Unlike the majority of the other reviews on Goodreads for this book, I did not receive this as a NetGalley preview, so I did read 400 pages of adventure following the Tenth Doctor and the mysterious adversary the Advocate. As with my recent experience with a tie-in novel, I don’t ordinarily go for tie-in graphic novels. This was, again, a Christmas present.

I enjoyed Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End more than Engines of War. Maybe it’s the fact that, with pictures, we get to see more of the physicality of the Doctor come to life. This is a collection of 16 issues told over 6 chapters, the upshot being that it’s a hodgepodge of artists and writers. I liked a couple of the renditions of David Tennant but not all of them. However, the layout is extremely nice across every issue. The artists and writers make full use of the way the comic medium can draw attention to certain details or minimize others. Each page is carefully balanced; each panel conveys just the right amount of information. At times the speech bubbles struggle to contain the Doctor’s verbosity.

The first three chapters comprise the majority of the book. The Tenth Doctor is fresh from saving all the universes with the help of Donna—and fresh from the pain of losing her. (Donna is one of my favourite companions, and to me her loss is harsher even than death … because it’s like she never even got to travel with the Doctor. I’m still upset with RTD for doing that to her.) He stumbles onto a mysterious device in 1926, ends up on “trial” before the Shadow Proclamation, does lots and lots of running, takes on some companions, and bounces around time and space trying to foil the plans of the Advocate.

As far as Doctor Who stories go, it is fairly standard—almost slavishly so, one might say. The writers seem hellbent on paying tribute to any number of past stories and situations. The Advocate is a manipulator bent on playing mind games with the Doctor in the same vein as the Master or the Black Guardian. Matthew is overtly likened to Turlough numerous times. We get to revisit Martha and UNIT (which is a lot of fun), various weak-willed humans betray their species to sweet-talking aliens only to discover a change of heart and sacrifice themselves for the Doctor, and generally we get reminded that the Doctor inspires a lot of people to get hurt. And he’s very, very sorry about that.

Coming to this now, just as Peter Capaldi is about to start his second season as the Twelfth Doctor, evokes a certain nostalgia. This story is very much Tenth Doctor, in that it has his characteristic softness as well as his characteristic anger at injustice. He delivers some passionate invective against the use of weapons and force, and he shows us that almost irresponsible, joyful appreciation of the chaotic wonders of the cosmos. And underlying it all is the tragedy of the Tenth Doctor’s companions. He just can’t catch a break with them, and it’s really damaging his relationship with people in general.

(Just as I resent the way RTD wrote out Donna, what’s up in general with the way companions in the new series get written out so … dramatically? Martha is the only companion who has really just walked away, and not without considerable psychic baggage of her own. But the whole thing with Amy and Rory was just stupid. Anyway, I digress.)

So as a reader who considers the Tenth Doctor my Doctor, Winter’s Dawn, Season’s End creates all sorts of warm, bubbly feelings inside me. I appreciated and cherished every moment with this book … even though, objectively, the story is derivative and fairly lacklustre. I think this will not be a surprising sentiment to my fellow fans: Doctor Who has had some excellent storytelling, but fandom has never been about appreciating the show for its stories. We have stuck with Doctor Who through good and bad and terrible; we muddle along when the show does because we love the Doctor and the TARDIS and all the amazing companions who make those two even more amazing. The stories, really, are just there to give the characters something to do.

The back end of the collection is the 2010 Annual, which seems to be three very short, somewhat whimsical stories with little in the way of plot. I sped through them, shrugged, and flipped back through the earlier chapters quickly before sitting down to the write this review.

While I’m not going to become a collector or a regular reader of Doctor Who comics or graphic novels, this collection was a nice change of pace from what I usually read, and some welcome time with the Tenth Doctor. It’s more fun than good, if you know what I mean—and if you don’t, just move along. You have plenty other Doctors and adventures to enjoy.

I’m very ambivalent about this book. Skinny Legs and All is a dense, intricate spiral of a story with funny characters but serious messages. However, Tom Robbins’ style grates on me a little bit. There’s nothing egregious about it, but maybe I’m just getting less patient with purpler prose as I approach the ripe old age of 26. In any event, I appreciate and respect this book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I wanted to.

Skinny Legs and All follows Ellen Cherry Charles, a small-town Virginian woman, as she grows older and wiser in New York City. Owing to her crazy fundamentalist uncle and estranged art-nouveau husband, not to mention her employment at a restaurant owned by an Arab and a Jew, Ellen finds herself adjacent to all sorts of events related to the tension in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine.

It’s also about a Dirty Sock, Can of Beans, and Dessert Spoon who join up with an ancient Painted Stick and Conch Shell to make their way to Jerusalem and await the coming of the Third Temple.

There’s a great deal of allusion here, Biblical and otherwise, and it’s easy to get lost down the rabbithole. The plot doesn’t move forwards so much as spiral around and around the drain. The main focus seems to be on Ellen’s struggle to redefine herself after separating from Boomer. She was supposed to be the artist, the hip and trendy participant in New York’s cultural scenes. Then Boomer, the welder who couldn’t see the point in art, suddenly finds himself caught in the maelstrom, while Ellen watches from the sidelines and finds her own inspiration and direction drying up.

Meanwhile, the anthropomorphized household articles are on a quest of their own, in a sideplot that is so bizarre I can’t do it justice. Ultimately I’m not sure it ever really comes to fruition—it’s fun, I guess, but it never held my attention for too long. I feel like Robbins is just having fun riffing off these characters he created, while also playing around in the sandbox of Middle Eastern history and mythology. And if that’s what he wanted to do, fair enough.

