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tachyondecay
I’ve had Jumper on my computer for a while now and never got around to reading it, not sure why. Sometimes with books like that, I feel extra trepidation going into it. Why haven’t I read it yet? Is it because I can sense it’s bad? What if I don’t like this book?? I’m on vacation; I want my reading to be good!! Fortunately, although by no means a home run—by dint of Gould’s somewhat blah narration—Jumper managed to captivate me and keep me reading right until the end, and I’m almost tempted to pick up the sequel now.
Trigger warnings in this book for scenes of child abuse and domestic violence, child sexual abuse, terrorist attacks (particularly hijackings), alcoholism, and discussions about parental abandonment/neglect.
David Rice first discovers he can teleport while being beaten, again, by his alcoholic and abusive father. David quickly becomes more adept at jumping, as he calls it, and runs away from home, ending up in New York City at seventeen with no diploma, no ID, and no money. So he robs a bank! Set up with riches, David quickly discovers life isn’t that simple. He falls in love, but being an autodidact with a lot of money isn’t enough. It doesn’t fill the hole left in his heart, the one asking him to search for his mother, who left him and his dad when he was younger. And then, of course, government agents get involved….
I do have to give Gould credit: teleportation is a fun superpower to have, but it would be so easy to screw it up as a plot device. Instead, Gould gets creative and fairly practical with the ways in which David exploits his ability. There are sensible limitations on it, but Gould also considers how the ability would shape David’s understanding of how he should navigate the world. For example, at one point David starts constructing a little hideaway house in a remote part of the Texas desert. For a long time, he doesn’t bother building a bathroom (and thus figuring out all the attendant plumbing requirements); when he needs to go, he just jumps somewhere else with a bathroom. It makes sense. Similarly, Gould writes combat/fighting that David engages in with an eye for how teleportation would help (or hinder) the experience.
I also really liked how Gould doesn’t shy away from David’s mental health considering his abuse and abandonment issues. More than once, Millie suggests that David should see a therapist—this is a good idea. And it’s clear from their interactions, as well as a lot of David’s other dialogue, that he is aware of his issues. He wonders if he has an inclination towards alcoholism like his father. He realizes when he isn’t “being rational” about something. Although running away and living independent forces him to grow up and act more adult than his years might credit, deep down he is, in many ways, a scared kid.
My major critique, though, is about David’s narrative voice. It’s just so flat. I spent the first half of the book wondering if Gould was intentionally trying to make David come off as psychopathic, because it almost felt like he was faking his feelings. He’s so cold and logical, the way he describes all his decisions. Eventually he exhibits a lot more emotion—but even that’s portrayed in a flat way that makes it feel hyperbolic or somewhat disturbed. And it took me a while to decide whether that was intentional or not. I’ve landed on the side of it being fairly unintentional, of it being Gould’s style and skill (or lack thereof) in establishing a narrative voice. It’s a shame, of course, because the entirety of the novel gets filtered through David’s head, and so I can understand why someone might toss this book just because of this issue.
I also don’t know why David and Millie are together beyond reasons of plot. What, exactly, do they have in common? David tells us he loves her and is basically obsessed with her (Millie is much better at boundaries). But after that initial meet-cute at the musical, we don’t actually observe them sharing many common interests. Millie is a university student and David is a somewhat younger high school dropout who, yes, has educated himself fairly decently, but still … what exactly does his do with his free time, other than read and practise his jumping?
Gould is great at describing how David overcomes the practical challenges of living on his own and how jumping factors into this. He is not so good at describing David’s emotional journey, despite this being such a core motif in the book. Gould aims for a powerful theme—something along the lines of how having more power doesn’t necessarily let us get what we want, because sometimes the things we really want, like the return of a loved one, are unattainable no matter how much power you have. Yet the execution feels bumpy and inconsistent.
Jumper is a book where the concept is so fascinating you almost wish you could distill that and only that, but no, you have to wrap it up in a plot and characters so you can have a story. And the story itself is only so-so, hampered by a writing style that just does very little for me. Lest that sound too harsh, consider that I still enjoyed reading this over two days while on vacation in Montreal, when I could very easily have abandoned it to something else on my Kindle. So there’s that.
Trigger warnings in this book for scenes of child abuse and domestic violence, child sexual abuse, terrorist attacks (particularly hijackings), alcoholism, and discussions about parental abandonment/neglect.
David Rice first discovers he can teleport while being beaten, again, by his alcoholic and abusive father. David quickly becomes more adept at jumping, as he calls it, and runs away from home, ending up in New York City at seventeen with no diploma, no ID, and no money. So he robs a bank! Set up with riches, David quickly discovers life isn’t that simple. He falls in love, but being an autodidact with a lot of money isn’t enough. It doesn’t fill the hole left in his heart, the one asking him to search for his mother, who left him and his dad when he was younger. And then, of course, government agents get involved….
I do have to give Gould credit: teleportation is a fun superpower to have, but it would be so easy to screw it up as a plot device. Instead, Gould gets creative and fairly practical with the ways in which David exploits his ability. There are sensible limitations on it, but Gould also considers how the ability would shape David’s understanding of how he should navigate the world. For example, at one point David starts constructing a little hideaway house in a remote part of the Texas desert. For a long time, he doesn’t bother building a bathroom (and thus figuring out all the attendant plumbing requirements); when he needs to go, he just jumps somewhere else with a bathroom. It makes sense. Similarly, Gould writes combat/fighting that David engages in with an eye for how teleportation would help (or hinder) the experience.
I also really liked how Gould doesn’t shy away from David’s mental health considering his abuse and abandonment issues. More than once, Millie suggests that David should see a therapist—this is a good idea. And it’s clear from their interactions, as well as a lot of David’s other dialogue, that he is aware of his issues. He wonders if he has an inclination towards alcoholism like his father. He realizes when he isn’t “being rational” about something. Although running away and living independent forces him to grow up and act more adult than his years might credit, deep down he is, in many ways, a scared kid.
My major critique, though, is about David’s narrative voice. It’s just so flat. I spent the first half of the book wondering if Gould was intentionally trying to make David come off as psychopathic, because it almost felt like he was faking his feelings. He’s so cold and logical, the way he describes all his decisions. Eventually he exhibits a lot more emotion—but even that’s portrayed in a flat way that makes it feel hyperbolic or somewhat disturbed. And it took me a while to decide whether that was intentional or not. I’ve landed on the side of it being fairly unintentional, of it being Gould’s style and skill (or lack thereof) in establishing a narrative voice. It’s a shame, of course, because the entirety of the novel gets filtered through David’s head, and so I can understand why someone might toss this book just because of this issue.
I also don’t know why David and Millie are together beyond reasons of plot. What, exactly, do they have in common? David tells us he loves her and is basically obsessed with her (Millie is much better at boundaries). But after that initial meet-cute at the musical, we don’t actually observe them sharing many common interests. Millie is a university student and David is a somewhat younger high school dropout who, yes, has educated himself fairly decently, but still … what exactly does his do with his free time, other than read and practise his jumping?
Gould is great at describing how David overcomes the practical challenges of living on his own and how jumping factors into this. He is not so good at describing David’s emotional journey, despite this being such a core motif in the book. Gould aims for a powerful theme—something along the lines of how having more power doesn’t necessarily let us get what we want, because sometimes the things we really want, like the return of a loved one, are unattainable no matter how much power you have. Yet the execution feels bumpy and inconsistent.
Jumper is a book where the concept is so fascinating you almost wish you could distill that and only that, but no, you have to wrap it up in a plot and characters so you can have a story. And the story itself is only so-so, hampered by a writing style that just does very little for me. Lest that sound too harsh, consider that I still enjoyed reading this over two days while on vacation in Montreal, when I could very easily have abandoned it to something else on my Kindle. So there’s that.
Sara Douglass is one of those fantasy authors whose books I haphazardly read B.G. (before Goodreads), throughout my teens, as I encountered them in the stacks of my local library’s fantasy section. It was good times! As with my ur-fantasy experiences of David Eddings and L.E. Modesitt, Jr., these books almost certainly don’t hold up. Yet when I came across not 1, not 3, but all 6 books of this series at my local used bookstore and got them all with store credit … well, it was a no-brainer. This summer brought with it a hankering for classic fantasy of the highest calibre of epic cheese, and The Wayfarer Redemption and its five sequels showed up to satisfy that craving like lemonade on a hot summer day. So yes, I am going to read all 6 books in the near future, and yes, I’m going to have fun with these reviews. If that sounds good, read on!
I’d summarize this book, but honestly, if you have read any fantasy from this era you can probably guess the tropes. We’ve got prophecy! We’ve got a Chosen One bonded to the Big Bad by blood! We’ve got mistaken identities and people assumed dead! We’ve got snivelling noblemen cowards! We’ve got hideous monster creatures! We’ve got a noble forest-dwelling people connected to the land and a beautiful winged people connected to the stars and humans hate both of these groups (fantasy discrimination for the win)! We’ve got obnoxious ambiguously-powered exposition characters called Sentinels who make sure characters meet their dates with destiny and mumble vague, ominous warnings about disobeying Prophecy if anyone thinks about disobeying Prophecy.
But why would you do that? All the cool kids are going along with the Prophecy! You want to be cool, don’t you?
Look, when I was 15, I was so steeped in fantasy that I had started writing my own novel. I had the map. I didn’t quite have the prophecy poem that Douglass has going on here, but I definitely had a lot of destiny-mongering. I had gods and monsters and sibling betrayal and a title that quoted Shakespeare. I was going places! And I don’t think I’m overly praising myself when I say that the quality of my novel (I did finish a full draft by the time I was 17, just for the record) approached that of The Wayfarer Redemption. My prose was almost certainly better. I’m not saying it was publishable—this is ten years later, when the tropes have already been played out. But you need this little tidbit to fully understand my positionality here: this book doesn’t make me nostalgic just for what I read in my adolescence but for what I wrote.
On a related note: one reason The Wayfarer Redemption is such a joy to read is its unwavering earnestness. The subversion of clichés in fantasy has, itself, approached cliché. There is a cynicism to a great deal of modern fantasy when it lampshades its past, and while it can be fun when done well, there’s also something to be said just for … going with it. That’s exactly what Douglass does here. She doubles down on high fantasy tropes, and it is glorious.
Let’s take a look at the setting, then some characters, and then finish up with some reflection on the plot (such as it is).
First off, the majority of the book takes place in the human domain of Achar. Humanity worships Artor, god of the plow, through the organization called the Seneschal. The Seneschal loves plowing so much that it ordered humanity to cut down all the forests it could find, to the point where apparently Achar is totally deforested. Which raises the obvious question … where is all your wood coming from? Do you import it? This is never addressed, nor are the environmental ramifications of eliminating an entire ecosystem.
