The Lady series by W. R. Gingell (ft. me relating way too much to both MCs)

I was recently (well, like, a couple of months ago...I wrote this post towards the end of last semester but didn't have a chance to post it until now) recommended a new set of W. R. Gingell books by Sarah Seele (or, well, she recommended them to the world at large by blogging about them, but, y'know, I took that as a personal recommendation), which I was kind of skeptical about. You see, I enjoy W. R. Gingell (I listened to nearly the entire City Between series last semester while I was working on landscape architecture projects, which, yes, was a lot of hours of my life), but I had yet to have an experience with one of her books that made me a Fan. 

Because while City Between is fun, and I love Pet and JinYeong, I have some issues with it. One of them is that the books feel episodic, like a TV show, and not like individual novels in a series. Another is that the climaxes never feel quite climactic enough. (I don't know why--I'm still trying to figure that out.) 

But, okay, I'm not here to critique CB. I'm here to talk about the books that Sarah recommended, because I was sucked in and could not escape. I have no complaints about episodic feel, or unclimactic climaxes. The only thing I have to complain about is that there aren't more books in the series yet. 

These books would be...Lady of Dreams and Lady of Weeds. 

They arrived in my life at the perfect time, somehow, and sucked me in so hard that I was actually really sad to finish Lady of Weeds and have to leave the cottage. (Which is funny, because that feeling reminds me of Clovis in Lady of Dreams.)

Okay, before I continue rambling about why the books were important to me, let me give you a couple of blurbs. Just for understanding's sake.

Lady of Dreams

To dream from a distance, or wake and risk losing it all?

Confined to her couch, Clovis Sohn spends her days and nights dreaming, drifting further away from the outside world with each passing day. But Clovis' dreams are also real, giving her a glimpse into the lives of those around her...

When a moment of unthinking sympathy twines Clovis' dreams with the bored, playful composer Yong-hwa, she must decide whether to keep dreaming in the comfort of her chaise lounge, or to awaken into a reality that is by no means so sure or familiar as her dreams.

Lady of Weeds

Beware the gift left too close to the sea...

Cold, isolated, and almost a thing of the sea herself, Carys keeps the seashore. It's a simple calling: Collect the seaweed along the rocky shore every day before the selkies come out to play, or pay the consequences. She knows the workings of the laws between the sea and the shore, and she collects payment from the sea itself. Issues of King and country barely touch that moving, foamy border: Only saltwater, selkies, and seaweed exist by the rocky shore. Every day is the same for Carys; a cold continuity of service.

Then a boy washes up in one of Cary's tide-pools: Injured, amnesiac, and bearing with him a token of her past without the memories to accompany it. Now she will need to keep him safe from enemies both at land and at sea; but the land is a mystery to her, and as for the sea—no one knows better than Carys that a single slip of the foot means death by the rocky shore.

Or that for every gift given by the selkies, there must be payment in one form or another...

Do those, or do those not sound amazing?

I read them in order, and while I enjoyed Lady of Dreams, it was Lady of Weeds that I connected with most. 

The way that Carys is completely in denial about the fact that someone could love her, and completely oblivious to any clues that someone might, reminds me of myself to a slightly concerning degree. I read it during a time where I needed to escape (a stressful semester will do that to you), and I could slot so well into Carys and her environment, because she's so much like me, that it actually felt like I was living the book. (I kid you not. It was one of the most vivid reading experiences I've ever had.)

Also, the way that she's like "you know, if I ignore my emotions long enough, and tamp them down hard enough, they will go away, actually"--that is me. I'm just starting to learn that there are some emotions that I can accept and then wait out and they will go away--so, I can acknowledge that they're there, and then ignore them, but I have to acknowledge them first. Tamping them down doesn't work super well. (Not that I still don't try it from time to time, as evidenced by how much I related to Carys, but hey. I'm working on it.) 

According to my mom, who's reading a book about St. Thomas Aquinas's writings on the emotions, Aquinas says that our emotions are accurate reactions to our view of the world, so while emotions may be unwelcome, they're not 'wrong', inasmuch as they're accurate to our view of the world. Our view of the world may be wrong, which we can recalibrate, but our emotions know that according to our worldview, they are correct, and they have a message to tell us, and don't appreciate it if we tamp them down. Which makes a lot of sense, honestly. 