As far as the commentary on the Middle East goes: this novel predates September 11, 2001. I couldn’t help but fixate on this fact and wonder how it would be different if Robbins had written it ten years later. There is an atmosphere of optimism even amidst all the strange and sometimes upsetting things that happen, as if Robbins believes that humanity might possibly just manage to muddle through this all. The Middle East is an appropriate focal point for exploring our species’ foibles because of how it is the birthplace both of Abrahamic religions and so much strife in the contemporary world—how can a place named for peace be the centre of so much conflict? This contradiction proves to drive the most interesting moments of the book.

Yet for all its intensive soul-searching and intriguing commentary on religion, Skinny Legs and All strikes me as ultimately a disappointing and empty book. It’s nearly five-hundred pages of rumination on why humans band together with common beliefs and then proceed to be massive dicks to the rest of humanity. And none of what Robbins says about religion is really all that original or thoughtful—he says it very well, of course, but if you’ve read any critiques of or apologies for organized religion, you’re already going to be familiar with these themes.

What redeems the book, if anything, is Ellen. I enjoyed reading about her, sympathizing with her, and even being annoyed with her sometimes. Robbins gives Ellen sexual agency in a way that many male authors fail to do with their women characters—Ellen has a healthy internal and external sex life. The sexuality of women and the way our society and religions police it is one of the pillars of Robbins’ critique of organized religion, of course—hence the allusions to Jezebel and Salome and the veil dance that comprises the entire structure of the narrative. Whereas I wasn’t that impressed by the overall commentary on religions, I did appreciate this facet.

This is the third in a trio of books lent to me by a friend (Gould’s Book of Fish and Sweet and Vicious being the other two). I think I enjoyed the ride that was Sweet and Vicious most, but Skinny Legs and All is probably the best book of the three. Although it took too long to read for what little reward I got from it, I can still appreciate. For me this book is an example of how literature is like art—sometimes you know something is important, even though it doesn’t really speak to you on an emotional level. It’s intellectually satisfying, even though viscerally you’re left wanting something else, something different. This won’t be everyone’s reaction, of course, and I’m sure there are plenty of Robbins fans out there who love this book to pieces. I’m just not one of them.

Normally when I love a book, I inhale it, reading it so quickly that it’s gone before I realize how much I should cherish this unique experience of reading it for the first time. It took me a little longer than normal to read The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, enough that I started to savour it. Each brief, cleverly-named chapter was a small episode in the life of Nouschka Tremblay. And it was perfect, for I did indeed love this book.

I loved Heather O’Neill’s first novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals. I read it the summer I first joined Goodreads, and it was my second favourite book of the year. Now The Girl Who Was Saturday Night will be joining it on my favourites shelf, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes an appearance on this year’s best 10 books. Because Heather O’Neill has done it again: she’s bottled lightning twice.

Whereas Baby, the protagonist from Lullabies for Little Criminals, was just on the cusp of adolescence, Nouschka is just on the cusp of adulthood. Nineteen turning twenty, she should be independent or nearly so. But she is anchored to this small, impoverished, impersonal yet intimate Montréal street through her twin brother and her grandfather. Her identity is boxed in by the tabloids and documentarians who recall the days she spent appearing on TV with her chansonnier father, Étienne. Her need to make a connection lands her with the most outrageous husband and a marriage that is properly bizarre for fiction but likely accurate for real life.

It’s this way that O’Neill captures the bizarre layers of our life almost photorealistically that appeals to me. She depicts the struggles that Nouschka faces, but unlike many novelists, she does not glamourize or even dwell on them. There’s a latent current of humour running throughout the book (so many cats, so much Anglo-bashing!), but there are also moments of quiet seriousness. O’Neill neither makes light of Nouschka’s troubles nor exaggerates them; they simply are, and it’s the people and circumstances in her life that are absurd by comparison.

Many of the characters in this book are also studies in how to write a sympathetic but unlikable character. Nouschka herself arguably falls into this category (though I like her!). Raphael is the prime example. He has a tragic quality; I can see why Nouschka was drawn to him. She’s smart enough to realize that she can’t actually fix him, and that she has to leave him at some point—but she’s also enough in love with him to go along with his craziness just slightly more than another person might. Ultimately, O’Neill uses Nouschka to do what most people refuse to do: interact with the person suffering from a serious mental illness instead of trying to interact with their condition.

These issues of identity, and identity politics, suffuse the novel. The story takes place during the second Québec referendum (1995), and Nouschka gives us a very Québécois perspective on something that many Canadians will only be familiar with through the lens of news media. Though The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is “CanLit” that ended up being shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, it certainly feels less like a Canadian novel and more like a Québécois novel (not that I have much experience with those). Despite the novel being in English, it’s implied that the characters speak and think primarily in French. By playing with the language in this twisted way, O’Neill gets to have some fun meditating on the different ways French- and English-speaking Canadians think and act.

O’Neill just depicts everything with such a beautiful sensitivity. She doesn’t sugar-coat things, but she also puts that sympathetic light on people like Nicolas and Nouschka and even Raphael, who might otherwise seem like jerks and assholes for the way they act. You want things to work out for these people. I agreed with Loulou when he tried to stop Nouschka from marrying Raphael, and I knew it wouldn’t work out well—but I couldn’t stop myself from hoping that maybe I would be wrong, maybe something would work out. In the end what happens is what happens so often in real life—something stupid and tragic and irrevocable, but also something you have no choice but to move on from and keep on living afterwards. Unlike a story, life does not always end after tragedy—and it’s that weird, anticlimactic part of life that O’Neill captures here. Whether it’s the day after the province voted “Non” or the day after something else, life goes on … just always different from before.

