Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Review: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

by Rich Horton

This is the first novel I read by Marilynne Robinson, which I suspect is true for many readers. Shortly before it appeared, in 2004, I read an excerpt from this novel in the New Yorker and was quite taken by it. Otherwise I might not have read the full book, though perhaps the praise of it by friends like Greg Feeley would have persuaded me. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Best Fiction of 2004, but I have a tendency to dismiss Pulitzer winners. (No doubt I am partly influenced by the common mistrust of genre readers for mainstream literary awards (though I've tended to like the Bookers), also I am influenced by a book I read long ago criticizing the first few decades of Pulitzer fiction choices.) The clincher was when I saw a friend of mine from church reading the book, a friend with whom I have traded the occasional book in the past (The Time Traveler's Wife, for instance, and Jasper Fforde's novels). She lent me the book on finishing it -- so I had to read it! And a good thing, too. To cap this discursive little paragraph, just a bit later I saw a copy of the New York Times with a profile of a reader's club, in which they cited five favorites (including The Time Traveler's Wife) and 4 books they disliked. One of these latter was Gilead ("watching paint dry") but I was heartened that another they disliked was The Master and Margarita, which I think is a spectacular novel.

I will add that after reading Gilead I of course continued to her only other novel then published -- Housekeeping, from 1980. And I will tell you that it is very different from Gilead -- and, for me, it is even better. It is one of my favorite novels of the 20th Century. Robinson has gone on to publish three further novels, each very closely related to Gilead: Home, Lila, and Jack. And of these I think Home is also magnificent, and I'd rate it too as better than Gilead. Which is only to say that Robinson truly is a great writer, to have written three such remarkable novels. (And the other two are also strong, though to me not quite at the level of the first three.)

Gilead is presented as a long series of letters from a man to his son. The letters are intended to be read after the man dies, and after the son is an adult. The letter writer is John Ames, a pastor in the small town of Gilead, Iowa, near the Kansas border. John Ames is an old man, 76 as the book opens (in 1956), and he has heart problems and doesn't expect to live long. He married very late in life to a much younger woman, and his son at the time of writing is only 7. In part the letters are an attempt to replace the years of fathering he guiltily feels he is depriving his son by his expected death.

John Ames is the son and grandson of preachers of the same name. His grandfather was a fiery abolitionist, an associate of John Brown, who came to Gilead as a Free Soiler, and who maintained in "Radical Iowa" a safe house for Brown and other abolitionist fighters and too for escaped slaves. The middle John Ames, by contrast, was a pacifist, who fought in the Civil War but was disgusted by it. Each pair of father and son became estranged -- the grandfather eventually returning to Kansas in the 1890s to preach and soon die. The estrangement between John Ames's father and himself is never clearly explained -- there is reference to a letter from father to son which the son burned, and a hint that the father may have lost his faith, or may have been simply offended by his son's refusal to ever move from Gilead.

But I digress. The letters from the younger John Ames to his son are partly a mixture of meditations on such subjects as the joys and disappointments of life, the life of a pastor, and theology. That doesn't seem like a novel, and perhaps if that's all the book was it wouldn't be a novel. (Though it could still be very enjoyable.) But the letters also tell stories, mainly on two subjects. One is the eldest John Ames, the wild abolitionist grandfather, who would steal from the collection plate in order to give money to the poor, and who apparently shot and possibly killed a Federal soldier to save John Brown from capture, and who had visions of Jesus coming and talking to him face to face. The other is Jack Boughton, John Ames Boughton, the ne'er-do-well son of the younger John Ames's best friend, a fellow pastor. Jack Boughton returns to Gilead from St. Louis during the book, but John Ames is suspicious of him, partly because of his dishonorable past actions, and partly because he seems to be just a bit too nice to John's wife, who is Jack's age, and to John's son, with whom Jack is able to play in a way that now frail John cannot. But Jack's story is more complex than John Ames first understands, and he presents John with a problem of faith, forgiveness, and honesty. As well as closing the novel with an involving story that resonates well with the historical motivations of John's grandfather.

