Review: Iago: A Novel by David Snodin

[majkia]

I finally finished [Iago: A Novel] which I found to be slow going. I didn't identify very well with any of the characters so really didn't much care about their fate. By the end of the book I did care about Iago and it would have helped immensely if I'd known more about him throughout the book.

It is well written, and the world painted well, though.

My review is here.

Comments

[sollers]

I'll be looking at your review later, but in the meantime I'm curious about this "identify" thing. I've never been clear what people mean by it; sometimes they seem to think a character that is similar to them in significant ways, and sometimes it seems to be a character that they're interested enough in to be interested in them (sorry if that sounds circular, but that's how it came over in a recent exchange I had). The first gives me the same sort of problems as the emphasis when I was teaching in London on books that the children could "relate" to, i.e. books where the protagonist had the same sort of background. I'd always felt that the idea of fiction was to widen experiences, not narrow them, and anyway I myself had never come across a book where any of the characters had a background like mine. I did find one where the heroine went to the same school as I did - the French school in London - but even so she started there at the age I was when I left.

Could you elucidate, please?

[majkia]

What I mean by it, is that I didn't connect with the characters enough to really care about them. I don't expect them to be like me, I don't care if they are good, or bad, or what they look like. But I want to be interested enough in them to feel the NEED to see what happens to them.

I think for me that means understand their motivations and knowing WHY they do the things they do, or how they think. I especially need to understand their inner mind. Thus, I hated Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond because I hadn't a clue what he was doing or why.

Any clearer?

[sollers]

I'm starting to get the idea; it sounds as if it relates to my writing tutor's aphorism "writers are actors without the bottle" - they have to get inside the character's head, and convey them to the audience, but they don't actually have the sort of guts it takes to get up on stage and do it in public.

However, I can see a major problem with this in historical writing, particularly when dealing with the Romans. To take as an example Robert Harris' Roman books, you get a lot of insight into Cicero's character, but the more you learn the more uncongenial (because typically Roman) he seems. This is a major reason why I don't write main period (late Republic/pre Constantine Empire) Roman fiction: I know enough about the mindset not to want to get inside it. I would either have to whitewash it (intellectual dishonesty) or alienate the reader with a world whose morality was almost the diametric opposite of ours.

[majkia]

Well, you could do it like GRRM did with Jamie Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire. He's the most hated character in the first book, yet grows to be one of the most beloved by book 3 or 4. Done by staying outside his head at first, and only later seeing his inner motivation and doubts and the way he was raised and what he believes, and how that all grows as the series progresses.

My favorite character of all time, Marc Remillard, from Julian May's books (Pliocene Exile Saga and the related sci fi books) is a guy who is willing to murder millions - billions - of people for an idea. Yet I adore him. He's mislead by his ideals, but that makes him forgiveable, especially when he starts to hesitate and change.

Readers too, I think, need to get inside a character's head, at least I do. But maybe that's because I write too. Dunno.

But I obviously can love a villain more than I love the good guys. I just want him to have a reason for doing what he's doing and not be just evil incarnate, with faults and doubts and a past that explains why he's like he is.