"Before Dorothy", Hazel Gaynor
10 May 2026 07:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeIn many ways it reminded me a lot of fan-fic, which raises the spectre that perhaps this type of fan-fic is not, as I had supposed, merely incompetent, but is actively attempting to emulate this type of book... :-O
One big and ongoing source of annoyance is the author's apparent desire to fetishize 'Oirishery', which she proceeds to do on the level of the popular songs of the era, all about little cottages on the Emerald Isle and the sweet old Irish mother by the turf fire awaiting her long-lost child. I don't remember any suggestion at all in the original novel that Aunt Em was Irish, let alone Gaelic-speaking, so having the author clumsily drop bits of what I suspect to be Google-Translate-level Gaelic into her opening chapter grated quite a lot. (Did they even have lady fiddlers in turn-of-the-century Ireland, or is this another bit of misplaced cultural nostalgia?) Contemporary depictions of Irish emigrants never seem to show them speaking Gaelic to one another, whether in Liverpool or New York and however broad their brogue; possibly this was for the benefit of the English-speaking reading public, but again it made this book feel as if it was trying too hard and made its depiction of the period fail to match up with my own experience of it. I didn't recognise this era in the way that I immediately did, for example, in "Billy Bathgate", and the whole thing had a tendency to feel fake -- as if I were writing a story set in France, and indicating the fact by having all the characters wear berets and say Zut alors to one another.
[Edit: apparently the author actually *is* Irish, which is even more worrying!]
Similarly, I winced when the 1920s narrator talked anachronistically about 'glamorous silent film stars' or commented on the maid 'crossing herself in a Catholic fashion' (apparently it hadn't occurred to the author that if her viewpoint character was an impoverished Gaelic-speaking inhabitant of a tiny cottage with a cauldron swinging over a turf fire, then she was presumably Catholic *herself*). The perspective throughout was all too clearly that of a thoroughly modern lady book-club writer rather than of the character it purported to represent, and I'm afraid that's one of the things that I find really hard to put up with in historical novels :-(
If I had been less irritated already I might have found the attempted nods to Oz canon (the emerald stone, the silver shoes, nasty Miss West the 'witch', etc.) as endearing as they were presumably intended to be. As it was, I'm afraid they just felt very forced, and reminded me of the fanfic writers who like to work in their favourite lines from the show, often reattributing them out of context to different characters whom they find more appealing.
My other problem with this book was the writing style itself, which is generally fairly straightforward but then spills out into trying much too hard; the very first pages are unfortunately an example of that.
The city was a colourless palette of grey as Emily Gale arrived at her sister's South Shore row house. Even the familiar brownstone building that had once carried shades of copper and gold in its brickwork was dulled. She paused at the foot of the steps and drew in a long, anxious breath. The frigid air caught the back of her throat and made her cough.Courage, Em. Courage.
Henry's parting words were a distant echo, muffled by the miles she'd travelled from Kansas, and further diminished by the city's towering skyscrapers. She had never felt so out of place, so uncertain, so entirely alone. There was no sweet meadowlark's song to cheer her, no comforting rush of rippling, ripened wheat, no trace of the purpose and renewal usually carried by the first hopeful day of spring on the prairie. This was a place of sorrow and uncertainty.
A wave of grief and guilt consumed her.
Courage.
She took a moment to compose herself, stiffening her shoulders before she walked up the steps and lifted the heavy iron knocker, letting it fall, just once, against the imposing ebony door. The sound carried the sombre tone of a church bell at a funeral mass. Appropriate, in the circumstances.
A moment passed.
Silence.
Perhaps there'd been a misunderstanding, an alternative arrangement made. Guilt chided her for hoping it might be so. The child was her responsibility now, hers and Henry's. How she wished he was beside her, ready to offer his calm encouragement and steady reassurance. 'If I come with you, there'll be nobody here to welcome you home,' he'd said. 'I'll make cornbread. Sweep the porch.' His attempt to lighten the mood was appreciated, but the usual crinkle at his eyes had been absent. What would home mean for them now?
A soft breeze swirled, capturing early blossom in tiny whirling cyclones at the edge of the steps, tugging at Emily's cloche as she caught her reflection in the bevelled glass panels of the door.[...]
Despite the spring day, winter still laced the Chicago air. Steely clouds smothered the sun, leaving a cold flat light as the sharp bite of the wind off Lake Michigan sent a shiver through Emily's bones. The lining of her black mourning coat had been sacrificed for a shirt for Henry last fall, the remaining garment no match for the drop in temperature between Kansas and Illinois. A day's journey by railroad -- and yet the place Emily had left, and the place she had arrived to, were so entirely different that she might have travelled for a hundred years. She shivered again, the wintry day not the only cause of her rattling bones. She had good reason to be anxious.
