there and "they have their own vegetable and flower gardens and their own company whenever they choose." GEE, QUINN, HOW GENEROUS OF YOU, LETTING THEM HAVE GUESTS IN THEIR OWN HOUSE
WHICH YOU STILL APPARENTLY HAVE THEM LIVING IN INSTEAD OF IN THAT MASSIVE FUCKING MANSION WHERE YOU YOURSELF DON'T EVEN SLEEP ANYMORE
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 2002, PEOPLE, AND OSTENTIBLY TAKES PLACE ABOUT ROUGHLY THAT TIME
YEAH
WOW
I was waiting to talk about racist shit in the below section for that and just do a general summary first but this just...wow. I couldn't wait. Wow.
- More about the bungalow, noting that it's "on a human scale" whereas the Blackwood Manor is "built for giants" and about its décor and then a very, very weird page-long recounting of each of Jasmine's living relatives and their exact skin-tones, including how well each can pass for white. Yeah.
-And how Little Ida, Jasmine's mother, was Quinn's nurse until she died and she was "sleeping with me until I was thirteen, and then dying in my bed." WHAT THE FUCK
I HOPE THIS IS *SUPPOSED* TO BE WEIRD
BECAUSE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!
- Stuff about Manfred riding his black horse across the farm pastures muttering and cursing to himself, declaring he would never die and join Virginia Lee but roam the earth for centuries honoring her memory instead...he sounds more interesting to read about than Quinn, at least. At least he DID stuff. He began to fund the construction of the Hermitage upon the island out there, using only non-local workmen who would go away once it was done, or that was the story, and Quinn wondered growing up if it was true, if there was really an island, really a hermitage, and why there was no swamp tour to take people to see it, though he answers himself by saying the swamp is nearly impassable. For those who have forgotten, we the readers know it is indeed real and there's a Hermitage (with a capital H) on it, since Quinn mentions in his letter to Lestat that's where he sleeps during the day. Pops, though, in his day, put no stock in the stories.
- Pops and Quinn used to hunt and fish in Sugar Devil Swamp, but then when Quinn succeeded in killing a deer, he "lost my taste for all hunting right there as I watched it die." But killing human beings, hey, that's fine, as long as they're icky bad women with skimpy dresses who speak Spanish and do drug murders, right? That makes it okay!
- However, they never went deeper than twenty feet into the swamp, and there are stories of poachers who got lost in there.
- And of course, in 1942, just as Aunt Queen told us previously, Manfred went in and never came out. They searched for him for two years, and since they failed to find him or the island, general belief became that there had never been an island and Manfred had just drowned.
- When his will was discovered, it included the commandment that no Blackwood or member of the Blackwood house was to ever hunt or fish beyond the mud banks, and that Sugar Devil Island was "a danger not only to flesh and blood, but to the immortal soul." I really like this line! I know it's an oldie, but still! A copy of the will is framed and displayed on the tour, and apparently guests love it and Quinn's tutor Nash downright laughed at it.
- Back in the day, Aunt Queen used to travel the world to places like Bombay and Rio and Rome, and she was already known as a great came collector. I think I'd really rather read about a young Aunt Queen having this adventure instead, maybe inspired to investigate because of the strange things Manfred said when he gave those first cameos to her. She seems a lot more fun and interesting and human than Quinn. Quinn describes her visits as being like the apparitions of a saint and thinking of her as a protective spirit when he was a kid, but he doesn't say why.
- There's a "Halloween Weekend" tradition where the rich Blackwood family and their rich guests all show up in their fancy costumes and it's lots of fun and Quinn loves it.
- Even when expert ghost hunters came around, they never noticed Goblin, who would dance around them and stuff. Goblin is not, according to Quinn, the ghost of a living person.
- He mentions the Christmas traditions again, and how the singing made him cry and how it's specifically the men joining in singing that makes him cry because he expects women to sing. I don't really know what to make of this. Also there's an Easter buffet and Mardi Gras and weddings, and Quinn occasionally met other kids at the Christmas and Halloween parties but mostly it was just him and Goblin, and he actually was kind of scared of other kids as "treacherous" for some reason.
- He hints that something really bad happened at a wedding after he became a vampire, and I guess we know what that is now but Lestat doesn't and he says he'll tell him later.
