I'm so over Templar fiction.

I was never into Templar fiction per se, but somehow my love for historical fiction and my love for Arthurian fantasy had an incestuous relationship that resulted in an irrational urge to inflict Templar fiction upon myself. I blame [a:Jack Whyte|45309|Jack Whyte|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1231090502p2/45309.jpg], who writes both Arthurian fantasy and Templar fiction.

That being said, I chose to read The Knights of the Cornerstone. There's even a blurb from [a:Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg], one of my all-time favourite authors, on the cover! And on the back cover are a number of blurbs from an all-star cast of blurb-writers. That just goes to show how blurbs are inaccurate indicators of whether one will enjoy a book.

Of course, all of the blurbs without exception are talking about James P. Blaylock, not about The Knights of the Cornerstone. This is the first Blaylock book I've read; owing to the ringing endorsements from all these authors, I'll probably give him a second chance with one of his better-recommended books.

The main character might be Calvin Bryson, or it might be a roll of unused paper towel. The two have equivalent amounts of personality, so it's very hard to tell. Calvin lacks any sort of ambition in life; his fiancée has left him for reasons we never get to learn, so he's living off his inheritance by feeding a passion for New Age Californiana books. But then his uncle asks him to visit New Cyprus, a New Age hotspot that's actually a cover town for some modern-era Knights Templar wannabes. Calvin brings down a veil (or a decoy veil?) that has miraculous holy relic healing powers, but this gets the attention of the Big Bad Bob Postum, who wants the veil. Or silver. Or maybe he just wants to stand around waving his pistol and employ colloquialisms all day.

The whole pattern of dialogue in this book annoys me. I'm sheltered; I live in Canada, have never been to California, and never intend to go to California, so maybe people in that area of California actually talk like that. I don't care. While not exactly "metaphor poisoning" of the severe variety seen on Smallville, the locals speak with enough "local colour" for two New Cypruses. I wouldn't mind it so much except that, once you strip all the slang away, there's nothing left.

This is a short enough book as it is, but these few pages conceal an embarrassing secret: there isn't enough plot to fill them. Calvin spends an inordinate amount of time vacillating about an inordinate amount of things. I have nothing against protagonists undergoing mid-life crises and trying to figure out who they are, but there never seems to be anything redeeming about Calvin except perhaps his complete obedience to his aunt and uncle. He plays no pivotal role in the plot, contributes nothing of unique worth—in short, he's just there, and we're just there with him. I wish I could say Calvin is the exception, but this analysis applies to every character in The Knights of the Cornerstone. I'm not sure why I need to care about any of them, because most of them exist only to provide dialogue.

The appeal of the Templars lies in their rich history and mythology, and Blaylock does nothing with that. Instead, the eponymous Knights have almost nothing to do with the real Templars. In fact, the Knights themselves don't have much of a sinister secret—everyone in New Cyprus is a Knight, it seems, and they aren't up to any master plan, good or bad. The entire plot revolves around stopping Bob Postum from stealing the veil (or the silver), because that would be bad, and because the citizens of New Cyprus would rather take care of such problems themselves rather than involving law enforcement. If the stakes were high enough, if the Knights of New Cyprus were actually involved in something secret or illicit, I could understand this attitude. But the conflict is lame! A healing veil? Hidden silver, acquired from a mine, that everyone in the town decides to share?

It's possible there's a decent story buried somewhere in The Knights of the Cornerstone. Done differently, I can see an epic quest to protect the miracle veil from harm. Indifferent Calvin must step up, make a stand, even at the cost of the woman with whom he finds himself falling in love. Unfortunately, that's not the story we have here. The Knights of the Cornerstone isn't so much Templar fiction as it is Templar name-dropping; even if you are a fan of Templar fiction, this book isn't for you.

I've talked smack about Jane Austen before, not so much to discount her ability as a writer—if you question that, then oh, we will throw down—but to compare her unfavourably to George Eliot. What can I say? I was young and stupid two years ago!

Today I would like to apologize to Miss Austen. Since Middlemarch I've come a long way and read a lot more of Austen's works, and while Eliot's novel remains uneclipsed by Austen's novels, my awe and appreciation of Austen's abilities has only increased. Though I considered Sense and Sensibility somewhat disappointing, Emma more than made up for it, and now Northanger Abbey has only confirmed this opinion.

Reading four of Austen's works, two of which are unfinished drafts, all in one volume was very interesting. It provides a breadth to the Austen experience unavailable from a single novel, and unlike some editions of her work, I actually found the critical opinions in this edition helpful. The introduction provides something that we modern readers sorely lack, context. In particular, it explains the relationship between Northanger Abbey and gothic novels, a genre with which I am entirely unfamiliar. There is also a delightful set of explanatory notes at the back of the book that explain particular social references and literary allusions through these four works that otherwise would have gone right past me. Not only have I read more Austen, but I've had an educated and enlightening glimpse into the rural English society of that time.

I'm going to review each work separately, proceeding backward from the order in the text, since I'm saving the best for last.