In the end the story is nothing super special. It’s the consummate storytelling skill that transforms The Girl Who Was Saturday Night into something far more sublime and amazing. I can understand how some could feel that O’Neill overdoes the similes or the asides (but you ain’t seen nothing if you think this is overdone). For me, though, the prose is a perfect alchemical mix of description that leads to introspection. This is a quiet novel, a slow novel, and a wonderful novel. If I didn’t already own it, I’d want to take it home with me and put it on my shelf. Considered altogether, it’s just a lovely package of story and character and craft: the exhilaration of anguish and terrible foreboding of joy.

After my pre-ordered copy of Furiously Happy arrived in the mail last week, I went looking for my copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. I wanted to tweet a photo of the two books together—Jenny Lawson now has a running theme of taxidermied animals on her book covers; I think she should stick with it. The copy of her first book was not on my bookshelf under “L.” I briefly pondered if I had lent it to someone, as I am wont to do with books I love (I keep meaning to start some kind of spreadsheet, but laziness, am I right?). No, I hadn’t lent it to anyone.

Turns out I don’t actually own a copy of Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. I have bought it several times over—but as a gift. It’s one of those books I just keep giving (to different people, not the same person, because that would be weird) because I know a lot of people who would appreciate the Bloggess’ humour, even if they don’t realize it themselves. And because that metal chicken will cut you.

Ordering Furiously Happy the moment I learned Lawson had another book on the way was a no-brainer. I actually ordered two, knowing I’d give the second copy to a friend. Whereas her first book is mostly a collection of blog posts and assorted musings, with particular focus, as a memoir might, on Lawson’s childhood and upbrining, Furiously Happy focuses more on living with mental illness. It features both direct and indirect confrontations with this demon—there are many stories about Lawson’s visits to therapists, arguments with her long-suffering husband Victor, and the difficulties that her depression, anxiety, etc., create in her daily life. However, there are also more meandering stories. She talks about her trip to Australia, where she stood next to a koala while dressed as a koala. She talks about her experience as a parent. This is a book about living with mental illness, yes, but it would be just as accurate to say that this is a book about living in general.

Because the truth that we are only now starting to acknowledge is that mental illness is more common than we want to think. Those who have it don’t always want to talk about it, because those who don’t shame them, blame them, or otherwise refuse to offer empathy when a cold shoulder will do. In the work-obsessed American society, mental illness is more synonymous with laziness and malingering than actual disease. Lawson demonstrates the harmfulness of this idea very early in the book (she actually quotes her own blog post that inspired the title of this book):

When cancer sufferers fight, recover, and go into remission we laud their bravery. We call them survivors. Because they are.

When depression sufferers fight, recover and go into remission we seldom even know, simply because so many suffer in the dark…ashamed to admit something they see as a personal weakness…afraid that people will worry, and more afraid that they won’t. We find ourselves unable to do anything but cling to the couch and force ourselves to breathe.

She returns to the cancer analogy later when she discusses her complicated relationship with medication:

Lots of concerned friends and family felt that the first medication’s failure was a clear sign that drugs were not the answer; if they were I would have been fixed. Clearly I wasn’t as sick as I said I was if the medication didn’t work for me. And that sort of makes sense, because when you have cancer the doctor gives you the best medicine and if it doesn’t shrink the tumor immediately then that’s a pretty clear sign you were just faking it for attention. I mean, cancer is a serious, often fatal disease we’ve spent billions of dollars studying and treating so obviously a patient would never have to try multiple drugs, surgeries, radiation, etc., to find what will work specifically for them. And once the cancer sufferer is in remission they’re set for life because once they’ve learned how to not have cancer they should be good. And if they let themselves get cancer again they can just do whatever they did last time. Once you find the right cancer medication you’re pretty much immune from that disease forever. And if you get it again it’s probably just a reaction to too much gluten or not praying correctly. Right?

Leaving aside the bizarre and scary fact that many people apply precisely this logic to cancer treatment (Chemo not working? Let’s try homeopathy! And prayer! Ummmm…), I love the way Lawson frames the issue here. I have not yet experienced mental illness in my life. I’m thankful for that. And I like to think I’m generally open and capable of empathy for people who do struggle with mental illness. But because I don’t really know what it’s like, and because I live in a culture that stigmatizes mental illness and those who suffer from it, I have a lot of internalized crap to deal with. It’s much the same as how, not being a woman and living in a sexist culture, I’ve internalized a lot of sexist views even if I consider myself an ally. Because I don’t, all my idiosyncrasies and distaste for certain social niceties aside, exhibit “craziness,” I have privilege. And that blinds me sometimes.

As I read Lawson’s metaphorical explanation of the common attitude towards medicating mental illness, I started to realize this was one of my blind spots. I had fallen into the trap of believing the binary narrative that drugs either work or don’t work, that we just over-medicate because it’s easier and more profitable for pharmaceutical companies. As with most things in life, the issue is just not that simple. It’s true that pharmaceutical companies don’t play fair. And it’s true that drugs alone can’t “fix” someone suffering from mental illness. But Lawson reminds us what we already understand: our brains are our most complicated organ, so the idea that we might treat their ailments in a simplistic way is facile.

