The Fiction of Zoran Živković

This review first appeared at Locus Online way back in February of 2002 -- about the same time my first column for the magazine appeared. (I had been doing a few things for Locus Online before that, however.) I thought it worthwhile to reproduce it on my blog (though it can still be found buried in the archives of Locus Online), partly because I think Zoran Živković a writer who deserves our attention. I will add that he has written many more books than those reviewed here, and remains prolific today.

(I note that, unlike back in 2002, many of Živković's books are readily available (in attractive editions) now.)

The Fiction of Zoran Živković 

a review by Rich Horton

Time-Gifts, by Zoran Živković 

Impossible Encounters, by Zoran Živković 

Seven Touches of Music, by Zoran Živković 

Regular readers of the excellent UK magazine Interzone will have noticed in the past few years a pronounced attempt to publish SF in translation. Interzone has featured fine stories by Hiroe Suga (Japanese), Ayerdahl (French), and Jean-Claude Dunyach (also French). But their most prolific non-English Language contributor is the Serbian writer Zoran Živković, who lives in Belgrade. Approximately a dozen of his stories have graced the magazine since "The Astronomer" appeared in #144, for June 1999.

Živković's work is marked by a quiet and graceful style (smoothly translated by Alice Copple-Tošic with the editing assistance of Chris Gilmore), by an interest in time, in the effects of knowledge of the future and the past on people's lives, and by a pronounced tendency towards metafictional effects. Almost all his work is nominally SF (or fantasy), but the basic thrust is often more allied with the "mainstream" — the stories look closely at ordinary characters, as their lives are affected by curious fantastical incursions. But some few of these stories take a more directly SFnal tack — for instance "The Puzzle", one of my favorites, is at the same time a look at a man entering a lonely retirement, and a metaphor for the difficulty of communicating with the alien — or, perhaps, with anybody.

I've received three of Živkovic's books in English translation. Each book is a subtly linked series of short stories. The links are both thematic and metafictional — each book closes with a story in which the other stories are wryly alluded to. The oldest of these books, Time-Gifts (1997, tr. 1998) is available from Northwestern University Press, and through Amazon.com. The other two books might be available from the publisher, Polaris, or one could read the stories in the various issues of Interzone in which they appear. (To the best of my knowledge, each story in Impossible Encounters and Seven Touches of Music will have appeared in Interzone by early 2002, though only one of the parts of Time-Gifts appeared there.) The books are very slim paperbacks, on high quality paper with nice covers — they are rather short, between 20,000 and 30,000 words each, I estimate.

Time-Gifts consists of four stories. "The Astronomer" concerns a medieval astronomer awaiting his execution for heresy. He entertains a mysterious visitor in his cell, who allows him to travel to the future, there to learn what effect, if any, his heroic opposition to the rigidity of the Church might have. He is left with an agonizing decision. The title character of "The Paleolinguist" is instead offered a trip to the distant past, where she can learn for herself whether or not her radical speculations about the origin of language were correct — but once again, such knowledge, and the means of gaining it, may be a decidedly mixed blessing. And "The Watchmaker" is vouchsafed the ability to alter a tragic event in his own past, but even there his happiness with the outcome is hardly guaranteed. The concluding story, "The Artist", features a woman in an asylum, who is painting a picture — apparently of the mysterious visitor with the "Time-Gifts" in each of the preceding stories. This story, then, serves mainly as a vehicle for commenting on each of the other stories, and for tying them up in a metafictional knot. The whole thing is effective and thought-provoking.

Impossible Encounters tends just a bit more towards being a jape, and is more strongly metafictional still. The shadow of Borges looms over this book. Each story features a character meeting an "impossible" other character — it might be God, or himself, or an alien, or the author. And the book, Impossible Encounters, appears as well in each story. They all satisfy, but there is perhaps a sense of cleverness, and a sense that the stories are a touch too cute, and a touch too much about each other, and not enough about character or metaphysics. But that is to quibble — they are fun to read, witty, and at times quite beautifully written.

