Hello, Just a note with bits and bites of my thoughts on your book.
Nicola might have passed on i posted on the AOL lesbian reading group bulletin board that i really liked Solitaire. Anyhow, in no particular order, here are some thoughts.
Hope you get the Nebula. And the Lammy.
Oops spoiler here i guess, the book didn’t really kick in for me until the elevator attack. I stopped reading at that point and had a deep breath. Then she gets the option of going into VC and when she says ‘I don’t think i can be alone for eight years’, wow, i stopped there again. That’s really where this book went BANG for me and then i was hooked lined and sinkered. The first part was mostly set up, but there were bits of Jackal and Snow that made me think they weren’t going to be cut off. At least it made me pull for the characters to come out ok.
I noted how the story doesn’t touch revenge or getting even. I didn’t find it necessary, just somewhat unusual.
Jackal doesn’t even get mad at her parents, at least not her father, nor Neill, nor KO and it’s so easy to hate some big corporation. But i guess the corporation in a way is home to her, it’s where she went while in VC.
I thought the line where Snow tells Neil that Jackal loves him just stuck out, didn’t go anywhere. He’s important but to use the word ‘love’ was a bit far. ‘Love’ is between Snow and Jackal. You had some lines there (i can’t recall them anymore) that really felt spot on for me. I know the book wasn’t intended to be romantic, but there was a bit of it the way i read it.
Boy, do they drink a lot. (g)
What about a sequel? More, more.
Thanks for writing a thought provoking, heart rending read.
Please leave off my email if you post this on the virtual pint. Nice name that.
Cheers, V.
I’m glad you liked it. Thanks for taking the time to share your response.
No Lammy for Solitaire. The nominations have been posted, and Solitaire is not among them (although Nicola’s novel Stay has been nominated, which is a Very Fine Thing). Thanks for your kind wishes about the Nebula. Win or no, it will be fun to turn up at the ceremony and spend time with people that we haven’t seen for a while. I very rarely really feel like part of the science fiction community, and it will be unusual and interesting to be right in the thick of it for a few days.
Revenge in books is mostly wish-fulfillment. That’s fine, but not what I wanted to do in Solitaire. I think we’d like to believe that we can get even when bad things happen to us, but usually it doesn’t work out that way. Just think about the language â we want to get “even” with the people who have hurt us. But that’s not possible. If someone damages me or the people I love, how can I make that even? How can there be a balance for that? At the end of it all, Jackal has to live with what’s happened, and so do we. I do think she’s mad at her parents, at Ko, sometimes at the whole damn world. But the book isn’t about someone being bitter. I said in the previous question that Jackal behaves the way I would like to, and that’s also true for what we’re talking about here â I hope that when my foundation drops out from under me in one of the several inevitable ways, I will find a way through it rather than being swallowed up. Sometimes the things I write about are a kind of rehearsal.
We can disagree about proper applications of the word “love.” It’s the word I meant to use, and I think Jackal does love Neill, although not the way she loves Snow, or her parents, or the Ko greenbelt, or the feeling of being a Hope, or any of the other degrees of attachment and vulnerability possible along this particular emotional spectrum. It’s a shame to make one poor little word do so much work, but there it is. Your mileage may vary.
They do drink a lot, don’t they? (grin). I wonder where they get that from.
Cheers.
I perceived Jackal as being very capable of empathy. She must have felt that her parents hurt themselves by agreeing to cut off their ties. Perhaps it hurt them even more than it did her, because they also had to deal with the guilt of abandoning a daughter when she was most vulnerable. I don’t see any need for revenge there. As for Ko, well, it’s Ko. Corporations behave that way and Jackal knew it from the start. Ko doesn’t play nice, they manipulated her life from the second she was born in order to reap a benefit. Sure, Jackal received a number of privileges as a result, but she knew well what she was in for with Ko. Also, no need for revenge because the company cut itself off from any liability concerning her.
Love. That word. You English speakers really need to come up with new ones. Or just not freak out so much when people use it. In Spanish, we have ‘querer’ and ‘amar’ for ‘to love’. Te quiero is what you say to your parents, your brothers and sisters, your friends, etc. Te quiero, papá. I love you, dad. Te amo is how you express passionate and fierce and all consuming love for someone or something. Te amo, Esmeralda. I love you, Esmeralda. It’s all love.
I also think Jackal loves Neill. While at film school, the principal and I became close friends. I made him breakfast and lunch and dinner every day. We spent at least 10 hours a day together. We weren’t hot for each other, he liked men and I had a crush on a girl. But we were hot over fine arts and conversation and film. We must have watched at least 200 movies each year we spent together, close to six years. Then stuff happened and things got messy and he hurt me. Some of my friends say I’m really stupid for not hating him after that. And I don’t hate him. When I think about the man, the first thing I feel is *happy*. And I treasure all the time we spent together. I do believe he could and should have handled things better, and I know he’ll just go and hurt me again because it seems to be a pattern in his life. He’s got a long line of people who hate him. So I stay away. That’s all I can do to keep myself safe. Because I’m absolutely sure that if I saw him crossing the street right now, I’d jump in excitement and run out in my pajamas to hug him and tell him how much I’ve missed him. I think love is the right word for that.
Neill=mentor=people who teach you something valuable about yourself and the world. I’ve found myself thinking about my personal Neill quite a bit lately, with the vidding and stuff.
Yes, that Love word does have a way of freaking people out, doesn’t it? That is a sad thing. I like the idea of having more words to express the variations of love, but something about not having them appeals to me too. It’s such a hard thing to define – so many subtle layers and mixtures of feeling. Maybe I’d rather leave it as a feeling and not define it so.
I imagine that Jackal felt betrayed. Revenge never occurred to me.