The characterization in this book is bonkers at times. I could write a whole separate essay analyzing this. We’ve got characters who are introduced and set up as major players, like Brother Jayme, only for them to be jettisoned a third of the way through the book. Do they come back in later books? I don’t remember! But Douglass’ use of narrative perspective is certainly very generous throughout. Moreover, nearly all character change appears to be driven by authorial forces. Most of the characters are quite static in their personalities and how they approach problems. A few, like Timozel, change because that’s what the plot requires. Even characters who are initially reticent about embracing their new roles, like Faraday, acquiesce after they’ve been reminded they are slaves to the Prophecy (you have to say that in an ominous voice though or it doesn’t work). The background characters are so stock their watermarks are still on them. At one point when Faraday ends up taking refuge in some peasants’ house, the “Goodman” and his “Goodwife” practically fall over themselves to help her out, all the while creepily admiring her clean hands and beautiful white skin, like she’s some kind of goddess. Apparently the serfs are really happy with their position in life in Achar….
Then we have Axis and Borneheld. One is protagonist and hero by fiat. Douglass attempts to make him flawed and moody, tortured by the idea that he could have so much more power to save lives yet reluctant to embrace his identity as StarMan and the corollary that he has to take on Gorgrael. But his personality is a bit like a soggy cracker: the more you poke it the more it crumbles into your soup, and it still tastes fine, but does anyone honestly like cracker crumbs floating around in their soup? In contrast, Borneheld starts off as a somewhat vain and very flawed minor antagonist who looks like he’s going to be a thorn in the side of Axis along the way to bigger and badder bosses. Yet as the story develops, Borneheld morphs into a screechy shrew of a man portrayed as craven, cretinous, and entirely undeserving of respect. I’m ambivalent here: I do love the way that Douglass illustrates how Axis gains the respect of his soldiers through his actions while Borneheld sabotages himself at every turn … yet I feel like Douglass overplays that hand.
Basically, if I had to pick one word to describe The Wayfarer Redemption, it wouldn’t be subtle.
The plot of the book borrows a lot from standard quest structures. Axis’ ultimate objective is to get to Gorkentown (no, I don’t have anything stuck in my throat, that’s the name of the place), but when he finishes the tutorial level in Carlon, the mentor NPC dishes out a mandatory side-quest first: deliver Faraday et al somewhere, and pick up some expository NPCs along the way. So Axis eventually shows up at Gorkentown for the real boss battle, only for Douglass to reveal that the real Big Bad won’t be showing up until you buy the DLC. But if you explore all the conversation trees, complete the side-quests, and read the codex entries, you’ll get some fan service along the way.
So if you want 650 pages of grade A ’90s fantasy cheese, you cannot do any better than The Wayfarer Redemption. But let me close on a bit of a serious critique/praise: this book is actually pretty dark. Setting aside the now-clichés, etc., the storyline here is properly gritty in a way that maybe isn’t apparent from my tongue-in-cheek tone here. There is child abuse, arranged/forced marriage, a lot of graphic violence—this could be made into a Starz TV show and would work quite well. The underlying story of the divisions among 3 species, the latent magic of the Mother and the Star Gate and whatnot, the inherent tragedy of Axis and Gorgrael’s conceptions and births … Douglass knows what she is doing when it comes to plotting and worldbuilding. Don’t let the trope-laden fantasy cladding fool you into thinking that this is just marshmallow puffs all the way down; this is the full breakfast right here.
Does it hold up? I honestly don’t know how to answer that question. What does it even mean for a book like this to be “good”? It’s not great literature, genre considered or otherwise. I enjoyed reading it, but I can’t separate that enjoyment from the intense payload of nostalgia that comes with it. I don’t think someone coming at this with a fresh perspective is going to see it the same as I do. Likewise, I think my reaction is probably different from someone who first read these books as they came out as opposed to haphazardly a decade later (I honestly don’t remember which books in this series I’ve read).
All I can say is that I’m going to have fun re-reading and reviewing all of these books. Because from what I do remember, the ride is going to get wilder still.
I’d summarize this book, but honestly, if you have read any fantasy from this era you can probably guess the tropes. We’ve got prophecy! We’ve got a Chosen One bonded to the Big Bad by blood! We’ve got mistaken identities and people assumed dead! We’ve got snivelling noblemen cowards! We’ve got hideous monster creatures! We’ve got a noble forest-dwelling people connected to the land and a beautiful winged people connected to the stars and humans hate both of these groups (fantasy discrimination for the win)! We’ve got obnoxious ambiguously-powered exposition characters called Sentinels who make sure characters meet their dates with destiny and mumble vague, ominous warnings about disobeying Prophecy if anyone thinks about disobeying Prophecy.
But why would you do that? All the cool kids are going along with the Prophecy! You want to be cool, don’t you?
Look, when I was 15, I was so steeped in fantasy that I had started writing my own novel. I had the map. I didn’t quite have the prophecy poem that Douglass has going on here, but I definitely had a lot of destiny-mongering. I had gods and monsters and sibling betrayal and a title that quoted Shakespeare. I was going places! And I don’t think I’m overly praising myself when I say that the quality of my novel (I did finish a full draft by the time I was 17, just for the record) approached that of The Wayfarer Redemption. My prose was almost certainly better. I’m not saying it was publishable—this is ten years later, when the tropes have already been played out. But you need this little tidbit to fully understand my positionality here: this book doesn’t make me nostalgic just for what I read in my adolescence but for what I wrote.
On a related note: one reason The Wayfarer Redemption is such a joy to read is its unwavering earnestness. The subversion of clichés in fantasy has, itself, approached cliché. There is a cynicism to a great deal of modern fantasy when it lampshades its past, and while it can be fun when done well, there’s also something to be said just for … going with it. That’s exactly what Douglass does here. She doubles down on high fantasy tropes, and it is glorious.
Let’s take a look at the setting, then some characters, and then finish up with some reflection on the plot (such as it is).
First off, the majority of the book takes place in the human domain of Achar. Humanity worships Artor, god of the plow, through the organization called the Seneschal. The Seneschal loves plowing so much that it ordered humanity to cut down all the forests it could find, to the point where apparently Achar is totally deforested. Which raises the obvious question … where is all your wood coming from? Do you import it? This is never addressed, nor are the environmental ramifications of eliminating an entire ecosystem.
The characterization in this book is bonkers at times. I could write a whole separate essay analyzing this. We’ve got characters who are introduced and set up as major players, like Brother Jayme, only for them to be jettisoned a third of the way through the book. Do they come back in later books? I don’t remember! But Douglass’ use of narrative perspective is certainly very generous throughout. Moreover, nearly all character change appears to be driven by authorial forces. Most of the characters are quite static in their personalities and how they approach problems. A few, like Timozel, change because that’s what the plot requires. Even characters who are initially reticent about embracing their new roles, like Faraday, acquiesce after they’ve been reminded they are slaves to the Prophecy (you have to say that in an ominous voice though or it doesn’t work). The background characters are so stock their watermarks are still on them. At one point when Faraday ends up taking refuge in some peasants’ house, the “Goodman” and his “Goodwife” practically fall over themselves to help her out, all the while creepily admiring her clean hands and beautiful white skin, like she’s some kind of goddess. Apparently the serfs are really happy with their position in life in Achar….
Then we have Axis and Borneheld. One is protagonist and hero by fiat. Douglass attempts to make him flawed and moody, tortured by the idea that he could have so much more power to save lives yet reluctant to embrace his identity as StarMan and the corollary that he has to take on Gorgrael. But his personality is a bit like a soggy cracker: the more you poke it the more it crumbles into your soup, and it still tastes fine, but does anyone honestly like cracker crumbs floating around in their soup? In contrast, Borneheld starts off as a somewhat vain and very flawed minor antagonist who looks like he’s going to be a thorn in the side of Axis along the way to bigger and badder bosses. Yet as the story develops, Borneheld morphs into a screechy shrew of a man portrayed as craven, cretinous, and entirely undeserving of respect. I’m ambivalent here: I do love the way that Douglass illustrates how Axis gains the respect of his soldiers through his actions while Borneheld sabotages himself at every turn … yet I feel like Douglass overplays that hand.
Basically, if I had to pick one word to describe The Wayfarer Redemption, it wouldn’t be subtle.
The plot of the book borrows a lot from standard quest structures. Axis’ ultimate objective is to get to Gorkentown (no, I don’t have anything stuck in my throat, that’s the name of the place), but when he finishes the tutorial level in Carlon, the mentor NPC dishes out a mandatory side-quest first: deliver Faraday et al somewhere, and pick up some expository NPCs along the way. So Axis eventually shows up at Gorkentown for the real boss battle, only for Douglass to reveal that the real Big Bad won’t be showing up until you buy the DLC. But if you explore all the conversation trees, complete the side-quests, and read the codex entries, you’ll get some fan service along the way.
So if you want 650 pages of grade A ’90s fantasy cheese, you cannot do any better than The Wayfarer Redemption. But let me close on a bit of a serious critique/praise: this book is actually pretty dark. Setting aside the now-clichés, etc., the storyline here is properly gritty in a way that maybe isn’t apparent from my tongue-in-cheek tone here. There is child abuse, arranged/forced marriage, a lot of graphic violence—this could be made into a Starz TV show and would work quite well. The underlying story of the divisions among 3 species, the latent magic of the Mother and the Star Gate and whatnot, the inherent tragedy of Axis and Gorgrael’s conceptions and births … Douglass knows what she is doing when it comes to plotting and worldbuilding. Don’t let the trope-laden fantasy cladding fool you into thinking that this is just marshmallow puffs all the way down; this is the full breakfast right here.
Does it hold up? I honestly don’t know how to answer that question. What does it even mean for a book like this to be “good”? It’s not great literature, genre considered or otherwise. I enjoyed reading it, but I can’t separate that enjoyment from the intense payload of nostalgia that comes with it. I don’t think someone coming at this with a fresh perspective is going to see it the same as I do. Likewise, I think my reaction is probably different from someone who first read these books as they came out as opposed to haphazardly a decade later (I honestly don’t remember which books in this series I’ve read).
All I can say is that I’m going to have fun re-reading and reviewing all of these books. Because from what I do remember, the ride is going to get wilder still.
I’m not sure Thomas Hardy knows what love is. Or maybe I don’t know what love is. Does anyone know what love is? Haddaway has been zero help, by the way.
If I was worried I’ve been ploughing through Hardy’s novels too fast, I shouldn’t be: my last review was over a year ago! Time to rectify that! It’s also a nice break from the YA/SF-heavy binge I’ve been on (and to which I will likely return shortly!).