Finally, Seven Touches of Music, published only last year, and with component stories still appearing in Interzone this year, is perhaps the most impressive of these three books. The seven stories all feature music, not surprisingly, usually as a catalyst for some strange message, or curious intrusion. The links between the stories are a bit subtler (mainly confined to a hint that two stories share a setting, and to the trademark appearance in the last story of the characters from the previous ones — something which occurs, one way or another, in all three of these books). Thus, I feel, the individual stories work somewhat better read separately. Perhaps most impressive is "The Puzzle", one of the better SF stories of 2001, which I have already mentioned. It's about a man who has retired from a job working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). In his retirement, he organizes his life rather obsessively in patterns. Most striking is a series of paintings he is compelled to make while listening to music in the local park. The paintings seem to be parts of a puzzle — but how to find a meaning? Zivkovic has no answer, but his means of asking the question invites us to think about SETI, and about communication in general — it's a subtle, evocative, piece. "The Cat" deals engagingly with another elderly man, and his cat (complete with sly nod to Schrödinger) — and with another of many Zivkovician looks at the effect on our lives of contingency, and of knowledge of the effects of choices, past and future. Thus it resonates both with "The Watchmaker" from Time-Gifts, and with "The Waiting Room" in this collection — about an old woman apparently granted visions of the upcoming deaths of several people. "The Fire" is a striking story about a woman who dreams of the burning of the Library of Alexandria, and who is perhaps vouchsafed a chance to read a lost volume — much as the dying scientist in "The Violinist" hears, in a beautiful passage on a violin, the secrets of the universe for which he has long searched. In "The Whisper" the music of Chopin seems to spark in an autistic child some insight into the deep structure of the universe, while in "The Violin-Maker", we perhaps learn something about the origin of the violin played in "The Violinist". In all these stories, the gift of secret knowledge is ambiguous, in that it seems impossible to reliably transmit this knowledge to anyone else — perhaps this is the overriding theme to this collection. At any rate, the seven stories, separately and together, are again quite thought-provoking.

Zoran Živković is revealed here as one of the more interesting voices in contemporary SF. His fiction is at one level clearly informed by a knowledge of SF, but it remains separate from the main currents of the contemporary field. It is indeed worth your while to see what sort of work is coming from non-English Language practitioners, and how their stance, as it were, outside the US/UK/Canada/Australia "center" of the field (at least to our perceptions) affects their work.

Review: Jewel Box, by E. Lily Yu

Review: Jewel Box, by E. Lily Yu

by Rich Horton

E. Lily Yu made a splash from the start in the SF field, with "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" in 2011, though she had published a story in the Kenyon Review earlier, and she has continued to write outstanding stories, and strikingly original stories, in the decade plus since then. She published a beautiful novel, On Fragile Waves, in 2021. Her stories are varied in tone, setting, and subject matter, but they are always beautifully written, intensely interested in character and in morality -- personal morality, as in how to live a good life, and public morality: that is, one might say, justice, both economical and political. They do not hector, however, they simply demonstrate. More than that, they make the reader, or this reader, feel strongly -- anger, love, joy, hope, but not cynicism.

The book at hand is her first collection, published by Erewhon Books in 2023. It collects 22 stories, four of them original to the book, and a few more that many readers may have missed. It is an essential collection -- a strong representation of the work of one of the most interesting new writers in recent years. (Even so, she has published enough stories that she could readily assemble another collection.) The stories are a mixture of contemporary fiction (some which veer into what might be called magical realism), fantasy, and science fiction. If there is a single mode she repeats, it is variations on fairy tales, folk tales, or myths. (One story is a wild transformed almalgam of "Jack and the Beanstalk", "The Pied Piper of Hamelin", and Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale", with a bit of "The White Cat" thrown in.)

