Moonwise

Rating:
Summary: This book gives me a headache.
Review: Giving up in the middle of my second attempt to read this book...

I've heard some rave reviews about _Moonwise_, and plus I like a good intellectual challenge from time to time, so I desperately wanted to understand and like this book. Now, I could do one of two things here. I could pretend that I understood every word and that the book moved the earth for me, etc, etc. Or I could just come straight out and say, "I can't follow it." I don't care at this point if my opinion makes some people think I'm unintelligent or whatever. I have to be honest. I'm not going to rave on and on about the Emperor's lovely new clothes if he looks naked to me, and I'm not going to rave about this book when just trying to follow the plotline gives me a headache. From time to time Gilman achieves some very pretty poetry, but she also uses pages and pages of opaque prose and made-up words to describe an scene or action that could be described more succinctly, or at least in English. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it.

OK, so it is technically possible to find the plot; after I gave up on finishing the book, I skimmed the rest of it to find out what happened. It is fairly straightforward if you can get past the made-up words and the thick dialect. It's just that it could have been a much shorter novel, and a better one, if about a gazillion pages of "unmoons" and "unenskied" had been left out. And I wouldn't have needed the Excedrin.

Rating:
Summary: Moonwise : Like the Wake
Review: Greer Ilene Gilman is one of the most significant writers in the world today and I hope she gives us something new to follow up to or surpass her wonderful classic "Moonwise". We do not go to "Moonwise" for plot. We go to it for an experience of language that makes us feel as if the roots of psychic and telluric realities have been laid bare. The book can only be compared to James Joyce's astonishing "Finnegans Wake" but unlike the Wake Gilman shifts back and forth from dream conciousness to a more visionary form of conciousness. Long live Greer Ilene Gilman in whose wake the discerning will follow any day!

Rating:
Summary: Moonwise : Like the Wake
Review: Greer Ilene Gilman is one of the most significant writers in the world today and I hope she gives us something new to follow up to or surpass her wonderful classic "Moonwise". We do not go to "Moonwise" for plot. We go to it for an experience of language that makes us feel as if the roots of psychic and telluric realities have been laid bare. The book can only be compared to James Joyce's astonishing "Finnegans Wake" but unlike the Wake Gilman shifts back and forth from dream conciousness to a more visionary form of conciousness. Long live Greer Ilene Gilman in whose wake the discerning will follow any day!

Rating:
Summary: It's all in how you read it
Review: I read over the other reviews and have a secret to share with you about this book. It's a book that should be read out loud. The poetry, the rhythms of this book are wonderful. And what emerges is something quite different from when you read it silently to yourself.

Rating:
Summary: It's all in how you read it
Review: I read over the other reviews and have a secret to share with you about this book. It's a book that should be read out loud. The poetry, the rhythms of this book are wonderful. And what emerges is something quite different from when you read it silently to yourself.

Rating:
Summary: Just because it's gnomic doesn't mean it's pithy.
Review: Moonwise grabbed me the first time I read it 7 years ago. I read it probably half a dozen times in the first year and have not missed a year since. One reason I kept re-reading it was to try to understand it, and I understand more each time. It feels at once utterly foreign and deeply, personally familiar. The visual imagery is vivid and dreamlike. If I don't read it at least once each year (starting just before Winter Solstice) I feel out of balance the whole year. It speaks in the language of the subconscious and racial memory. It renews my spirit each time I read it.

Rating:
Summary: Moonwise
Review: This is a difficult and gorgeous book. It's written in a style both literary and dialect, and readers who don't like poetry may not enjoy it. At times the plot is hard to follow -- I think I got it, mostly, on my second read.

Ariane and Sylvie become lost in a world which I suspect is meant to be more a part of our own world, an inner part, than an "other universe". Symbolism, dualities, and images from ballads fill this world. The symbolism is deeply powerful, because at its root it reflects natural themes: the turning of the seasons, the rise and fall of forest life, the orbit of the moon. I'm not at all sure, as some readers have thought, that the women failing in their quest would lead to dead perpetual winter *only* in the "otherworld". European folkloric material also enriches the text immeasurably. However, readers without any familiarity with the images and the folklore may find themselves swamped. This is not a book that explains itself.

Despite the admitted inaccessibility of the work (I did wish at some point the author would simply define a hallows), the characters are appealing, particularly the wandering "Mad Tom" persona, and there is humor to be found.

It's not a book for everyone, but I'm very glad that it exists.