octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

The more I read of this series, the more I like it. It's partially that this second volume is more streamlined, in that it seems to have fewer moving parts and therefore flows a little more easily (at least it seems that way to me). Mostly, though, it's the clear and firm attachment to the city of Marseilles and the people who live in it. When I say "the people," I'm referring primarily to the immigrant communities that are Izzo's focus. His primary concern is how alienation and economic disadvantage contributes to criminal activity and religious fundamentalism, and his approach - through the protagonist Fabio Montale - is so humane, and so generally thoughtful and compassionate that the ongoing violence comes across as sad endurance more than anything else. And wasteful as well, as people are ground down due to circumstance, racism, and corruption directed at them both by their own communities and by the state.

And throughout this, there is Marseilles. A melting pot centuries in the making, trying to find its identity within an ever more connected Europe. The love and exhaustion that Izzo has for his city shines through, and it's just very appealing to read... both depressing and hopeful and incisive at once. I'm just very impressed by it. 

As always with the Blish adaptations, these are quick, workmanlike retellings of the original episodes. They mostly work, I think, as reminders of those episodes, with the odd unusual addition. For instance, in one of the episodes collected here, "Bread and Circuses," Blish persists in his use of the phrase "space karate" (and every time I read it I wondered how space karate differed from actual karate... especially as it was actually performed on a planet, and not in any sort of antigravity environment). Which is a picky observation but it caught my attention even so.

Of the six episodes collected here, the most interesting is "Plato's Stepchildren," I think: famous of course for the Kirk/Uhura kiss, the first interracial kiss on television, if I recall rightly. I certainly remember watching that episode more than I do the others; I didn't recall a single thing about "Wink of an Eye" when reading it, which may mean it's time to rewatch the series. 

This is probably as close as one of these novels has come to getting four stars from me. Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying reading the series - the central friendship is excellently done - but once I've finished it I probably won't pick it up again. It's not that it's badly written, because it isn't. They're extremely well-written and well-researched books. I just cannot make myself all that interested in the sea-going part of it. The first half of this book is a case in point: sea battles, sea travel, and it was all very slow and I didn't care that much. Then Aubrey and Maturin arrived in Australia, and what with the natural history and the political conflict and the really cynical view of Australian colonisation, the book improved out of sight. Had the second half been all of it, I would definitely have given it four stars, but that first half... I'm sorry, it's just a wee bit boring. It's a boat. It floats. Move on.

Towards the very end, I was almost hoping for a blow-up. As much as I enjoy that central friendship, Maturin (who will always be my favourite) and Aubrey have different goals and different priorities. For half a minute, it looked as if they were going to fall out and the book would end on a cliffhanger, and honestly I was here for it. Then a venomous playtpus spoiled my suspicions. But, you know, it's a venomous playtpus and so I couldn't be wholly disappointed. I'm glad the library has the whole series, because I'm ready for the next book. 

I must confess to an ungenerous impulse: perhaps one must be trapped in a fundamentalist state in order to appreciate Lolita. I know that's untrue, as I've a writer friend from America who thinks it's marvelous, but I would have to be desperately bored in order to inflict that mosquito whine of selfishness on myself again. Give me Jane Austen over Nabokov any day. 

If you're Nafisi, of course, you can enjoy both. And you know what, good for her. Not every book will appeal to every reader in the same way. The ability to read any book, though... that's critical. Not just to individual development, but to cultural survival. I'm not talking about the survival of the book, either: any society that's so desperate to purge itself of argument that it restricts access to literature will one day fail. I don't have faith in much, generally, but I do have faith in that. And so when Nafisi, expelled from her university position due to her refusal to wear the veil, continues to teach, it has to be at a smaller scale. Young women, wanting to learn, turning up at her home, transforming tutorship and book clubs into understanding... of stories, of their country, and of themselves. I'd like to think that in their position I'd be doing the same. (I'm not entirely sure that I would. I have a horrible feeling I'd be more likely to withdraw, as the magician does, if I couldn't get the hell out of the country and not ever go back.)

Wherever all the women in this book are now, I hope there are libraries. I hope that those libraries are open to them, and that they can read whatever they want there. We're all poorer for it if they can't. 

This was great - one of those sci-fi novels that masquerades as general fiction, almost. It's set in a future apartment building (admittedly, the future it's set in is now, but then this was written back in the 1970s, I believe), and the actions of the individuals and families in the building are presented in an almost mosaic form. There's no real overarching plot, and the different chapters, some of which essentially work as short stories, can sometimes be only marginally related to each other. It's also fairly dystopian: one of those imagined futures where rationing (of everything from housing to babies) is one of the cornerstones of society.

That's where most of the genre elements stop, to be honest. The people who inhabit the building are working class people in public housing, and the resulting storylines are highly domestic: kids so bored they're causing mayhem, family arguments over which school to send a particular child to, an elderly lady who develops a crush on her social worker, the practice and refusal of eviction. I think if you had to actually live with any of these people they'd drive you round the bend, but the point is that they're ordinary, so ordinary that driving round the bend is inescapable, and will be so no matter who they (or any of us) live with. As I said, there's not a great deal that actually happens, but the whole of it's still so entertainingly lively that I don't much care. The first chapter, particularly - it's about a feckless young man throwing away opportunity after opportunity because he's lazy and not very clever - is especially well-drawn.

