Oooh, nice, Miller! I would have never believed that there was such a connection between the books, apart from the sumptuously baroque prose and Harold Bloom's recommendation.

But I'll say this. Faith, true faith, provides a great deal of personal security and peace. Not total peace, not freedom from woe and pain and doubt, but confidence in an unseen, but real and present order to the universe and the seeming chaos that is your unfolding life. That confidence, that faith may easily be…

My goodness, this has to be one of the most passionate discussions the Book Club has yet spawned.

Swibble, I think that Smoky's repair of the Orrery is the climax of his struggle to understand and accept the magical world his family claims to inhabit. As he admits repeatedly throughout the novel, he feels very out-of-place amongst the Drinkwaters, and flatly doesn't believe in the faeries. But when he's finally…

If I may appropriate a point made by Steerpike earlier, historically, gods and other mythical spirit-figures were not inherently "good" agents. A great example Steerpike cited was Yahweh in the Old Testament; if you look at his behavior objectively, God is really an insecure dick. He's like the Universe's worst…

Yeah, Swibble, the family does seem to have a matriarchal power line, Violet-Great Aunt Cloud-Daily Alice/Sophie. Is Crowley depicting women as having a stronger link to nature, to the inherent, wild mystery of life? In keeping with these gender-segregated roles, if women's inherent life-giving potentiality defines…

Okay, you got me Swibble. I forgot that Crowley spelled out in neon lights (or at least his chapter title) what I had oh-so-smartily "surmised."

I can see your point, Miller. It wasn't an issue for me, personally, but I understand the criticism you're leveling, which seems to fall in with a general thread among the Commentariat: Crowley's writing, both its beauty and its sprawling length, inspires and requires a major investment on the part of the reader that…

I dunno. I would still argue that between the subtle appearances of technological items in Driftwood (the fridge, the station wagon), and especially the moment when the Family takes note of the highway being built off in the distance, threatening if not invading the borders of The Wood, that Crowley is pointing out…

Perhaps not coincidentally, he develops the Drinkwater Unibrow around the same time he gets over it.

That's very astute, Swibble.

@ Sincere Senei; Those are fair points. I feel like we're wading into a "process vs. product" discussion. Some of us, notably Dick Grayson, are dismayed that the story doesn't go somewhere, or at least not quickly or firmly enough. (DG, sorry if that is an improper summary of your opinion) And while the near-terminal…

Okay, perhaps it's not so simple as "technology=bad, mysticism=good", but Crowley obviously takes a dim view of American "progress"; The 20th century is quite clearly mapped out as taking a sharp downward trajectory, not coincidentally including the slow extinction of the faeries over the years.

God, I did not catch all the Midsummer references running through this book. Good call, ya'll.

Normally, I would try to find some as-yet unnamed, equally fabulous word, but Natty, I can't top "bosky".

Yeah, I was struck by the heavy influence 100 Years of Solitude has on this book. Early on, it was a bit of a flaw for me, especially how August's amorous career and sprawling progeny mirror the 17 Aurelianos, and the whole idea of taking the mythological/magical story of a family through the generations as a path…

@ Swibble and Rowan:

Insomnia by Stephen King. Then I picked it up again recently and read the whole thing…which was a mistake. Some books should be left unfinished.

Yeah, this book is definitely a denser read than, say, The Woman Chaser…

I'm at the halfway point (260 pages), so I can definitely power through in a week.