- He traces the family lineage one more time, and we learn that Patsy had him at sixteen and he doesn't have a father. She doesn't remember anything about the week he was conceived, just that she was with her band in New Orleans at the time in a flat with other musicians and "plenty of weed and plenty of wine and plenty of company". Quinn wonders why she didn't get an abortion, as he's sure she could have managed it, and is "tormented" by the suspicion that she thought that if she had a baby, she'd be an adult and her parents would give her "money and freedom" and she didn't get either, just "a baby brother of a child" but since she had "no notion of what to do with me" she went on with her dreams of becoming a country-western singer and having her own band.
Well, good for her. She was a kid and made a mistake, but she didn't let it hold her back. To be honest, in a situation like that, I think she actually made the right choice of letting her parents raise Quinn. She was, as he said, sixteen, and had no idea how to care for him, and this way she knew what kind of a home and family Quinn would have (and it sounds like he was very happy and well-taken-care-of) and she still gets to have contact with him. That might not have been an option with adoption in her day; Quinn is 22 and it's presumably 2002, so he was born in 1980. I know that open adoptions are the norm today and they check out prospective families very seriously, but twenty years previous that might not have been the case. And it's certainly better than if she dragged him around on her tours *or* had to give up doing what she loved at such a young age when there were clearly better people to take care of the child anyway. The only factor not mentioned is whether or not her parents wanted Quinn. If they didn't want to take care of the baby, then, yeah, that might be an issue, a kid should never be with people who don't want and love them, but if they did want and love Quinn (which it certainly seems they did) then I don't really see the issue and I'd rather like to know what Quinn hates her for. She doesn't seem to have been around enough to abuse him or anything, so perhaps there's something else there. I suppose he could resent her for not being around, despite the love he was getting from everyone else, but wanting to murder her seems more than a bit overblown if that's the case.
"I wish I could stop feeling pain every time I think of her. I'm ashamed to say it again, but I would like to kill her."
Yeah, there must be a story here. But Quinn apparently is more interested in telling us about "me and Goblin and how I was educated and how I educated him." So that'll be next chapter I guess.
I'm interested in Goblin, not so much in Quinn's education.
GENERAL CRITICISM
- A lot of description could have been cut. Again, florid Gothic prose is one thing, a flipping ton of irrelevant and distracting details is another. I don't mind Quinn recounting that Sweetheart was plump (er, "inclined to embonpoint") or how Manfred looked or things like that, since it's the sort of thing you might throw in while telling a story of your family, but stuff like two paragraphs detailing the family crypt is excessive, and it sounds unnatural coming from someone who is not a tour guide...of course, since Quinn grew up around tours being given, maybe that's on purpose by Anne Rice as something he naturally picked up. But yeah, little notes about oh guests at the Blackwood bed and breakfast never stole (oh, of course not!) and how the ghost of William is not only scene rifling through a desk but specifically a Louis X with cabriole legs and whatever is just...I dunno. And I really don't need to know about each specific holiday celebration at the manor and to what degree Quinn enjoyed them as a child. And I think a lot of the stuff that *is* arguably relevant or useful to know, such as the family tree and who's a ghost or not, would have been better revealed in a more organic manner than Quinn just talking about it. It's a massive info-dump, and that, for me, makes the information harder to remember.
- Quinn and his oh if I ever have the courage to kill myself stuff...again, I don't see Quinn as someone who has any reason to want to die. Unlike many vampires, he still has the life and people that he did as a human, and will likely have them for awhile, for as long as he can just pass himself off as aging very well. Even if Aunt Queen dies soon, he's still supposedly very fond of the staff and vice versa. He may just be thinking about "well I might want to in the future when all that is gone" but it sounds more like he's immediately wishing to die and just not brave enough yet, and I don't buy it, especially with the whole 'you want to live forever you just don't want to kill for it' thing being brought up earlier and why that's patent bullshit, Quinn is A-Okay with killing as long as he's judged his victims as deserving it. Ditto for that bit about him being oh so upset about killing that deer but not HUMAN BEINGS.