The Return of the Native is firmly in the middle of Hardy’s career as a novelist, and it shows. The novel opens with an exhaustive description of the picturesque Egdon Heath and its bucolic pre–Industrial Revolution furze-cutters and reddlemen. Hardy wants you to understand that this is the most beautiful green place in all the beautiful green places in England—and unlike the rest of England, in Wessex it only rains when Hardy needs pathetic fallacy. It also exists in a kind of bubble, with only the barest of interruptions—all of Wessex is like that, of course, but Egdon Heath seems isolated even from wider Wessex itself. There is something so profanely ironic about Hardy setting such unabashed tragedies within these idyllic pseudo-utopian worlds.
So this book has the same environmental sensations as the earlier Under the Greenwood Tree and, like Far from the Madding Crowd, it flirts with the theme that loving “wrongly” leads to disaster. Hardy’s fascination with Greek and Shakespearean modes of tragedy is on full display here. While the characters’ downfalls are rooted in their personalities, arguably the tragedies that befall them are also an indictment of contemporary norms around love and relationships. This is a proving ground for Hardy’s cynicism, much more fully explored in his later novels and poems, about the influence of class, wealth, and misguided moralism on people’s happiness. As such, The Return of the Native might be simultaneously one of Hardy’s best and worst novels, for it has such deep, abiding passion yet also suffers from rough edges.
I was not feeling this novel at first! It wasn’t just the seemingly-endless pages of description of the heath. None of the characters seemed remotely likeable or even sympathetic. Wildeve is a cad; Mrs Yeobright is stuck up on her high horse; Thomasin might as well be a washboard for all the personality she has; and Eustacia, while fuller in character, has a massive chip on her shoulder (to the point where I was starting to agree with Mrs Yeobright’s evaluation of her, and that made me feel weird). Even as the novel progresses and the actual plot emerges (this takes too long), I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t find myself wanting any of these people to be happy.
I criticize Hardy for it above, and I’m only half-joking: the word love gets tossed around very lightly. I don’t really think this is Hardy’s fault; however, it does make the characters seem more like players in a melodrama than actual people. Eustacia convinces herself she is “in love” with Clym after about a night of spying on him. It’s pretty clear that this is wishful thinking on her part, a psychological duplicity visited upon herself because Clym, the eponymous native, is an enigmatic unknown to Eustacia who holds the possibility of rescuing her from her benighted existence on the heath. She falls out of love just as easily when—surprise, surprise—no such extraction to even greener pastures emerges.
With this failure on Clym’s part to abandon his stupid schooling plan take Eustacia to Paris—or even Budmouth!—Hardy makes some genuinely interesting observations about our propensity for deceiving ourselves about others. Eustacia is convinced that, despite Clym being very upfront about his intentions prior to marrying her, the marriage itself will somehow help her change his mind. So, I mean, I can be critical of the ease with which Eustacia or Wildeve keep falling in/out of love with each other and other people. But real human follies lie at the heart of all these relationships.
So we might summarize Hardy’s position as being, “Everyone is an idiot, so why does society punish us for it?” He acknowledges that people are making bad, rash decisions about things like marriage. But it seems self-defeating, and even cruel, for our society to make it so difficult to make amends. The Return of the Native is set in the 1840s, a decade prior to England’s first stab at proper divorce proceedings. Once hitched, our couples have but two choices: live together in discontent, or separate in semi-scandal.
Hardy explores the former state with the Wildeves. It’s not so much that Thomasin doesn’t love Wildeve as I suspect she’s the type of person who doesn’t love any of these characters in a romantic way. Rather, my reading of Hardy’s subtext is that Thomasin represents the type of woman who loves being courted. Hence her excitement and breathlessness at Wildeve’s pursuit, particularly when his suit was forbidden by her aunt and guardian. Deep down, Thomasin knows—and rebels against—the pressure in English society to make a “respectable” marriage. Hardy, as is typical of his somewhat proto-feminist writings, deftly illustrates how women of any class had few options beyond marriage; once married, even the rustic women who populate the Wessex countryside are judged more harshly than their menfolk if they stray. Thinking about it now, I’m actually getting angry about this: Wildeve knocks up Thomasin, and then while she is at home nursing their kid, he has the luxury of debating whether or not to run away with Eustacia.
(I’m angry in part because of how Wildeve treats his wife and child, but also because a hundred years on, this kind of double standard still exists.)
With the Yeobright–Vye marriage, on the other hand, Hardy gives us two people are just so ill-matched for one another, and everyone except them sees it from the beginning. Eustacia seems more classically suited to the judgement I passed on Thomasin above. She certainly loves the attention Wildeve pays her. But I think that’s more a symptom of her general boredom from life on the heath. And whether or not Eustacia really is suited for town life, she definitely thinks she is. She doesn’t love Clym so much as the idea of everything Clym represents, the possibility of escape from Egdon Heath. Throughout the novel, she remains remarkably consistent in this goal—hence, when Wildeve eventually presents her with the escape route, she seizes upon it immediately and fatally. Like Eustacia, Clym is a very driven individual; however, he allows himself to be seduced by the simplicity of furze-cutting life.
There is a rich dramatic symmetry to the fates of the characters as well, once again hearkening back to classical tragedies. Eustacia wants to leave the heath, so she dies in the river—symbolically, she is now part of the heath forever. Wildeve is punished for wanting to leave his wife to follow Eustacia by being allowed to follow her in the universe’s ironically macabre way. Clym gets to live—but he essentially abandons his project of intellectual enlightenment in favour of moral enlightenment, because he recognizes that the universe has been punishing him for his hubris. Thomasin’s fate, even altered by the final chapter Hardy added at the end to appease serial readers, is a type of “punishment.” Venn loves her more than she loves him (again, see above, I don’t think she loves anyone). She essentially agrees to marry him because she doesn’t want to be a widow or dependent on her cousin. Hardy once more uses her to show the pragmatic attitude women often had to take towards marriage. The book’s original ending would have been Clym’s words:
Clym totes wouldn’t have been tweeting using #notallmen; he gets it!
Hardy still manages to conclude the story with a focus on Clym (part of me wonders if Clym’s fate as revealed in “Aftercourses” is a kind of rebuke or “f u” to the magazine/readers who demanded a happy ending). His epilogue is a philosophical return to the physical descriptions visited upon us by the opening of the book: Hardy disdains organized religions or philosophies and prefers instead simpler wisdom, simpler times. Typical Hardy.
See, this is why I write reviews. Actually reading The Return of the Native was not as energizing as some of Hardy’s other books. There were certainly parts that I liked, moments that made me gasp or groan as I anticipated what was to come—everything that makes Hardy a great writer is here, on display, in one way or another. But it doesn’t have that central protagonist present in some of Hardy greater works, or that sublime plotting of The Woodlanders. In writing this review, however, I have had to grapple more intensely with the book’s meanings, and my appreciation has deepened as a result. There is plenty to talk about here, with this one volume, even without attempting to converse about it in the context of Hardy’s wider works.
The Return of the Native is never going to vie with some of Hardy’s other novels as my favourite, nor would I consider it his “best.” I definitely see its appeal more now than I did when I began reading it, and I suspect any other Hardy fan will as well.
I would like to conclude with a shout-out to my man Hardy for his mad naming schemes. Far From the Madding Crowd gave us Bathsheba Everdeen, and now here we have Eustacia Vye, Thomasin Yeobright, and Damon Wildeve. Hardy is a master of unusual naming, and it oddly makes these books that much more delightful to a modern audience.
If I was worried I’ve been ploughing through Hardy’s novels too fast, I shouldn’t be: my last review was over a year ago! Time to rectify that! It’s also a nice break from the YA/SF-heavy binge I’ve been on (and to which I will likely return shortly!).
The Return of the Native is firmly in the middle of Hardy’s career as a novelist, and it shows. The novel opens with an exhaustive description of the picturesque Egdon Heath and its bucolic pre–Industrial Revolution furze-cutters and reddlemen. Hardy wants you to understand that this is the most beautiful green place in all the beautiful green places in England—and unlike the rest of England, in Wessex it only rains when Hardy needs pathetic fallacy. It also exists in a kind of bubble, with only the barest of interruptions—all of Wessex is like that, of course, but Egdon Heath seems isolated even from wider Wessex itself. There is something so profanely ironic about Hardy setting such unabashed tragedies within these idyllic pseudo-utopian worlds.
So this book has the same environmental sensations as the earlier Under the Greenwood Tree and, like Far from the Madding Crowd, it flirts with the theme that loving “wrongly” leads to disaster. Hardy’s fascination with Greek and Shakespearean modes of tragedy is on full display here. While the characters’ downfalls are rooted in their personalities, arguably the tragedies that befall them are also an indictment of contemporary norms around love and relationships. This is a proving ground for Hardy’s cynicism, much more fully explored in his later novels and poems, about the influence of class, wealth, and misguided moralism on people’s happiness. As such, The Return of the Native might be simultaneously one of Hardy’s best and worst novels, for it has such deep, abiding passion yet also suffers from rough edges.
I was not feeling this novel at first! It wasn’t just the seemingly-endless pages of description of the heath. None of the characters seemed remotely likeable or even sympathetic. Wildeve is a cad; Mrs Yeobright is stuck up on her high horse; Thomasin might as well be a washboard for all the personality she has; and Eustacia, while fuller in character, has a massive chip on her shoulder (to the point where I was starting to agree with Mrs Yeobright’s evaluation of her, and that made me feel weird). Even as the novel progresses and the actual plot emerges (this takes too long), I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t find myself wanting any of these people to be happy.
I criticize Hardy for it above, and I’m only half-joking: the word love gets tossed around very lightly. I don’t really think this is Hardy’s fault; however, it does make the characters seem more like players in a melodrama than actual people. Eustacia convinces herself she is “in love” with Clym after about a night of spying on him. It’s pretty clear that this is wishful thinking on her part, a psychological duplicity visited upon herself because Clym, the eponymous native, is an enigmatic unknown to Eustacia who holds the possibility of rescuing her from her benighted existence on the heath. She falls out of love just as easily when—surprise, surprise—no such extraction to even greener pastures emerges.
With this failure on Clym’s part to abandon his stupid schooling plan take Eustacia to Paris—or even Budmouth!—Hardy makes some genuinely interesting observations about our propensity for deceiving ourselves about others. Eustacia is convinced that, despite Clym being very upfront about his intentions prior to marrying her, the marriage itself will somehow help her change his mind. So, I mean, I can be critical of the ease with which Eustacia or Wildeve keep falling in/out of love with each other and other people. But real human follies lie at the heart of all these relationships.
So we might summarize Hardy’s position as being, “Everyone is an idiot, so why does society punish us for it?” He acknowledges that people are making bad, rash decisions about things like marriage. But it seems self-defeating, and even cruel, for our society to make it so difficult to make amends. The Return of the Native is set in the 1840s, a decade prior to England’s first stab at proper divorce proceedings. Once hitched, our couples have but two choices: live together in discontent, or separate in semi-scandal.