Review of Sandition

It's difficult to review an unfinished work. I empathize with the editors for the difficult choices they made in typesetting Sandition and The Watsons. There are no paragraphs in Sandition, and paragraphs are one structural item in modern writing that I find indispensable. I have rejected books that I'm sure are otherwise amazing as a result of this very personal prejudice, so I am proud that I managed to slog through Sandition and give it a fair hearing. Because it's mostly very good.

Sandition stands out from Austen's other work because its setting is quite different from the villages and estates present in Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, etc. The eponymous coastal town is undergoing a renewal in the form of health tourism, an industry vigorously promoted by Mr. Parker. The protagonist is apparently Charlotte Heywood, daughter of an innkeeper who befriends the Parkers when they travel in search for a physician for their venture. Austen spends a considerable amount of time on the setting, the intricacies of Parker's real estate plans, and the zeitgeist in a town that is trying to make the transition from a rural habitation to a commercial resort. She's exploring her usual topics of money, status, social mobility, etc., but she does so from a different angle. Charlotte doesn't attend a dance or, so far, start courting suitors; she is more of a witness to Sandition's attempts to attract affluent tourists.

The stylistic, editorial problems with Sandition made it a chore to read. However, it is very short, and it is a shame that Austen did not complete it. Good or bad, it was definitely quite promising.

Review of The Watsons

Compared to Sandition, The Watsons is even rougher in plot and narrative. It is also more traditional, in the sense that we have a female heroine who struggles to find a suitable, likeable husband while dealing with family issues. Notably, the Watsons are one of Austen's poorer families; though they do not quite live off the charity of a relative like the Dashwoods do, Emma's return to the family after the death of the aunt with whom she was living signifies an increased burden. Best to get her married right quick!

The bulk of the extant text consists of a ball that Emma attends as a guest of a richer family. Her sister Elizabeth usually attends this annual affair, and Emma's unfamiliarity with the people and the event are a source of tension. Emma attracts attention to herself when she dances with a young child, Charles, whose sister reneged on a promise to dance with him in favour of dancing with an eligible young man. In particular, the Watsons later receive a visit from none other than Lord Osborne himself, and we know what that means.

Like Sandition, The Watsons is promising, but I'm very hesitant to judge it as is. It is an obviously unfinished, unpolished work, and not something I would be likely to read were it not for the author and her status.

Review of Lady Susan

An actual finished work from Jane Austen, Lady Susan is the epistolary account of the manipulations of the eponymous flirty widow, Susan Vernon. And it is amusing, almost laugh-out-loud funny.

The short length of the letters, combined with their shifting points of view, presents a very different experience from Austen's other work. While a narrator shows up at the very end, the bulk of the novel consists of the first-person accounts of Lady Susan and various other correspondents. Each of these characters have a delightfully distinct voice, and I love watching Austen switch between them. From the schemes of Lady Susan and her low opinions of her own daughter we quickly jump to her sister-in-law, Catherine Vernon, complaining to her mother about Susan's behaviour.

Despite the intensity of her wit and humour here, Lady Susan does manage to make me care about its characters and the conflict. Susan is a duplicitous bitch who schemes to get her own way and neglects her daughter. I don't want to see Frederica marry Reginald any more than Frederica does! Yet there's also something intriguing about Susan. She has twin roles: widow and flirtatious woman. She can marry again, but she doesn't want to give up that freedom. Susan is a very different character from Austen's other heroines, who are mostly young and somewhat innocent. Susan is neither, and even though she is not a nice person per se, she is a very interesting one.

I'll go so far as to call Lady Susan a hidden gem. It's something you might miss if you focus only on Austen's better-known works, and that would be a shame.

Review of Northanger Abbey

Though not published until after he death, Northanger Abbey is the first novel Austen sold to a publisher. The editors of this edition call it both a parody of and an homage to the gothic novel. I find it the most obviously self-aware of Austen's works. Austen's narrator vehemently defends the novel as a literary form from its detractors:

… they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels;—for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.

That is a small snippet from a much longer diatribe on the infidelity of other novelists to their own form. I love it; it's Austen with attitude.

I found it easy to identify with Catherine. Like her, I've often wondered what my life would be like with elements of favourite fictions included. Austen creates moments of suspense as Catherine pokes around Northanger Abbey that are absent from her other stories. There's plenty of tension in Emma and Pride and Prejudice, but the emulation of the gothic form lends a different atmosphere to this book.

Of course, central to the book are the relationships of the main characters, particularly Catherine's friendship with Isabella Thorpe and her budding romance with Henry Tilney. Isabella and her brother, John, are obviously bad influences on Catherine; the scenes in which they inveigle her "with gentle violence" to accompany them on a country carriage ride at the expense of an engagement with Eleanor Tilney are delightfully awkward. Poor Catherine is unsure of how to extricate herself from what she sees as terrible rudeness, especially when her current "best friend" and her own brother are among those encouraging her! It's like high school peer pressure, albeit everyone is better dressed and there are no drugs involved.