So I appreciate the perspective that Furiously Happy offers me. As Lawson points out early in the book, her experience is not every person’s experience with mental illness. I get that. But whereas many of her fans are drawn to her through a kindred feeling of “getting it,” I’m drawn to her for two reasons. Firstly, she is hella funny. She’s a great writer, a great storyteller, and exhibits a keen sense of whimsy. Secondly, she is willing to share her story. Some people aren’t. Wanting to be more understanding of how people deal with mental illness doesn’t give one the freedom to pry into someone’s life—I do have friends who struggle with mental illness, and some are open about it while others aren’t. Wanting to be sympathetic doesn’t mean I can demand raw details from them. So I am grateful for people like Lawson who have the ability and desire to speak out about their struggles.

It’s natural to want to compare Furiously Happy with Let’s Pretend This Never Happened and rank them. For the sake of discussion I’ll say that I liked the first book better, in that I laughed out loud more often at more of her stories. I don’t necessarily think that means the first book is a better book, if that makes any sense. If you like either book you’ll like the other one, and you can also read them in either order. As far as I’m concerned, more Bloggess writing in the world is just better.

In the spirit of the Bloggess, here are some blurbs I might offer up about this book. You are welcome to use any of these in future printings, Ms. Lawson!

“Delightful, poignant, brave.”

“Inspirational, memorable, jaw-breakingly funny.”

“It was difficult to read this in public. People kept coming up to me and high-fiving the raccoon on the cover.”

“My lungs exploded with laughter. Literally. I’m typing this in the hospital, where I’m on a ventilator. I’m not letting them pull the plug until I finish the book.”

“Now that Amazon uses drones to deliver orders, does that mean I could bomb ISIS-controlled areas with this book? Because that might be more effective.”

“Worst fanfiction ever. There was hardly any street-racing, and since when was Dominic a raccoon? Zero stars.”

(Some of the blurbs may not be factually accurate.)

Seriously, not even sure why you’re still reading my review. Just read this book instead.

Probably should have put that last paragraph at the start of my review. Oh well, you live and learn.

I want to say that I don’t remember these books being as dark as they seem now, but I think that would be a lie. Young!Ben recognized the darkness—but for me, at that age, that wasn’t even the draw. I was more about the adventure and the heroism of these young characters—the science-fictional elements were really the coolest thing. Now when I read Megamorphs #2: In the Time of the Dinosaurs I’m focusing more on how messed up these situations are.

So in this, our second blockbuster-style Animorphs novel, K.A. Applegate is all, “Oh, you want a longer book with a punchier plot so you can sell it for a couple dollars more and market the hell out of it? OK, then. Be careful what you wish for!” The Animorphs go back in time (again), 65 million years to be (more or less) precise. Indeed, they conveniently arrive just before the comet that triggers the extinction of the dinosaurs hits the Earth. (Well, whether the comet would have hit the Earth if the Animorphs hadn’t shown up is another question.)

It’s worth noting that there is not a Yeerk in sight in this book. The Animorphs go play superhero to help rescue people from a sunk nuclear submarine, and that precipitates their temporal incursion. (There is literally no debate about risking exposure by playing superhero like there has been in the past.) Once thrown back in time through that ol’ pal of theirs, the Sario Rip, the Animorphs scrabble to survive amidst dinosaurs and two alien species fighting for dominance of the planet.

Let’s be perfectly clear here: if I were an Animorph, I would not survive in this book. Can we count the ways I would not survive?

I mean, I always talk about how badass Rachel is, and that’s the common refrain among her friends. But she is literally swallowed by a prehistoric sea creature in this book, demorphs into a human, and then morphs into a grizzly bear to fight her way out of the creature’s stomach. While being dissolved by stomach acid.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Animorphs—who are still, let’s remember, kids—are forced to walk through a prehistoric jungle in bare feet, with just leotards and T-shirts and tight shorts, surviving without any technology or survival gear. I would not survive this. Unless you are Bear Grylls, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you would probably not survive this either. These kids are tough. Ford wishes their trucks were built as tough as these kids.

And that’s just the physical trauma. There’s also plenty of psychological trauma to go around in this book.

Tobias almost eats grizzly Rachel when he morphs a deinonychus.

Cassie gets overpowered by a T-rex morph and freaks out, kills a triceratops, and loses her shit.

Oh, and Tobias and Ax sabotage a nuclear bomb in order to preserve the future, even though it makes them all complicit in wiping out a sentient species that was kind enough to help them obtain the bomb in the first place so they could get back to their own time.

I love that whole doublecross and the way Applegate reveals it. The Mercora show up and ask for the bomb, and Jake asks them for time to make a group decision. The group votes to give them the bomb—and then Tobias reveals what he did. It is a betrayal of everyone. Until now the group has been united in how it proceeds—either by vote or by Jake’s leadership. Tobias acted unilaterally (albeit with assistance from Ax) because he felt it was “the right thing to do.” This was a dangerous, perhaps even reckless act, despite being necessary from the perspective of someone who wants to get back to their own time.

But it has such an element of classical tragedy to it. The whole idea of Tobias taking this guilt on his own shoulders, and the fact that the rest of the Animorphs have to live with the burden of this knowledge. There are definite, if unspoken, comparisons to Yeerk behaviour here. Applegate wants her readers to think about how our decisions affect other lives, and how very often we rationalize something as being “noble” or “right” when in reality it’s just preferable for our survival. Marco is more correct than he knows, earlier in the book, when he speaks the harsh truth about this being a struggle for survival.

Damn, these psychological scars are piling on faster than Lindsay Lohan’s court appearances. I sure hope it doesn’t cause one of the Animorphs to want to quit….

Next time, Cassie quits!

