2024/129: Tooth and Claw — Jo Walton

2024/129: Tooth and Claw — Jo Walton

You can make your way by your own wits and claws, while I must always be dependent upon some male to protect me. Wits I may have, but claws I am without, and while hands are useful for writing and fine work they are no use in a battle. [p. 63]

Patriarch Bon Agornin dies, and his children gather at the deathbed to distribute his wealth amongst themselves. Penn the cleric hears his father's confession; eldest sister Berend and her husband Daverak take more than their share; Avan, enraged by Berend and Daverak's behaviour, mounts a legal case against them; Selendra is compromised by another cleric, Frelt; and Haner is dispatched to live with Berend and Daverak, away from her beloved Selendra and the only home she's ever known.

So far, so Victorian. Walton acknowledges a debt to Trollope, and adds that 'this novel is the result of wondering what a world would be like…if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology'.( Read more... )