There is not a story in this book that is not worth reading and rereading. The four new stories are of a piece with her earlier work. "The Cat's Tale" is perhaps the highlight: it's the wild almagam I mentioned: when Jackie goes to sell her mother's cow, a white cat buys it, and convinces Jackie to accompany her to confront an ogre: the abusive Lord Walter. It's inventive and amusing and pointed. "The Lion God and the Two Gates" is essentially a parable, about a judge who is reputed to be a good man -- but his goodness is shown as legalistic and supportive of the status quo -- and when he faces his judgement at the hands of the lion god, his sentence is appropriate. "Courtship Displays of the American Birder" is a sweet contemporary story about a substitute teacher getting the courage to upend his life and migrate to the home of a woman he met while birding. And "The Eve of the Planet of Ys" is SF (if not terribly plausible scientifically) about a woman's -- several women's -- efforts to make a liveable place underground as the two suns of Ys consume each other. Perhaps the science doesn't work, but the story makes emotional sense.

Rereading the other stories reinforced to me their virtues. The slyness, indeed subversiveness, of "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees" still enchants and makes one think. The fierce satire, married with almost loving description of the foolish extravagances of the near-future ultra-rich, makes "Green Glass: A Love Story" both timely and timeless. A more hopeful near future is shown in "The Doing and Undoing of Jacob Mwangi", set in Kenya with a version of Universal Basic Income that has divided society into "Doers" and "Don'ts" -- those who live on UBI and those who work for something more. Jacob Mwangi is a Don't who is moved to became a Doer -- but who needs to find a way true to his own self. "The Wretched and the Beautiful" is a searing and scary portrayal of humanity's reaction to the arrival of alien refugees. "Three Variations of a Theme of Imperial Attire" is a very dark portrayal of the real story behind "The Emperor's New Clothes" -- the clothes, and the advice, the tailor provides are horrifying, and the results are terrifying. And "The Valley of Wounded Deer" is one of the most moving stories here, another story in the mode of fairy tale, about a Prince who ends up on the only survivor of her murderous grandmother, the Queen, and who emulates the ways of deer in attempting to escape her grandmother's plots. The ending is particularly powerful.

I've only mentioned a subset of the contents -- but the entire book, as I said, is excellent. Some stories are vicious, some are sweet, some are clever, some are hopeful, some despairing. All are beautiful. 

(Disclosure -- Lily is a respected colleague, someone with whom I correspond somewhat regularly, and meet occasionally at conventions. And she sent me this book. So calibrate my words as you choose -- but, honestly, you'll thank me after you read her!)

Review: Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany

Review: Fifty-One Tales, by Lord Dunsany

by Rich Horton

(This is my 1000th post at this blog!)

In Boston this past weekend I visited the Brattle Book Store, an antiquarian store a bit over a mile from the hotel. (It has an outdoor space for discounted books that was used for a scene in the film The Holdovers -- I didn't recognize it offhand but when Alexander Jablokov told me that it was obvious.) It's a very nice bookstore, three stories high, a huge selection. I came away with two things: an issue of Harper's from 1902, and this very slim book by Lord Dunsany.

I've written about Dunsany before -- so, very briefly: Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, was born in London in 1878 but lived most of his life in his castle in Ireland -- his baronage was part of the Irish Peerage. He died in 1957. He wrote some 90 books, but is largely remembered for several books of fantasy short stories published between 1905 and 1916, for his novel The King of Elfland's Daughter, and for several books of "bar stories" told by one Joseph Jorkens. The early fantasy work has been tremendously influential, and a key strain of sword and sorcery is essentially Dunsanyesque, though one hears much less about his influence than the later influences of Tolkien, Howard, and Lovecraft. I believe Leigh Brackett in particular was working in a Dunsanyesque vein in her planetary romances. Dunsany was accomplished in many fields, in particular a brilliant player of chess. He was friends with Yeats, AE, Padraic Colum, and other prominent Irish writers. His niece Violet Pakenham, a writer herself, was the wife of the great novelist Anthony Powell and the brother of the notorious seventh Earl of Longford.