- "You can just picture this guy tearing birds apart with his teeth." This was said by Quinn as he's describing Manfred living on the island he found in Sugar Devil Swamp, and it so UNLIKE the voice and diction Quinn uses throughout the rest of the chapter and the book thus far that it YANKED ME RIGHT OUT IN UTTER CONFUSION. Like...does this sounds like someone who says his grandmother was "inclined to embonpoint" rather than calling her fat or who waxes about "the well-carved granite guardian angels beside its bronze gates" at the crypt and how Manfred "could find no locale suitable to his visions of splendor" until he located the Blackwood Farm property? No. No it does not. It is a JOLT to read, let me tell you want. Maybe Anne Rice thought Quinn breaking his flowery way of speaking all of a sudden was good for shock value but it doesn't have the shock she wants it to if that's the case. I'm not shocked by the idea of Manfred hunting live birds, I'm shocked by why the hell is Quinn suddenly talking like a normal person? It just seems weird, random, unnatural, and nonsensical. I hate it every time I look at the line.
- I really did like some of the descriptions of the big spooky cypress swamp!
RACIST/SEXIST
- Again, the idea that black people just like serving, specifically serving white people. We've not heard of a single person on staff who isn't black, not to mention the entire family of black people working for an old white southern family just because they LIKE to. Not because they need money, remember, the staff are all so rich they don't need to work, this is apparently just FUN for them because...reasons??
Here's something that isn't fun: The idea that black people just love serving was used as justification for slavery, and for the low wages of black servants employed in white households after slavery. The idea was that this is something they love, they loved it because it's what they're meant for, so they don't need higher wages like you would pay a white person for whom it might actually be considered real work. Like this entire thing is just really, really uncomfy. The whole "staff are so rich they don't need to work" thing was weird, but when you throw in that said staff are a black family that have worked for a rich white one for generations in the old South, it's just...holy Toledo, I can't even.
- Quinn mentions that Jasmine wears cast-offs from Aunt Queen, and again, I'm reminded of the poor treatment that black domestic workers received in the antebellum South. Much like the "oh, but they just love to work!" thing, giving gifts to their black staff (usually leftover food and clothing, aka nothing nice they'd gone out and actually bought without using first) was something used as an excuse by white employers to not pay shit to black workers (the idea was that the gifts were a form of payment in themselves, even though the black staff had no say in that) and to claim it was okay because they were "practically members of the family" with the fact they got to wear their crappy old worn-out shit as proof of this because look how "well" they're treated. This is even more fishy because if the staff are so rich, why does Jasmine NEED cast-offs? Surely she can buy her own things, and in her proper sizes too!
- Oh, and that bungalow Jasmine and her family live in? Because, you know, I'm sure they just don't WANT to move into the mansion proper, of course, that wouldn't be nicer or more convenient or anything. Yeah, about that bungalow: "Aunt Queen is famous for refurnishing the front rooms and giving all the old items to Jasmine" for the décor there." I am having a more and more difficult time believing that this staff is so rich if they are entirely reliant on old shit from their employers and are never mentioned as owning anything, not even the clothes on their backs, that didn't come from the Blackwoods. I really hope that this ends up being revealed as a lie told to Quinn that he was naïve and privileged enough to never question.
- So, yeah, there is seriously a part where, when naming all the members of Jasmine's family who works for the Blackwoods, he goes into details about skin color of each of them and whether they can pass for white. Now, it would make sense to refer to their specific skin tone if he internally describing them to us upon seeing them, that's fine, but keep in mind he was telling this to Lestat in conversation. Imagine someone talking to you about their life and they found it relevant to describe the skin of various black people they know in that kind of detail? It's WEIRD.
-You now what's also weird? Little Ida, Jasmine's mother, sleeping in his bed till she died/till he was thirteen. I just...what? Also, is it normal these days to have a nanny at that age? Granted, the Blackwoods are clearly not normal...
-I've noticed that every woman Quinn likes or speaks well of is maternal, be they black or white. The only bad or disliked women mentioned by name thus far are Rebecca and Patsy, and both were defined by lack of maternity (Rebecca was literally called an evil step-mother, Patsy picked career over raising son). It's still early in the book though, with lots of time for character expansion and development and new perspectives, so hopefully that will change.
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But Quinn isn't that old, so unless his family is deeply old school and the tours conducted through his stately manor skirted some major issues he should have more evolved views. Then again, he's happy to kill Latinas he thinks might be criminals.
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