My reviews of Animorphs:
← #18: The Decision | #19: The Departure →

One reason I regret that so much young-adult science fiction is dystopian at the moment is that it fails to adequately explore the intersections of technological advancement and pop culture. In fact, this is largely true of much science-fiction—but it’s a particularly keen absence in a subgenre wherein pop culture should be at the foreground of the protagonist’s experience. Considering that the amount of time most of us spend engaging with pop culture to one degree or another is dwarfed only by the amount of time we spend thinking about sex, food, and sleep, it’s curious that we often neglect it in favour of so-called “Bigger” Ideas.

So maybe William Gibson’s brilliance isn’t so much his seeming prescience as it is his willingness to turn the light of technological extrapolation into an introspection of our own cultural evolutions. I suspect this is why Japan figures so prominently in much of his writing: Japanese culture operates within a pressurized equilibrium between the traditional realm and the hyper-accelerated popular realm. This embodies the famous Gibsonian adage that “the future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed”. Our techno-fetishist obsession with Japanese culture means the media tends to present it as racing ever-towards a cultural singularity in sharp contrast to the more sedate pace of Western adjustment to the proliferation of networking (or cyberspace, as Gibson called it in those days) and distributed social cognition.

Idoru exemplifies this facet of Gibson’s genius, then. As the second book in the loose Bridge trilogy, it is set in a near future in which an earthquake rocks both Japan and San Francisco, and the resulting use of nanotechnology to rebuild has altered the geography and culture of these places. The eponymous character is a semi-sentient AI construct that also happens to be a pop singer—this is Japan, after all, and her name is actually Rei Toei. She doesn’t enter into the plot for a while, however. Instead, Gibson intersperses the narratives of Colin Laney and Chia McKenzie—and the result is addictive. He splits scenes across micro-chapters in such a way as to create knife-edge tension, forcing me to read a Chia chapter so I can get back to what Colin was doing—or vice versa, for my relative fascination with the two protagonists changed multiple times as I read.

This ability to make the reader’s opinions progress and regress in dazzling, non-linear fashions is another reason I love Gibson’s writing. His plots tend to be intricate and abstract to the point of seeming like they aren’t there—and they are, but he builds them into the background of the world until they reach a point where they just appear to be setting. You really have to work to follow the bizarre chain of events that leads from beginning to end, and that doesn’t always pay off. But I’m willing to overlook this, because Gibson manages to engage that part of the brain that likes thrillers—for Idoru, like so much of his work, is undeniably a techno-thriller—without making me hate myself for reading a thriller.

He also makes it all seem so effortless, even though a moment’s consideration will reveal it obviously isn’t. Idoru has a lot of very plausible technology—Colin’s job sounds very Big Data, definitely something Hubertus Bigend would be into, and certainly well within the capabilities of the NSA, Google, or maybe Amazon—as well as some stuff that is possible but not quite there yet—Chia’s immersive computing rig is like the Oculus Rift, only actually good. Unlike some authors, however, Gibson spends almost zero time on technobabble explanations of how these things work. (Keep in mind this book was published in 1996, so the Internet and web were both a thing, but they were things very different from the Internet and web as we think of them today.) Gibson demonstrates why distinctions between so-called hard and soft science fiction are meaningless. This is hard in that it involves AIs and virtual realities and nanotechnology and soft in that it involves the cultural implications of marrying an artificial person, of identity in cyberspace, of ethics and morality in the land of Big Data.

Let’s put it this way: it says something about Gibson’s skills that Idoru is generally one of his lesser-known novels. A lesser writer who put out Idoru would be remembered for it. This book is overshadowed only because Neuromancer et al happen to be titans to this book’s giant. On its own, it can still crush the weak and puny dross of pulp science-fiction any day of the week.

No, I’m not actually going to spend that much time talking about the book, just meditate on its and Gibson’s awesomeness. This is a book for Gibson fans to enjoy; it’s a book for newcomers to read as well. You don’t need to read Virtual Light to pick up Idoru—you could read the former afterwards and not really be spoiled. All you need is a certain willingness to contemplate the various complexities of our nascent networked age and how that will influence our relationships, our identities, and of course, our organized crime.

Because if there is one constant in William Gibson’s novels, it’s that somewhere along the way, you run into a mob boss or two.

My reviews of the Bridge trilogy:
← Virtual Light | All Tomorrow’s Parties →

Whenever I need a dose of the future past, I turn to William Gibson. I’m catching up. Soon I’ll be able to read The Peripheral. But first we need to return to Northern California, circa sometime in the near future that never was. All Tomorrow’s Parties definitely has a conclusive feel to it. The Bridge trilogy has always felt somewhat laid-back in its connections across books—characters in common, vague references to events, but each book has been very much its own story. This has a lot to do with the way Gibson creates his settings, and the way his characters interact with each other in his weird nearly–post-apocalyptic environments.

Gibson is famous for coining cyberspace and sparking the genre of novels that take place in entire digital realms. Yet I think what makes his stories so interesting is not solely his depiction of cyberspace. Rather, it’s the juxtaposition of cyberspace with real space that matters. The Bridge trilogy exemplifies this. We return to the Bridge in All Tomorrow’s Parties, and Gibson remarks on how its layout has influenced architecture, which in turn affects how Bridge denizens live and get around. Physical space, its layout and decoration and the ideas of ownership over it, is a huge factor in our lives.

In the earlier books, we had characters attempting to control physical space by engineering it with nanotechnology. Hackers of the Walled Garden created their cyberspace environment precisely because it was impractical and dangerous for them to communicate with each other in physical space. Now in this book, the very existence of the Bridge comes under threat, while we spend comparatively little time in virtual worlds. Gibson explores the tension between the real and unreal in subtle ways here, but it reminds me nevertheless of the ways in which some philosophers and sociologists have mused on the effects of the Internet on our society.