The novel, then, is profoundly a moral meditation. At times it concerns the moral tug between pacifism and just causes such as ending slavery. At times it deals with this country's racial history. At times it concerns the responsibilities of parents to children, or of pastor to flock. At times it is, quite beautifully, a celebration of the wonders of life, and of the beauty of very simple things. Sometimes it is a love letter to a son and a wife. To an extent it is a depiction of life in a small town in American in the 1950s -- and earlier. And it is very much a religious novel, and concerned with the John Ames's sincere and humanistic religious beliefs. Ames's voice is wonderfully maintained. The prose is just remarkable, very balanced and measured, not spare but not ornate, and quite often striking without any sense of showiness. A great novel, I think, or at any rate a novel that over time will be a candidate for "greatness". 

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

Review: The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy

by Rich Horton

Pat Murphy's new novel, The Adventures of Mary Darling, is a clever mashup of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes -- the one sentence elevator pitch might have been "Sherlock Holmes is engaged to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the Darling children." In a sense this reminded me of her Max Merriwell trilogy (1999-2001), which I absolutely loved: three books linked in clever metafictional ways and also referencing classic texts such as the Odyssey, Tarzan, The Jungle Book, "The Hunting of the Snark", and The Hobbit*. Those three books (There and Back Again by Max Merriwell, Wild Angel, and The Adventures of Max Merriwell) are at one level simply great fun, offering the reader enjoyable plots, engaging characters (including Pat Murphy herself!), and the chance to play "catch the clever references". But at another lever they are after something deeper -- the metafictional (and "pataphysical"!) games have a serious point, and there is an abiding concern with gender roles and personal identity choices. The Adventures of Mary Darling does indeed do some similar things, though the levels of metafictional complexity aren't as extensive (partly in that there is only one book here) while the overtly serious aspects -- an examination, again, of gender roles, but also of British colonialism, with a soupçon of American and Canadian mistreatment of indigenous populations -- are more explicitly foregrounded (not always to the novel's benefit.)

I suppose I'll have to unpack some of that a bit later. But not to bury the lede -- in the end I was immensely entertained by The Adventures of Mary Darling. It's simply lots of fun -- and the more "serious" aspects after all do hit home: Victorian ideas about women's roles and rights were terribly unfair, the British Empire routinely and offensively misunderstood and oppressed the native inhabitants of their colonies, and the treatment of indigenous tribes in both Canada and the US was horrifying, particularly portrayed here regarding the attempts of Indian schools to erase tribal identities. One other aspect of the novel that works is a skeptical deconstruction of the character of Sherlock Holmes.

But maybe I should talk about the novel itself more! The story is ostensibly told by Mary Darling's granddaughter (so Wendy Darling's daughter) in an attempt to set straight the story of Peter Pan, given that J. M. Barrie got so much wrong, and left so much out. It begins with the night of the disappearance of Wendy, John, and Michael Darling. Naturally the parents, George and Mary Darling, are distraught. But Mary's uncle (and foster father) is a certain Dr. John Watson -- and before long Sherlock Holmes has agreed to help investigate the apparent kidnapping. However, Mary Darling is not impressed by Holmes, and is even less happy when her husband seems ready to commit her to a "rest cure"**, even though if anyone needs psychiatric care it's surely George. So Mary decides to set off for Madagascar herself -- partly based on the one clue Sherlock Holmes found -- a leaf from a tree native to the Indian Ocean. 

Thus John Watson realizes he must follow his niece -- and he has encountered an ally, Sam Smalls, a native of the Solomon Islands, who is involved with the criminal side of London society, but is an educated and intelligent man. And -- he turns out to have known Mary Darling -- and her brother Tom -- from their childhood. Much of the next long section of the novel, then, expands on the back stories of the characters -- Mary Watson Darling in particular, but also Sam Smalls, George Darling, and even Captain Hook. We learn about Mary's childhood in Australia, with her artist mother Alice, who drew pictures of fairies. We learn about Sam's childhood in the Solomons, the son of an English missionary and a native woman.  We even see an extended portrayal of the origination of the "Red Indians" in Peter Pan, who turn out to have been members of the Kanien'kehá:ka nation, living on the St. Lawrence River, who escaped the prospect of seeing their children sent to Indian school by joining a circus act, and eventually setting out on their own, only to shipwreck on Neverland.

