30 Days of Books: Day 09

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 09 – Best scene ever

My current favorite scene is from Corambis, by Sarah Monette. It’s also the 4th book in a 4 book series.

There’s two main characters, brothers, both adults. One of them is very educated and a kind of nerdy bookworm scholar in some areas. The other is illiterate. Felix, the elder and the scholar, starts teaching Mildmay, the younger, to read. One of the tools they’re using is newspapers. Mildmay is at the point where he can make it through an article and understand most of it, and ask follow up questions.

He did, in fact, have three more additions to his vocabulary when I returned, and we ended up discussing the word “cleave” all the way to Arkwright Hall. (“They’re talking about this woman cleaving her husband like it’s a good thing,” he said, “and, you know, I guess it could be, but it don’t seem like the kind of thing the newspapers would get behind.” I bit my lip to keep from laughing and said, “Did they perhaps say ‘cleaving to‘?” “Oh,” said Mildmay, “it makes a difference?”) I wondered what the real reason was that Kolkhis hadn’t properly taught him to read. It certainly wasn’t the reason he always gave, that he was too stupid to learn.

I like it because of the word play, frankly, and also because it clarifies a new relationship between the brothers while also bringing up a part of Mildmay’s past vis a vis his previous “Keeper” (who paid cash money for him and trained him to be a pick pocket, card sharp, thief, and assassin) and correcting some of Mildmay’s unreliable reporting of himself. (he has, of course, internalized all of Kolkhis’s harsh judgements and verbal abuse regarding himself, that he’s stupid and ugly and blah blah blah.) It’s a tiny, tiny scene but I like it. It’s one of those scenes that makes a relationship — and characters — come alive.