She knocked twice more in quick succession, the dull thud thud matching the heave of her heart.
And then later on we get "The woman's face was milk pale. Her eyes carried the unmistakeable[sic] ruby hue of grief" and then Dorothy: "soft curls in all the colours of a New England fall, emerald-green eyes full of sorrow, heart-shaped face, rosy apples in her cheeks. Smart red shoes with gleaming silver buckles offered a defiant burst of colour amid the permeating air of grief".... It's not outstandingly *bad* writing, but it's too much; too many adjectives, too many florid metaphors, too many attempts to be Deeply Meaningful, too much laboured explanation (what's more, this is February in the middle of the Dust Bowl era, so there isn't going to be 'rippling, ripened wheat' back in Kansas -- and is it a 'soft breeze' or 'the sharp bite of the wind' that she feels?)
I'm afraid it really does remind me very much of fan-fiction writing... and it's the type of writing that I've seen get ecstatic praise for how 'descriptive' and 'evocative' it is, hence my dawning suspicion above that the fanfic resemblance may actually be intentional :-( It's the sort of thing people post on the critique threads of Writers Anonymous in the hopes of praise; it's the sort of thing that leads to ten-thousand-word chapters in which nothing much really happens (but the writer is immensely proud of the sheer volume of verbiage created). To me it feels distinctly amateur -- and yet it isn't even this author's first novel, and she apparently has multiple awards.
(And then, inevitably, it makes me wonder if this is how *my* writing looks to other people: wallowing in emotion? over-verbose? too clever by half? But the door doesn't need to be 'ebony' instead of black; the brickwork doesn't need to be 'copper', the eyes don't need to be 'emerald', the reddened eyes don't need to be 'ruby', the grey clouds don't need to be 'steely'...)
The basic concept of the book is fine, and the plot, such as it is, is fine. (Not entirely sure about the Big Twist, but the author had to get some dramatic conflict out of somewhere.) The execution of those ideas is what kills it for me.
If I'd just pulled this book down off the shelf in the library out of curiosity without knowing anything about it, I would definitely have put it back almost immediately, since it doesn't meet the 'read a few random pages, care about the characters and want to know what happens next' test. As it was, I persevered through 384 pages of the stuff -- given that what I'd been reading previously was Rumer Godden, Jack London, and Barbara Hambly, the difference in prose quality was all too apparent. You know you've got a problem when you find yourself consciously having to force yourself to continue reading a novel instead of taking refuge in your Russian textbook!
It also immediately makes me want to start editing it...
Emily Gale hesitated for a moment at the foot of the steps, gazing up at the once-familiar front door. The tall brownstones of Chicago's South Side had an unwelcoming air, and she shivered a little, chilled by more than the wind that still held its winter edge. {{She'd carefully rehearsed what she would say to the child, repeating the sentences over and over in her mind, but now that she was here, everything felt wrong. There was nothing she could ever say to make this better.}}(reinserted from original text)
Finally she drew a deep breath. Courage, Em. Henry's voice in memory steadied her, as always, though it was a day's journey by railroad from Kansas to Illinois, and just now it felt more as if she had been travelling for a hundred years. The thought of him brought a comfort that warmed her, despite the shabbiness of her coat, and she clung to that reassurance. But everything would be different at home now, for them all. Courage.
She went up the steps, slowly, and lifted the knocker, letting it fall. There was a dull finality to the sound. She'd been here countless times before, when the house had been alive with the whirl of Annie's presence, and she herself had been young and impatient and full of hope. Now the fractured glimpses of reflection in the glass panels of the door showed her only a woman aged beyond her years, with a pinched expression that matched the grey beginning to show in her hair. {{They said the prairie aged folk prematurely. She was proof of it.}}
No answer. {{Perhaps there'd been a misunderstanding, an alternative arrangement made.}} Guiltily, she was conscious of a faint lift of hope, and thrust it down. {{The child was her responsibility now. Hers, and Henry's.}}
She knocked twice more in quick succession, an insistent double rap that echoed the sudden heave of her heartbeat.
(Now I'm starting to write fanfic of fanfic...)
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Date: 2026-05-11 02:48 am (UTC)Now I'm starting to write fanfic of fanfic...
Well, they do say that one of the impulses to commit fanfic is identifying a place where the original has room for improvement.
I myself have occasionally started writing "fanfic" of works I really disliked; usually not to completion - I stop once I've pinned down or worked through whatever it was that had been preying on my mind.