These back stories all give information but I wonder if some of them should have been curtailed a bit. The history of the Kanien'kehá:ka band is pretty much dropped, for example, which makes their section seem largely unnecessary. And there is a sense of over-idealization of some of the indigenous characters -- their characterizations and attitudes don't fully convince. Some of the back stories seem a bit contradictory, but I think that may have been intended -- we see a slow unraveling of the layers of both well-intended deceit, and of not always reliable memory, as the story continues. And there are unresolved issues -- Mary's mother's true fate, for instance. These sort of things are just fine, and add realism to the novel. I was also intrigued by a couple of namedrops -- Mary's mother is named Alice, for example, and another important character is named Hawkins, and I wonder if Murphy intended sly references to Wonderland and Treasure Island thereby. 

The book is fun throughout but it really takes off when we start to follow the parallel journeys of Mary Darling on one ship; and of John Watson, along with Sherlock Holmes, Sam Smalls, and George Darling on another. I won't detail what happens -- suffice it to say that Watson and George are confronted with some blind spots they have developed, and that they change as a result, and that Holmes too is confronted by his blind spots, and stubbornly retains his blindness. Mary Darling is resolute and of course ultimately successful, and she is allowed to fully integrate some previously conflicting elements of her life -- she is happy to be a wife and a mother, but she also wants to be an independent and powerful woman -- and she finds a way to have it all, in a sense. Perhaps unresolved is the problem of Peter Pan himself -- but one can't have everything!

I really enjoyed this novel. It combines a fun and involving story with some probing deconstruction of 19th century adventure literature, and of the colonialist attitudes behind much of that literature. The characters of Mary Darling and John Watson in particular are delightful, and the sharp examination of Sherlock Holmes' character is bracing (even if a bit of it is unfair -- Holmes' skepticism about the existence of fairies is, after all, justified -- and one incident in which he described the unreliability of photographic evidence hits home in particular when we remember how Arthur Conan Doyle himself was taken in by the "Cottingham Fairies".) (I will say that George Darling remains a bit hard to credit.) Less central characters such as Lady Hawkins, the disgraced doctor Rumbold, and Sam Smalls are also interesting. Recommended.

*While the Tolkien estate's predatory behavior in defense of their copyright is not so evil as that of the Doyle estate, they do often go well overboard in using their access to legal defense, and the way they caused the suppression of There and Back Again by Max Merriwell was disgraceful, in my opinion.

**Sometimes I wonder if I read the same articles an author read while researching their story, as not long ago I encountered a piece on the inventor of the "rest cure", Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, which described that rather horrifying treatment. (Mitchell was a very prominent American doctor, and a decent writer of fiction, and his work outside the rest cure was apparently quite impressive.)

Resurrected Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

Another resurrected review -- this was on my SFF Net blog in 2002.

Review: Perdido Street Station, by China Miéville

by Rich Horton

China Miéville's second novel, Perdido Street Station, was published in the U. K. in 2000, and in the U. S. in 2001. It made the 2002 Hugo shortlist --the beneficiary of a then recent Hugo eligibility change, whereby a book can be eligible for a Hugo nomination based on the first publication in the location of a given year's Worldcon. 

The novel is set in New Crobuzon, a large city in a fantasy world. New Crobuzon seems overtly modelled on London, and the fantasy world, the rest of which geography is rather vague, is somewhat "steampunk" in nature. There is considerable magic, openly recognized, even systematized, operating side-by-side with tech of a somewhat Victorian feel (but on the whole more advanced than that: for instance, the computing tech is ostensibly based on Analytical Engines a la Babbage, but the level of computing power is comparable at least to say 1980s electronic computing). The city is controlled and mainly inhabited by humans, but there are also a number of different alien (or "xenian") races (all to some extent humanoid): the water-dwelling vodanyoi, the cactus-like cactacae, the flying garuda, and the bug-headed khepri.