Once Catherine goes to Northanger Abbey, her relationship with Isabella becomes entirely epistolary. We learn about Isabella's infidelity and flirtatiousness at the expense of Catherine's brother. As with Lady Susan, the letters from different people allow us a rare glimpse at another person's perspective on the matter. Despite Isabella's entreaties, Catherine remains constant once she learns from her brother of what Isabella did, which is something I found interesting. I thought for sure there would have to be an attempt at reconciliation by the both of them, but I was wrong; Catherine is stronger than that. Good for her! That is, naturally, the point: Austen sets the stage for Catherine to choose between friends, Eleanor or Isabella. Eleanor is the obvious better choice, but it takes a while for Catherine, who is a little naive, to understand the depth of Isabella's shallowness.

I don't know if "the most uncomplicated" of Austen's leading males is the right phrase to describe Henry Tilney, but I think it captures the gist of what I want to say about him. He is not dark and brooding like Mr. Darcy, and the dynamic between Catherine and Henry is quite different from the one established between Emma and Mr. Knightley, mostly owing to the differences in maturity between the two heroines. Henry is Catherine's first love and her first real exposure to a potential husband. She conflates his true personality with those of heroes from her gothic novels, conjuring up a fantastic backstory of betrayal and murder for his father, the General. This is the most serious obstacle to their union, aside from General Tilney's short-lived objections.

The abruptness of the conclusion to Northanger Abbey is its weakest part. Austen lampshades this, mentioning, "the anxiety … as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity." I still don't like it. The Morlands just happen to improve enough in their financial situation to obviate the General's objections to the marriage; Austen invokes a narrative fiat to create a happy ending and remove the conflict. It's effective but crude and a little undermining for the rest of the story.

As always, I've read and reviewed this book with an emphasis on how it compares to Austen's other stories. Northanger Abbey is not my favourite Austen novel, nor is it my least favourite. It exhibits the best and worst of Austen's traits as a writer, a humourist, and a careful descriptor of the relationships of her chosen demographic. I especially liked the insight it provides into how Austen viewed the novel form and gothic novels, something I admit was emphasized by the editors to the benefit of my historical edification.

I don't read many vampire stories. And no, it's not because [b:that other vampire series|41865|Twilight (Twilight, #1)|Stephenie Meyer|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275613536s/41865.jpg|3212258] soured me on them. I've just never seen the appeal of vampires in general. The one exception would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, because Joss Whedon is awesome. Those series aside, I tend to approach vampire stories with some reservation. The last vampire book—straight-up vampire book, not a book with vampires in it, like one of the Dresden Files books—I read was The Midnight Guardian. And as I said in that review, it had a premise that couldn't really go wrong: "Vampires kicking Nazi ass."

That's what a vampire book needs to get—and keep—my attention. Fortunately, Thunder and Blood has such a premise: "Two women get stranded in an alternate Earth ruled by a feudal vampire oligarchy." Yes please!

In Voss' alternative vampire history/mythology, vampirism kicks off with Charles V and quickly spreads throughout sixteenth century Europe. I have a few reservations about the way Voss pitches her timeline—supposedly Charles V sires Leonardo da Vinci. These two did overlap, but only when Charles was young and Leonardo quite old. On a similar note, we have the matter of language. Hillard can speak English and French in addition to German because he learned them in school. Yet the English of the sixteenth century was quite different from the English of today. Moreover, as our two universes diverged, so too would our modern evolutions of English—especially if Shakespeare did not make his contributions to the language. Voss doesn't touch on this part of her history (why would she?), but I wonder if, with Henry VIII remaining on the English throne, Shakespeare ever rocked the English-speaking world.

I nitpick because it is obvious that Voss has put a lot of thought into her new universe. Unfortunately, it is obvious because of the amount of exposition present in the dialogue between Sarah and Hillard and between Christine and Lord Radek. The objections I mentioned above are minor obstacles, but this matter of exposition is not. For the most part, these conversations are tiresome but tolerable, more clumsy than they are detrimental to the pacing of the plot. There is one that occurs closer to the end, when Lord Radek sits down with Hillard and they have it out about Hillard's history and his purpose in this area. The conversation is long, introduces dead characters we don't care about, and does little to further anything except reveal that Hillard is a good guy (shocking, that).

This inconsistency is probably the most frustrating thing about Thunder and Blood. Voss has created a great story and characters who are, mostly, interesting. And most of the time she gives these characters the voices they deserve and makes her narrative come alive. But once in a while, mostly toward the end of the book, these voices falter, and you get the sort of flat, clunky writing that engenders the exposition I noted above. You get random characters (I'm looking at you, Conrad) coming out of the woodwork at the last moment, no warning. You get a story that starts out wild and wondrous, and ends rather predictably.