Anyway, that was a fun but unnecessary tangent. 

In addition to relating to Carys, I also just loved the shoreline setting, with the contrast between the dangerous sea and Carys's cozy cottage, which is full of knickknacks and things to make it feel like home. I am a coastline girl--I've spent a fair bit of time on the beach, from the time I was very little. And because the water's so cold, we don't usually swim, but we do things, build things, play on the shore, which is rather like what Carys does, although her job is quite a bit more important. So, that felt familiar to me. 

Tl;dr: Lady of Weeds reminded me of myself, and was a familiar setting, and was a really wonderful escape. 

It took me maybe a week to figure out the critique of my modus operandi that's implicit in Lady of Dreams. (It wasn't my favorite discovery, but it was certainly interesting. I love it when books teach me things about myself, even if I don't really want to learn them.)

One of the things about Clovis's dreaming is that she's a completely external observer. The people she's watching can't see her, but she can see everything that's going on with them, and sometimes mess with their lives in small ways. And that's how she entertains herself, more or less. I thought that this was an interesting plot device (which it is) and an interesting way to frame a story within a story, where the stories merge (which it is), but I also think it's a critique, whether or not it was intended to be.

I figured this out one day when I was sitting in the cafeteria by myself, people-watching while eating lunch, and one of my acquaintances walked by and said "Hi, Samantha!" and I was...surprised? I was surprised that he saw me. It was a very strange feeling. 

And I was thinking about it later, and I realized...I have become Clovis, in some weird way. I have distanced myself from my life (well, my social life) enough that I feel like an external observer, and don't expect people to see me. 

#oops?

With that realization, and with a few other things going on in my life, I started to make more of an effort to interact with people and feel less like I'm Dreaming when I'm walking through my day. Although I won't say it was entirely easy, turns out, it makes life more enjoyable. Who'd'a thunk? XD
(Because the thing was, it wasn't something conscious I was doing--it was just a coping mechanism I had adopted somewhere along the semester, and once I realized that yeah, it was actually pretty unhealthy, I was able to step it back to a large degree. Sarah and I had a really interesting conversation about whether Clovis's Dreaming was purposeful or not, and how unhealthy it was, and our conclusion was that she refuses to make the effort to interact with the real world, even though she knows maybe she should, because it's too hard, in her mind.)

The other realization about this, which is actually connected with some of the realizations I had when reading Life in Five Senses, was made slightly more recently. The weeks leading up to Finals Week were kind of stressful, and so I ended up reading while walking a lot. It's something that I often indulge in to a reasonable level, but as per my spiritual director, I try not to do it all of the time. And one day, while I was walking and reading, it occurred to me that:
a) At that moment, I was happier in the story world than in the real world, i.e. I would rather be reading than paying attention to the world outside of my book, even though it was beautiful.
b) I had been spending probably more time reading than interacting with actual people.

And that was what sparked the realization that maybe Clovis was, to a certain extent, a critique of people who spend most of their time with their noses buried in books. (Which are things that are completely externally observed--the characters definitely can't see us!) Not, obviously, that reading is bad. But I was reading (and honestly, still often do) as if I was Dreaming:
1. Spending tons of time on it.
2. Feeling the siren call of it when I'm not doing it.
3. Prioritizing it over more important things, like spending time with friends and actually taking time to think about the things I'm reading.
4. Doing it during other activities that I might want to pay attention to, like walking. 
I think, in a way, that's reading as escapism in an unhealthy way. Not, as Tolkien says, the "flight of a prisoner of war", which is acceptable, but more like the "flight of a deserter". Which I hadn't ever thought of as a danger before reading Lady of Dreams. 

#oops?

To be clear, I have no intention of stopping the first two things on the list of why I read like Clovis Dreams. I just want to try to scale back the latter two. XD Although finding a balance is, shall we say, not the easiest thing in the world. (And there are days where I'm not convinced that I actually want to find any sort of balance...but I'm working on that, too.)

Tl;dr: I think Clovis is a critique of people who spend more time absorbing other stories than living their own, which, ouch, is sometimes me. 

So...have you ever felt like Clovis, in spending more time in other peoples' lives (through books &c) than in real life? Do you relate more to Carys? What's your favorite book by W. R. Gingell?