Isaac der Grimnebulin is a human scientist living in a rather bohemian quarter. He is in love with a khepri artist named Lin, though because interspecies relationships are looked on with much prejudice they keep their affair a (rather open) secret. One day they each get a valuable commission. A garuda named Yagharek, who has had his wings ripped out for some terrible crime, asks Isaac to find a scientific means of giving him back the power of flight. And a radically Remade crime boss named Mr. Motley asks Lin to sculpt him (the Remade are surgically altered people, usually altered for punishment, but apparently sometimes for enhancement: Motley's alterations are extensive and chaotic). 

Isaac's investigations into the possibilities of flight lead him to a potentially world-changing scientific discovery. Unfortunately, they also result in him accidentally releasing another sort of flying being on New Crobuzon, something called a "slake-moth", which preys on sentient beings' dreams, in the process literally sucking out the sentient part of their mind.

The major portion of the plot turns on Isaac's attempts (with a small band of friends and temporary allies: the garuda Yagharek, a radical journalist named Derkhan Blueday, a criminal named Lemuel, a spontaneously generated AI, and an extradimensional spider-like creature called the Weaver) to track down and destroy the slake-moths. These intersect the similar attempts of the city authorities to deal with the slake-moth threat, and with Mr. Motley's interests, which are more ambiguous: he had been keeping slake-moths in captivity because they secreted a valuable drug, and he resents what he sees as Isaac attempting to horn in on his business.

The plot itself is interesting, though probably not worthy of over 700 pages. It is reasonably well worked out, though. Miéville's imagination is fecund, however, and his descriptions of New Crobuzon and the various alien inhabitants are continually fascinating. His political parallels are often rather crudely drawn, but not fatally so. Isaac and Lin and Yagharek and Derkhan are good characters, people we learn to care for. The prose is sound but not spectacular, and it does stumble in places. The book's structure does have one mild flaw: it is framed with Yagharek's story, and the eventual revelation of his crime is rather anti-climatic, and by ending with the resolution of his story things seem to go on beyond the proper end. But all in all this is a fascinating novel, an involving read that only rarely drags over 700+ pages, a very worthy award nominee.

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

Capsule Review: The Essence of the Thing, by Madeleine St. John

by Rich Horton

The Essence of the Thing is a very short novel (about 47,000 words), by Madeleine St. John. It was published in 1997 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize. St. John was born in 1941 in a suburb of Sydney, moved to the US with her husband, and then to London after a divorce. She wrote four novels between 1993 and 1999, the first (The Women in Black) set in Sydney, that latter three forming a loose trilogy set in London's Notting Hill neighborhood. The Essence of the Thing was the middle book in this set, and became the first book by an Australian woman to be shortlisted for the Booker. I bought in on impusle, and found it a rewarding read. My brief review follows. 

Nicola is a 30ish Londoner living with a lawyer named Jonathan. She fully expects that they will marry, but one day she walks into their flat and Jonathan tells her coldly that he has decided they must part. He seems surprised that she is devastated by this.

The rest of the novel follows her and Jonathan's reaction. Despite her friends' advice, Nicola still feels devastated by the breakup, and still feels in love. But she slowly disconnects. She leaves the flat, which was originally hers but which she can't afford to keep. She moves in first with married friends, then with friends of these friends who have a little girl and a spare room. She applies for a job she has no belief she can get. At the same time Jonathan only slowly tells anyone, despite visiting his parents for a weekend and being given his mother's engagement ring to give to Nicola. He is shown realizing that his shirts aren't magically getting ironed, and that he misses other aspects of Nicola's presence. There are also some very witty scenes with Nicola's various friends -- lots of supple and clever and believable conversation. The final resolution is fairly predictable, though aspects are (wisely) left open ended. A slim but quite enjoyable novel.

Hugo Best Novel Final Ballot Thoughts, 2025

My latest Substack post covers my thoughts on the current Hugo Best Novel final ballot: https://open.substack.com/pub/richhorton314252/p/the-2025-hugo-best-novel-ballot

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

Old Bestseller Review: The Wings of the Morning, by Louis Tracy

by Rich Horton

A year or two ago I happened across this book in an antique store. It's a novel I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of. I was a bit taken aback, though, by the series is appeared in: The Winston Clear-Type Popular Classics. This was a set of novels apparently aimed at teen-aged readers -- what me might call YA today. These books are almost all very well known -- novels and collections often originally aimed at adult readers, but deemed (correctly) to appeal to younger people. Examples include several classic books that I read as a teen: Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott; Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson; Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates, by Mary Mapes Dodge; and Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell. Other entries were familiar as well: the Lambs' Shakespeare; Pinocchio; Heidi; Robinson Crusoe; collections of stories from the Bible, from the Arabian Nights, and folk tales and fairy tales. Indeed, of all the books listed in the series I knew of everyone -- EXCEPT The Wings of the Morning. 

Well, I had to buy it! I should note in passing that the publisher, John C. Winston, was long known for books for young readers -- SF fans of a certain age might remember the Winston Juveniles from the 1950s. As best I can tell this particular set of books was published in the early '20s. All the books were reprints -- the novel at hand was first published in 1903. But -- who was Louis Tracy? As often with such older popular books, tracking down information about the author proved as interesting as the book itself.

Louis Tracy was born in 1863 and died in 1928. He is often said (on Wikipedia, for example) to have been born in Liverpool, but Steve Holland did some rigorous research and traced his birth to Ireland, and established his name at birth as Joseph Patrick Treacy. The family moved to England not long after -- likely first to Liverpool then to Yorkshire, where his father was a police officer. His name was changed at some point to Louis Tracy. He became a journalist, working in Durham and Yorkshire and eventually London. His first novel was science fiction, The Final War (1896), one of a number of "future war" books he published. He also collaborated with M. P. Shiel, particularly on a number of mysteries under the name "Gordon Holmes". Tracy published mysteries under his own name as well.

But it seems that his most popular novel was indeed The Wings of the Morning. This was first published by Ward Lock in the UK as Rainbow Island, in 1904. That same year it was published in the US by Edward J. Clode as The Wings of the Morning. Clode reprinted the book multiple times (and the copyright notice in my edition is under Edward J. Clode.) Editions are readily available on Abebooks. There were illustrated versions, including one using stills from a 1919 silent film. As far as I can tell, the John C. Winston Popular Classics edition dates to 1924, and it is illustrated by the once prominent American artist Mead Schaeffer, in nice colored plates. I have found two different covers for that edition on Abebooks, and I've seen it stated that different editions include additional Schaeffer paintings -- mine has only four.

(I need to credit Steve Holland, Douglas Anderson, David Langford, Mike Stamm, and the late John C. Squires for providing most of the information on Tracy and his works.)

The book itself? It's really quite fun. (I'll note in advance that it features some out and out racist depictions of Malay pirates ("Dyaks") as well as of one virtuous but cringily portrayed Indian character.) As the original title might hint, it's a "Robinsonade" -- that is, the main characters are marooned on a deserted island, just like Robinson Crusoe. (And the characters mention both Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson.)

It opens on the Sirdar, a steamer owned by Sir Arthur Deane, heading from Hong Kong back to England. The passengers include Sir Arthur's daughter Iris. However, a typhoon is threatening, and after a brave battle with the elements, the Sirdar, after a collision with a junk and then a crash on a reef, is destroyed, and everyone on board dies except Iris and one sailor, Robert Jenks, who managed to grab her and bring the two to safety on an island. 

Robert, fortunately, has considerable experience -- Iris quickly gathers that he was in the military. He and she are able to rescue some supplies from the wreck of the Sirdar, and to find water on the island -- first from pitcher plants and then after discovering a well. The well represents signs of habitation, and they soon realize that the island had been visited by people from nearby islands, and well as some Chinese and at least one European, but all perished due to a volcanic emanation of poison gas. They find a cave that will serve as shelter while they hunker down and wait hopefully for rescue.

The novel continues as you might guess. Robert Jenks, who doesn't talk or act like a common sailor, has a secret, which Iris soon winkles out of him. She herself is supposed to marry a certain Lord Ventnor, but she's never really liked him. Propinquity, along with Iris' beauty and Robert's many manly virtues, does its magic, and they are soon chastely promised to each other. And Robert has a made a dramatic discovery that may change their future fortunes. But there are severe dangers, particularly a threat of the Dyak pirates who haunt the area -- and even if they are rescued, will Iris' father consent to her marrying a poor seaman ...

There follows some dramatic action, some sweet domestic scenes, more dark secrets balanced by some rather lucky revelations. It's an adventure novel of its time, for good and bad; and it's the sort of thing I'd have enjoyed as a teen, and still quite enjoyed now. I don't really know why its reputation has diminished so much in the past decades, except that it's a good enough book but it's not great -- it's not at the level of Stevenson, certainly, nor of the very different Alcott, nor even Defoe. And to be sure its racist elements do make it a hard sell nowadays -- and, frankly, deservedly so. For all that, I'll probably try another of Tracy's novels along the way -- maybe one of his mysteries. 

(And here's one more cover -- of the sort you often see on early 20th Century books: just slap a Gibson-style pretty woman on the cover, no concern for representing the book.)

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Hugo Novel Ballot Review: Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

a review by Rich Horton

This is the sixth and last of my reviews of novels on the 2025 Hugo Award final ballot. Service Model is one of two Adrian Tchaikovsky novels that made the ballot this year. It's a standalone novel (as was the other, Alien Clay.) 

The novel opens with Charles, a robot valet, going through his normal routine serving his master. We quickly gather that things aren't quite normal -- though Charles always asks, his master doesn't need much of what he offers. He never travels, so Charles can't make travel plans or ask as chauffeur. He doesn't have a wife any more, and in general he's not interested in much of anything. But today things are even more different -- for when Charles goes to dress his master, he finds him inert, and there's a terrible red stain. It's quickly clear that Charles must have slashed his master's throat while shaving him, though Charles has no record of taking such an action in his memory.

Charles must be defective, he concludes, so he heads off to the diagnostic center to be repaired. But once there is it clear that not much is being accomplished -- in fact, all the robots are sent to "data compression", which turns about to be rather more literal than one might hope. But Charles has encountered another very unusual robot called "The Wonk", which insists that Charles must have been infected with the "protagonist virus", which gives him free will. Charles doesn't believe this, and decides that the Wonk is a terribly defective robot. (The reader will instantly recognize what the Wonk really is.) Charles desperately want to return to service, and the Wonk, having given him a new name -- Uncharles, as he can hardly still use the name his mater had given him -- suggests he investigate a "Conservation Farm" where humans are attempting to reenact ancient human life -- prior to robots.

So begins Uncharles' journeys through a world which is revealed as post-Apocalyptic -- society has clearly completely collapsed. The "farm" turns out to be a horribly oppressive sort of prison, where "volunteers" are compelled to pointlessly take a subway to work and to meaningless work etc. etc. The Wonk invades the farm -- she (she is mysteriously given a pronoun at some point) is very good at getting into places -- and helps free Uncharles from service to the bureaucrat running the farm. Then there is a journey to the "central library", where robots are archiving all human knowledge; then an encounter with "God" who gives Uncharles three wishes -- sending him first to serve the master of a manor like his first manor -- but of course there is no living human there; then a feral group of humans, who have no particular use for Uncharles, then a "king" -- but not a human king but a massive robotic soldier, ruling a group of military robots fighting an endless war. Finally, he and the Wonk (who keeps showing up) journey to God to finally learn the real truth as to what caused the apocalypse -- and they learn of course that God is no better than anyone else in this terrible future.

I am of two minds about this novel. It's very cleverly written, in Tchaikovsky's snarky voice, which is well adapted to the satirical aims of the book. Both Uncharles and the Wonk are delightful characters, though most of the rest of the characters (almost all robots) are slimly depicted. I found myself quite moved at times. Still, some of the book is too obviously set up to make satirical points that don't always land; some of it is unconvincing (particularly the time span), and every so often Tchaikovsky stomps on a joke (as when I could see the setup for an Oz reference towards the end of the book from a mile away.) It's a bit tendentious, for sure. All that said, on the whole it works nicely, and I enjoyed reading it.

Bottom line -- I divide the Hugo nominees this year into three piles -- one novel is to my mind clearly at the top; four novels are pretty close to each other in the middle group -- and Service Model is in this pile; and one novel is distinctly the least of the nominees (to my mind, a really puzzling choice.) I'll do an official summary at my Substack in a few days.