![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Review
Aug. 11th, 2012 01:01 amRadiant Days
by Elizabeth Hand
This short, YA-ish* novel was quite lovely. It's about Merle, a young artist living in DC in 1978, and Arthur Rimbaud, young poet in France in 1870. Merle flunks out of art school and hits rock bottom one night, ending up homeless and robbed of her sketchbooks and supplies. She is befriended by Ted, a homeless musician who is something of a local legend, and Merle's interactions with him seem to be the catalyst for a kind of rift in time that allows her to meet Arthur. These experiences help Merle climb back up and eventually become a very successful artist. They also help provide inspiration and drive to Arthur.
While not as good as Waking the Moon, Radiant Days has a lot of the same wonderful qualities: vivid characters, a sharp sense of time and place, and a luminous, mythic approach to magical realism/modern fantasy. It's a lovely examination of the different ways art can be redemptive to both the artist and the audience, and the ways it can bridge time and space to create relationships that wouldn't otherwise be possible. I loved the character of Ted - he was so clearly inspired by Tom Waits' persona by way of Orpheus. Also, Merle really reminded me of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ashears.
(I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)
*It's being marketed as YA, and it is completely appropriate for teens. Yet I would hesitate to label it that completely because the themes, subject matter, and general atmosphere of the book definitely transcend such categorizations.
by Elizabeth Hand
This short, YA-ish* novel was quite lovely. It's about Merle, a young artist living in DC in 1978, and Arthur Rimbaud, young poet in France in 1870. Merle flunks out of art school and hits rock bottom one night, ending up homeless and robbed of her sketchbooks and supplies. She is befriended by Ted, a homeless musician who is something of a local legend, and Merle's interactions with him seem to be the catalyst for a kind of rift in time that allows her to meet Arthur. These experiences help Merle climb back up and eventually become a very successful artist. They also help provide inspiration and drive to Arthur.
While not as good as Waking the Moon, Radiant Days has a lot of the same wonderful qualities: vivid characters, a sharp sense of time and place, and a luminous, mythic approach to magical realism/modern fantasy. It's a lovely examination of the different ways art can be redemptive to both the artist and the audience, and the ways it can bridge time and space to create relationships that wouldn't otherwise be possible. I loved the character of Ted - he was so clearly inspired by Tom Waits' persona by way of Orpheus. Also, Merle really reminded me of
ashears. (I received this book for free through a Goodreads giveaway.)
*It's being marketed as YA, and it is completely appropriate for teens. Yet I would hesitate to label it that completely because the themes, subject matter, and general atmosphere of the book definitely transcend such categorizations.