Fifty-One Tales was published in 1915 by the firm Elkin Mathews. My copy is part of the Third Edition, or "Third Thousand", no date given but I believe 1919. The frontispiece is a photograph of Dunsany in uniform (he served in the Army in the Second Boer War and the First World War, and in the English Home Guard in the Second World War) -- and the page is signed "Dunsany" -- probably a reproduction. In literary style it is of a piece with the fantasy stories he was writing at this time, but these pieces are much much shorter (and many of those stories were quite short.) They range from under 100 words to perhaps 750 words. They are largely melancholy, though occasionally rather droll, and most of them concern the scourge of modernity, the value of sincere art, the passing of humanity, and death. 

I found the book quite enjoyable, though it must be said his grumpiness and prejudice about any aspect of 20th century industry got pretty tiresome. The writing is beautiful if his style works for you, as it does for me: it is old-fashioned and ornate, and very well constructed. (I should note that his style evolved over time, and the Jorkens stories, for example, are told in a less mannered mode.) The mood is deeply melancholy for the most part, though modulated by considerable irony.

It might be best not to read too many stories at one go, though I did read it fairly quickly. Favorites include a short sequence about encounters with Death: "The Guest", about a despairing man eating a meal with a nonexistent guest (of whom he says "there is plenty for you to do in London"; "Death and Odysseus"; and "Death and the Orange". I would add to that set "Charon", in which the ferryman, after years of idleness finally conducts one more shade across the Styx, who tells him "I am the last". "A Moral Little Tale" casts a cynical eye on the censoriousness of a Puritan. "The Demagogue and the Demi-Monde" shows what happens when a strident politician and a demi-mondaine arrive at the gates of Heaven at the same time.  "How the Enemy Came to Thlünräna" tells of the defeat of the title city of wizards. "The Dream of King Karna-Vutra" is a meditation on the King's desire for his long dead wife. And "The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise" tells not just of the race between those two but of the mordant latter day result of that race.

These stories are minor Dunsany, and uneven, but at their best they do evoke a melancholy sense of deep time and of the impermanence of humanity and its works. The writing is effective, and sometimes lovely. I'd read, say, A Dreamer's Tales first -- but this is a nice work. 

Review: Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler

Review: Patternmaster, by Octavia E. Butler

by Rich Horton

Patternmaster was Octavia Butler's first novel, published in 1976. It was the final novel chronologically (though first published of coure) in her Patternist series. I discovered Butler's work not too much later, and read several of her novels, borrowed from the library -- Kindred, and the other Patternist books: Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and even the one she later disavowed, Survivor. And I thought they varied from very good (including Survivor) to brilliant. Her short fiction was also brilliant. But somehow I never got to Patternmaster, or if I did I forgot it. (Which as we will see, might not be improbable.)

Patternmaster was our book club choice for February this year. We often have the author call in to our sessions, but obviously we didn't have the option this time, as Butler died in 2006, only 59 years old, after a fall. But one of our members, Cliff Winnig, had her as an instructor when he attended Clarion, so he could offer some insight. I listened to the audio edition, narrated very well by Robin Miles, and also got a Kindle version.

It's set on Earth, centuries into a post-apocalyptic future (some of the details of this are covered in the other novels.) The rulers of the planet are telepathic humans called Patternists, who keep the non-telepathic Mutes as slaves. There are also dangerous mutated human/lion chimeras called Clayarks. The viewpoint character is Teray, who is rumored to be a son of Rayal, the Patternmaster. We meet Teray and his wife Iray as they leave their school to meet Joachim, a house master who has agreed to take Teray on as an apprentice. This is Teray's best chance to eventually have a House of his own. But Joachim is beholden to a more powerful Housemaster, Coransee, and when they visit Coransee he forces Joachim to sell him both Teray and Iray ... an act that is a deep betrayal by Joachim.