I'm tempted to get a copy of my own once this is back in the library. Or at least find more by this author to read, because this felt fresh and likeable, even if it's fifty years old at this point. 

Having been restored to his position as Naval captain, Aubrey's sent off to the South China Sea, ferrying a persnickety diplomat in order to secure a treaty. Maturin's along for the ride, with his own instructions for intelligence work. While it's generally interesting, the high point for me was the latter's excursion to a temple, where he was able to indulge his interest in natural history... observing orangutans, and that sort of thing. That was a genuinely enjoyable hiatus, of sorts, within the rest of the novel, which in pretty much every other respect was rather slow. I don't know if this volume, number thirteen as I recall, has the least appealing pacing in the series thus far, but if it doesn't it's close to it. It felt very slow, especially in comparison to the past couple of books in the series.

Fox, the ferried-about diplomat, is an interesting side character though. He's not especially likeable, and indeed he manages to put off pretty much every character who has the misfortune to spend time with him. Nonetheless, he's still competent, if potentially a little unstable and completely tone-deaf to how he comes across to the people he considers underlings. The ending's somewhat ambiguous regarding him - I don't know if I'd be sorry if he died at sea or not. As irritating as he is, he did seem to give a small jolt to the plot, and the pacing, whenever he appeared, and maybe that's reason enough to keep him around for a bit. 

I remember seeing the (excellent) film of this when it came out, and I made a note back then to read the book one day. It's been years, but I've finally done it. No surprise that it's more informative than the film - at a densely packed 300+ pages it can hardly help being so - and it took a while for me to get through it. There's just so much information here, and I kept stopping reading to go to the internet and look things up, which, honestly, is the mark of an interesting story as far as I'm concerned.

There's a note towards the back, from the author, which comments that the women described here are not so much hidden figures as unseen ones. In the history of science they are not alone in that, unfortunately. The visibility of books like this, though, and the subsequent movement of its subjects from unseen to seen can only be a boon in the democratisation of science. Scientists aren't a monolith. They need to be diverse, not only in order to ensure that everyone has a chance to practice science, but to ensure that science isn't held back by the refusal to include intelligent people regardless of gender or race. Think of how much further we'd be ahead if so many people, through history, hadn't been barred from full contribution and their own individual potential!

Fascinating book. I read an ebook edition from the public library, though, and I wish it had included photographs. Did the print editions? I don't know, but it could have used them. 

I have to admit that my reaction to this short collection was very mixed. Of the eight stories collected here, I had only a mild interest in the first six. In one case, "mild interest" is stretching it: "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is frankly interminable. There aren't many short stories where I flip ahead to see how many pages are left and groan, but that one managed it. Don't get me wrong, some of the ideas in these six stories were genuinely compelling - particularly the attempt to rewrite Don Quixote in "Pierre Menard" - but the treatments of those ideas were often too removed, or too dry, for me to really appreciate them. Having heard wonderful things of Borges, but never having read him before, I was mildly horrified to realise I was likely going to award this collection two stars.

But then! But then! The last two stories. They are wonderful. "The Library of Babel" particularly. It still has that sense of removal, but I'm so fascinated by the concept that I just don't care. And the title story manages, for once, to inject some sense of emotion into the collection... or at least, emotion that isn't wonder, evoked by the previous "Library." I would be sincerely delighted never to have to slog through the philosophical swamps of the Tlon story again, but "The Library of Babel" is going straight onto my list of short favourites. Together with "Paths," it drags the book's rating up to four stars, and glad I was to give it. 

Stories about disaffected cops who turn their backs on their careers due to institutional corruption aren't uncommon. This one stands out, however - albeit not, perhaps, for character. There's a vast cast here for a relatively short book, and Fabio Montale, the detective protagonist, is distantly likable, even if he doesn't have much of a personality. Or if he does, it's sketched out: not absent, exactly, but the one great force of personality depicted in Total Chaos doesn't belong to a person. Rather, it's the city of Marseilles itself that looms over the narrative. I've never been there. I'm not familiar with the politics of the place, but the city that Izzo depicts is messy and lovely and violent, a city of historic and contemporary immigration, of poverty and distrust and racism, the burgeoning influence of the National Front. Picking his way through this is Montale, and his inability to deal with the reality of Marseilles as a cop, or as a friend, is at breaking point. 

It's grim reading, but I find myself caring less about the solution to the various murders than I do the evolution of the city itself, and how the various communities there adapt to the constant change and economic uncertainty that change brings. Montale is basically a placeholder (and I use the word deliberately) for exploring the social setting of Marseilles, and I find myself perfectly fine with that, less interested in him than in where he lives. 

Slight, mildly funny story that - according to a Goodreads review I read of it - had the ending slightly changed for publication. Apparently, the simple, dangerous creatures referred to were meant to be references to Ronald Reagan, which might have given some sense of punch to the ending. As is, it just peters out a little. 

I don't know if that little piece of literary history is true or not, but the possibility of it is the most interesting thing about this short.