Sometimes Thunder and Blood is amazing and impressive. When something happens to Hillard and I wonder why, Voss is right there with a pithy explanation of the part of her vampiric rules governing that event. Sarah and Christine are separated, and Sarah wants nothing more than to find her sister and return home. At the same time Christine, is held prisoner in a castle with a crazy vampire lord; escape is simultaneously the thing closest to and further from her mind. I love how Voss has constructed a society that, at least on the surface, seems like it works (I have some reservations about this too). And sometimes Thunder and Blood, as I noted above, is disappointing.

By way of postscript, I have to say, as someone who has lived in Thunder Bay all his life, it's neat reading a book set in the area around Thunder Bay. That being said, I think if I saw the phrase "Sarah saw her familiar friend the Sleeping Giant" one more time, I would have thrown the book across the room.

Thunder and Blood is a good book with a refreshing view of vampires and alternate history. Since Thunder and Blood was about vampires, I'm guessing Thunder and Ice will be about Sarah and Christine's struggle against invading yetis? Can't wait! Seriously though, while this review has been heavy on the criticism, that's just because I don't want to get too repetitive with the praise. It's a wonderful story that's not without its flaws, but it does vampires well.

My first experience with Alice Munro was with "The View from Castle Rock" in excerpted form in The Penguin Book of Canadian Short Stories. Even shortened, something about the ocean journey of this immigrant family intrigued me. On the surface, the story is rather bland. A Scottish family is making the crossing to Canada. The characters, however, are engrossing. Their relationships are unromantic. The father once inspired his son with talk of going to America, and now that they are living this dream, he is filled with nostalgia for Scotland. Agnes married Robert because she was certain he wouldn't leave her for someone else, not out of love. Nor does she have particular affection for her son, whom she feels her sister-in-law spoils. William is a bit of a dreamer, perhaps the most romantic—or simply the most naive—of the bunch.

Although "The View from Castle Rock" attracted me to this book, I preferred the latter stories, focusing on Munro's fictionalized life, to those of her ancestors. The most noticeable difference is Munro's switch from a third person to first person narration. The fact that these stories have a single, central protagonist, whom I shall call Alice to distinguish her from Munro, makes the stories feel more connected and intimate. Almost like a novel.

All right, so I'm biased. I won't deny it: I am a child of the novel, and a lover of novels I remain. I have nothing against short stories or other forms of literature; indeed, there are many a short story that have earned a dear place in my heart. Nevertheless, I never seem to make enough time for short stories. I don't seek out anthologies, and I'm not interested in rectifying this shortcoming of mine. Despite occasionally lighting a fire in me, short stories never beckon to me with the potential to light such a fire. So, when I do dip my feet into the short story pool, I like to sample from the best.

There is a refreshing frankness and honesty to Munro's fictionalization. She presents Alice neither as a Mary Sue nor as a martyr. Alice often makes mistakes, or does something that prompts Munro to express regret. Each story is about a single moment. Everything else in the story is a reflection of this moment, a scaffold that suspends the moment for inspection and introspection.

In one of my favourite stories, "Hired Girl," Alice goes to live with a rich family for the summer to keep house for them. She picks up a book left lying around by the husband, and it captures her imagination. Later he gives the book to her; this exchange, kept secret by both of them, is pregnant with meaning. To me, the act of giving a book is an intimate one. I love to give books to people, even people I don't know very well. When you give a person a book, you are, to paraphrase Neil Gaiman, giving them an entire world. The husband was drunk when he gave Alice the book, and he doesn't mention it again later, either because he doesn't remember or he wants the gift to be secret. It's interesting how, when we look back at an event, we make so much out of small things.

Retrospection is a big part of The View from Castle Rock. Alice's world of rural Ontario in the thirties and forties is very different from contemporary Canadian society. Every story is narrated by the older Munro, who has access to the unique perspective of the Alice of that period. As Alice grows older, she assumes a more active role in her stories. Instead of relating what happened to her, she talks more about what she did, the steps she took to make something happen. I liked this progressive time-lapse of both person and place.

Books are always a conversation between author and reader. With The View from Castle Rock, I was more aware of this than usual. At 20, I haven't had a lot of the experiences Munro discusses in the stories of herself and her ancestors. I bring my own experiences to the table, however, and use those perspectives to judge what I read. You do the same. I'm not quite sure what to say about this book, because while I enjoyed it, I don't know how to judge it properly. Is it memoir? Fictionalized family history? Tales about what it means to be family, about ancestry and heredity? I could be trite and say that it's all of these things. But it's more up to you.

The character of time is an open question in physics and philosophy. Entropy and the laws of thermodynamics seem to indicate that there is an "arrow of time," that time goes only in one "direction." Despite our best efforts, however, we still just don't know. It is, however, a well-known fact that humans, or at least most of us, experience time in an aggressively linear fashion. Whatever the objective nature of time, for humanity time moves in one direction common to everyone. There's no going back, and there is no reliving the past.

