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lizshayne 's review for:
The Fated Sky
by Mary Robinette Kowal
I had a hard time putting this book down (which, incidentally, might not be what one wants in a book on Yom Kippur night when one ought to be going to bed) and I feel like there's a lot to talk about in terms of what this book DOES and is trying to do and how I feel about it and Elma and...
Okay, Kowal's at her best when she's meticulously crafting alternate universes. This is true in all her books and no different here. The what-if? scenario that she plays out across these books and stories is ridiculous in its depth and breadth.
What always gets me with Kowal--less in her short stories, more in her novels--is her voice. The attention to detail is there; word choices are informed by life experiences, but there is an absence that goes beyond word usage to...fluency, maybe? The inside of Elma's mind feels like belongs in 2018 and not the 1950s. (The same is true for Kowal's other universes, but the closer they actually ARE to 2018, the less I mind...and the less familiar I am with the era, the less it registers. See "why I don't read Austen books".)
This meant, first of all, that I was trying to figure out whether Elma's attitudes towards race, class, sexual orientation, etc. were a) of 2018, but set in 1950s in a way that doesn't reflect what people were "like" b) appropriate to the alternate timeline, given the effects of the Meteor on global cooperation, c) appropriate to both 2018 and 1950s and, as such, a searing indictment of how little we've improved matters. My sense is a combination of b and c; she doesn't feel out of place, but there's also an AU sense that the world has more space for the other characters to speak up and be heard not only by the people already listening, but also by the ones just learning to.
But the sense of "does this fit?" spills over into my feelings about Elma's Jewishness. I honestly could not be more thrilled that Elma is Jewish--I love that she exists, I love that she just happens to be Jewish, I recognize that this is what most people mean when they say they want representation and that's amazing!* But because there is a kind of niche knowledge here, and because Kowal has done astounding amounts of research, I keep trying to fit Elma into my knowledge of 20th century Jews and she just doesn't fit. I feel like I know where she fits in the 21st century, with the revival of Jewish ritual as a method of meaning making and where non-observant Jews are using specific observances as a form of connection. But most of the people I know from the 50s and 60s were either the kind of people who were not particularly strict about kashrut OR the kind of people who could conjugate שנה טובה תכתבי ותחתמי. Heck, most Orthodox Jews I know wouldn't manage that on the first try. I want to understand what kind of Jewish woman Elma thinks of herself as. Did she go to synagogue? Was there a mechitzah? What is her relationship with kashrut other than "I try to avoid pig"? It's possible that what I'm running into is the limits of my own knowledge about the history of Judaism in the US (which, yes, is limited)...but which also gets to my point that the lived experience of Jews in the US is not the same as possessing knowledge about one's own religion. What turns up in research is different that what I know by living and my lived experience is obviously not comprehensive and, in some ways, I'm assuming it's my lack of experience because anyone is possible. What do you do when the research feels like it outstrips the knowledge available to the character?
Representation is tricky, because the closer it hits to home, the more it can fall into the uncanny valley. I'm not sure it helped or hurt that I am less interested in Jewish characters than Jewish stories (see footnote).
Anyway, these were delightful and clever books and it's clear that they are the books that will bring deep joy to many readers. The fact that they are not written for me can't take away from that.
---
*I think Jewish characters are neat. I want Jewish stories. I'm more interested in secondary worlds based on Jewish traditional stories than I am in SF with people who happen to Jewish. I want stories grounded in midrash, and aggadah and the tales of the shtetl and actual characters from tanakh because I am SO. Very. Tired. of every story being a Jesus story. This is a personal preference and I wish VERY BADLY that there were enough books out there that I could pick and choose the ones I wanted.
Okay, Kowal's at her best when she's meticulously crafting alternate universes. This is true in all her books and no different here. The what-if? scenario that she plays out across these books and stories is ridiculous in its depth and breadth.
What always gets me with Kowal--less in her short stories, more in her novels--is her voice. The attention to detail is there; word choices are informed by life experiences, but there is an absence that goes beyond word usage to...fluency, maybe? The inside of Elma's mind feels like belongs in 2018 and not the 1950s. (The same is true for Kowal's other universes, but the closer they actually ARE to 2018, the less I mind...and the less familiar I am with the era, the less it registers. See "why I don't read Austen books".)
This meant, first of all, that I was trying to figure out whether Elma's attitudes towards race, class, sexual orientation, etc. were a) of 2018, but set in 1950s in a way that doesn't reflect what people were "like" b) appropriate to the alternate timeline, given the effects of the Meteor on global cooperation, c) appropriate to both 2018 and 1950s and, as such, a searing indictment of how little we've improved matters. My sense is a combination of b and c; she doesn't feel out of place, but there's also an AU sense that the world has more space for the other characters to speak up and be heard not only by the people already listening, but also by the ones just learning to.
But the sense of "does this fit?" spills over into my feelings about Elma's Jewishness. I honestly could not be more thrilled that Elma is Jewish--I love that she exists, I love that she just happens to be Jewish, I recognize that this is what most people mean when they say they want representation and that's amazing!* But because there is a kind of niche knowledge here, and because Kowal has done astounding amounts of research, I keep trying to fit Elma into my knowledge of 20th century Jews and she just doesn't fit. I feel like I know where she fits in the 21st century, with the revival of Jewish ritual as a method of meaning making and where non-observant Jews are using specific observances as a form of connection. But most of the people I know from the 50s and 60s were either the kind of people who were not particularly strict about kashrut OR the kind of people who could conjugate שנה טובה תכתבי ותחתמי. Heck, most Orthodox Jews I know wouldn't manage that on the first try. I want to understand what kind of Jewish woman Elma thinks of herself as. Did she go to synagogue? Was there a mechitzah? What is her relationship with kashrut other than "I try to avoid pig"? It's possible that what I'm running into is the limits of my own knowledge about the history of Judaism in the US (which, yes, is limited)...but which also gets to my point that the lived experience of Jews in the US is not the same as possessing knowledge about one's own religion. What turns up in research is different that what I know by living and my lived experience is obviously not comprehensive and, in some ways, I'm assuming it's my lack of experience because anyone is possible. What do you do when the research feels like it outstrips the knowledge available to the character?
Representation is tricky, because the closer it hits to home, the more it can fall into the uncanny valley. I'm not sure it helped or hurt that I am less interested in Jewish characters than Jewish stories (see footnote).
Anyway, these were delightful and clever books and it's clear that they are the books that will bring deep joy to many readers. The fact that they are not written for me can't take away from that.
---
*I think Jewish characters are neat. I want Jewish stories. I'm more interested in secondary worlds based on Jewish traditional stories than I am in SF with people who happen to Jewish. I want stories grounded in midrash, and aggadah and the tales of the shtetl and actual characters from tanakh because I am SO. Very. Tired. of every story being a Jesus story. This is a personal preference and I wish VERY BADLY that there were enough books out there that I could pick and choose the ones I wanted.