Amidst this meditation on space, Gibson gives us characters who are all isolated from the space of relationships. Rydell, now that he broke up with Chevette, has no one. His only “friend” is his coworker at the Lucky Dragon. Laney has withdrawn almost totally from society, literally living in a cardboard box in a subway station and peeing into a bottle (ewww). Chevette is running away from an abusive ex-boyfriend and an old life, running back towards the last place she had stable relationships, but connected to it all only by her friend, Tessa. And we have the mysterious hyper-capable assassin Konrad. These are people who are alone despite being next to each other in some cases.

I admit I found the vagueness of All Tomorrow’s Parties’ plot somewhat frustrating. Laney keeps insisting we’re approaching a “nodal point” similar to what happened in 1911. But of all the Gibson’s ways of talking about the future, this one was least impressive or evocative. I’m down with the idea that we could somehow enhance our ability to spot patterns in data flow and anticipate the way events will develop. But he doesn’t really develop that here in the same way he has explored other ideas.

Towards the end of the book we see hints of the bright and dismal nanotech future, thanks to the Lucky Dragon nanofax service. This is an entertainingly anachronistic use of future technology, but with the rise of 3D printing it no longer seems so silly. (Why buy a physical product online if there’s a 3D printer nearby that will print it on demand for you?) Once again Gibson demonstrates that even if a science-fiction author’s job isn’t to predict the future, it’s still mighty impressive when the dart lands in the general vicinity of the bulls-eye.

All Tomorrow’s Parties is a rich, meditative conclusion the Bridge trilogy. It’s one last shot to see some of those old characters again, and it’s another walk through Gibson’s fantastically fertile imagination. It didn’t grab me as one of his more impressive works, but it certainly has his characteristic originality mixed with a patient appreciation for characterization and setting.

My reviews of the Bridge trilogy:
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I make no secret of the fact that I think George Eliot is a literary badass, and Felix Holt: The Radical is just the latest example of these well-deserved credentials. This is essentially a political and legal thriller set in 1832 England on the cusp of the passage of the First Reform Act. (Among other things, the Reform Acts of the 1800s redefined the electoral districts for the English Parliament and expanded the franchise ever so slightly.) The sleepy English town of Treby finds itself the centre of political action during the latest election campaign. Harold Transome returns home after fifteen years abroad and decides to run as the Radical candidate, much to the surprise of his Tory family. Meanwhile, in typical Eliot fashion, the Felix Holt doesn’t show up for the first fifty pages of his own book! Despite Transome and Holt’s self-declared Radicalism, the two butt heads, and soon it’s obvious neither really embodies the label they’ve chosen. Meanwhile, a dastardly lawyer plots possible revenge against Transome, and it all hinges on the question of paternity and inheritance of a preacher’s daughter.

You hooked yet? Because I know that the language in novels like this can be an obstacle to enjoying them. Eliot is a fan of lengthy sentences and even longer paragraphs. Her description belabours points until they become entire discourses; her dialogue is more of a series of speeches fired back and forth like broadside salvos. With this style, however, comes a consummate ability to draw out the most intricate descriptions of human foibles and fragility. We see this quite early in Eliot’s portrayal of the ageing Mrs Transome, and later when we delve into Esther’s motivations for obsessing over the strange and somewhat offensive Mr Holt. Unlike modern thrillers, which tend to sacrifice depth of character for depth of field in the action, Felix Holt is a character-driven thriller in which Eliot asks how our upbringing, gender, and political convictions influence the choices we make and how far we will go to get what we want.

I could spend

First, we have Harold Transome. He comes back home after living in “the East” (mostly Smyrna), where he had a wife (who since died) and a kid (whom he mostly ignores, in that great fashion of the English gentility). Like many a man convinced of his competence, he essentially swoops down on Transome Court like the North Wind: we’re doing things the Harold Transome way, and if you don’t like it, then tough. He engages the Transomes’ lawyer, Jermyn, as his election agent even while plotting to remove Jermyn at the most convenient opportunity. He ignores his mother and the tough time she’s been having of keeping up the estate—but that’s mostly because Transome ignores women in general, finding the weaker sex useless for everything except stroking his ego and likely stroking … well … you know what I mean.

Transome runs as the Radical candidate for this district. I never completely understood why he was going for Parliament, except perhaps because he felt it was the prestigious thing to do. He certainly never evokes a sense of statesmanship. Although he good-naturedly (and naively) attempts to put a stop to the rabble-rousing activities Jermyn’s minion engages in on Transome’s behalf, Transome does not in and of himself spend much time espousing Radical views. His political allegiance seems more a reaction against the stagnant Toryism of the countryside than any conviction that England needs to change.

I guess the most redeeming thing we can say about Transome is that he’s not a total dick. When he learns that Esther has legal claim to Transome Court, his first reaction is not to conceal the news but actually tell her and then kind-of-sort-of attempt to court her in the hopes he can keep the estate this way. (Now, the cynical would point out he’s just pre-empting the uncomfortable disclosure from Jermyn, and he obviously talks himself into loving Esther instead of harbouring true feelings for her. And there is something to that. But Transome is not a villain so much as an opportunistic upper–middle-class businessman; granted, the distinction between these two labels is not always clear.)

Whereas Transome considers himself a “man of the world” in a quite literal sense and almost condescends to bring himself down to the worker’s level, Felix Holt is quite proud of his poverty. He looks down on the rich, in a moral sense. Like Transome, he identifies as a Radical but doesn’t necessarily embody that philosophy: he in fact discourages workers from getting it into their heads that they need to vote to effect political change. Holt wants everyone to behave nicely in the hopes that this will persuade the people in charge to be nicer in return. In her “Address to the Working Man” included as an appendix to this edition, Eliot writes in Holt’s voice and explains that expanding the franchise to uneducated workers would be a bad idea right now, because it would encourage a kind of ignorant populism that would pull the country down.