Hardy explores the former state with the Wildeves. It’s not so much that Thomasin doesn’t love Wildeve as I suspect she’s the type of person who doesn’t love any of these characters in a romantic way. Rather, my reading of Hardy’s subtext is that Thomasin represents the type of woman who loves being courted. Hence her excitement and breathlessness at Wildeve’s pursuit, particularly when his suit was forbidden by her aunt and guardian. Deep down, Thomasin knows—and rebels against—the pressure in English society to make a “respectable” marriage. Hardy, as is typical of his somewhat proto-feminist writings, deftly illustrates how women of any class had few options beyond marriage; once married, even the rustic women who populate the Wessex countryside are judged more harshly than their menfolk if they stray. Thinking about it now, I’m actually getting angry about this: Wildeve knocks up Thomasin, and then while she is at home nursing their kid, he has the luxury of debating whether or not to run away with Eustacia.
(I’m angry in part because of how Wildeve treats his wife and child, but also because a hundred years on, this kind of double standard still exists.)
With the Yeobright–Vye marriage, on the other hand, Hardy gives us two people are just so ill-matched for one another, and everyone except them sees it from the beginning. Eustacia seems more classically suited to the judgement I passed on Thomasin above. She certainly loves the attention Wildeve pays her. But I think that’s more a symptom of her general boredom from life on the heath. And whether or not Eustacia really is suited for town life, she definitely thinks she is. She doesn’t love Clym so much as the idea of everything Clym represents, the possibility of escape from Egdon Heath. Throughout the novel, she remains remarkably consistent in this goal—hence, when Wildeve eventually presents her with the escape route, she seizes upon it immediately and fatally. Like Eustacia, Clym is a very driven individual; however, he allows himself to be seduced by the simplicity of furze-cutting life.
There is a rich dramatic symmetry to the fates of the characters as well, once again hearkening back to classical tragedies. Eustacia wants to leave the heath, so she dies in the river—symbolically, she is now part of the heath forever. Wildeve is punished for wanting to leave his wife to follow Eustacia by being allowed to follow her in the universe’s ironically macabre way. Clym gets to live—but he essentially abandons his project of intellectual enlightenment in favour of moral enlightenment, because he recognizes that the universe has been punishing him for his hubris. Thomasin’s fate, even altered by the final chapter Hardy added at the end to appease serial readers, is a type of “punishment.” Venn loves her more than she loves him (again, see above, I don’t think she loves anyone). She essentially agrees to marry him because she doesn’t want to be a widow or dependent on her cousin. Hardy once more uses her to show the pragmatic attitude women often had to take towards marriage. The book’s original ending would have been Clym’s words:
Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that you se your way clear to happiness again. My sex owes you every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by.
Clym totes wouldn’t have been tweeting using #notallmen; he gets it!
Hardy still manages to conclude the story with a focus on Clym (part of me wonders if Clym’s fate as revealed in “Aftercourses” is a kind of rebuke or “f u” to the magazine/readers who demanded a happy ending). His epilogue is a philosophical return to the physical descriptions visited upon us by the opening of the book: Hardy disdains organized religions or philosophies and prefers instead simpler wisdom, simpler times. Typical Hardy.
See, this is why I write reviews. Actually reading The Return of the Native was not as energizing as some of Hardy’s other books. There were certainly parts that I liked, moments that made me gasp or groan as I anticipated what was to come—everything that makes Hardy a great writer is here, on display, in one way or another. But it doesn’t have that central protagonist present in some of Hardy greater works, or that sublime plotting of The Woodlanders. In writing this review, however, I have had to grapple more intensely with the book’s meanings, and my appreciation has deepened as a result. There is plenty to talk about here, with this one volume, even without attempting to converse about it in the context of Hardy’s wider works.
The Return of the Native is never going to vie with some of Hardy’s other novels as my favourite, nor would I consider it his “best.” I definitely see its appeal more now than I did when I began reading it, and I suspect any other Hardy fan will as well.
I would like to conclude with a shout-out to my man Hardy for his mad naming schemes. Far From the Madding Crowd gave us Bathsheba Everdeen, and now here we have Eustacia Vye, Thomasin Yeobright, and Damon Wildeve. Hardy is a master of unusual naming, and it oddly makes these books that much more delightful to a modern audience.
SLAY in the story is a MMORPG where players duel using in-game cards that derive their names and powers from elements of various Black cultures. Kiera Johnson is 17 years old and should be worrying more about whether or not she’s getting into her first choice college. But she’s also the secret creator and developer for SLAY. She wanted a gaming world that embraced players’ Blackness rather than punishing it. She wanted a space where Black people could express themselves in “unapologetically Black” ways. Except now SLAY has made international news thanks to a grisly murder associated with the game, and it seems like everyone is baying for the blood of SLAY’s mysterious creator, Emerald/Kiera.
In many ways, this basic premise is nothing new, and many a good story has started from a secret that must be kept at all costs. I like that Kiera is actually good at keeping her secret—so often in these stories, it seems like the protagonist tells an ever-increasing number of close friends, swearing them to secrecy, until there’s basically a small village who know her identity. For most of the book, Kiera’s identity is totally unknown, even to SLAY’s sole other employee, Cicada, who lives somewhere in Europe. There are layers to Kiera’s concerns about being outed as well. Beyond the obvious negative attention from media and players that it might bring, Kiera reflects on how her family and friends will variously react to the revelation.
Related to this is one of my favourite things about SLAY: its diverse portrayals of Black women and Black feminism. If one of Morris’ goals is to help move beyond the stereotypes of Black women so often seen on screen and page, she succeeds. Kiera, her sister Steph, and her mother are all feminists but in different ways. Kiera sees SLAY as a vehicle for empowerment and exploration of Black identity, yet she fears that Steph, whose feminism is at a stage where everything is about terminology and figuring out the “right” way to express ideas, would condemn SLAY. Their mother wants the best for their daughters and therefore is wary of things like AAVE and how they act and dress: she wants them to be successful Black women, but her idea of success is different from theirs. The dynamic among these women reminds me of Lynn, Jennifer, and Anissa in Black Lightning: three related women, all of whom are strong and smart and feminist, yet who regularly disagree about what they should do or how they should read a situation. I love these portrayals.
Orbiting these characters are several white ones, particularly Harper and Wyatt, who act as foils for Morris’ explication of the exhausting experience of being minority Black in a school. I liked that Harper acquires some depth over the course of the book; she goes from being Kiera’s best friend who happens to ask awkward white girl questions to someone who takes the time to learn and finally educate herself instead of asking Kiera to do it for her.
Then, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Cicada, Kiera’s partner in the game. We learn a little more about Cicade throughout the course of the book and even get a few chapters that follow her POV, which was as surprising as it was lovely. She’s a little older than Kiera, and the racism that she experiences is different as a result of her location and how she navigates the world. Morris’ choice to present Cicada’s POV and the POV of a few other Black people whose lives intersect with SLAY is interesting, although it seems under-utilized. I was never quite sure when the next non-Kiera chapter would show up, and aside from Cicada we never return to those characters.
Finally, let’s talk a little about Kiera’s relationship with her boyfriend, Malcolm. I’m pretty ambivalent about this one’s characterization. On one hand, Morris tries to lay the groundwork throughout the book: his ever-so-slightly controlling tendencies, his overbearing attitude, his hyper-masculine demeanour, and of course, the way that Kiera makes excuses to us about how one day he will open his eyes and actually see the light of feminism. Mmhmm. The signs of an abusive, or at least proto-abusive, relationship are already there, plain to see. Nevertheless, in some ways Malcolm is more of a caricature. We’re told that he’s like this because of his choices of reading material, that it has somehow radicalized him. Um … okay? But you don’t choose these things in a vacuum. Who has Malcolm been talking to who got him into these texts, and who has curated his journey? Moreover, for a guy who supposedly eschews video games because of their detrimental effects on Black people’s chances to succeed in the world, he seems awfully good at video games and hacking in general.
And then there’s the eleventh hour heel turn reveal, which I don’t want to spoil, but the fallout from that feels rushed. Indeed, the whole denouement of SLAY is rushed. I stayed up late on a weeknight to finish reading this book, because I hit a point where I realized I could not put it down. That’s a big deal. Now, I’m not saying Morris disappointed me—I do like the ending, and I think the climax itself is so skilfully executed that I genuinely doubted the outcome for a few pages—but there’s an awfully big build up beyond that, as the other shoe drops, only for the echo from that shoe to dissipate too quickly.
I want to distinguish between my disappointment over the ending’s pacing (which I felt) versus disappointment over the happy ending (which I did not feel). I suspect that many people are going to read SLAY and think it unrealistic. How can a single 17-year-old girl code a whole VR game from scratch in her bedroom? How can she afford to maintain the game and its servers, and keep her identity secret, for so long? How can SLAY be both an underground phenomenon and this huge game at the same time? How is it that Kiera is just so lucky, towards the end, regarding the various things that go her way?
Honestly I don’t have answers and I don’t really care. I’ll suspend my disbelief regarding the complexities of video game programming and the number of coincidences that line up for Kiera, because I see what Morris is getting at with this book. As she makes abundantly clear in her author’s note, her target audience is not white dudes like me: it’s young Black women who are going through life questioning their Blackness and figuring out their identity. She’s writing for them, which is laudable. Sometimes, you just need a win. SLAY provides that without providing false hope; it is anti-racist but does not pretend that racism is not a huge factor in Black peoples’ lives. As far as a plotting and characterization go, it’s not a great novel all the time, no. That’s why I’m not giving it 5 stars. Yet even with its flaws, as a story SLAY still manages to entertain, to educate (in my experience), and hopefully (for Black people) to empower, although that last one isn’t my verdict to render.
At the end of the day, though, if we can have half a million books about teenage white boys being Chosen Ones, we can have a handful of books about teenage Black girls being uber-developers. I know which trope I’d rather read more of.
I love fierce sister duos. You know, the kind where the two sisters have complementary skills and get on each other’s nerves yet always have the other’s back? That kind.
Yeah, Shadow Captain isn’t quite that kind of story.
Adrana and (Ara)fura Ness have managed to dispatch the fearsome space pirate Bosa Sennen, taking her ship in the process. These young women are way out of their league, however, and now that they are in charge of the Revenger, as they’re calling their prize, everyone else is going to think they’re the pirates. Adrana, our narrator this time around, is still trying to recover from her torture at Bosa’s hands. Meanwhile, she is worried about what Fura had to do to rescue her, and the long-term effect that’s going to have on Fura’s mental health. The sisters try to put up a united front for everyone else, but as far as they’re concerned, they’re on shaky ground.
Although a part of me yearns for that good ol’ sister duo ferocity, I will admit to enjoying the conflict Alastair Reynolds creates through the Ness sisters. With each of them on edge, for slightly different reasons, nothing ever quite feels right in this book. Moments of possible redemption turn on a dime into disappointment and bitterness—not through deliberate, over-the-top betrayal, per se, but more through the slow attrition of mistrust.