In Time's Arrow, Martin Amis creates a consciousness that experiences the life of Tod T. Friendly in reverse. Time literally flows backward, but at the same pace as we experience it in our lives, so this consciousness watches Tod grow younger. Although equipped with "general knowledge" this consciousness has no sense of what "normal" life is like—it is, for all intents and purposes, tabula rasa. The process of eating involves regurgitating food onto a plate and sculpting it into a meal (presumably one would then uncook the food, bag it, and return it to a supermarket). Similarly, the toilet becomes the source of sustenance—yeah, I'm not going to explain that any further.

So through the eyes of this hitchhiker, Amis shows us how funny our lives would be if experienced in reverse. Relationships start with break ups and end with shy meet-cutes. Babies are implanted into a mother's womb, in which they shrink for nine months and then are "killed" by a father's sexual act. And Tod Friendly is a doctor, a profession feared by the public because its practitioners are responsible for inflicting injuries on healthy people and sending them back out on the streets, where car accidents, rapists, etc., will heal them.

The punchline of this novel-length joke is, of course, not a spoiler, because it's on the dust jacket: Tod Friendly is an ex-Nazi doctor from Auschwitz. For those of us who experience time "forward," he is a monster complicit in the Holocaust; for Amis' hitchhiker, he is a Frankenstein-like hero, a scientist who pieces together Jews from the grave or materializes them from the gas chamber and restores them to life, sometimes hundreds or thousands a day! Auschwitz is a miracle centre. It's a twisted premise, and that should make it promising.

Except Time's Arrow fails at conveying any meaning. I can't see the point Amis is trying to make through this chronological reversal. It can't just be that life looks silly in rewind. Stumped in a way I seldom am, let us examine the dust jacket of my edition for some clues:

This spectral observer's ignorance of the doctor's past combines with the reader's awful knowledge to reverse the numbing effects of time and gives history the impact of direct experience.

Oh, OK, now I get it. This is all about dramatic irony. Amis is trying to juxtapose the moral innocence of his narrator with our knowledge of what Tod is going to do in his past (the narrator's future). And that is pretty much the only source of entertainment in this entire book.

How exactly does this "reverse the numbing effects of time" though? Now my dust jacket is equivocating! Obviously one doesn't have to tell a story in reverse to make a reader empathize with events from the past. And for reasons I'll explore later, I am actually convinced of the opposite of this claim: Amis' choice in narrative style ruins the hope for empathy or enjoyment.

And "gives history the impact of direct experience?" I don't want to fault Amis for this, since he did not hire the person who wrote the jacket copy. But in the paraphrased words of Inigo Montoya, I do no think that phrase means what you think it means, gentle dust jacket writer. At least not in a literal sense. Obviously it's meant to be a metaphor, but in that function it has the same flaw as the previous phrase: exactly how does this differentiate Time's Arrow from any other work of historical fiction? It doesn't.

The jacket goes on to claim that "Time's Arrow is a stunning, virtuosic [sic:] exploration of guilt and repression, America and Germany, history, time, and morality." Now I'm starting to wonder if the dust jacket writer read the same book as me. Who is supposed to feel guilt? Tod Friendly? I took the liberty of reading the conversations between Tod and others in reverse (so that they would make sense in my perspective) and even that did not shed more light on his character. I can't tell if he feels guilty for what happened in Auschwitz (I get the sense that he doesn't, but maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention). Or is the narrator supposed to feel guilty for Tod's actions? I doubt that somehow, because after watching Tod "give life" to Jews, the narrator thinks this guy is the bee's knees (or whatever the German equivalent of that expression is).

All right, so I've digressed somewhat. I've started bashing the book jacket instead of the book, and I should reiterate that Amis had little if any control over what the dust jacket promises the reader. I have read many books which are, in retrospect, nothing like their jacket copy promises but were still good judged on their own merits. So I'll put aside the discussion of the themes of Time's Arrow, confusing as they are. Where does this book stand as, you know, a book?

Here I can praise Time's Arrow in one respect: it is a paradigm case of a "literary experiment." Amis had an interesting idea and ran with it. I can grok that. But an interesting idea does not a novel make, and in this case, I think the idea actually works counter to the experience of reading a novel. There is nothing wrong with chronological reversal itself, but the way in which Amis has chosen to use it cripples the story.

Simply put, Amis' narrator is a spectator. It cannot interact with the world in any way other than through Tod's experiences, which it cannot affect. This consciousness, whatever it may be, is locked in Tod's body with no volition of its own, able only to think and feel for itself. What a miserable existence!

This poses a problem for the reader too. Not only is the narrator unable to change events, but the characters are similarly impotent. Amis' chronological reversal has removed the ability for any character to make a choice or change in any way. Time's Arrow is essentially MST3K where you are stuck watching Tod's life in reverse with a smart-ass companion who doesn't know about World War II. The story is narrative and only narrative.

The genius of fiction is its ability to create cognitive dissonance within a reader. At an intellectual level, the reader knows that a non-interactive plot will always have the same outcome, no matter how many times one reads it. Unlike Schrödinger's cat, that outcome will also remain the same whether or not one reads the book. Nevertheless, during the actual experience of reading, every aspect of the story is bent toward convincing the reader that the characters make choices which affect the plot. We don't want to believe that Juliet kills herself because Shakespeare willed it so; we believe that she kills herself out of grief for the loss of Romeo.