And so Felix Holt is fascinating, because it is not actually a very radical novel. At the time Eliot was writing it, of course, those in favour of Reform were seen as quite radical people (and then you had the unions, and later, the people advocating for secret ballots). But if anything, this novel shows that Eliot is herself calling only for gradual change. She doesn’t want workers to have the right to vote until they also have the education she feels is necessary for them to vote “properly.” I find this paradox fascinating, because in some ways she has hit on the crucial point: franchise is no good if the people enfranchised have little knowledge on which to base a decision. Simply guaranteeing everyone over 18 the right to vote is not enough, then; we are obligated to provide civic education—and in this respect, I don’t think our present government does nearly enough….

So Holt, then, is the “common man” who nevertheless acts as a voice of caution. He is continually trying to apply the brakes, as seen in his foolish and ill-fated attempt to curb the rioting on election day. It sometimes seems like Eliot focuses less on him than on any other main character. Nevertheless, his role as titular character is deserved more because he ties all the other characters together. He interacts with everyone else, subtly shaping the nature of the conversation. It is the not-quite-love-triangle among Holt, Esther, and Transome that precipitates the novel’s conclusion.

In Esther we see Eliot wrestle with ideas of femininity, education of women, and the duties that children have for their parents. I’ve always lauded the way Eliot’s writing has a feminist tone for the Victorian period in which she lived; and, by all accounts, Mary Ann Evans was a pretty spectacular woman. Nevertheless, Esther demonstrates some of the limits of Eliot’s endorsement of “women’s liberation.” On one hand, Eliot mocks those women around Treby who look down on Esther for being “over-educated” for a preacher’s daughter and for putting on airs. On the other, she uses Felix as a foil for Esther’s ego and high opinion of herself: after a single meeting, Esther becomes desperate to prove to Felix at every turn that she can be humble and be open to being lead by a man (i.e., him) in matters of substance. Eliot places Esther in a role complementary to the men in her life: she must support and aid her ageing father; be led by the man she chooses as a husband; and nurture the children in her charge, whether it’s as a mother or a teacher. In this respect, while Eliot is quick to call out the double standards that adversely affect women’s quality of life, she is not quite ready to tear down conventional gender roles.

Felix Holt culminates in an election, a riot, a trial, and shenanigans over estate ownership. It all ends in tears, and then a wedding, and finally a happily-ever-after, for most involved. The winds of change are evident throughout the novel, but the ending seems to assure us that all will go on as it largely was before: the rich will be rich, the poor will be poor, and there will be Tories and Whigs and the occasional Radical doing whatever it is men of means do in Parliament while your average worker drinks and works the mines. This is not, therefore, that radical of a book. But Eliot manages to deliver an amazing story full of intrigue, backstabbing, characters who are all out for themselves.

I picked an excellent time to read this as well. And I don’t just mean because Thanksgiving Saturday was unseasonably pleasant and I could read this outside while listening to the new Florence + the Machine album. No, I mean that in Canada we’re a week away from a federal election. The campaigning in this book reminded me of the lengthy campaigning happening here. Eliot’s coverage of the Reform Act is a potent reminder that we are lucky we have the right to vote—and by we, I don’t just mean land-owning white men. While I completely understand why some people are discouraged by our political system and don’t believe their vote will “count,” I’m still disappointed when someone I know shrugs off the idea that they should vote. It is a duty, and it is not one we should take for granted considering that some of us have had it for less than a century. And it’s certainly in the interests of the people in power to keep you from voting, particularly if you are young, or poor, or from a minority group and interested in expressing your opinions.

This might sound trite, but one of the most radical things you can do as a Canadian on October 19 is vote. Go do it.

And then go read Felix Holt. It’s far from my favourite Eliot novel, but it shows the beginnings of all the skill and ability with character and setting that makes her one of my favourite authors. Eliot manages to convey a sense of entirety, that microcosm of the human experience: she is not overly cynical or overly optimistic; she simply shows what is—and what might be.

Now that I own copies of Neil Gaiman’s three short story anthologies, I re-read Fragile Things and then tackled this one, Smoke and Mirrors. As with Fragile Things this earlier collection has a description of each story’s origin in the introduction. Unlike the other collection, Smoke and Mirrors’ introduction also comes with a bonus short story embedded. So, yeah. There’s that.

I have to say that the more I read Gaiman’s stories the less unexpected or surprising they seem, if you know what I mean. Gaiman is a writer who loves to play with and subvert tropes, but he does it in very obvious ways. When there are twists, you can often see them coming. Smoke and Mirrors is rife with examples like this: “Snow, Glass, Apples” reimagines Snow White as a vampire child and the Queen as a heroine protecting her realm—it all ends poorly for her, still. There’s a story about a troll who wants to “eat the life” of a victim, which essentially means … well, I’ll let you guess.

This unsurprising quality is not bad, just different. I’ve always appreciated Gaiman on a stylistic level. In particular, he often writes protagonists who are—or at least start off as—vaguely unsympathetic. I was never much a fan of Richard Mayhew from Neverwhere, and many of the characters in these stories share that quality of being a less-than-stellar human being. It’s as if Gaiman is trying to say something….

My favourite story is, by far, “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale,” and I’ll tell you why: I thought this was a Harlan Ellison story.