This is a book about how small cracks in relationships and grow into wedges and fractures that threaten to shatter at the slightest pressure.
Expanding this to the wider cast: no one here is really a friend. Some are friendly, like Prozor. Others are cagey, like Strambli. Whatever the case, the book reminds me of the crews of Serenity in Firefly or Moya in Farscape: joined together more out of common cause, or having no place else to go, than any real like of each other. Reynolds reminds us that this can work just as well when it comes to having characters work together towards a common goal.
Shadow Captain feels slow to me, because the majority of the book is spent approaching and then tiptoeing around Strizzardly Wheel. I kept waiting for the “plot” to happen, by which I mean further developments in the sisters’ involvement with the overarching conspiracies afoot—the quoins, the mysteries of the Occupations, the aliens, etc. I never expected those matters to truly take over the foreground, but I kept waiting for more to happen than “we need to visit this station and oh look we’re running afoul of the criminal overlord of the week oh no.” I felt like most of this novel turned into one big sidequest in a space version of Bioshock.
I continue to dig that overarching story. I’m really intrigued to see where Reynolds goes with all this (I have some ideas, but of course there’s still so much left up in the air right now). That’s his hope, of course: tease the reader with just enough to keep them reading into the next book, even if the rest of the story wasn’t as satisfying. I just hope that the next book presents a more dynamic plot, in which the Ness sisters have a little more agency than “get into trouble at Strizzardly.”
I guess I come for the mystery and stay for the sister relationship. There are points in the book, when Adrana asks Paladin to keep something between them, when Adrana makes decisions or uncovers certain facts that Fura might have been obscuring … points when I was reading this, sipping a cup of tea, in my nice, hot bath, and it felt like Reynolds was really capturing the importance of that family dynamic. As sardonically critical as I am of the story here, this protagonist duo is probably one of the best I’ve seen in a while, purely on the ground of the depth of feeling beneath the tension in their relationship. It’s not something that can or even should be resolved easily, and I’m really happy that Shadow Captain goes in the direction of widening the gulf instead of closing it easily.
My overall impression of this series may hinge on the next book (if it is indeed the concluding volume) and where it takes us….
My reviews of the Revenger series:
← Revenger
Yeah, Shadow Captain isn’t quite that kind of story.
Adrana and (Ara)fura Ness have managed to dispatch the fearsome space pirate Bosa Sennen, taking her ship in the process. These young women are way out of their league, however, and now that they are in charge of the Revenger, as they’re calling their prize, everyone else is going to think they’re the pirates. Adrana, our narrator this time around, is still trying to recover from her torture at Bosa’s hands. Meanwhile, she is worried about what Fura had to do to rescue her, and the long-term effect that’s going to have on Fura’s mental health. The sisters try to put up a united front for everyone else, but as far as they’re concerned, they’re on shaky ground.
Although a part of me yearns for that good ol’ sister duo ferocity, I will admit to enjoying the conflict Alastair Reynolds creates through the Ness sisters. With each of them on edge, for slightly different reasons, nothing ever quite feels right in this book. Moments of possible redemption turn on a dime into disappointment and bitterness—not through deliberate, over-the-top betrayal, per se, but more through the slow attrition of mistrust.
This is a book about how small cracks in relationships and grow into wedges and fractures that threaten to shatter at the slightest pressure.
Expanding this to the wider cast: no one here is really a friend. Some are friendly, like Prozor. Others are cagey, like Strambli. Whatever the case, the book reminds me of the crews of Serenity in Firefly or Moya in Farscape: joined together more out of common cause, or having no place else to go, than any real like of each other. Reynolds reminds us that this can work just as well when it comes to having characters work together towards a common goal.
Shadow Captain feels slow to me, because the majority of the book is spent approaching and then tiptoeing around Strizzardly Wheel. I kept waiting for the “plot” to happen, by which I mean further developments in the sisters’ involvement with the overarching conspiracies afoot—the quoins, the mysteries of the Occupations, the aliens, etc. I never expected those matters to truly take over the foreground, but I kept waiting for more to happen than “we need to visit this station and oh look we’re running afoul of the criminal overlord of the week oh no.” I felt like most of this novel turned into one big sidequest in a space version of Bioshock.
I continue to dig that overarching story. I’m really intrigued to see where Reynolds goes with all this (I have some ideas, but of course there’s still so much left up in the air right now). That’s his hope, of course: tease the reader with just enough to keep them reading into the next book, even if the rest of the story wasn’t as satisfying. I just hope that the next book presents a more dynamic plot, in which the Ness sisters have a little more agency than “get into trouble at Strizzardly.”
I guess I come for the mystery and stay for the sister relationship. There are points in the book, when Adrana asks Paladin to keep something between them, when Adrana makes decisions or uncovers certain facts that Fura might have been obscuring … points when I was reading this, sipping a cup of tea, in my nice, hot bath, and it felt like Reynolds was really capturing the importance of that family dynamic. As sardonically critical as I am of the story here, this protagonist duo is probably one of the best I’ve seen in a while, purely on the ground of the depth of feeling beneath the tension in their relationship. It’s not something that can or even should be resolved easily, and I’m really happy that Shadow Captain goes in the direction of widening the gulf instead of closing it easily.
My overall impression of this series may hinge on the next book (if it is indeed the concluding volume) and where it takes us….
My reviews of the Revenger series:
← Revenger
Not exactly what I was expecting from Alastair Reynolds (though I should probably know better) but maybe what I needed. It has been a hot 5.5 years since I read one of his books, and that is too long! I finished off the trilogy of main Revelation Space novels at the extreme tail-end of my enjoyment of high space opera. So it is fitting that, with Revenger, Reynolds introduces what might be a good compromise between my desire for magical science fantasy and my desire for more sensible science fiction.
Revenger is basically space pirate opera. You could take the basic plot and turn it into a regular pirate novel set on the high seas if you really wanted to. Arafura (the narrator) and her sister Adrana are the heiresses to a family that is not so fortunate anymore. So they run away, intent on making back the money their father has squandered, by treasure hunting. Except it all goes horribly wrong. Adrana is kidnapped by Bosa Sennen, an infamous (space) pirate. Fura vows to retrieve Adrana at all costs, and she means at all costs.
Basically, imagine Taken in space but instead of Liam Neeson it’s a 17-year-old girl who has no particular special skills and literally just the drive to do whatever it takes to get her sister back.
As I implied in the introduction, Revenger appears, on the surface, to be a departure from much of Reynolds’ other work. Most of his other novels are what I call high space opera, which is adjacent to Singularity- or post-Singularity-style science fiction but doesn’t necessarily require AI. In contrast, this book feels more low tech: no superluminal spaceflight (at least among humans), and humanity, such as it is, seems confined to a single solar system (which might be ours, just in the far future). Humanity itself has spread across hundreds of thousands of “worlds” (not all of which are planets). It’s explicitly stated that humanity has survived multiple falls of civilization, each one called an “Occupation” and given a number. It’s treasures from previous, usually more advanced, Occupations that treasure hunters like Fura and Adrana’s crews are after.
I say Revenger appears to be lower tech, because I’m not fully convinced it is. Reynolds is just the type of writer who has the skills not just to write believable high space opera but also conceal what he’s doing within low space opera. Because why not? While the main characters don’t have access to nanotechnology and other nearly-magical science fiction toys, it seems clear that previous civilizations did (the Ghosties, for one), and current alien species interacting with humanity might. The (possibly) true nature of the quoins, as revealed at the end of the book, also hints towards far greater technological treasures out there. So this story is, on one level, about rescue and revenge—but on another level it’s about opening humanity up to greater possibilities and rediscovering what might have been lost over the eons. I love a story with layers!
The space pirate motif works far more for me than I could have predicted. Generally, not a huge fan of sailing and sailing metaphors. And indeed, the direct sailing references in this book did very little for me. Yet the overall atmosphere? I dig it. Reynolds has skilfully created a world with the right mix of people, people who exist in that liminal space between an organized outfit (which would be too hierarchical) and totally anarchic scavengers. These treasure hunters and pirates are the kinds of rogues that could logically exist in the frontier-type atmosphere that presently suffuses this civilization.
Fura’s character development is really fascinating—but also a little uneven. What really fascinates me about it is how Reynolds quite intricately (because Fura narrates, so she is therefore quite unreliable) builds the case that Fura has always been a little bit broken. Like, if I had some kind of degree, I might think about diagnosing her as a borderline sociopath/psychopath? There’s something going on with her personality profile, anyway, and Adrana’s abduction is the last straw that finally causes her to tap into it. I would give examples, but I don’t really want to flag this review for spoilers. Suffice it to say, when I say that Fura will stop at nothing in her quest to rescue Adrana, I do literally mean that. Reynolds makes it quite clear that mere things like morality and ethics have no role in Fura’s new philosophy.
And this is where Revenger falls down slightly for me. As much as I enjoyed the incredibly intimate seat to Fura’s antiheroic exploits, I’m less sold on her relationship with Adrana. The story starts so abruptly, and Fura basically tells us that Adrana has always been the adventurous, rebellious one, while she has always been the good one, like a girl group duo of some kind … and then they’re off. While they are on Rackamore’s ship, there is very little meaningful interaction between them to help establish their rapport. Mostly we see a little bit of sibling rivalry, and some supportive interactions as well. Overall, though, this is where I feel the book is most lacking: I just don’t feel the close bond between the Ness sisters that Reynolds seems to want me to feel. Similarly, I found some of the antagonists—particularly Qindar—a little bit flat and one-note.
I bought Shadow Captain at the same time that I bought Revenger because both were on display at Chapters during a good sale event, and Reynolds has earned enough for me to buy two books in a series sight unseen. Fortunately, he continues this streak with this book, and I’ll read the sequel and report back soon.
My reviews of the Revenger series:
Shadow Captain →
Revenger is basically space pirate opera. You could take the basic plot and turn it into a regular pirate novel set on the high seas if you really wanted to. Arafura (the narrator) and her sister Adrana are the heiresses to a family that is not so fortunate anymore. So they run away, intent on making back the money their father has squandered, by treasure hunting. Except it all goes horribly wrong. Adrana is kidnapped by Bosa Sennen, an infamous (space) pirate. Fura vows to retrieve Adrana at all costs, and she means at all costs.
Basically, imagine Taken in space but instead of Liam Neeson it’s a 17-year-old girl who has no particular special skills and literally just the drive to do whatever it takes to get her sister back.
As I implied in the introduction, Revenger appears, on the surface, to be a departure from much of Reynolds’ other work. Most of his other novels are what I call high space opera, which is adjacent to Singularity- or post-Singularity-style science fiction but doesn’t necessarily require AI. In contrast, this book feels more low tech: no superluminal spaceflight (at least among humans), and humanity, such as it is, seems confined to a single solar system (which might be ours, just in the far future). Humanity itself has spread across hundreds of thousands of “worlds” (not all of which are planets). It’s explicitly stated that humanity has survived multiple falls of civilization, each one called an “Occupation” and given a number. It’s treasures from previous, usually more advanced, Occupations that treasure hunters like Fura and Adrana’s crews are after.
I say Revenger appears to be lower tech, because I’m not fully convinced it is. Reynolds is just the type of writer who has the skills not just to write believable high space opera but also conceal what he’s doing within low space opera. Because why not? While the main characters don’t have access to nanotechnology and other nearly-magical science fiction toys, it seems clear that previous civilizations did (the Ghosties, for one), and current alien species interacting with humanity might. The (possibly) true nature of the quoins, as revealed at the end of the book, also hints towards far greater technological treasures out there. So this story is, on one level, about rescue and revenge—but on another level it’s about opening humanity up to greater possibilities and rediscovering what might have been lost over the eons. I love a story with layers!
The space pirate motif works far more for me than I could have predicted. Generally, not a huge fan of sailing and sailing metaphors. And indeed, the direct sailing references in this book did very little for me. Yet the overall atmosphere? I dig it. Reynolds has skilfully created a world with the right mix of people, people who exist in that liminal space between an organized outfit (which would be too hierarchical) and totally anarchic scavengers. These treasure hunters and pirates are the kinds of rogues that could logically exist in the frontier-type atmosphere that presently suffuses this civilization.
Fura’s character development is really fascinating—but also a little uneven. What really fascinates me about it is how Reynolds quite intricately (because Fura narrates, so she is therefore quite unreliable) builds the case that Fura has always been a little bit broken. Like, if I had some kind of degree, I might think about diagnosing her as a borderline sociopath/psychopath? There’s something going on with her personality profile, anyway, and Adrana’s abduction is the last straw that finally causes her to tap into it. I would give examples, but I don’t really want to flag this review for spoilers. Suffice it to say, when I say that Fura will stop at nothing in her quest to rescue Adrana, I do literally mean that. Reynolds makes it quite clear that mere things like morality and ethics have no role in Fura’s new philosophy.
And this is where Revenger falls down slightly for me. As much as I enjoyed the incredibly intimate seat to Fura’s antiheroic exploits, I’m less sold on her relationship with Adrana. The story starts so abruptly, and Fura basically tells us that Adrana has always been the adventurous, rebellious one, while she has always been the good one, like a girl group duo of some kind … and then they’re off. While they are on Rackamore’s ship, there is very little meaningful interaction between them to help establish their rapport. Mostly we see a little bit of sibling rivalry, and some supportive interactions as well. Overall, though, this is where I feel the book is most lacking: I just don’t feel the close bond between the Ness sisters that Reynolds seems to want me to feel. Similarly, I found some of the antagonists—particularly Qindar—a little bit flat and one-note.
I bought Shadow Captain at the same time that I bought Revenger because both were on display at Chapters during a good sale event, and Reynolds has earned enough for me to buy two books in a series sight unseen. Fortunately, he continues this streak with this book, and I’ll read the sequel and report back soon.
My reviews of the Revenger series:
Shadow Captain →
Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism
Laura Tarzia, Margaret Thornton, Meghan Donevan, Kate Farhall, Helen Pringle, Camille Nurka, Teresa Edwards, Meagan Tyler, Meghan Murphy, Shakira Hussein, Rebecca Whisnant, Laura McNally, Natalie Jovanovski, Kaye Quek, Julia Long, Caroline Norma, Finn Mackay, Miranda Kiraly, Naela Rose
I don’t remember how Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism came on my radar. Someone somewhere must have mentioned it; it looks like I bought it from Book Depository four years ago. Anyway, I finally got around to reading it last summer. I was hoping to dig deeper into some of the essays, but honestly things like breaking my elbow took up most of my time, and now I just don’t have the inclination or the heart, really. I do like to try books that I suspect I’m going to disagree with—and to be fair, Freedom Fallacy has some tantalizing critiques of neoliberalism I do agree with.
Let’s talk about the wizard behind the curtain: if I drank, I would have made a game where I took a drink every time someone mentions Catharine MacKinnon. Two pages in to the introduction and the editors have already cited her, and nearly every essay in this collection references her at least once, if not extensively. It’s official: every contributor loves MacKinnon! (Andrea Dworkin also gets an epigraph and lots of love too.) Look, I’m not going to claim a huge familiarity with MacKinnon’s writing, and other people have written far better rebuttals of MacKinnon’s work. So rather than get into that, let me broadly summarize the approach these essays take to critiquing “liberal feminism.”
The thesis that runs throughout these essays concerns the debilitating nature of liberal feminism, aka third-wave feminism, popular feminism, or choice feminism. The editors and contributors contend, with focus on various topics and tactics, that liberal feminism is a neoliberalist corruption, an individualist betrayal of “true” feminist ideologies, which are collectivist. Its popularity has been driven by media and corporate attempts to co-opt feminism as a branding strategy, to position it as “women’s choice” instead of “women’s liberation.” Kiraly and Tyler say in their introduction:
On the one hand, I don’t actively disagree with the denotative meaning of this statement. Indeed, this is perhaps what intrigued me by this book—at the time, I was probably looking for academic writing that would sharpen my understanding of the systemic nature of women’s oppression, and I was concerned by the notion that we should frame all feminist thought as a matter of “choice,” given the amount of internalized misogyny that society saddles us with.
Yet Kiraly and Tyler clearly mean to imply much more than that. If you go on to read the later chapters, of course, you see that the connotation of this statement means women who embrace makeup and high heels and sex appeal and call it feminist are not, actually, feminist. They’re liberal feminists. Beyoncé is mistaken when she shakes her booty in front of a huge sign that says “feminist.” No, dear reader: the ones doing the real work are these poor, radical feminists who toil in the obscurity of academia because their feminism isn’t fun enough for the mainstream, apparently.
Radical feminism is the term that many of these essays use as the counterpart to liberal feminism. It’s like second-wave feminism, but many of the contributors don’t want to use that term. Really, though, this book reads like second-wave feminism tweaked for the social media age.
The frustrating thing (from my perspective) about Freedom Fallacy is that, on some level, there is a cogent and necessary critique of neoliberalism happening here. Many of the essays make valid points about the way capitalism can co-opt feminist ideas. When I teach about gender stereotypes in media to my English classes, and I show them the “Dove Real Beauty” campaign ads, I use the videos to help them visualize the ways in which media manipulates appearances, yes. But I also ask my students to consider why Dove (owned by Unilever, which also sells Tag and Axe) would launch this campaign. So, yes, I do think that these authors are on to something when they point out that it’s not enough for us to call ourselves feminist, treat individual women equally, make sure women can have jobs and whatnot. Definitely there is more work, deeper work to be done. I agree with the radical feminist proposition that the oppression of women is structural, that no amount of “leaning in” on the part of women will ever be enough to truly achieve equity.
Nevertheless, I can’t get behind many, if any at all, of the propositions within these pages. They’re anti–sex work and gender essentialist (I don’t know how many are straight-up TERFs except that Meghan Murphy, the only name I recognize, is included in this collection, which is a huge red flag). And I’m guessing, just from the way they write at least, that most of these contributors are white women. Some of them definitely aren’t, and I’m not trying to whitewash the book—but my point is that attempts at intersectionality here are tepid at best. This is one of the features of second-wave feminism that I most strongly dislike, this idea that no matter who you are, if you are a woman, another woman is the only/best person to understand your experience.
Beyond that, there is just such a bitterness to these essays. These are academic lamentations at how astray we’ve gone, hand-wringing over the ways in which feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism. I agree with a lot of the critiques of neoliberalism here—but the ways in which they’re applied to feminist ideas is overly-broad, overly prescriptive. I don’t like academic ruminations on what “is” or “is not” feminism. Feminism is like porn: I know it when I see it. And rather than fight you on whether yours and mine line up point-for-point like there’s supposed to be some kind of master feminist checklist, I’d rather judge your feminism based on your actions. You can tell me you think trans women are women all you like, but do you actually include them in your spaces? Are you really open to the fluidity of gender, or do you want to be just as prescriptive as patriarchy—just in a different way? Take your prescriptiveness to another door please.
But, if you really do need some kind of litmus, I hereby propose “the Lizzo test.”
I’ve been listening to a lot of Lizzo lately. I think Cuz I Love You is brilliant. Almost every single track is my jam in some way, and I’m a white asexual cis male—yet here we are (I particularly love “Soulmates” for its message that jives with my aromantic identity…). Lizzo’s music celebrates, unapologetically, self-love situated within her identity as a fat, queer Black woman. It is also very sex-positive in terms of women expressing their sexuality—“Tempo” and “Juice” obviously come to mind, but there is a couplet from “Like a Girl” that sticks out in this case: “I work my femininity / I make these boys get on their knees.” Is this freedom of sexual expression and embrace of femininity a sign of empowerment? Or is Lizzo merely internalizing the media-promulgated feminine idea of sexiness to make money in our capitalist world? Your response is probably a sign of whether or not your feminism and mine are going to get along.
Freedom Fallacy identifies a real problem in our modern society (neoliberalist co-option of anti-oppressive moments). Yet I have no interest in its solutions. Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think the feminisms described herein have any place for feminists like Lizzo, or the indescribably brilliant Janelle Monáe. Their definitions don’t stretch that far, aren’t inclusive enough, are not beautiful enough to recognize that feminism has to be more than a stark and academically-defined struggle against oppression. It has to be lived, taught, shared—in this case, sung. It has to be built from the ground-up by the people who are, indeed, struggling. Academic essays can describe but should not prescribe.
Let’s talk about the wizard behind the curtain: if I drank, I would have made a game where I took a drink every time someone mentions Catharine MacKinnon. Two pages in to the introduction and the editors have already cited her, and nearly every essay in this collection references her at least once, if not extensively. It’s official: every contributor loves MacKinnon! (Andrea Dworkin also gets an epigraph and lots of love too.) Look, I’m not going to claim a huge familiarity with MacKinnon’s writing, and other people have written far better rebuttals of MacKinnon’s work. So rather than get into that, let me broadly summarize the approach these essays take to critiquing “liberal feminism.”
The thesis that runs throughout these essays concerns the debilitating nature of liberal feminism, aka third-wave feminism, popular feminism, or choice feminism. The editors and contributors contend, with focus on various topics and tactics, that liberal feminism is a neoliberalist corruption, an individualist betrayal of “true” feminist ideologies, which are collectivist. Its popularity has been driven by media and corporate attempts to co-opt feminism as a branding strategy, to position it as “women’s choice” instead of “women’s liberation.” Kiraly and Tyler say in their introduction:
What unites our contributors in this book is not a single perspective — there is a range of different feminist positions included — but rather, a unified belief that liberation cannot be found at a purely individual level, nor can it be forged from adapting to, or simply accepting, existing conditions of oppression.
On the one hand, I don’t actively disagree with the denotative meaning of this statement. Indeed, this is perhaps what intrigued me by this book—at the time, I was probably looking for academic writing that would sharpen my understanding of the systemic nature of women’s oppression, and I was concerned by the notion that we should frame all feminist thought as a matter of “choice,” given the amount of internalized misogyny that society saddles us with.
Yet Kiraly and Tyler clearly mean to imply much more than that. If you go on to read the later chapters, of course, you see that the connotation of this statement means women who embrace makeup and high heels and sex appeal and call it feminist are not, actually, feminist. They’re liberal feminists. Beyoncé is mistaken when she shakes her booty in front of a huge sign that says “feminist.” No, dear reader: the ones doing the real work are these poor, radical feminists who toil in the obscurity of academia because their feminism isn’t fun enough for the mainstream, apparently.
Radical feminism is the term that many of these essays use as the counterpart to liberal feminism. It’s like second-wave feminism, but many of the contributors don’t want to use that term. Really, though, this book reads like second-wave feminism tweaked for the social media age.
The frustrating thing (from my perspective) about Freedom Fallacy is that, on some level, there is a cogent and necessary critique of neoliberalism happening here. Many of the essays make valid points about the way capitalism can co-opt feminist ideas. When I teach about gender stereotypes in media to my English classes, and I show them the “Dove Real Beauty” campaign ads, I use the videos to help them visualize the ways in which media manipulates appearances, yes. But I also ask my students to consider why Dove (owned by Unilever, which also sells Tag and Axe) would launch this campaign. So, yes, I do think that these authors are on to something when they point out that it’s not enough for us to call ourselves feminist, treat individual women equally, make sure women can have jobs and whatnot. Definitely there is more work, deeper work to be done. I agree with the radical feminist proposition that the oppression of women is structural, that no amount of “leaning in” on the part of women will ever be enough to truly achieve equity.
Nevertheless, I can’t get behind many, if any at all, of the propositions within these pages. They’re anti–sex work and gender essentialist (I don’t know how many are straight-up TERFs except that Meghan Murphy, the only name I recognize, is included in this collection, which is a huge red flag). And I’m guessing, just from the way they write at least, that most of these contributors are white women. Some of them definitely aren’t, and I’m not trying to whitewash the book—but my point is that attempts at intersectionality here are tepid at best. This is one of the features of second-wave feminism that I most strongly dislike, this idea that no matter who you are, if you are a woman, another woman is the only/best person to understand your experience.
Beyond that, there is just such a bitterness to these essays. These are academic lamentations at how astray we’ve gone, hand-wringing over the ways in which feminism has been co-opted by neoliberalism. I agree with a lot of the critiques of neoliberalism here—but the ways in which they’re applied to feminist ideas is overly-broad, overly prescriptive. I don’t like academic ruminations on what “is” or “is not” feminism. Feminism is like porn: I know it when I see it. And rather than fight you on whether yours and mine line up point-for-point like there’s supposed to be some kind of master feminist checklist, I’d rather judge your feminism based on your actions. You can tell me you think trans women are women all you like, but do you actually include them in your spaces? Are you really open to the fluidity of gender, or do you want to be just as prescriptive as patriarchy—just in a different way? Take your prescriptiveness to another door please.
But, if you really do need some kind of litmus, I hereby propose “the Lizzo test.”
I’ve been listening to a lot of Lizzo lately. I think Cuz I Love You is brilliant. Almost every single track is my jam in some way, and I’m a white asexual cis male—yet here we are (I particularly love “Soulmates” for its message that jives with my aromantic identity…). Lizzo’s music celebrates, unapologetically, self-love situated within her identity as a fat, queer Black woman. It is also very sex-positive in terms of women expressing their sexuality—“Tempo” and “Juice” obviously come to mind, but there is a couplet from “Like a Girl” that sticks out in this case: “I work my femininity / I make these boys get on their knees.” Is this freedom of sexual expression and embrace of femininity a sign of empowerment? Or is Lizzo merely internalizing the media-promulgated feminine idea of sexiness to make money in our capitalist world? Your response is probably a sign of whether or not your feminism and mine are going to get along.
Freedom Fallacy identifies a real problem in our modern society (neoliberalist co-option of anti-oppressive moments). Yet I have no interest in its solutions. Because, at the end of the day, I don’t think the feminisms described herein have any place for feminists like Lizzo, or the indescribably brilliant Janelle Monáe. Their definitions don’t stretch that far, aren’t inclusive enough, are not beautiful enough to recognize that feminism has to be more than a stark and academically-defined struggle against oppression. It has to be lived, taught, shared—in this case, sung. It has to be built from the ground-up by the people who are, indeed, struggling. Academic essays can describe but should not prescribe.
Sometimes the best I can summon up for a book is “competent.” That’s where I’m at with The Justice Project by Michael Betcherman. This young adult/new adult book is an interesting mix of thriller/mystery, but the tone and pacing and characterization leaves me a little confused about who the audience is and which themes Betcherman wants to emphasize.
Matt is finishing up high school, but his dreams of playing college football are over. Instead of leading his team to another championship he’s relegated to the sidelines because of a career-ending leg injury that has left him with a permanent limp. Nervous about how people in his hometown will look at him now, Matt considers relocating to Florida, where his mother lives. When that is no longer an option, Matt takes a summer internship with the Justice Project, which is this book’s version of the real life Innocence Project. He and his fellow intern, a peer named Sonja, take it upon themselves to investigate someone they believe is innocent even though the Justice Project can’t officially take his case. What they discover will shock Matt’s sleepy, football-obsessed town to the core….
Trigger warnings in this book for use of ableist slurs.
What confuses me about The Justice Project is largely the tone. Matt and Sonja are supposed to be 18, so this book seems poised on the upper end of the YA spectrum—almost NA. Yet the tone of the novel, at least until near the end, feels more Hardy Boys than anything else—in other words, on the younger side of YA. Matt and Sonja read more like two teenaged sleuths than young adult investigators. For most of the book, there isn’t much of an element of danger or risk for any of the characters. This changes abruptly in the final act, which introduces a fair amount of existential risk.
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed The Justice Project, and there’s a lot of good I can say for it.
First, it’s obviously an issue book, and Betcherman’s handling of the issue of innocent people on death row, while perhaps not subtle, is thorough. He adequately represents different perspectives on the death penalty without creating straw men. Even Matt starts off as pro–death penalty.
That brings me to my second point of praise: Matt’s character development is decent. He starts off resentful of his injury, missing his girlfriend, etc. As the story goes on we see him starting to heal, start to look for another relationship, and basically grow as a person. He’s still not perfect by any means, but he at least changes. In particular, I enjoyed his friendship with Sonja and the way that Betcherman avoids any romance there. It was nice to have a strictly platonic male/female team-up in this kind of situation.
Going back to critiques, however, I’ll add that while Matt’s character development is great, most of the other characters are very flat. Betcherman focuses almost exclusively on the main plot, and it feels like the subplots are squeezed out by the end. Matt starts dating someone new, but she has … what, 5 lines? We see her two r three times and he texts her a couple of times, but otherwise all their scenes happen off the page. We don’t see much substance to them. Similarly, Matt takes a new job as the assistant coach of his old high school team … but most of that happens off page too.
Finally, I’m ambivalent about the portrayal of Matt’s disability. On the one hand, Betcherman captures the resentment and depression that can accompany these kinds of injuries. I think Matt’s behaviour, the way he sees himself, etc., are all very realistic. On the other hand, the treatment of his disability is fairly one-note. Everyone either doesn’t really mention it/is cool with it, or they give him weird looks. For a book that makes this kind of injury a major part of the protagonist, I would have loved to see a much more nuanced handling of the matter. Where are all the other disabled characters, for one?
If this book is supposed to be aimed at a younger audience, then I guess I see why it’s on the shorter side. It feels like it should be aimed at someone older, though, in which case it could stand to be longer and have a much deeper story structure. The Justice Project is intriguing and full of potential. It is, as I began this review with, a competent book—but it really could have been much more.
Matt is finishing up high school, but his dreams of playing college football are over. Instead of leading his team to another championship he’s relegated to the sidelines because of a career-ending leg injury that has left him with a permanent limp. Nervous about how people in his hometown will look at him now, Matt considers relocating to Florida, where his mother lives. When that is no longer an option, Matt takes a summer internship with the Justice Project, which is this book’s version of the real life Innocence Project. He and his fellow intern, a peer named Sonja, take it upon themselves to investigate someone they believe is innocent even though the Justice Project can’t officially take his case. What they discover will shock Matt’s sleepy, football-obsessed town to the core….
Trigger warnings in this book for use of ableist slurs.
What confuses me about The Justice Project is largely the tone. Matt and Sonja are supposed to be 18, so this book seems poised on the upper end of the YA spectrum—almost NA. Yet the tone of the novel, at least until near the end, feels more Hardy Boys than anything else—in other words, on the younger side of YA. Matt and Sonja read more like two teenaged sleuths than young adult investigators. For most of the book, there isn’t much of an element of danger or risk for any of the characters. This changes abruptly in the final act, which introduces a fair amount of existential risk.
Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed The Justice Project, and there’s a lot of good I can say for it.
First, it’s obviously an issue book, and Betcherman’s handling of the issue of innocent people on death row, while perhaps not subtle, is thorough. He adequately represents different perspectives on the death penalty without creating straw men. Even Matt starts off as pro–death penalty.
That brings me to my second point of praise: Matt’s character development is decent. He starts off resentful of his injury, missing his girlfriend, etc. As the story goes on we see him starting to heal, start to look for another relationship, and basically grow as a person. He’s still not perfect by any means, but he at least changes. In particular, I enjoyed his friendship with Sonja and the way that Betcherman avoids any romance there. It was nice to have a strictly platonic male/female team-up in this kind of situation.
Going back to critiques, however, I’ll add that while Matt’s character development is great, most of the other characters are very flat. Betcherman focuses almost exclusively on the main plot, and it feels like the subplots are squeezed out by the end. Matt starts dating someone new, but she has … what, 5 lines? We see her two r three times and he texts her a couple of times, but otherwise all their scenes happen off the page. We don’t see much substance to them. Similarly, Matt takes a new job as the assistant coach of his old high school team … but most of that happens off page too.
Finally, I’m ambivalent about the portrayal of Matt’s disability. On the one hand, Betcherman captures the resentment and depression that can accompany these kinds of injuries. I think Matt’s behaviour, the way he sees himself, etc., are all very realistic. On the other hand, the treatment of his disability is fairly one-note. Everyone either doesn’t really mention it/is cool with it, or they give him weird looks. For a book that makes this kind of injury a major part of the protagonist, I would have loved to see a much more nuanced handling of the matter. Where are all the other disabled characters, for one?
If this book is supposed to be aimed at a younger audience, then I guess I see why it’s on the shorter side. It feels like it should be aimed at someone older, though, in which case it could stand to be longer and have a much deeper story structure. The Justice Project is intriguing and full of potential. It is, as I began this review with, a competent book—but it really could have been much more.
It’s with no regret, but some shame, that I admit I’m not a fan of poetry, and that I actively avoid teaching it. I use poems in my classes, when we’re talking about other subjects. But I avoid teaching the mechanics and technique of poetry, analyzing the metre and rhythm, looking into the intricacies of imagery and similes and repetition. I do this largely because, as a reader, I am not comfortable with poetry, and that translates then into my teaching.
I avoid poetry for the same reason I avoid graphic novels: there’s something about the way I read that precludes me from really absorbing the meaning, or enjoying the message, of a poem. Oh, I can sit down, read a poem, mull over it, study it, write an essay on it—if I have to. But give me the choice between a nice, juicy novel and a slim volume of poetry, and I will choose the novel every day of the week. There is no contest. There is just something about prose, about sentences linked together into paragraphs stacked on atop another and squished into pages of exquisite storytelling, that gets me going in a way that poetry and comics and even movies and TV and music just do not. Nothing gives me a high as good as a novel does.
And I’m a hypocrite, because even though I might say it’s totally OK to prefer reading one form over another, I definitely judge people who say, “Oh, I don’t read novels.” Then again, I also have some fairly mixed feelings about the way we teach novels.
But I digress.
Ben Lerner tries to tackle some of these common mixed emotions regarding poetry in The Hatred of Poetry, and he does a fairly good job. He describes the weird relationship that we have with poetry, in the way it is foisted upon us in schools, the way writing (and writing, in particular, poetry) is seen as a less serious occupation, the way poetry occupies a weird space within art itself.
I liked the part where he describes how people react to learning that he is a poet:
I like this, because if you replace “poet” with “mathematician” and “poetry” with “mathematics”, you get exactly my experience telling people I study/teach math. “Oh that,” they say, “I haven’t taken that since high school. Algebra was fine, but I didn’t much care for trigonometry. Never touch it now. I just don’t have that ‘math brain’, you know?”
(So much facepalming.)
Poetry, like math, is something that everyone can learn and do and that kids do with joy. As we age, we relegate it to an Else, and you are marked by your choice to participate or not participate in the activity. People who do math are fundamentally different from people who don’t; people who write poetry as a serious occupation are somehow different from those who do not. Full stop, end of story.
Except it’s not, as Lerner goes on to explore. He touches on the “bafflingly persistent association of poetry and fame” that he finds baffling precisely because “no poets are famous among the general population.” According to Lerner, this is because poetry, if it does its job correctly, sinks into the brain until your mind makes it your own. For poetry to truly work its magic, it must subsume itself into the reader/listener, until it becomes a part of their being. So when poetry affects you, the identity of the author might not be something you remember—even the words might fade away—so much as the feelings associated with the poem itself.
In case you can’t tell, The Hatred of Poetry is not so much about poetry itself so much as poetry’s place in our society. Lerner meanders through history in a search for differing attitudes towards poetry. He holds up Plato as history’s first poetry hater; Plato regards poets as dangerous liars. He takes us through the French Revolution and poetry’s decline in the nineteenth century as the novel becomes the rising star of the literary scene. He compares Keats and Dickinson in a way that I’m sure could cause total flame wars if he were to post it on a poetry subreddit. And he spends some time with Walt Whitman, looking at how poetry can be an exercise in timelessness and identity.
Despite being only 84 pages, this is a very ambitious book. Lerner sets out to accomplish much, and for the most part, I think he achieves it. My friend and former coworker Emma gave this to me as the response to my gift to her of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too. At the end of the book, she has written: “Well. Twas a bit dense at times and I felt his argument a wee repetitive, but overall I’m glad I read it.” I concur. I don’t necessarily think that The Hatred of Poetry is going to make you jump up and go read the nearest poetry anthology to hand (and yes, I have several sitting on the shelves around me, including a complete collection of William Blake’s poetry I received as a gift from my dad…).
Moreover, despite being white and male (like myself), Lerner displays a healthy awareness of issues of gender and race and how these play into the reception of poetry. He draws on the work of Claudia Rankine, explaining the context:
before then quoting at length from Citizen and analyzing:
This is where I think The Hatred of Poetry gits gud, so to speak. Lerner avoids the pitfall of trying to present poetry, poets, or poetical activities as monolithic and functioning to serve a single greater artistic or cultural good. Indeed, he freely admits that poetry is a fractured exercise, that there are as many philosophies towards poetry as there are poets (and thus, people). I respect and appreciate his attempt to dive deeper than whether or not we should “like” poetry and attempt, rather, to look at why it is so persistent despite its failure to find purchase in mainstream popularity.
Even though it’s a new year, I won’t be so silly as to spout off some resolution about reading more poetry. I am defiantly and unapologetically not going to do such a thing. Without question, I will read and consider some poems this year, for they will come across my desk in my research and lesson-planning, or simply because cool people I follow on Twitter might share them. Nevertheless, my abiding passion and obsession must remain novels. Lerner’s essay is erudite and interesting, but poetry … sorry, still not a fan.
I avoid poetry for the same reason I avoid graphic novels: there’s something about the way I read that precludes me from really absorbing the meaning, or enjoying the message, of a poem. Oh, I can sit down, read a poem, mull over it, study it, write an essay on it—if I have to. But give me the choice between a nice, juicy novel and a slim volume of poetry, and I will choose the novel every day of the week. There is no contest. There is just something about prose, about sentences linked together into paragraphs stacked on atop another and squished into pages of exquisite storytelling, that gets me going in a way that poetry and comics and even movies and TV and music just do not. Nothing gives me a high as good as a novel does.
And I’m a hypocrite, because even though I might say it’s totally OK to prefer reading one form over another, I definitely judge people who say, “Oh, I don’t read novels.” Then again, I also have some fairly mixed feelings about the way we teach novels.
But I digress.
Ben Lerner tries to tackle some of these common mixed emotions regarding poetry in The Hatred of Poetry, and he does a fairly good job. He describes the weird relationship that we have with poetry, in the way it is foisted upon us in schools, the way writing (and writing, in particular, poetry) is seen as a less serious occupation, the way poetry occupies a weird space within art itself.
I liked the part where he describes how people react to learning that he is a poet:
If you are an adult foolish enough to tell another adult that you are (still!) a poet, they will often describe for you their falling away from poetry: I wrote it in high school; I dabbled in college. Almost never do they write it now…. There is embarrassment for the poet—couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behind you?—but there is also embarrassment on the part of the non-poet, because having to acknowledge one’s total alienation from poetry chafes against the early association of poem and self.
I like this, because if you replace “poet” with “mathematician” and “poetry” with “mathematics”, you get exactly my experience telling people I study/teach math. “Oh that,” they say, “I haven’t taken that since high school. Algebra was fine, but I didn’t much care for trigonometry. Never touch it now. I just don’t have that ‘math brain’, you know?”
(So much facepalming.)
Poetry, like math, is something that everyone can learn and do and that kids do with joy. As we age, we relegate it to an Else, and you are marked by your choice to participate or not participate in the activity. People who do math are fundamentally different from people who don’t; people who write poetry as a serious occupation are somehow different from those who do not. Full stop, end of story.
Except it’s not, as Lerner goes on to explore. He touches on the “bafflingly persistent association of poetry and fame” that he finds baffling precisely because “no poets are famous among the general population.” According to Lerner, this is because poetry, if it does its job correctly, sinks into the brain until your mind makes it your own. For poetry to truly work its magic, it must subsume itself into the reader/listener, until it becomes a part of their being. So when poetry affects you, the identity of the author might not be something you remember—even the words might fade away—so much as the feelings associated with the poem itself.
In case you can’t tell, The Hatred of Poetry is not so much about poetry itself so much as poetry’s place in our society. Lerner meanders through history in a search for differing attitudes towards poetry. He holds up Plato as history’s first poetry hater; Plato regards poets as dangerous liars. He takes us through the French Revolution and poetry’s decline in the nineteenth century as the novel becomes the rising star of the literary scene. He compares Keats and Dickinson in a way that I’m sure could cause total flame wars if he were to post it on a poetry subreddit. And he spends some time with Walt Whitman, looking at how poetry can be an exercise in timelessness and identity.
Despite being only 84 pages, this is a very ambitious book. Lerner sets out to accomplish much, and for the most part, I think he achieves it. My friend and former coworker Emma gave this to me as the response to my gift to her of For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood… and the Rest of Y’all Too. At the end of the book, she has written: “Well. Twas a bit dense at times and I felt his argument a wee repetitive, but overall I’m glad I read it.” I concur. I don’t necessarily think that The Hatred of Poetry is going to make you jump up and go read the nearest poetry anthology to hand (and yes, I have several sitting on the shelves around me, including a complete collection of William Blake’s poetry I received as a gift from my dad…).
Moreover, despite being white and male (like myself), Lerner displays a healthy awareness of issues of gender and race and how these play into the reception of poetry. He draws on the work of Claudia Rankine, explaining the context:
…Rankine confronts—as an African-American woman—the impossibility (and impossible complexity) of attempting to reconcile herself with a racist society in which to be black is either to be invisible (excluded from the universal) or all too visible (as the victim of racist surveillance and aggression).
before then quoting at length from Citizen and analyzing:
My privilege excludes me—that is, protects me—from the “you” in a way that focuses my attention on the much graver (and mundane) exclusion of a person of color from the “you” that the scene recounts (how could you have an appointment. Citizen’s concern with how race determines when and how we have access to pronouns is, among many other things, a direct response to the Whitmanic (and nostalgist) notion of a perfectly exchangeable “I” and “you” that can suspend all difference.
This is where I think The Hatred of Poetry gits gud, so to speak. Lerner avoids the pitfall of trying to present poetry, poets, or poetical activities as monolithic and functioning to serve a single greater artistic or cultural good. Indeed, he freely admits that poetry is a fractured exercise, that there are as many philosophies towards poetry as there are poets (and thus, people). I respect and appreciate his attempt to dive deeper than whether or not we should “like” poetry and attempt, rather, to look at why it is so persistent despite its failure to find purchase in mainstream popularity.
Even though it’s a new year, I won’t be so silly as to spout off some resolution about reading more poetry. I am defiantly and unapologetically not going to do such a thing. Without question, I will read and consider some poems this year, for they will come across my desk in my research and lesson-planning, or simply because cool people I follow on Twitter might share them. Nevertheless, my abiding passion and obsession must remain novels. Lerner’s essay is erudite and interesting, but poetry … sorry, still not a fan.