We realize quickly some of the organization of this Patternist culture -- Housemasters have complete rule of the house. Apprentices can have wives, but not Outsiders -- and Coransee will make Teray an Outsider -- which is to say a Patternist of lower status. Iray will become just one of Coransee's wives, available to any man in the house EXCEPT Teray. Teray also realizes that Coransee is a son of the Patternmaster -- and that Teray is his own full brother. Coransee's actions must have something to do with Rayal's growing weakness -- he is likely to die soon, and Coransee is scheming to become the next Patternmaster. 

During Teray's time working for Coransee -- as the overseer of his Mutes -- he learns that he is indeed Coransee's full brother, and that Coransee is stronger (telepathically) than he, and also does not trust Teray's claim that he has no interest in being Patternmaster. Coransee also takes Iray to his bed, and to Teray's chagrin, Iray comes to care for Coransee. Teray's position becomes more and more tenuous, especially after his efforts to improve the condition of the Mutes, who are subject to terrible abuse from Patternists in the household, lead him to meet an independent woman, Amber, who is a strong healer. It soon becomes clear that Teray must flee or directly confront Coransee -- and Teray does not feel strong enough for a confontration, so he and Amber ending up running away, trying to reach the Patternmaster's territory before Coransee catches them. The route is perilous, especially because it takes them through the territory of the Clayarks, who who carry a terrible disease and attack Patternists on sight. On their journey, Teray learns much from Amber, about his latent healing ability, about better ways to kill Clayarks, and about how to tread a strong and independent woman ... But in the end, everything comes down to the inevitable confrontation with Coransee.

I've made the plot seem pretty direct and simple -- and it really is. There are some nuances, to be sure -- Teray is clearly a better person than his brother -- more interested in fair treatment of slaves, more open to equitable relationships with women, at least vaguely interested in understanding the Clayarks better (they are, after all, intelligent creatures.) But all this is in the context of a truly awful culture, built on slavery, on strict gender roles, on a fiercely hierarchical ordering of society. Thus it's not at all clear that Teray, if he wins, will be a substantive improvement on his father or his brother. This is consistent with Butler's vision -- she was uncompromising on where the logic of her stories led, wholly aware that the five books of the Patternist series have led humanity into a terrible trap, and unwilling to construct a typical SF plot in which the hero magically saves the world by the end.

Alas, this is a first novel, and it shows. It's not nearly as subtle as Butler's later books, nor as well written. There are promising ideas that are dropped -- such as one curious encounter between Teray and a Clayark, which raises questions that Butler doesn't choose to answer. Iray is a weak character -- perhaps on purpose but it's still diappointing. Amber is much better, mind you. The plot, especially towards the end, is devoid of surprise, and the battles are clichéd magical fights, as disappointing in there way as the wand wielding in the Harry Potter books. 

Butler got much better, almost immediately. The other Patternist books are better than Patternmaster (and it's clear she had a good idea of the whole series from the beginning.) The short stories are fantastic, Kindred is powerful indeed, and the Xenogenesis and Parable books are first-rate -- her reputation is wholly deserved. But this, her first novel, is ultimately very minor work. Definitely not a good place to start. There's potential here, mind you -- and if Butler had been interested in returning to this novel after completing the series and doing a from the ground up rewrite, it could have been much better. But by then, of course, she had other fish to fry. 

Review: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

Review: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey

by Rich Horton

I discovered this novel based on recommendations from Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Robert Silverberg. And I owe them gratitude!  Samantha Harvey is a British writer who has gained considerable admiration for her previous novels -- of which I confess I was unaware. Orbital, published just a couple of months ago in the UK and in December in the US, is her fifth novel. And it is glorious -- one of the most sheerly beautiful novels I've read in recent years.