I read this story a long time ago somewhere else—I don’t recall where now. I want to say it was in Grade 12, because that’s when I read a big anthology of Harlan Ellison’s works, but maybe I’m only claiming it was then because I was under the impression, for the longest time, that this story was written by Ellison. All I could remember was the premise: guy tries to take out a contract killing, but he gets up-sold by the marketing person until they agree to … well, I’ll let you guess. This is another example of where the twist is not so much surprising as almost stupefying in its logical progression, but I feel like it’s a very satisfying story.

Anyway, for the longest time I’ve been going around telling people that one of my favourite short stories is this one by Ellison, not remembering what it was called. Turns out it’s actually by Neil Gaiman. So it goes.

So for entirely personal reasons, “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” is my favourite (and it is a very good story besides). The stories collected herein are all pretty good, actually. Some are so short it’s hard to really enjoy them—they are like a small candy you put in your mouth that melts just as it starts to release its flavour. “Chivalry,” the modern-day spoof on the quest for the Holy Grail, is a fantastic opener. I loved Gaiman’s characterization of Mrs Whitaker; she reminded me a lot of the types of older women I would meet in England or see on television there. “Murder Mysteries” reminds me a lot of Supernatural.

But if it weren’t for that personal anecdote, then the best story of the collection has to be “The Price.” This story is heart-breaking. It’s about a heroic Black Cat fighting the forces of evil in a very visceral way, and I love every word of it. It’s simply and starkly written but powerful in the images it evokes and a reminder of the bond we have with our animals.

I’ll echo the opinion I shared at the end of my review of Fragile Things: this is not where I would start with Gaiman. Encountering one of these stories alone in the wild might be compelling; so many all together like this feels too artificial. That’s the trouble with short story collections, isn’t it? Short stories are meant to be appreciated and savoured by themselves, but keeping them separately is inefficient and impractical. Collecting them takes them out of context, and reading such a collection robs them of some of their spontaneity.

Be that as it may, Smoke and Mirrors is another good Gaiman read. It’s an excellent example of what he does best, which is take the familiar and look at it from a different perspective. In his introduction he says that all fiction is ultimately a form of fantasy. He’s not the first to make this observation, but I feel like he’s one writer in particular who takes such an observation to heart. A lot of Gaiman’s fantastic stories are set in a world like ours—a world where strange things happen, but unlike in this one, the people there get a little more idea of what’s going on. As if that’s ever a good idea.

As I continue my odyssey of Reading Things People Read in High School That I, For Some Reason, Did Not Read, I ponder why some classics are obviously classics and others inscrutably so. This dichotomy is indubitably subjective; in my case, I consider Flowers for Algernon a member of the former category. On the surface this is a simple book with a straightforward story, but there is so much going on here that it’s well worth studying, in school or independently.

Unlike many others, I read The Speed of Dark long before Flowers for Algernon, which is generally the book people compare The Speed of Dark to. I can see why. Both involve the augmentation or enhancement of the brain of someone with a disability and then allow the reader to observe how this affects the protagonist’s outlook on life and the way people in his life change in their treatment of him. But Moon and Keyes take subtly different approaches to these issues.

Flowers for Algernon is entirely narrated by Charlie Gordon through an epistolary device that allows Keyes to chart Charlie’s mental development throughout the story. When the book begins, Charlie cannot spell or form proper sentences. His writing isn’t just childish; it is painfully under-developed. Yet that doesn’t stop us from getting a sense of Charlie as a character. After Charlie undergoes the surgery that is supposed to “cure” him, his writing rapidly becomes more complex and almost hyper-intelligent. This alteration of narrative style is just as if, if not more, telling than any difference in the way Charlie or other characters act, and I think it’s a very interesting device that would make for great discussion. Keyes exploits it once more at the end, in the other direction, to tragic and distressing effect.

I feared going into this book that, having left my formative adolescence finally behind for the ever-more-confusing years of middle-twentysomething-hood, I wouldn’t get as much out of this book as those who embraced it when they were younger. I feel like at certain times in one’s life, subject to one’s experiences, there is a range of titles that can leave more than the usual lasting impact upon one’s psyche. Flowers for Algernon is so widely taught and read because it is one such title for many young people. If that window closes, then it’s still possible to enjoy the novel, but it just won’t be as affecting. My fears were, to some extent, justified. But it never crossed the line to dissatisfaction or dislike, for which I am grateful. Flowers for Algernon didn’t leave me with a lasting impression the way some other classics have. But I still appreciate Keyes’ writing and relentless characterization, not just of Charlie but of all the others like the scientists, Alice, and Charlie’s mother.

The flashbacks Charlie shares with us of his mother’s abuse of him are some of the most harrowing parts of this story. On the one hand, her behaviour is so painful and discomforting to watch. All children deserve to be valued and treated like human beings, and here she is, punishing Charlie for his mere existence. On the other hand, Keyes still makes it possible to sympathize with Charlie’s mother, especially when we learn later on about her dementia. This is a potent reminder that we cannot demonize and Other the people whose mistakes and malice misshape our lives: those people, too, are human and flawed and just as complex as we are. Flowers for Algernon is about more than the quandary of intelligence and self-worth … it’s about the way in which conflicting goals and desires and ideas among individuals affect the overall human condition. Sometimes doing the right thing or doing good is difficult because different perspectives yield different priorities. That’s why it’s so important that we have empathy for others.

I’d definitely recommend and even teach Flowers for Algernon. Even if, like me, you missed out on it when you are younger, it is an obvious classic, intrinsically value for discussion and debate. And if ever it was overhyped, of hype it is still quite deserving.