The style in which Amis' employs his narrative conceit collapses this cognitive dissonance. The narrator certainly never has a crisis of any kind. In fact, it is extremely mellow considering it has experienced sixty years without any ability to affect the external world. That would drive me crazy. And Tod's life does not interest me, because when played in reverse, Tod just becomes a robot. Any significance of his role in the Holocaust is lost. Sure, it's ironic because we know it is coming and the narrator does not. However, unlike a conventional work of historical fiction, we never have access to Tod's feelings and motivations for becoming a Nazi doctor; we never see his fall and his redemption (or lack thereof). We see it twisted and in reverse, but that is not the same thing.

So kudos to Martin Amis for this literary experiment. After all, by definition, if it is an experiment its outcome is uncertain. So does Time's Arrow succeed or fail as a literary experiment? I don't want to be harsh, but the answer is failure. By no stretch of the word did I hate this book, but it was a disappointment. And as a story, backwards or forwards, it's no good at all.

Fundamentalism scares me. Like, causes me to despair and lament the future of human civilization scares me. Fundamentalists seem so diametrically opposed to progress, freedom, and education that I fear what will happen if ever they attain a critical mass of power. Fundamentalism is universal in its appeal to the irrationality of our species: it is not just limited to any one religion. We cannot fight it by identifying a religion with its fundamentalist base and rejecting it; we cannot say, "Terrorists who were Muslim destroyed the Twin Towers, therefore Islam is bad." We're more mature and nuanced than that, right?

I sure hope so. And so does Tarek Fatah, because his book, Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, is an appeal to logic and rationality. "Islam is in danger" extremists chant, and yes, it is—in danger from them.

Chasing a Mirage is divided into three parts. Fatah first uses present claimants to the title "Islamic state" to investigate what this term means. Then he delves into the history of Islam and examines past countries that Islamists want to use a templates for a the Islamic state. Finally, he singles out some particular examples of how the Islamist agenda is furthered in Western countries. Each of these sections alone would be worth reading. Together, they form a compelling argument both fascinating and bleak.

In "Part One: The Illusion" Fatah elaborates on what he means by the term Islamic state. He uses three contemporary countries—Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—as case studies. These countries both claim to be "Islamic states" in one form or another, and many readers (including myself) associate these countries with Islam. Fatah also looks at Palestine, which he feels is in danger of being hijacked by extremists in an ill-advised attempt to turn it into an Islamic state. In all of these cases, Fatah highlights how attempts to transform Islam into a political system in addition to a religious one have become mired in corruption and human rights abuses. His argument is simple: if these are examples of Islamic states, then he does not want one.

Central to the concept of Islamic state is the supremacy of Islam. Simple enough: there is no god but God (or Allah, if you prefer), and we worship him based on the revelations in the Quran given to us by the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. In an Islamic state, Islam is more than just a state religion. Rather, the entire political and judicial systems are codified according to Islamic practices and principles. Or at least, that is the theory. As Fatah demonstrates in Part 2, there aren't really Islamic principles for politics. However, I am getting ahead of myself.

In their zeal to spread Islam, proponents of the Islamic state lose sight of the little things in life, like, say, human rights. Societies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have institutionalized a form of hierarchical racism in which Arab Muslims are at the top and non-Arab Muslims are treated like second-class citizens, often as poorly as non-Muslims. At times, this has resulted in genocidal or near-genocidal atrocities, both against non-Muslims and even other Muslims. Fatah spares us no detail as he recounts Pakistan's bloody history. That such actions are committed in the name of Islam is a travesty, for what does it say of one's religion if it condones such violence and abuses? Where in the Quran does it say, "Arabs number 1! Arabs number 1!"?

The fact of the matter, as Fatah explains it, is that the Quran contains no outline for the "Islamic state" that Islamists want. Indeed, apparently even the Islamists don't have a consistent idea of what "Islamic state" means across the board: "Among Pakistan's imams and Islamic scholars, no two agreed on the fundamental definition of either an 'Islamic State' or a 'Muslim.'" This last tactic is all too common:

… the only beneficiaries of the Islamic State were the tyrants who ruled Muslim populations and who were able to silence opposition by getting the Ulema [religious scholars:] to declare that opposition to their government was opposition to Islam.

If someone opposes you, obviously he or she is an apostate. Conveniently, Islamists believe the punishment for apostasy is death. As a result of such an extremist view, Islam has been hijacked.