It's set on a space station -- indeed, the ISS, though in what seems a slightly alternative history, or perhaps a slightly aspirational near future. The ISS is nearing its end of life (scheduled for 2031), but there is finally a new expedition to the Moon, and plans for sending people to Mars. But this novel, set simultaneously with the trip to the Moon, covers one day -- sixteen orbits of the Earth -- on the space station. There are six astronauts aboard -- or, I should say, four astronauts and two cosmonauts. Shaun is from the US, Chie from Japan, Nell from the UK, Pietro from Italy, and Roman and Anton from Russia.

In simplest terms, this is just a day in the life, for all six characters. A look at their daily routine, their interactions with each other, the work they do, what the station is like, what they see looking down on Earth. There is little or no drama on the station. But on Earth there is a super typhoon gathering strength, heading for the Philippines -- where Shaun and his wife had befriended a family now threatened. On the way to the Moon are the first astronauts to land there since 1972. And Chie's mother has just died. Roman is worrying about his marriage, which is on the verge of collapse. Nell is happily enough married to an Irish farmer, but at the same time aware that if she were asked to go to Mars she would accept. Pietro thinks about his daughter, and Anton about his heroes such as Sergei Krikalev, the cosmonaut who was the last man on Mir and one of the first on the ISS.

We see Chie thinking about her mother, who miraculously survived the bombing of Hiroshima. We see Roman talking on the radio to ham operators all over the world. Shaun thinks about the postcard he has from his wife -- a reproduction of Velazquez' great painting Las Meninas, which was discussed in the class in which they met, and which is further discussed powerfully here. We see visions of the Earth passing underneath them, over and over, the whole world, piece by piece in the 16 orbits. We hear of the progress of the Moon mission. We learn about the histories of each of the station's residents. And again and again there are astonishingly lyrical passages -- just some of the most powerful prose I've read -- about many things -- the fragility of the Earth, the promise of Mars, the beauty of humans, our aspirations, our failures. One of the highlights -- just a wonderful sequence -- is a meditation on what aliens might think of the golden record on Voyager 1 -- "Would they ever infer that over forty thousand years before in a solar system unknown a woman was rigged to an EEG and her thoughts recorded?" "Could they see into a human's mind? Could they know she was a woman in love?" "In five billion years when the earth is long dead, it'll be a love song that outlives spent suns."

I'll warn you -- there's no real plot here. But what does that matter? This short novel is ecstatic, lovely, hopeful, despairing but believing, honest, loving, real. The best tears are tears of awe, and I shed those. What a book! What a triumph! 

Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

by Rich Horton

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves appeared back in 2013, and I bought a copy right away. But in our family, Karen Joy Fowler's books go first to my wife. (She is the only writer we both read everything by.) So she read it, and before I could start it, we had lent it to a friend. And, as happens sometimes, the book never came back! I'm sure if I had asked, it would have, but I was in my usual schedule crush, with Locus reviews and all, so the book sort of went on the back burner -- and it only just came off. I went ahead and got the audio version and listened to it.

And, boy, it was worth reading. Was it better now than then? Probably didn't make a difference. I will say that the narration, by Orlagh Cassidy, was very well done. I've been a Karen Joy Fowler fan since her stories began appearing in Asimov's in 1985, and this is one of her very best books.

Let me pause here to make a remark about the ISFDB's page for Fowler. It breaks up her novels to SF and Non Genre. Now, the thing with Fowler is that much of her short fiction -- the bulk of it, I'd say -- is pretty unambiguously SF or Fantasy. (And I've reprinted a few of her stories in my anthologies.) But all her novels are in some way or another ambiguous as to genre. But a couple are definitely non-SF, though with some slant ties to the field -- for example, The Jane Austen Book Club is not SF, but one of its characters is an SF fan. And We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is, to my mind, definitely not SF, though the way in which it explores our relationships with non-human characters who have some degree of intelligence at least puts it in conversation with the genre. Nonetheless, it's not SF -- but the ISFDB has it listed as SF. And they have Sister Noon, which definitely dances on the Fantasy/Mainstream border, with some features that strike me as surely fantastical -- but it is listed as Non Genre. In the final analysis, none of this really matters, but it is a bit odd.

