I agree with his suspicion, but I do think that calling Undermajordomo Minor Patrick deWitt’s take on a fairy tale is more apt than calling The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood’s take on dystopian future.īy calling something a take necessarily summons a coopting, and to me that is exactly how Undermajordomo Minor reads. However, he says he is suspicious of the lines drawn by calling what Patrick deWitt has done a "take" and goes on to rope Margaret Atwood into the dividing line conversation. The writer Daniel Handler in his New York Times review suggested this book could be considered Patrick deWitt’s “take” on a fairy tale. The trouble is that they often read as authorial intrusions or word play, rather than ideas generated from within the story or the characters, making them surprising but not necessarily delightful. Undermajordomo Minor has its moments of good character dialogue and the writing is more than competent - some truly wonderful notions appear at the sentence level. Lucien (Lucy) Minor has gained employment at a mysterious barony in the Castle Von Aux, a fantastical realm equipped with royals and thieves and a constant, meaningless war.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |