Review: Miss Marjoribanks, by Margaret Oliphant

Review: Miss Marjoribanks, by Margaret Oliphant

by Rich Horton

Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was a Scottish writer of some dozens of novels published from 1849 until her death. Per Samuel Johnson's rule, she was no fool -- she wrote for money, to support her family after her husband's early death. But prolific as she was, she was also supremely talented; and while her work, like that of many Victorian writers, especially women, was quite neglected for quite some time, she has been profitably rediscovered. I earlier read Hester (1883), a first rate novel about a young woman eager to use her considerable powers to the fullest but restricted by the sexism of that era, only to eventually reach an uneasy rapport with her much older cousin, a very powerful women as well. Hester is one of Oliphant's best known novels, but her most famous work might be the six volumes called the Carlingford Chronicles (1861-1866, with a last novel in 1876) -- consciously influenced by Anthony Trollope's roughly contemporaneous Barsetshire series, in using the limited scope of a small provincial town as the setting for novels of what seem minor events, but as important to their characters as those of any saga.

Miss Marjoribanks (pronounced "Marchbanks" as the main character's father insists) was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1865-1866, and in book form (three volumes) by William Blackwood and Sons in 1866. I both read and listened to it -- I have the Penguin Classics editon from 1998, edited by Elizabeth Joy; and I listened to a Librivox recording, in which the first volume was read by Michelle Crandall and the last two volumes by Marisol Cui. Curiously, the Librivox recording was of the serial edition, which has a number of minor differences and one very significant difference from the book version, which I'll discuss later. 

We meet Lucilla Marjoribanks at the age of 15, as her mother is dying. I will quote the delightfully subtle passage that suggests her appearance: "the most common description they gave her was, that she was "a large girl"; and there was great truth in the adjective. She was not to be described as a tall girl -- which conveys an altogether different idea -- but she was large in all particulars, full and well-developed, with somewhat large features, not at all pretty as yet, though it was known in Mount Pleasant that somebody had said that such a face might ripen into beauty, and become "grandiose," for anything anybody could tell. Miss Marjoribanks was not vain; but the word had taken possession of her imagination, as was natural, and solaced her much when she made the painful discovery that her gloves were half a number larger, and her shoes a hair-breadth broader, than those of any of her companions; but the hands and feet were both perfectly well shaped; and being at the same time well clothed and plump, were much more presentable and pleasant to look upon than the lean rudimentary schoolgirl hands with which they were surrounded."

She pronounces herself ready to take over the household for her father, a Scotsman who has served as Carlingford's physician for decades; but Dr. Marjoribanks is used to having his own way, and sends her back to school, and then on a Grand Tour -- but finally, Lucilla comes home, and declares herself ready to "be a comfort to her dear papa". She swiftly takes command of the household, demoting the very capable cook Nancy to "Prime Minister" and her father to a sort of emeritus position. Her next goal is to reform Carlingford society; and she sets to that task with a vengeance, especially by establishing a regular series of "evenings" every Thursday -- expanding on her father's longstanding meals with his friends (much appreciated due to Nancy's cooking and Dr. Marjoribanks' cellar.) 

We meet the main inhabitants of the central street of Carlingford, Grange Lane: the elderly couple Colonel and Mrs. Chiley, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn -- the latter known for her satirical imitations of people; Mrs. Woodburn's brother Mr. Cavendish -- one of "The Cavendishes" and rumored to be the next MP from Carlingford once the current man has the grace to die; Sir John Richmond and his wife; the Misses Brown who are devoted to photography; the Rector, Mr. Bury, and his sister; and so on. Lucilla's cousin Tom Marjoribanks visits, and seems to be ready to pay his court to Lucilla -- but she quickly sends him packing, for had she wanted to marry, she needn't even have come home. Miss Marjoribanks takes the controversial step of inviting Barbara Lake, the daughter of the drawing master, who lives in lowly Grove Street, not on Grange Lane -- because Barbara's magnificent contralto will go so nicely with Lucilla's voice. And she plans for the handsome Mr. Cavendish to be a "flirt" -- because you always need a flirt to keep an "evening" hopping.

Lucilla's evenings are a success, and after a bit it seems that she and Mr. Cavendish might become an item. But Barbara Lake is a very attractive woman, if somewhat vulgar ... and Mr. Cavendish can't make up his mind. And so things continue -- Mr. Cavendish's character is portrayed as not precisely bad but just that bit shady, and Lucilla adopts another case, the widow Mrs. Mortimer, who is in terrible economic straits until Lucilla sets her up as a schoolteacher; and then the Archdeacon visits, amid rumors he is in line to be a Bishop if the rumors that Carlingford will be the seat of a new bishopric turn out to be true. There is an unexpected connection linking the Archdeacon, Mrs. Mortimer, and Mr. Cavendish. Lucilla's rumored prospects of marriage excite the whole town, but somehow, amid hints of scandal (not involving her) and social upheavals (which she manages to control) she rides out everything, avowing that her "affections were never engaged". 

That portion takes up the first two volumes. The third volume is somewhat tonally different -- it is set 10 years in the future. Lucilla is about to turn 30. She has the social life of Carlingford operating efficiently, and she is looking for a new challenge. And one arises when the old MP finally dies. Lucilla choose her candidate -- Mr. Ashburton, a wealthy man who had moved into a fine estate nearby. (And who is, thus, a very eligible bachelor indeed.) But Mr. Cavendish returns, and decides he too will run for the seat, as he had already planned. And just as the campaign is raging, an unexpected sad event wholly alters Lucilla's prospects. But she is capable of rising to yet another challenge ... and there's no need to say more.

The book is essentially a comedy, and it is very funny in its lightly satirical fashion. There is plenty of incident -- some of it a bit melodramatic even -- but in the end the stakes are small. The characters are well done but with one exception somewhat sparsely sketched. But the exception is, of course, Lucilla Marjoribanks, and she is a masterful creation. Oliphant walks a fine line her, and never stumbles. The book both satirizes her -- her self-absorption, her pretenses, her vaunting ambition to be leader in such a small orbit -- and yet for all that she is admirable. She really does succeed in her efforts. She really does make people (mostly) happy -- with the caveat that her class prejudices do seem unfair to the likes of the Lake family. She is amusingly contemptuous of men -- in a way that seems at once a bit oblivous -- but that also has real bite, hits home. You can't help but like Miss Marjoribanks -- and feel for her. She is, in an almost unknowing fashion, a feminist, who would be shocked to be described so. 

Miss Marjoribanks is the fifth of the Carlingford novels, but while the books do share characters, it seems that for the most part they are independent stories. I did a quick scan through the Carlingford series on Project Gutenberg, and Miss Marjoribanks shows up in only one other novel (though her father appears elsewhere): in The Doctor's Family, Lucilla is briefly a potential love interest for a new doctor, Dr. Rider. This is indeed mentioned in passing in Miss Marjoribanks, and we can see that Oliphant manipulated the timeline a bit as the series continued -- in The Doctor's Family Miss Marjoribanks is presented as an old maid some years Dr. Rider's senior, while in Miss Marjoribanks, it is made clear she is the same age as Dr. Rider. Likewise, Miss Marjoribanks' role as the prime mover in Carlingford society is prominent in this novel, but not mentioned in the other books.

I mentioned the differences between the serial version and the book version above. The Penguin Classics edition that I have gives an extensive side by side comparison -- and most of the changes are quite minor. But Oliphant made on significant alteration: she combined two chapters in the serial into one, and cut a long passage in which Barbara Lake's sister Rose is invited to one of Lucilla's "evenings", and brings a portfolio of her art (she is a promising artist) along with one piece by her talented brother Willie. The Archdeacon leafs through the portfolio, and takes up Willie's drawing, and expresses astonishment at how good it is, especially from the hand of an inferior woman. Rose is terribly embarrassed. It's a good scene -- comic but pathetic -- but I can see while it was taken out, for we never really hear much about Rose's eventual fate, and having her take such a prominent role in one scene sort of raised my expectations.

Finally, I'll include a few quotes from the novel, that I liked a good deal.

Lucilla on religion:"Miss Marjoribanks was not a woman to be blind to the advantages of this situation, but still, as was to be expected, it took her a little time to get used to it, and to make all the use of it which was practicable under the circumstances -- which was all the more difficult since she was not in the least "viewy" in her own person, but had been brought up in the old-fashioned orthodox way of having a great respect for religion, and as little to do with it as possible, which was a state of mind largely prevalent in Carlingford."

Lucilla on her education:""Oh, you know, I went through a course of political economy at Mount Pleasant," she said, with a laugh. "One of the Miss Blounts was dreadfully strong-minded. I wonder, for my part, that she did not make me literary; but fortunately I escaped that.""

On men:"For everybody knows that it requires very little to satisfy the gentlemen, if a woman will only give her mind to it. As for Miss Marjoribanks herself, she confessed frankly that she did her best to please Them. "For you know, after all, in Carlingford, one is obliged to take them into consideration," she said, with a natural apology."

Lucilla on on the place of women:"Miss Marjoribanks had her own ideas in respect to charity, and never went upon ladies' committees, nor took any further share than what was proper and necessary in parish work; and when a woman has an active mind, and still does not care for parish work, it is a little hard for her to find a "sphere." And Lucilla, though she said nothing about a sphere, was still more or less in that condition of mind which has been so often and so fully described to the British public -- when the ripe female intelligence, not having the natural resource of a nursery and a husband to manage, turns inwards, and begins to "make a protest" against the existing order of society, and to call the world to account for giving it no due occupation -- and to consume itself. She was not the woman to make protests, nor claim for herself the doubtful honours of a false position; but she felt all the same that at her age she had outlived the occupations that were sufficient for her youth. To be sure, there were still the dinners to attend to, a branch of human affairs worthy of the weightiest consideration, and she had a house of her own, as much as if she had been half a dozen times married; but still there are instincts which go even beyond dinners, and Lucilla had become conscious that her capabilities were greater than her work. She was a Power in Carlingford, and she knew it; but still there is little good in the existence of a Power unless it can be made use of for some worthy end."

Review: On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle

Review: On the Calculation of Volume I, by Solvej Balle

by Rich Horton

This is the first of a planned seven volumes of a long novel. Solvej Balle is a Danish writer who has been well-regarded in her home country for decades, to the point that she has received a lifetime grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. Her first novel, Lyrefugl (The Lyre Bird) appeared in 1986. For the next three decades she published poetry, nonfiction, a memoir, and four volumes of "short prose", & (1990), Hvis (If) (2013), Så (Then) (2013), and  Ifolge loven, fire beretninger om mennesket (According the the Law: Four Accounts of Mankind) (1993). As far as I know, only the last book has been translated into English, and it seems to the book that established her reputation. (I'm not entirely sure whether the other collectons of short prose comprise short stories or essays or both.)

The first book of On the Calculation of Volume appeared in Denmark as Om udregning af rumfangin in 2020, though evidently Balle conceived the story in the '80s and began writing it in 1999.  It was translated into English and published by New Directions last year. By now, five books have been published in Denmark, and the first four have been published in English. The first two volumes are translated quite ably by Barbara Haveland, who also translated According to the Law. The third and fourth books are translated by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell. Each book is quite short -- the first one is 161 pages, perhaps 45,000 words. Still -- the final work will be over 300,000 words, big by any standard. 

I have read just the first book so far. It is narrated by Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller living with her husband in a small town in northern France. She opens by describing her life as of day #121. "There is someone in the house." But it's not horror, not a thriller -- the someone is her husband. And Tara lives, it seems, in the spaces her husband does not. But not because she's alienated from him or anything -- she still loves him and misses him. But it is the 121st time she has experienced November 18. 

We learn the story: she had gone on a short trip to Bordeaux for an auction, and then to Paris, to pick up some books they had ordered, to look for others -- and, as it turns out, to visit an old friend, a coin seller, and his new girlfriend. She went to sleep in the hotel room -- and woke up in the same room, but back to the start of November 18. She realizes this fairly quickly, and relives the day in Paris, with some changes, and realizes she's stuck in a time loop. So she heads back home, and remains in the loop. After several days explaining and re-explaining this to her husband, and trying variations on her routine to see if somehow she can break out of the loop, she has retreated to the spare bedroom, and has started living in the interstices of her husband's life -- going out shopping or walking where she knows he won't be, making tea and eating at times he won't hear her, and so on. 

And, in a way, that's the book. Which seems kind of boring -- and, to be honest, I was bored for stretches of the book. But there were other stretches that really worked. Some of the scenes are strikingly beautiful, and affecting. Tara's observations -- her detailed learning of everything she can about her house, her husband's routine, their yard, the weather and the stars and so on of November 18th -- gain a, well, volume of impact. The philsophical elements are intriguing too -- why is she stuck? Some things stay with her (some of the books she got at auction, for example) and some seem to return to their previous places? She ages a day at a time, but her husband and everyone else is unchanged. Her routine can change -- her waking times, for example; or the exact time that the loop resets. What does it mean that the food she consumes is gone -- so the shelves of stories mysteriously empty even though she only buys enough each day for her needs. 

There are changes as things go -- first the time spent with her husband reliving the day again and again, then the time hiding away in the spare room, then a time when she wanders more widely, even risks meeting her husband on his daily routine, or returning to Paris to try again to break the loop. And eventually she finds a vacant house to occupy. But for all that -- it is, by the end of the book, a year of reliving the same day. I understand that in the subsequent volumes there are more extensive changes to her repeated single day -- travel to other countries, for example.

I liked the book -- at times loved it, but at times labored a bit. But I will continue to the rest of it. There truly is an interesting series of philosophical questionss -- about time, and about the volume one person occupies in time, and about how much one person's changed routines affects people who are reliving the same day over again without remembering the other iterations of the loop. And the question arises -- what about November 19th for everyone else? Does it even exist? If it does, where is Tara? Or can time only continue when she escapes the loop.

As a genre reader, one who has read a great many time loop stories, and seen a number of time loop movies, it's hard not to expect a resolution -- an explanation, or at least an escape. But I'm not at all sure that's where this book is going. It's interested in asking questions; and in observing -- in, somehow, knowing that single day, November 18, more completely. Other reviewiers inevitably compare the book to Groundhog Day, or to the Adam Sandler movie Palm Springs. But if I were to choose a single movie for comparison, it might be The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, a 2021 movie starring Kathryn Newton and Kyle Allen, based on a short story by Lev Grossman -- only because the main characters in that movie, in making their map of perfect things they see on the day they relive, does suggest something of the experience of Tara Selter's close observation of her single day. But in reality, On the Calculation of Volume is something new and different in this familiar subgenre. 

Review: The Curious Case of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief, by Lisa Tuttle

Review: The Curious Case of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief, by Lisa Tuttle

by Rich Horton

Lisa Tuttle began publishing with a story in a Clarion anthology in 1972, and in the ensuing years built a reputation as one of the field's most interesting writers, mostly at shorter lengths though she published several novels. I hadn't read any of her novels (except her collaboration with George R. R. Martin, Windhaven) though I kept track of her short fiction over the decades, and a while back I noticed two entertaining stories in large anthologies edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. These two stories were about a pair of investigators of supernatural crimes in the late Victorian Era, Jasper Jesperson and Miss Lane, and they were lots of fun.

However, I never learned that she had published three novels about the two until last year. The reason is simple enough -- the books aren't available (except in ebook form) in the US. I went ahead and bought the first in the series, The Curious Affair of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief, from 2016. (The sequels are The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross (2017) and The Curious Affair of the Missing Mummies (2023).) It took me until now to get around to reading the first book, though. 

The Curious Case of the Somnambulist and the Psychic Thief is an origin story for the Jesperson and Lane partnership (though it was already established in the two previously published short stories.) Miss Lane is the primary narrator, and as the novel opens she has left her position with the Society of Psychical Research (SPR) because she has learned that her friend and mentor, Gabrielle Fox, is willingly to abet psychic frauds. Miss Lane heads to London in need of a job -- and she sees Jasper Jesperson's advertisement, looking for an assistant in his private detective business. Jesperson is a young man, living with his mother, and a man of apparent ability but unable to hold a conventional job. He and his mother are down to their last few pounds -- but they gladly welcome Miss Lane into the business, and their house. I should add that this is about 1890, and Arthur Conan Doyle is publishing the Sherlock Holmes stories -- which server as a sort of model for Jesperson and Lane.

But starting a business is tricky, and finally in desperation they see if their landlord will extend credit on their rent if they investigate any problems he has. And fortuitously there is something to look into -- their landlord's brother-in-law has been sleepwalking. Perhaps they can see what might have caused this? Is there something sinister behind it?

So that's the somnambulist. What about the psychic thief? Again somewhat fortuitously, Gabrielle Fox reenters the picture. She is back in London, and she is with a woman who claims to have psychic powers. Soon she has invited Miss Lane to a séance. And things start to get crazy: psychics are being kidnapped. A couple of them even seem to have real powers. And an American psychic, with a Russian princess for a wife, seems particularly powerful -- and, soon, particularly interested in Miss Lane.

This is all quite fun stuff. The Victorian milieu is well enough depicted -- I've been buried in Victorian fiction for a while now and the real stuff is inevitably more convincing but Tuttle didn't throw me out of the novel with anything too silly. The two main characters are very much worth spending time with. The mystery -- is just OK, I have to say. (Once magic is involved it's harder to keep mysteries properly mysterious!) Having said that, the setpiece climax is quite nicely done. I'll be getting around to the sequels sooner or later.

Answers to the Victorian Fiction Quiz

Answers to the Victorian Fiction Quiz 

The answers are given in bold below. If you want to see the questions first without the answers, my original post of the quiz is here.

1. By the 1890s, English morés seemed to shift away from the traditionally stuffy image of Victorians (exaggerated as that image may be). The writer who represented that shift most directly might be the Irishman Oscar Wilde, author of plays such as Lady Windermere's Fan, poems such as "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "The Sphinx", and what short novel, which might fancifully be read as allegorizing the decadence that could be seen as lying beneath the decorative exterior of the art of the "Naughty '90s"?

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2. Charles Dickens' first several novels were published under a pseudonym and several of them, as well as some later works, were illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, who chose the pseudonym "Phiz" to correspond with Dickens' pseudonym. Give Dickens' one-syllable pseudonym.

Boz

3. Elizabeth Gaskell is loved for her novels Cranford, Wives and Daughters, and a novel that was serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words right after Dickens' own Hard Times. Both Gaskell's and Dickens' books are considered "industrial novels", and both were set in Manchester (Gaskell's home, though Gaskell renamed the city Milton.) Name this book, which had a BBC adaptation in 2004, and the title of which refers to the protagonist's split time between London (and a nearby village), and her new home in Milton. 

North and South

4. Anthony Trollope, author of the Barsetshire and Palliser novels among many others, was famous for his prolificity. But despite the many novels (and often very long novels!) he wrote, he was also a very energetic worker in another area, part of the civil service of the United Kingdom. For which part of the civil service did Trollope work?

General Post Office (anything hinting postal service or mail was accepted)

5. George Eliot was a bête noire for many high school students in my time who were forced to read Silas Marner, though these days she is (deservedly) a golden girl for her novel Middlemarch. (I say Middlemarch is transcendent, and Silas Marner is a fine short novel.) Those novels, and much of the rest of her work, were set in the 18th and 19th centuries in provincial England. But Eliot went far afield -- to Italy in the 15th Century -- for which novel published in 1863? (This novel's title is also the first name of an actress who appeared in an adaptation of Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda as well as several other period pieces.)

Romola

6. Three English sisters published novels in the 1840s that are still regarded as classics today. Their first books were published under a common surname, Bell. Their brother Branwell published some poetry but no novels. Name any one of the three pseudonymous first names the sisters used, each of which had a first letter matching the author's real first name.

Currer, Acton, Ellis

7. Stanley Kubrick's 1974 film Barry Lyndon is adapted from a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, who also wrote Henry Esmond (my personal favorite), The Rose and the Ring, and, most famously, a novel which takes its title from John Bunyan's decidedly non-Victorian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. Give the title of that novel.

Vanity Fair

8. The now common practice of titling novels with quotes from poems doesn't appear to have begun until the Victorian Era (though there may be earlier examples.) Dickens' The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) takes its title from Milton's "Il Penseroso", and Rhoda Broughton's Red as the Rose is She, from 1870, uses a quote from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Just four years later, Thomas Hardy had his first major success with which novel titled after a line from Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

Far from the Madding Crowd

9. "The Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire was India. Needless to say, the record of the British Empire in India is highly checkered. There was a writer who was technically a subject of Queen Victoria, born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), educated in India and England, who wrote major plays such as Risarjan (or Sacrifice), from 1890, poetry such as the collection Gitanjali, novels including 1901's Nastanirh (later filmed as Charulata by Satyajit Ray), and numerous short stories such as "Atottju" ("The Runaway"). In 1913 he became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Who was this polymath?

Rabindranath Tagore

10. Some of the Victorian novelists were also poets, though only a couple achieved significant reputations. But one major poet produced an epic poem, Aurora Leigh, that the author called a "novel in verse", and which was called by the influential critic John Ruskin "the greatest long poem of the nineteenth century". Please give the first and last name of this poet, who was married to another major Victorian poet.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Elizabeth with either last name or both was accepted)

11. I loved Robert Louis Stevenson's novels as a child, such as Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Black Arrow and Catriona, and I continue to enjoy such books as The New Arabian Nights as an adult. Stevenson traveled widely in his brief life -- he lived at times in his birthplace of Scotland, in England, in France, and in the United States (home of his wife Fanny.) He spent his last few years in what South Seas island group?

Samoa (or Western Samoa, or the Samoan Islands, or even Upolu, the island on which RLS lived, were accepted)

12. One of the best and most prolific Victorian woman authors was Margaret Oliphant, who wrote over 90 novels between 1849 and her death in 1897. Perhaps her best work (at least in my eyes) is which 1883 novel in which the title woman crosses horns with her older cousin, as both eventually forsake marriage and instead work to maintain the family's bank in place of their feckless male connections? The title character shares a name with the tragic main character of a colorfully titled major American novel published during Victoria's reign. (First name only.)

Hester

13. Leo Tolstoy published the bulk of his work during Victoria's reign, though he was of course not one of her subjects. But he did, for example, admire both Dickens and Trollope, and indeed Anna Karenina is shown reading a novel that seems clearly to be by Trollope on the fateful train journey at which she meets Vronsky (that cad!) and also witnesses what tragic foreshadowing incident? 

Person killed by train

14. "Sensation novels" were very popular in England in the second half of the 19th century, showing scandalous doings behind the facades of seemingly ordinary families. Wilkie Collins was one of the first such novelists, and Rhoda Broughton a later example, but what woman, an actress in her teens, made a fortune in that genre, most notably with Lady Audley's Secret.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

15. Herman Melville is undoubtedly best known for Moby-Dick, but I love the last novel he published in his lifetime, which sold so poorly it ended not just his career but bankrupted his publisher. I'm sure you can tell me its title. 

The Confidence Man: His Masquerade (just The Confidence Man was enough)

16. One of the most popular French novelists of the Victorian era was Alexandre Dumas, author of such enduring classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Dumas' son, also named Alexandre, was also a successful writer. He is best known today for a novel that was the source material for a great opera by Verdi. Give either the title of the novel (in French or English), or of Verdi's opera that was based on it.

La Dame Aux Camellias/The Lady of the Camellias/Camille; or La Traviata or The Fallen Woman (though I've never heard the opera actually called that!)

17. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and there are of course writers whose career encompassed both her reign and those of her successors. One of the greatest published his most famous novel in the year of Victoria's death. This writer's stories published in Victoria's reign were often set in India, where he lived in early adulthood, though an important book of stories for children seems to be set in Africa. Just who was this man?

Rudyard Kipling

18. This author of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and The Egoist was also a well-respected poet, who wrote the lyric that inspired one of Ralph Vaughan Williams' most popular orchestral pieces, The Lark Ascending.

George Meredith

Review: Rakesfall, by Vajra Chandrasekera

Review: Rakesfall, by Vajra Chandrasekera

by Rich Horton

Vajra Chandrasekera made a big (and deserved) splash with his first novel, The Saint of Bright Doors, which won the Nebula Award last year. Rakesfall is his second novel, and it is if anything even more ambitious than his first, and it has been nominted for this year's Nebula. It is intricately -- and to be honest, sometimes confusingly -- structured. It is very well written. It audaciously mixes fantasy and science fiction -- and the fantastical parts are original and intriguing, while the science fiction ventures into the very far future with some very cool technological speculation. It even briefly visits the milieu of The Saint of Bright Doors. I was really primed to love it -- but I felt Chandrasekera didn't quite pull it off. 

Rakesfall opens with an excitingly confusing narrative -- a group of people -- a "fandom" -- are watching a TV series following the lives of a girl named Annelid and a boy named Leveret, shown on an old TV. The "fandom" seems possibly to consist entirely of dead people, and Annelid and Leveret seem to sometimes watch the "fandom" on their own TV. This is strange and cool ... and then we are in another milieu, and then another, and another ... And there are stories within stories. There is a long sequence in which the viewpoint character (seemingly a version of Annelid called Vidyucchika) is haunted by a corpse (a version of Leveret called Lambajihva) while living in a house whose owner's husband and son are both, well, undead. There is a justifiedly angry sequence set in Sri Lanka during the recent wars. Things jump forward to increasingly far futures, with a ruined Earth subject to ambiguously successful attempts at restoration, and with humanity spread into space, and also into digital worlds. Some of the embedded stories are real tours de force -- a postmodernist play about the horrible history of European colonization of Sri Lanka; and a fairy tale of sorts about Kings and Heroes and Wasps in particular. 

It's impressive, urgently and often beautifully written. It's powerfully felt. It's new, it's original. And ... for me, it didn't quite work. My main problem was the last half or so, in which the SF speculation kind of goes off the rails for me, and which was for some time rather boring, and by the end rather banal. This is a shame, because Chandrasekera can really write, and because his aims are impressive. Better, I think, that he try things like Rakesfall than settle for the routine -- but it's a risk/reward game, and sometimes the risks win. I'll add that perhaps the fault is with me -- perhaps it is my failure to understand the book more than the author's failure that I'm displaying. Fair enough! (Though I think the banality of the concluding segment is real.)

Is Rakesfall worth reading? Yes. Is Chandrasekera one of the most exciting newer writers in the field? Absolutely. In a way, the fact that he isn't afraid to do something as audacious as this novel, even if (in my opinion) the result is flawed, is good news. Because his next effort may be just as audacious -- and may absolutely nail it.

Review: Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope

Review: Phineas Finn, by Anthony Trollope

by Rich Horton

(In the belief that some people coming to this post might be interested in Victoriana, I will note that I have posted a quiz about Victorian Fiction that I recently wrote for an online trivia league. The quiz is here: Victorian Fiction Quiz.)

Phineas Finn (sometimes subtitled The Irish Member) is the second novel in Trollope's Palliser, or Parliamentary, series of novels. The series comprises six novels. I read the first, Can You Forgive Her?, about a year ago. It seems, however, that Phineas Finn begins what might be considered the main story arc of the books, which is continued in the final three volumes: Phineas Redux, The Prime Minister, and The Duke's Children. (The Eustace Diamonds is book three.) All six books share many characters, most of whom are significant players in the political world, and some of whom are evidently based on the actual Parliamentary leaders of the time, people like Disraeli and Gladstone. It should also be noted that these books are also connected to an extent with the Barsetshire novels -- for example, Plantagenet Palliser, probably the most important character in the series, is introduced in the fifth Barsetshire novel, The Small House at Allington, and his father, the Duke of Omnium, is an important minor character in the Barsetshire books, and is also a very important minor character in Phineas Finn. It does appear to me that the four Palliser books of the main arc should probably be read in the order of publication, but the other two books needn't be. (Though there is a key subplot in Can You Forgive Her? that sets up the future of Plantagent Palliser and his wife, Lady Glencora, in ways that do impact Phineas Finn.)

OK, that's just introductory blather. What about this novel? Phineas Finn is a young Irishman -- 25 at the opening of the book, 30 at its conclusion -- the son of a doctor in County Clare. He studied at Trinity, and has spent the previous few years in London, studying for the Bar. He is ready for his professional life, and suddenly the opportunity arises for him to take a seat in Parliament: the seat for Loughshire, near his father's home, is controlled by one of his father's patients, Lord Tulla. Lord Tulla has quarreled with his brother, who holds the seat, and is looking for another man to take over. Soon Phineas is back in London as the MP for Loughshire. As MPs are not paid, he must still live on the small amount his father can afford. But his life's ambition is to be in politics. 

That sets up the political plot of the novel, which concerns the first five years of Phineas Finn's career. He must navigate a course between his Liberal principles and various expediencies, such as keeping his seat (Lord Tulla is a Tory) and even keeping his borough in existence, as the Reform Bills which are the main controversy of the day will significantly redistribute the boroughs, to more fairly equalize representation. Even within the Liberal Party, he has issues of conscience -- must he do what the Party leaders wish, even if they differ from his own beliefs? All these elements reverberate through the novel, as for example he gains a (paid, crucially) Cabinet position, but if he bucks the Party leaders at any point, he must resign. This might seem dry, but it is not, in Trollope's telling. Part of this is Trollope's voice. Part is Trollope's knowledge -- which included a run for Parliament (though that was after writing Phineas Finn.) Part is that he uses these issues both for delineation of character, and discussion of governing theory, etc.

The other key plot is about Phineas Finn's personal life -- which is to say, mostly, his love life. There are four women in the book whom he calls lovers (or who, in one case, thinks of him as a potential lover.) These are Lady Laura Standish, who is intensely interested in politics and strongly supports Phineas' career. Then Violet Effingham, Lady Laura's friend, whom Laura wishes will marry her rackety brother. Violet is beautiful and intelligent and very independent in spirit. And there is Marie, Madame Max Goesler, a beautiful widow just a few years older than Phineas. Madame Max is very wealthy, very intelligent -- and, possibly, Jewish and of lower class origins. Finally, there is Mary Flood Jones, a good friend of Phineas' sister. Phineas has enjoyed her company while in Ireland, and probably has given her reason to believe he might marry her. She is pretty, and affectionate, and loyal -- and it seems not nearly as intelligent and interesting as the other women. 

There are ups and down, dramatic (even shocking) events in both threads, and the two intersect interestingly and effectively. There are extensive parts which don't directly involve Phineas -- one truly terrible marriage is closely examined, the behind the scenes influence of powerful women on the political world they are technically barred from is depicted, the attitudes and actions of ordinary people (that is to say, neither politicians nor aristocrats) are given voice. There are comic interludes, and tragic ones. Two of my favorite chapters are in essence almost entirely in the voice of other characters -- the one is called "Violet Effingham", and lets her discuss at length her attitudes about marriage; the other is called "Mr Monk Upon Reform", and is primarily a letter from Mr Monk (one of Phineas' political mentors) detailing his beliefs on the reform of the electoral system in the UK, and on the reasons it is desirable, and the shape of the best outcome. 

I'm trying not to detail much at all about the actual plot. Phineas's career, both political and personal, has high points and low points, and ends mostly happily, though with some ambiguity and a lot of stress -- and, of course, there will be further changes ahead, elaborated mostly, I assume, in Phineas Redux. Phineas himself is a fine character, a good man with flaws, a rather lucky man whose successes are partly due to his abilities, but also to his good looks, and to sheer good fortune. The three English women he is involved with -- Lady Laura, Violet, and Madame Max -- are wonderful characters. There is a host of minor characters who are intriguing: Phineas' fellow Irish MP Laurence Fitzgibbon; the journalist Quintus Slide; Mr. Low, the barrister who teaches Phineas the law; Mr and Mrs Bunce, Phineas' landlords; Plantagenet Palliser's wife, Lady Glencora; Lady Laura's unstable but oddly likeable brother Lord Chiltern; and many more. 

I have now read seven of Trollope's novels, all with at least some enjoyment, and most with immense enjoyment, but I think Phineas Finn is (so far!) my favorite. I said recently somewhere that, while Dickens and Eliot are undoubtedly greater novelists than Trollope, Trollope is more enjoyable. Does Trollope's hand on the scales sometimes noticeably influence the outcome? Sure (but so does Dickens' hand.) Is Eliot's moral and philosophical view of the world more complex than Trollope's? Yes, though Trollope's ideas are by no means negligible. Is Trollope's prose less energetic and surprising than Dickens', and less elegant than Eliot's? Definitely, though Trollope is never less than readable. What can I say? Trollope is a wonderful writer who deserves to be read, and will reward the reader. 

Quiz: Victorian Fiction

Over the past years I've posted some quizzes I've written for an online trivia league I play in. These quizzes have a format of 12 questions each, but naturally I typically write at least 15 questions before figuring out which work best. This year I outdid myself, and wrote 18 questions (with the help of Michael Moorcock, who made a few suggestions, one of which is in the list below.)

The theme was Victorian Fiction, originally intended to be concerning any fiction written during Queen Victoria's reign (1837-1901). After running the questions by a number of volunteer testers, I decided that it was best to restrict it to fiction written by actual subjects of Queen Victoria -- that is to say, anyone from the British Empire during her reign (in the end I included writers from England, Scotland, Ireland, and India -- abashedly, I realized I don't really know many writers from Canada or Australia or other British colonies from that period. (I read a Canadian SF novel from 1896 while writing the quiz, but that novel was so obscure I suspect I am one of maybe a dozen people alive who have read it, and in fact I alerted both the Science Fiction Encyclopedia and the ISFDB to its existence.))

I'll post the answers in a few days. Give your guesses in the comments if you feel like it.

So, here are the questions: 

1. By the 1890s, English morés seemed to shift away from the traditionally stuffy image of Victorians (exaggerated as that image may be). The writer who represented that shift most directly might be the Irishman Oscar Wilde, author of plays such as Lady Windermere's Fan, poems such as "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" and "The Sphinx", and what short novel, which might fancifully be read as allegorizing the decadence that could be seen as lying beneath the decorative exterior of the art of the "Naughty '90s"?

2. Charles Dickens' first several novels were published under a pseudonym and several of them, as well as some later works, were illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, who chose the pseudonym "Phiz" to correspond with Dickens' pseudonym. Give Dickens' one-syllable pseudonym.

3. Elizabeth Gaskell is loved for her novels Cranford, Wives and Daughters, and a novel that was serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words right after Dickens' own Hard Times. Both Gaskell's and Dickens' books are considered "industrial novels", and both were set in Manchester (Gaskell's home, though Gaskell renamed the city Milton.) Name this book, which had a BBC adaptation in 2004, and the title of which refers to the protagonist's split time between London (and a nearby village), and her new home in Milton. 

4. Anthony Trollope, author of the Barsetshire and Palliser novels among many others, was famous for his prolificity. But despite the many novels (and often very long novels!) he wrote, he was also a very energetic worker in another area, part of the civil service of the United Kingdom. For which part of the civil service did Trollope work?

5. George Eliot was a bête noire for many high school students in my time who were forced to read Silas Marner, though these days she is (deservedly) a golden girl for her novel Middlemarch. (I say Middlemarch is transcendent, and Silas Marner is a fine short novel.) Those novels, and much of the rest of her work, were set in the 18th and 19th centuries in provincial England. But Eliot went far afield -- to Italy in the 15th Century -- for which novel published in 1863? (This novel's title is also the first name of an actress who appeared in an adaptation of Eliot's novel Daniel Deronda as well as several other period pieces.)

6. Three English sisters published novels in the 1840s that are still regarded as classics today. Their first books were published under a common surname, Bell. Their brother Branwell published some poetry but no novels. Name any one of the three pseudonymous first names the sisters used, each of which had a first letter matching the author's real first name.

7. Stanley Kubrick's 1974 film Barry Lyndon is adapted from a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, who also wrote Henry Esmond (my personal favorite), The Rose and the Ring, and, most famously, a novel which takes its title from John Bunyan's decidedly non-Victorian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress. Give the title of that novel.

8. The now common practice of titling novels with quotes from poems doesn't appear to have begun until the Victorian Era (though there may be earlier examples.) Dickens' The Cricket on the Hearth (1845) takes its title from Milton's "Il Penseroso", and Rhoda Broughton's Red as the Rose is She, from 1870, uses a quote from Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Just four years later, Thomas Hardy had his first major success with which novel titled after a line from Thomas Grey's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

9. "The Jewel in the Crown" of the British Empire was India. Needless to say, the record of the British Empire in India is highly checkered. There was a writer who was technically a subject of Queen Victoria, born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), educated in India and England, who wrote major plays such as Risarjan (or Sacrifice), from 1890, poetry such as the collection Gitanjali, novels including 1901's Nastanirh (later filmed as Charulata by Satyajit Ray), and numerous short stories such as "Atottju" ("The Runaway"). In 1913 he became the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Who was this polymath?

10. Some of the Victorian novelists were also poets, though only a couple achieved significant reputations. But one major poet produced an epic poem, Aurora Leigh, that the author called a "novel in verse", and which was called by the influential critic John Ruskin "the greatest long poem of the nineteenth century". Please give the first and last name of this poet, who was married to another major Victorian poet.

11. I loved Robert Louis Stevenson's novels as a child, such as Kidnapped, Treasure Island, The Black Arrow and Catriona, and I continue to enjoy such books as The New Arabian Nights as an adult. Stevenson traveled widely in his brief life -- he lived at times in his birthplace of Scotland, in England, in France, and in the United States (home of his wife Fanny.) He spent his last few years in what South Seas island group?

12. One of the best and most prolific Victorian woman authors was Margaret Oliphant, who wrote over 90 novels between 1849 and her death in 1897. Perhaps her best work (at least in your smith's eyes) is which 1883 novel in which the title woman crosses horns with her older cousin, as both eventually forsake marriage and instead work to maintain the family's bank in place of their feckless male connections? The title character shares a name with the tragic main character of a colorfully titled major American novel published during Victoria's reign. (First name only.)

Here are two questions that didn't make the final cut, the first because the writer was not a subject of Queen Victoria, and the second because the testers thought the question very hard, and I couldn't figure out how to supply any particularly good hints.

13. Leo Tolstoy published the bulk of his work during Victoria's reign, though he was of course not one of her subjects. But he did, for example, admire both Dickens and Trollope, and indeed Anna Karenina is shown reading a novel that seems clearly to be by Trollope on the fateful train journey at which she meets Vronsky (that cad!) and also witnesses what tragic foreshadowing incident? 

14. "Sensation novels" were very popular in England in the second half of the 19th century, showing scandalous doings behind the facades of seemingly ordinary families. Wilkie Collins was one of the first such novelists, and Rhoda Broughton a later example, but what woman, an actress in her teens, made a fortune in that genre, most notably with Lady Audley's Secret.

And here are the other questions I cut:

15. Herman Melville is undoubtedly best known for Moby-Dick, but I love the last novel he published in his lifetime, which sold so poorly it ended not just his career but bankrupted his publisher. I'm sure you can tell me its title. 

16. One of the most popular French novelists of the Victorian era was Alexandre Dumas, author of such enduring classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Dumas' son, also named Alexandre, was also a successful writer. He is best known today for a novel that was the source material for a great opera by Verdi. Give either the title of the novel (in French or English), or of Verdi's opera that was based on it.

17. Queen Victoria died in 1901, and there are of course writers whose career encompassed both her reign and those of her successors. One of the greatest published his most famous novel in the year of Victoria's death. This writer's stories published in Victoria's reign were often set in India, where he lived in early adulthood, though an important book of stories for children seems to be set in Africa. Just who was this man?

And this was Michael Moorcock's suggestion:

18. This author of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel and The Egoist was also a well-respected poet, who wrote the lyric that inspired one of Ralph Vaughan Williams' most popular orchestral pieces, The Lark Ascending.

Review: The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

Review: The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

by Rich Horton

This review will be full of spoilers -- it's a classic SF novel, and pretty much everyone in the field (except John Scalzi :) ) has read it. Short answer: it's definitely worth reading -- a bitter and cynical look at war, some cool ideas including the effect of time dilation and lots of physics, a somewhat transcendent but pretty creepy conclusion. And, also, some very '70s things, including pretty questionable -- at times downright offensive -- "sexual revolution" era sexual politics, and oddly 70s-ish notions of dystopia.

To my impressions:

I read The Forever War back in 1975 when it came out, mostly in the Analog quasi-serialization, though I bought the paperback too. I had to get the first two parts of the novel out of the library as I didn't start buying Analog until the August 1974 issue. The last two sections (in Analog) were in the fourth and sixth issues I bought. I liked it then and I endorsed its Hugo and Nebula wins. But if I am telling the truth, my memories from 50 years ago have become pretty dim, so I only recall the basic outline: William Mandella is drafted into a war against the aliens, there are several very impressive battle scenes, he falls in love with fellow soldier Marygay Potter, they are separated by time dilation, the war ends when it is realized the whole thing was a mistake due to poor communication, Marygay waits for William by flying back and forth in a spaceship until time dilation means their timelines are synchronized again.

We scheduled it for our book club this month, so I finally reread it. I got a Kindle edition, partly because I had heard that a significant chunk of the novel had been rejected by Ben Bova at Analog, and had only been added back to the book edition much later. The funny thing is, that chunk, was published as a separate novella in the November 1975 Amazing. And I don't remember it at all! -- even though I was buying Amazing at the time. I don't even remember the other stories in that issue, nor do I recognize the cover. Either my memory is completely shot -- possible! -- or I somehow missed that issue -- I don't think I had subscribed yet.

What did I think on a reread? It's still a pretty effective book. The telling is cynical in a totally believable way. The Army scenes ring very true -- and Haldeman would certainly be a better authority than me anyway. The soldiers are foulmouthed, dislike their commanding officers, but fairly disciplined if only because the alternative is dying. From my perspective a couple of things bothered me. One: in the Army "confraternity" -- sexual relastions with your fellow soldiers of the opposite sex -- is essentially mandatory, and (at least for a while) on a rotation basis. This seesm that it would be particularly hard on the women -- and there are hints of this in the novel. But only hints -- for the most part people seem happy to be always ready for sex and to be bedding a different person each night. In reality -- probably not much fun for most women, and, really, not so much fun for lots of men. Two: the casualty numbers are incredible, probably significantly higher than Russian casualties in Ukraine (and partly for a similar reason -- the politicians on Earth don't care.) Even worse, part of this is to my mind very avoidable casualties during trainging. Three: I don't quite buy the concept of only recruiting geniuses (150+ IQ) for the Army. I get that there's some satirical point to that, but still.

That said, it's very exciting, and well-written. The battle setups are interesting, and seem like a plausible use of the technology Haldeman invents. Some of this tech is pretty implausible, but in an almost believable fashion. The new section, originally called "You Can Never Go Back", concerns William and Marygay's return to Earth after their battles, at which time they are eligible to muster out. They describe at thoroughly decayed Earth society, in a very '70s fashion. Homosexuality is encourage as a population control measure (though -- as Mandella even points out -- birth control is pretty easy to enforce anyway.) Haldeman's depiction of homosexuality is mostly positive, I suppose, but there are some cliches, which I understand he regretted in later years. The rest of the depiction of Earth at that time seems a bit over the top -- but partly it's a device to make it plausible that the two of them reup.

The social changes from then on remain interesting. Homosexuality is eventually mandatory, and enforced by medical treatments. All births are by artificial insemination and by using artificial wombs. There are algorithms to ensure genetic compatibility for "better" children. The novel takes a somewhat neutral stance towards this, though I find it horrifying. And the final fate of mankind -- where every one is clones of a single individual, linked a sort of hivemind, is appalling, and really dangerous. There is a backup plan -- a few planets where heterosexual relationships and natural birth is allowed -- which of course is where William and Marygay end up. But seriously -- what is "good", what is valuable, what sort of art would be possible, etc. etc., in a world with only one actual individual. It's really truly terrible. 

Anyway, it remains a good novel. As with so many books, it doesn't hold up as well 50 years later -- I wasn't as impressed as I remember being back then. Nonetheless, it definitely heralded an outstanding careers, and beginning some time in the 1990s I got in the habit of reading every Joe Haldeman novel as they came out, every 2 years or so, and they are reliably strong work. (My favorites are The Hemingway Hoax, The Coming, and Old Twentieth.)

Review: The Elfland Prepositions, by Henry Wessells

Review: The Elfland Prepositions, by Henry Wessells

by Rich Horton

Henry Wessells is a bookseller, writer, and publisher. His imprint, Temporary Culture, has published a number of books in the SF/Fantasy genre as well as some critical works. He also runs a website and newsletter devoted to Avram Davidson. I first encountered his fiction with a remarkable story in the New York Review of Science Fiction back in 2003, "Ten Bears; or, A History of the Weterings: A Critical Fiction". Shortly thereafter he published a beautiful collection, Another Green World, which also displayed his bookbinding talents. (The allusion to one of my favorite Brian Eno albums also delighted me.) Since then I have met Henry in person a few times at the science fiction convention Readercon. 

His latest book is this collection of four more "critical fictions", a label which I take to mean works of fiction that openly acknowledge, and comment on, their debt to previous works. These stories, written between 2017 and 2024, depict the interactions of people from our world and Elfland from the point of view of the lower classes; and rather cynically. The main charactes are a cleaner, a barmaid, a dry-cleaner (and automobile manufacturer!) and a detective. The afterword directly cites Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's Kingdoms of Elfin; and the stories themselves directly allude to many other writers (a helpful list of works cited is included.)

In "Cleaning Up Efland" the narrator wants to go to Elfland but not as a changeling or slave, and learns how to get jobs there as a house cleaner -- there's not much more to the story than that except of course for the language, and sly references, and the way we see something real about life (if that's what it is) in Elfland. In "The Barmaid from Elfland" the narrator recognizes the title character as an elf and falls for her -- which we know is dangerous! And things go, more or less, as the rules for these stories say they must -- and the story gets there beautifully. "John Z. Delorean, Dry Cleaner to the Queen of Elfland" gives the notorious automaker a backstory in which he makes an Elfland fortune by doing dry cleaning for the elves, which leads to some good fortune as he starts his business -- but of course bad fortune when the Queen turns against him. The last line here is a killer. And "A Detective in Efland" has a man hired to retrieve a young girl who has disappeared -- kidnapped by elves, the mother says. Of course there is more going on -- this is a hardboiled detective story after all -- and we learn a little more about the seamy underside of Elfland, especially the uses a certain school has for kidnapped humans.

These stories are elegantly done, very clever, beautifully dark in implication. The tricks of making Elfland effectively mysterious are ready to Wessells' hand, and so too the ways of showing both the glamour and the danger. It is nice but not necessary to pick out the allusions. Henry Wessells is not prolific at all (in fiction) but what he does is outstanding.

Review: The Tents of Wickedness, by Peter De Vries

Review: The Tents of Wickedness, by Peter De Vries

A review by Rich Horton

Peter De Vries is one of my favorite midcentury American writers, and one somewhat neglected these days. This is in part because he was a comic novelist, and his primary subject, suburban adultery, may have lost centrality as time passed. For all that though, he could be very funny indeed; and he could also be very serious, in the midst of comedy, as with my choice for his greatest novel, The Blood of the Lamb.

The Tents of Wickedness (1959), however, is not quite a success. It's a sequel to Comfort Me With Apples, from 1956. The main character, Charles (Chick) Swallow, was also the main character in Comfort Me With Apples, and in both novels he is tempted into adultery, though in very different ways. In the first novel, he had just taken a job as advice columnist for the local paper in Decencey, CT, the Picayune Blade; and through the course of the novel his advice had at times backfired, in particular in the case of his brother-in-law Nickie. He still has that job in the new novel, and Nickie is still a problem -- indeed, Chick's sister is ready to divorce him.

But the main engine of the plot is Beth ("Sweetie") Appleyard, a girl he had dated in high school but had never managed to get into bed. As The Tents of Wickedness opens, he and his wife are going to a neighborhood party -- and it turns out Sweetie is to be their babysitter. This is a bit of a problem for Chick, as he's convinced his wife will ferret out their shared past. But the big problem is Sweetie herself, who has gotten stuck in an extended adolescence. And her father seems to blame Chick -- for an incident in the coalbin when they were very young; and then, paradoxically, for not deflowering Sweetie when they were teens. 

So Chick ends up entangle in various schemes to get Sweetie to mature. This involves at first a number of parodies she has written of prominent poems, which Chick manages to get published. On the strength of this Sweetie moves to Greenwich village, but, disappointed that the boys she meets seem too serious, she returns to Decency, and tells Chick that she wants a child, but doesn't want to get married. Chick refuses to impregnate her until is seems she'll choose Nickie instead, and so to try to save his sister's marriage, he nobly sleeps with Sweetie.

The results of Chick's various maneuverings, along with Nickie gaining a second personality as a master thief, not surprisingly gets Chick in more and more trouble. Add in Sweetie's father getting involved with a British woman who might have her eyes on the family fortune; plus changes at the newspaper, and then an attempt to place Sweetie's child with an appropriate adoptive family, and ... well, lots of tangles.

The problem is, these tangles end up being a bit tiresome, and not terribly convincing. The characters are not as well realized as many of De Vries' characters -- particularly Sweetie, who never really comes to life. And the novel itself is a stylistic tour-de-force, that only works about half the time -- the chapters are written in the style of a series of well-known novelists. For me, alas, while I had no trouble figuring out when the novelist was Austen, or Hemingway, or Kafka; I was stymied by the likes of John P. Marquand. More importantly, though, the effort of mimicry -- well enough pulled off -- seemed to interfere with De Vries' comic timing, and the book just isn't as funny as his best work. 

Review: I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman

Review: I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman

by Rich Horton

Jacqueline Harpman (1929-2012) was a Belgian novelist, filmmaker, and psychoanalyst; a woman of many parts who was also fascinated by physics and astronomy. She was of Jewish heritage, and her family spent the war years in Casablanca to escape the Nazis. (Several relatives were killed in the Holocaust.) Her first husband was a film director and she collaborated on several of his films, and turned to writing and then to psychiatry. She published a couple of dozen books, with considerable success. I Who Have Never Known Men (1995) was the first of her books to be translated into English, in 1997 as Mistress of Silence; and several further novels have been translated since then. Mistress of Silence was reissued in 2022 as I Who Have Never Known Men, a more direct translation of the French title (Moi qui n'ai pas connu les hommes) and also a direct quote from the novel. It gained considerable popularity at the time. The translator is Ros Schwartz. I listened to the audiobook, read very well by Nikki Massoud.

The unnamed (even to herself) narrator opens by telling us that she is alone as she writes this account, and will likely die soon. And then she tells of her life. Her first memories are of life in an underground cage. She is the only child in a group of 40 women, who are kept prisoner by a group of men, guards. They never leave the cage, and the men never enter the cage. They are kept in order by whips, though by the time of the story, the women never seem to be hit -- the snap of the whip near them is enough. They are not allowed to touch each other, and they have no books, no paper, no clock. The single toilet is out in the open.

This goes on for years, until the narrator, called the "child" by the other women, is about 15. She is pubescent, and has what seem to be sexual fantasies, but is not wholly developed sexually. She has passed from a feeling of anger with the other women to some accommodation -- after years of refusing to tell her anything, they begin to tell her what they know of their situation, and what they remember of their past life -- very little in either case. The narrator learns simple math, learns to count time, and becomes friends with a 40ish woman named Anthea. 

Then, one day as food is passed into their cage, there is an alarm, and the guards suddenly flee, leaving the keys in the lock -- and so the women escape. They head upstairs and go outside, and find themselves on a large and almost featureless plain. There is lots of food stored in their prison, and some equipment. They set up a camp outside, and then, led by the narrator, begin exploring. In time they discover additional prisons, in which they inevitably find 40 dead people -- sometimes all women, sometimes all men. They make themselves homes. And, of course, the women begin to die, of old age, illness, and suicide. Meanwhile the narrator is ever learning, learning eventually to read and write, and after everyone else has died, making a couple more significant discoveries.

But still, never an understanding of what disaster led to their imprisonment (and that of so many more.) Nor do they even know where they are -- this planet can hardly be Earth. In this way this novel -- rightly acknowledged as a work of science fiction -- radically differs from most genre SF, for there is no explanation, no understanding. What is it about, then? It is most definitely NOT, unlike what some remarkably obtuse critics have suggested, anything at all like The Handmaid's Tale. And while in many ways it describes a terrible, and very sad, situation, it is oddly not bleak in tone. This is largely a function of the narrator's voice, and of her innocence, resulting in her knowing nothing of the Earth where she was born. But nor is it at all triumphalist. The narrator knows that her life in the end means nothing, solves nothing. She appears to -- to the extent possible -- live a good life, if a lonely life; but she certainly mourns what she missed. The story does have something to say about organizing a life, a small society, in a nearly hopeless situation. It does have something to say about life without men -- but remember that the men imprisoned here had a life without women. It's a strange and mysterious book -- more involving than I expected on first encountering it. I don't think it's as good as its reputation suggests -- perhaps I am so much a genre reader that I really do miss some explanation -- but it's worth reading. 

Review: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

Review: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers

by Rich Horton

Richard Powers is a very successful literary novelist whose works always address scientific ideas, and often cross the ill-defined border into actual science fiction. He became a bestseller with his 2018 novel The Overstory, about trees and forests. He is roughly my age, and we were at the University of Illinois at the same time (though I didn't know him), so I've long kept track of his work, and I loved his early novel The Gold Bug Variations. He has won a MacArthur Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize, and a National Book Award. 

His most recent novels have been intensely concerned with ecological systems and with ecological catastrophe. Bewilderment, from 2021, certainly fits that template. And it is definitely science fiction -- set in the present day more or less, but in a slightly alternate history.

Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist at the University of Wisconsin, with a nine year old son, Robin, who has some problems. Robin presents to this reader, at least, as somewhere on the autism spectrum (quite high-functioning.) He is prone to fits of rage, and he is very sensitive. Also, his mother Alyssa died in an accident a couple of years before the events of the novel -- a loss that has devastated both Theo and Robin. As the novel opens, the two are on vacation in the Smoky Mountains, near where Theo and Alyssa had honeymooned, and we see Robin's fascination with the stars (Theo's focus) and wildlife (Aly's focus.)

Back in Madison, we learn about Robin's troubles in school, and about Theo's impatience with the "medicate first, ask questions later" attitudes of school officials and doctors -- he doesn't think that treatment will help his son. The two are vegan -- learned from Aly, who was an animal rights activist. One of their shared pastimes is virtually visiting simulations of exoplanets, using a program Theo has developed with the intent of understanding how to detect signatures of life in the data from worlds circling other stars. One of Robby's obsessions is following in his mother's footsteps: doing everything he can to protect animals from the ecological devastation caused by humans. In pursuit of this he starts drawing animals from the Endangered Species List, and even stages a protest at the state capitol building.

Under pressure to enter Robin in a treatment regimen, especially after he broke a classmate's cheekbone in an understandable fit of rage, Theo takes up another Professor's offer of seeing if an experimental treatment will help. The technique is real -- Decoded Neurofeedback, or DecNef, and Professor Currier is hoping to use the treatment for emotional problems, indeed, to induce empathy in subjects. Theo and Aly had contributed some early brain state readings, but Theo has come to suspect that Aly and Currier had had an affair. Still, any hope for Robin is worth it, and Robin enters into the program, with good results that become astonishing when he trains himself using Aly's brain scans. Indeed, he begins to feel that his mother is somehow present in his mind.

But all this is set against an horrifying political backdrop. The President is viciously anti-Science, for essentially religious reasons. In many ways he resembles Trump -- though in his case his attempt to overturn an election result is successful. And his stance against science imperils not just the program Robin has been using; but Theo's life work, which depends on the Next Gen Space Telescope, and then on a follow on project which will allow very precise observations of exoplanets. Alongside all this, their are increasing climate-related catastrophes, and serious threats of plagues, and other more mundane issues.

I won't detail the way the book is resolved, though we are given hint after hint. (Most obviously, a book Robin and Theo read is Flowers for Algernon.) But it's a remarkable achievement. I did find myself arguing with it at times, and I do feel that Theo (and perhaps the author) failed to show empathy for some of the characters cast as villains, which I found ironic in a way. But the ultimate message comes through, and does so very powerfully, and the final scene is beautiful indeed. The various themes are wonderfully intertwined -- our empathy, for humans and other species is important. Understanding life on other planets is important. The various different forms of life Theo's simulations show is important. Alyssa's life, death, and lifework is a sort of running commentary. Beauty is everywhere, and so is ugliness and tragedy. And the scientific ideas are not only interesting in themselves but truly reinforce the novel's themes. Even the title is an intertwined them: "bewilderment" at the way people ignore science, "bewilderment" at the way Robin's mind works, and also a command, sort of, to "be wilder", or to engage in "bewilderment" as a sort of analog to "rewilding".

An outstanding book, and one of the best SF novels of the past several years, which, sadly, was not noticed with the field as much as it should have been.

Review: The English Air, by D. E. Stevenson

Review: The English Air, by D. E. Stevenson

by Rich Horton

(I reviewed a few novels already by Robert Louis Stevenson's cousin Dorothy: so, biographical details can be found here.)

D. E. Stevenson published two novels in 1940 -- The English Air, and Rochester's Wife. Both novels are set in the late '30s. Both novels feature families with men in the military. Rochester's Wife was the first Stevenson novel I read, and I thought it kind of a mess -- though it was just good enough in certain ways that I decided to keep trying her novels. (Also, I had enough friends eagerly promoting her work that I figured something was going on!) Since then I've read a few more of her novels, and the best of them are quite delightful, so I'm happy I kept up with it.

One of the things that bothered me about Rochester's Wife was how oblivious the characters seemed to the coming catastrophe. So it was interesting to get to the The English Air (which I believe was written right after she wrote Rochester's Wife, though it may have been published earlier in the year.) The English Air opens in 1938, when Franz Heiden, a young German man, whose father is a midlevel official in the Nazi regime, but whose late mother was English, comes to stay with his mother's first cousin, Sophie, at Chellford, a seaside town. This visit is on the surface a reason for Franz to (at long last) visit his mother's family (his father's controlling nature, and anger at the English role in WWI, had previously prevented this.) He also wants to improve his English, and his father wants him to report on English morale (not strictly spying, just observation.)

Sophie's daughter, Wynne, is a free-spirited and attractive girl just a few years younger than Franz, and so any reader of D. E. Stevenson knows where that's going right away. And there are really no surprises in that romance plot. But that's not really the heart of the novel. For one thing, it's an ensemble piece, and we see things via several characters. Sophie herself is an important character -- a fortyish woman with a reputation for a sort of silliness, but with a way with people so that everyone likes her, and a way with her silliness that's rather deep. Sophie's husband has died, and his half-brother Dane, who is independently wealthy, manages the house and Sophie's finances. Dane himself, Major Worthington, is an interesting and mysterious character -- he had a "good war" in the first War, but suffered some sort of injury, and so doesn't do any particular work, and spends a fair amount of time overseas, for his health. (Again, most readers will quickly cotton to what Dane really does with his time.) Wynne's brother Roy is in the Navy, and their local friends include members of the military as well. 

As time goes by, Franz learns colloquial English, and sends increasingly puzzled reports to his father. At first he finds the English lazy and unprepared, but slowly learns that there is steel behind this attitude. (It could be said that there is a bit of English bias behind some of Stevenson's depictions.) He realizes his feelings for Wynne, but knows it is impossible for them to have a relationship (plus his father would never consent.) His frustrated father begins to ask him to return to Germany, but he doesn't want to leave, and eventually Dane (who also is worried about his attraction to Wynne) gets him a job in London. The Munich Agreement comes in September, and Franz is overjoyed. No war! Peace in our time! Germany and England friends forever! But of course these hopes are dashed when Hitler takes Czechoslovakia -- and Franz's eyes are fully opened. He quickly converts to complete opposition to Hitler -- but he knows his place is back in Germany ...

All along the English characters realize that war will surely come. And Stevenson is really very good in portraying the months before the War, and the few months after it starts. (The book ends on February 29, 1940 -- exactly when Stevenson finished writing it, and a couple of months before Dunkirk.) Each of the characters is affected, of course. Franz (now called Frank by his English friends) is back home, but alienated from his father. Wynne and her friends set up a hospital. Roy and the others in the military are in active service of course. And Dane -- Dane has a pretty important role himself. I won't detail what happens, but there is adventure and sweetness and surprise -- and an ending that is meant to be hopeful but, as written, almost certainly means that (as with so many in the War!) the final fates of some of the characters will be sad. 

Oddly, the specific conclusion to the novel -- at least, Franz's plans -- became impossible within days of Stevenson finishing the book, and this edition (from the Furrowed Middlebrow imprint of Dean Street Books) reproduces some correspondence between Stevenson and her publishers, in which she wonders if she should alter the ending, and even if the book should be shelved until after the War. But the publishers felt that wasn't necessary, and settled for a brief explanatory note. (Apparently, Stevenson did provide a replacement conclusion, but it has been lost.)

This is quite a fine book -- much better than Rochester's Wife. The romances (there are two) are well enough done but kind of minor. Where the book shines is simply the portrayal of life in England (and a bit of life in Germany) in the runup to the War. And the characters are nicely done as well, particularly Sophie -- another wonderfully captured middle-aged woman -- Stevenson (a middle-aged woman herself at the time) was really good with those characters in many of her books.

Review: Den of Thieves, by Daniel Hatch

Review: Den of Thieves, by Daniel Hatch

by Rich Horton

Starting in 1990, Daniel Hatch published a couple of dozen stories, mostly in Analog. I always looked forward to them, and I've missed them over the past decade or so. They were well done science fiction, careful with the scientific details, interesting with the social organization.

I met Daniel in person just recently at Boskone, and he revealed that he is beginning to self-publish a number of novels. The first two (and I don't know how many more) are part of a series called Slow Space -- the basic conceit being that space travel is roughly instantaneous to the traveler, but lightspeed to the rest of the universe, via the "soliton drive". The novels are based in part on stories that first appeared in Analog. I bought the first one, Den of Thieves.

Den of Thieves is assembled from four separate long stories, the last three of which appeared in Analog ("Den of Foxes" (December 1990), "Den of Sorrow" (March 1991), and "Den of Wolves" (July 1991).) There is a long opening novella length section as well. The stories are set on a planet of Mu Casseiopia, Asgard. A crowded Earth has started a planetary colonization project, first by sending smallish groups ("dens") of "scouts" to survey a promising planet and prepare the way for the colonists. As the novel opens, young Guy Stanger, just a short time before official adulthood, is leading a group of young scouts on a routine inspection tour to Glacier Valley. The kicker is that not long after this is "Colony Day", the date when the "breakthrough" colonists will arrive, 20 ships with 5000 people each. Guy's feelings are bit mixed -- for one thing, the scouts won't have the planet to themselves anymore. 

This story continues to set up the main conflict of the novel. The colony ships arrive, but so does another ship. This latter one is from the Eta Casseiopia system, which had been colonized some time earlier. A group led by one Peter Kolberg is offering advice on how to avoid the mistakes they had made at Eta Cass -- in exchange, of course, for some room on Asgard. But there is a lot of suspicion as to their motives -- from Guy Stanger, for sure, and also from one of the leaders of one of the colony "dens", Suzanne Baxter. As the first section ends, Guy and Suzanne (and others) manage to keep the Kolbergs from achieving all their goals, but they remain a threat. And Suzanne's daughter Emily and Guy quickly become an item. A couple of other significant characters are introduced: Emily's precocious younger brother Joey, and a struggling but hardworking colonist, Lin Palmer

The rest of the novel details the Kolberg's continuing machinations, mostly political, but involving some pretty slimy stuff as well (rape and murder included.) At the same time, the Kolbergs do have some beneficial experience to offer, and the ending of the novel reveals a the pretty clever (and science fictional) plan they are really following. The novel also interestingly treats basic issues of the colonization process -- from the way the den organization works, to the choice between a more centralized political structure and a more dispersed structure, to the really impressive amount of equipment the colonists bring -- this is something that few SFnal stories seem to deal with. Add some crises -- adapting to severe weather (and setting up weather prediction systems), finding a way to at least minimize the inevitable ecological damage a huge human population will cause, setting up a durable government, and so on.

It would be fair to call this "old-fashioned" science fiction (and after all the bulk of this novel is over 30 years old.) But the political issues are still pertinent (and a bit sneaky at times.) And stories like this can be great fun -- and Den of Thieves is great fun. If I were to nitpick -- the first three sections end in slightly over-convenient and swift resolutions to the main plot problems. But the novel as a whole ends in a more satisfying fashion, and also sets up a continuing conflict that I assume will play out in future books.

Den of Thieves can be bought at various places online, and here's a link to where I buy most of my books these days, an online place to order from many of your favorite independent bookstores: Den of Thieves at bookshop.org. As it happens, the second book in the Slow Space series, The Long Game, is officially released tomorrow! And here's a link to Daniel's webpage.

Review: Annie Bot, by Sierra Greer

Review: Annie Bot, by Sierra Greer

by Rich Horton

Annie Bot is a 2024 novel, the first adult novel from a successful writer of YA books. "Sierra Greer" is a pseudonym, presumably to differentiate the author's adult work from her YA novels. It's a striking book, one of the best novels I read from last year.

Annie, the point of view character of Annie Bot, is a "cuddle bunny" -- essentially a sexbot -- owned by Doug Richards, who bought her as he was going through a divorce. As the novel opens, Doug has had Annie for a couple of years, and his friend Roland is coming to visit him, to aak Doug to be his best man. Doug has turned Annie into an "autodidactic" robot, converting her from the baseline "Stella" he had bought. "Autodidactic" robots have the capacity to learn, and the capacity for independent action -- within strict limits imposed by the owner. So, Annie essentially never leaves Doug's apartment, and is always ready for sex, which she quite enjoys (partly because she is programmed to desire to please Doug.) But on this day Doug lectures her about her lax cleaning skills (and, after all, she is not an "Abigail", a type of robot programmed for housemaind duties. We learn, over time, that there are also "Nannies", "Hunks", and "Handies".) 

Roland immediately notices that Annie resembles Doug's ex-wife Gwen, except for slightly lighter skin and different eye color, and he teases Doug about that, and about the cleaning issue. And, that night, he opens the closet door where Annie is recharging, and half-coerces her, half-seduces her. And thus Annie now has a secret to keep from Doug -- which bothers her, but also excites her. And in a sort of payment for sex, Roland gives her instructions on how to learn to program robots. 

Over the next few months her relationship with Doug has severe ups and downs. At times he is terribly controlling, insistent on her absolute loyalty and on his privacy. At other times he is very affectionate, buys her nice dresses, and they have lots of sex. He buys another robot, named Delta, to do the cleaning, but he also has sex with her, making Annie jealous. He powers Annie off for a long time as a punishment. We see Annie visiting the manufacturer for updates, which include tweaks Doug asks for to her weight and breasts; and also leads to a revelation that Annie's brain is becoming quite special -- enough so that the manufacturer want to pay Doug for copies.

The reader sees -- though Annie doesn't -- that this is a profoundly abusive relationship, complete with gaslighting and verbal abuse but mostly nothing physical (not counting the episode where Doug left her off for weeks!) And then things seem to change -- Doug is nicer to her, their relationship reaches new heights of affection, Annie gets permission to talk to AI friends, and to learn to ride a bicycle; and Doug even plans to take her to Las Vegas for Roland's bachelor party. But then it all comes crashing down when Doug figures out what Annie and Roland did that one night, and Annie fears she'll be discarded or have her memory erased, and runs away (along with Delta.)

What follows is scary, and liberating, and eventually horrifying, as Doug's rage is titanic. And he devises a truly dreadful punishment for Annie ... but then comes a period of repentance, and a return to a happier and apparently healthier relationship. Doug even agrees to a form of couples therapy, and is willing to continue to give Annie more independence ... he really is a changed man. But does that make their relationship any fairer? Then Doug does something quite remarkable for Annie ...

This is an excellent science fiction novel, exploring admittedly familiar ideas but very intelligently, and very movingly. The novel at one level reads almost like a metaphorical depiction of a particularly bad sort of sexual relationship between humans. But it is also a really thoughtful look at AI rights, and AI needs. I was reminded a bit of Rachel Swirsky's great story "Eros, Philia, Agape". It's well told, and Annie is a very believable character. Doug is perhaps less convincing, and there are some plot developments, and personality developments, that seem a bit forced to me -- the plot at times is clearly driven by the novel's didactic requirements. But that's a small complaint -- the book knows what it wants to do, and it works. I won't tell the ending, but I will say I think it sticks the landing. Highly recommended.