The novel is narrated by Rosemary Cooke. She is telling the story from much later than the main action (essentially at the time of writing, in 2012 or so.) She tells the reader (addressed often as you) that she was a great talker when she was young. But she is going to skip the beginning of her story and start at the middle. (Which is advice her father gave her, frustrated by her loquaciousness.) So we are taken to the University of California at Davis, where Rose is attempting to be a permanent student. She's quiet now, and isolated from her peers. And then she gets in the middle of a scene started by Harlow, another student, who is breaking up with her boyfriend -- violently. And somehow Rose ends up with Harlow in jail. And after they are released, Harlow shows up at Rose's place. Meanwhile we are getting hints of Rose's past -- parents from who she seems somewhat estranged, and a brother who ran away from home a decade or so before -- and who may have tried to see her in Davis. There's a visit to her family back in Indiana, where the night in jail -- and the subject of her brother -- are carefully ignored. Soon she's back in Davis, having lost a suitcase that held her mother's journals, and with Harlow still luring her into drunken nights out and such ...

But now it's time to drop the other shoe, the one about her missing sister. So Rose takes us back to 1979, when she was five. And we learn -- though most of us already knew because the book's publicity revealed everything! -- that her sister Fern is a chimpanzee. And that she and Rose were raised together from infancy. Her father is a psychologist, and Fern (and Rose) are his grand experiment. So the two of them grew up inseparable, amidst a host of graduate students. And there were very close -- until a terrible time when Rose was five, when she was sent to her grandparents for a few weeks, and when she got back, Fern was gone.

There is more going on than just the story of a girl raised with a chimp. There's her lonely time after Fern leaves, when she goes to school and is called Monkey Girl and is over time pressured to silence, and left friendless. And there's her brother Lowell, who loved Fern too, and who was desperately hurt when she was taken away -- and who eventually runs away. And her father becomes a hopeless alcoholic, her mother descends into deep depression. There are mysteries -- what is Lowell doing? Why did Fern have to leave? What will Rose do with her life? The narrative returns to Davis, and more wild adventures with Harlow and other inhabitants of her apartment building including its eccentric supervisor (who, like most men it seems, is instantly smitten with Harlow) and her roommates, and of course Madame Defarge, an antique ventriloquist doll who was in the wrong suitcase the airplane sent Rose.

I don't need to tell more of the story. My telling makes it seem potentially terribly depressing, and it's not that at all. The narrative voice is snarky and energetic, and the book is sometimes quite funny and always involving. Yet it is moving and, really, heartbreaking. Lowell's anger, and Rose's fear and guilt and loneliness, and their parents different ways of retreat, are depicted precisely. It's very intelligent, and very engaged -- it has a point to make, and makes it compellingly, about humans and animals and our cruel relationship to them. The characters all live -- certainly Rose and Lowell and Fern jump off the page. (Fern, of course, is a great jumper, or at least climber!) The revelations are all believable and wrenching. Rose is a girl who has lost both her sister and brother, though neither is dead, and it's about her love, her loneliness -- and an eventual accomodation of sorts. 

The structure is wonderful too -- it's a master class in controlling narrative by means of controlling time. It's not radically nonlinear, but it's cleverly nonlinear. The prose is excellent -- Fowler's control of voice is beautiful, her images are sharp and never cliched. And the reader learns a lot, too -- while having fun! It's one of Fowler's best books, which makes it a very good book indeed.

Review: Apricot Sky, by Ruby Ferguson

Review: Apricot Sky, by Ruby Ferguson

by Rich Horton

Here's another delightful discovery courtesy of Scott Thompson's Furrowed Middlebrow Press (an imprint of Dean Street Books.) Ruby Ferguson (1899-1966) is best known for one adult novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary (1937), and for a series of children's books about a girl named Jill and her ponies. Her full name at birth was Ruby Constance Annie Ashby, and her first several novels were published as by R. C. Ashby, and seem to be mysteries. She got married in 1934, and her first novel under her married name was Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, which was a bestseller and apparently admired by the (then) Queen Mother. She published novels for adults and children until her death.

Apricot Sky (1952) joins Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary as the only ones of her adult books now in print. The latter was reprinted by Persephone in 2004, and this book by Furrowed Middlebrow in 2021. It comes with enthusiastic recommendations from Scott Thompson (of course) but also Charles Litka, in a comment on this blog. And I have to say it met the expectations thus raised.

It's set in Scotland, as is Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, and both books are rapturous about that country, though Ferguson was an Englishwoman, albeit born in North Yorkshire. The main viewpoint character is Cleo MacAlvey, who is, in 1948, just returning home after spending three years in the U.S. Her younger sister Raine is engaged to be married, to Ian Garvine, whose slightly elder brother Neil is the Larrich -- that is, the head of an important local family. Cleo is in love with Neil, though Neil seems entirely unaware of that, and in fact a very beautiful local widow, Inga Duthie, seems to have set her sights on him. That's the romantic plot, such as it is, of the novel. But really the novel is hardly about romance it all. Instead, it's a story about family life in postwar Scotland. Besides Raine, Cleo has a brother, James, who has married a rather neurotic and unpleasant woman named Trina. The other two MacAlvey brothers died in the War, and they left three children, Gavin, Primrose, and Archie, ages ranging between 10 and 15, to be raised by their grandparents.

The point of view shifts between Cleo and Mrs. MacAlvey and the children, primarily. Over the summer we see the children having fun -- sailing by themselves to the nearby islands with their friend Gull (who has a neat secret of her own), and unenthusiastically putting up with their cousins, James' children Armitage and Angela, as well as the prissy and snobby more distant cousins Cecil and Elinore. We see Cleo and Raine looking for dresses and receiving Raine's wedding gifts and making plans for remodeling the Garvine place. Cleo gets a few chances to be with Neil Garvine and (in her view) blows every one with her tongue-tiedness. Mrs. MacAlvey fusses over her garden and worries about wedding plans and her various visitors, such as Mrs. Leigh, still apparently recovering from an operation which only bothers her when convenient. The arc points ever towards the end of summer, and Raine's wedding, and children returning to school, and Cleo's future ... whatever that might be. A new job? Caring for her parents as they age? or ... ?

I trust the above implies there isn't really much plot -- because there isn't. What there is is loving description of ordinary life in the Scottish coastal Highlands. (Admittedly, ordinary life among a fairly privileged family.) And throughout the novel is very funny. Some of it is gentle light humor, some is snarky (mainly the depictions of the visiting children, and of Trina,) and some is downright (if quietly still) uproarious. There is one glorious passage when Mrs. MacAlvey needs to make conversation with a chance visitor, one Mr. Trossach, who fancies himself an avant-garde writer, and is concerned about Mrs. MacAlvey's reception of his recently broadcast radio play, and who insiste on telling her the plot of his new novel. There is Raine and Cleo deciding to throw an ugly stone wedding present from an old relation into the river, and being surprise by the police in the act. Or there is Mr. and Mrs. MacAlvey's visit to Laird and Lady Keith -- where at least you won't get a sore throat from having to talk to much.

What more can I say? Is this somewhat fluffy? Well, sure (though grounded by what seems quite real portrayal of life.) Is the plot terribly thin, and resolved abruptly and conveniently? Again, sure, but that's not the point! Apricot Sky is a purely enjoyable novel, and as sweetly funny as anything I've read in some time.