As horrible as the human rights abuses perpetrated in the name of Islam are, I am even more troubled by this subversion and rejection of democracy. Democracy is a delicate flower that is beautiful when it flourishes but wilts all too easily. Once in decline, it is very difficult to restore. Islamists have often come to power through democratic means, but once in power they turn democracy into a sham, if they bother keeping it around at all. Iran is an example of this subversion of democracy: although their president is nominally elected by the people, elections in Iran are anything but free of intimidation. Worse, the policy implemented by the ayatollahs of Iran "virtually guarantees that no matter what the people of Iran want, they will not be able to dislodge the Islamic theocracy by democratic means." Instead, Fatah notes, "Not all ayatollahs in Iran agree with the current leadership.… It is quite likely that the changes the Iranian people desire in their country may come from within the religious establishment." Despite having just spent an entire chapter discussing the problems with Iran, Fatah remains optimistic about its potential for recovery:

… as long as even a handful of such Iranian clerics speak their mind, and as long as Iranian women rebel against the oppressive misogyny of the mullahs, there is hope for the Iranian revolution to reach its intended potential, a secular democracy where Iran can again play the historic role it once did. A free and democratic Iran where ayatollahs become the people's moral compass, not their executioners, would trigger a renaissance in the rest of the Muslim world.

Eloquently put, and right too. I am no fan of Iran. However, in opposing the ayatollahs it behoves one not to demonize them like they have done with the West. This only engenders more hatred and mistrust, and that is something we can ill afford.

Having looked at present-day Islamic states and found them wanting, Fatah decides to look to history for examples of an Islamic state worth emulating. He does this not on a whim but because Islamists often speak of a "golden age" of Islam. So Fatah looks at the period following the death of the Prophet, where Muslims were ruled by the four "Rightly Guided Caliphs." Then he looks at three other examples of empires nominally based on Islamic principles. The result is pretty much what one would expect, especially after reading Part 1. In all cases, these politicians use and abuse Islam to gain power and stay in power. Some of these empires achieved both zeniths and nadirs of civilization. There is no evidence, however, that any of these states witnessed a "golden age." And sometimes it seemed like living as a Muslim, especially a non-Arab Muslim, in an Islamic state sucks pretty bad. And if an Islamic state is a place where not even Muslims want to live … well, who exactly wants it?

"Part Two: The Genesis" is my least favourite section of Chasing a Mirage. It is long, almost too long, and at times it becomes mired in details as Fatah enthusiastically accounts for every name and place and factor involved in the current episode. That being said, there is nothing in this section that feels superfluous. I could not suggest removing anything just to make it shorter, and I cannot fault it for being comprehensive. All I can say is that you will probably want to take this section slowly. Read it a chapter at a time while relaxing with another book.

The final section of the book, "Part Three: The Consequences," is a nice little reward to those who persevered through Part 2. Fatah devotes a chapter each to sharia law, jihad, and the wearing of the hijab, ultimately concluding that each of these phenomena are part of the Islamist agenda in the West. This is where Fatah gets the most opinionated and the most personal, since as a founding member of the Muslim Canadian Congress he was often involved in these issues. On a somewhat nationalistic note, I also want to add that I appreciate how when Fatah says, "this country" he means Canada, not the United States. Obviously I need to read more books about Canadian politics.

Part 3 reminds me of Multiculturalism without Culture, by Anne Phillips. Like Philips, Fatah is concerned that simplistic ideas of unified cultures are being used against us: "In Ottawa, the lobbying by Islamist groups is relentless, putting politicians of all stripes on the defensive as they fear they might be labelled racist or Islamophobic if they criticize Islamists." Islam, like every other religion, is not monolithic. Muslim culture, like every other culture, is not monolithic. It behoves us to understand this and reject the attitudes of Islamists, who eagerly label as apostates any Muslim who disagrees with them.

I was pleased to see that, in addition to rejecting the Islamist requirement that women wear the hijab, Fatah supports a woman's right to wear the hijab if she chooses. From his vitriolic rejection of the former I feared a rejection of the latter as well. Fortunately, Fatah remains consistently pro-choice, which is how I see the matter: in both cases, the government removes freedom of choice. It is not enough to protest against bans of the hijab or the burka; one must also protest against the requirement to wear such coverings. It boggles my mind that some people would indoctrinate their daughters to believe that, if they don't cover their hair, some man will rape them and get them pregnant (for one thing, what does that say about men?!). It boggles my mind that otherwise progressive Muslims will, with a straight-face, parrot the hypocrisy of Islamists who denounce terrorism while calling for jihad. If Muslims and non-Muslims alike want to rehabilitate the image of Islam in the West, we must restore it to the tenets of gender equality preached in the Quran and ignore those voices who call for the submission of women and the demonization of the Other. We must strive to better educate ourselves about these issues, lest in our ignorance we fall prey fundamentalists and extremists, from whatever religion or creed they hail.

Multiculturalism does not mean "separate rules for separate cultures." It is am embrace of every culture, a commitment to preserve freedom of choice. I don't care if you worship Yaweh, Allah, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or even if you don't worship a god at all: treat me like a human being, and I will treat you like a human being. Because that's what matters. And as an added bonus, I promise that even if you don't wear a hijab, I will somehow manage to refrain from stoning you on suspicion of adultery.

Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State is an eye-opening look at the political history of Islam. Tarek Fatah reaffirms Islam as a peaceful, progressive religion and condemns those extremists who would reshape it into something otherwise. Fatah's rejection of the Islamic state is threefold: firstly, Islamists' claim that "Islam is in danger" without an Islamic state is false; secondly, the so-called Islamic states of the past to which Islamists point as "golden age" templates are anything but golden; finally, this struggle to achieve an Islamic state damages what Fatah labels the "state of Islam" that he believes is core to Muslim identity. Furthermore, Fatah does not do what frustrates me about so much of political non-fiction today; he does not say, "this book is merely an attempt to make you aware of the problems" in order to avoid proposing solutions. Chasing a Mirage is full of solutions, alternatives, and hope. This is without a doubt one of the best books I've read all year—and I've been having a pretty good year for reading, so I don't say this lightly. Oh, and the "manufacturer's warranty" included at the end is hilarious.

I love Bible stories. I have a vague memory of our family doctor's office, and how I would enjoy going there because there was a Children's Bible—or it might have just been the Old Testament—and I loved reading the story of Genesis from it. Of course, I was a child back then, and as my religious tendencies have gone from agnostic to atheistic, one might expect my enthusiasm for the Bible to dim. Quite the contrary, in fact. Regardless of one's religion, the Bible is one of the most important works in Western literature. Allusions to it permeate our high and pop culture; even my name, "Benjamin," is Biblical.

It is the privilege of any great book to be parodied. Such parodies are essential, because they help ensure we take the source material seriously but not too seriously. Whether you are intimately familiar with the details of these stories or you find the Bible boring, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! is a retelling both humourous and faithful to the source material.

The best stories in this book are "Adam and Eve", "Cain and Abel", "Jacob and Esau", and "Jonah and the Fish". Some of the other stories, such as "The Golden Calf" do not measure up in terms of humour or quality; others, like "King David", drag on longer than need be. I was surprised by the inconsistency in quality among these stories, because the first two are so good. That might be my childhood bias returning, however: I have a penchant for Genesis and retellings of the explusion from Eden. It is an iconic story, and there are just so many ways to re-interpret the Garden of Eden, the snake, Adam and Eve's relationship, and the Tree of Knowledge. In Goldstein's version, I love the dynamic between Eve and the snake, as well as his explanation of Adam and Eve's relationship:

Since the Garden of Eden was the very first village, and since every village needs a mayor as well as a village idiot, it broke down in this way: Eve: mayor; Adam: village idiot.

Sometimes, when Adam would start to speak, Eve would get all hopeful that he was about to impart something important and smart, but he would only say stuff like: "Little things are really great because you can put them in your hand as well as in our mouth."

Goldstein somehow injects contemporary sterotypes into ancient stories and make it all seem timeless. He goes the usual route of Biblical parodies, mocking the wrathfulness of the Old Testament God. In addition to that, however, his stories contain perspectives necessarily absent from the source material yet nonetheless relevant to the topic. For example, the ending to "Adam and Eve" is poignant and thoughtful:

The children would swarm into the house like a carpet of ants. The youngest ones would head straight for Adam, lifting his shirt to examine his belly for the umpteenth time. They smoothed their hands across his flesh and marveled.

"Where's Grandpa's belly button?" they all asked. He stared at the children—they were all his children—and as they slid their little hands across his blank stomach, he wondered what it was like to be a kid.

On a dramatic level, the expulsion from Eden is tragic, but Goldstein reminds us that there is a personal tragedy too. The Bible does not mention that Adam lacks a belly button (and God, being omnipotent, very well could have given Adam one, had He chosen). Maybe Adam did not have a belly button, since he was never in utero; and certainly he never had a childhood. Of all the differences accorded him in being the first human being, this is probably the saddest.

Similarly, the ending to "Cain and Abel" is one of the darkest parts of the entire collection. Cain has murdered his brother Abel, sure that God would intervene at the last moment. As punishment, he wanders the Earth, and we get a glimpse at how extreme longevity can be as much curse as blessing:

He began to doubt everything. He even began to wonder whether he had ever actually heard God's voice, whether the mark on his forehead was the mark of God and not just another liver spot. Was this a part of his punishment, he wondered, to be left so uncertain of whether God really was, or whether God was only something inside his own head?

Far from being humorous, much of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! is serious and even dark. Bible stories prove to be a perfect subject for showcasing Goldstein's ability to fuse levity and tragedy, black comedy that is not so much macabre as it is tragic. From the Bible, Goldstein appropriates names and events and turns them into real characters and stories. For the most part, he does it well. For every few moments of poetic triumph, unfortunately, there is also a moment of low comedy. (I had never before heard the phrase "psychosomatic anal welts" and never want to hear it again.) Several of the stories in this book have been broadcast, sometimes abridged, on Goldstein's CBC radio show, WireTap. You can hear the episodes for free from the website, and I urge you to give them a try. Not only is WireTap a great show, but there's something about Goldstein's voice that makes the stories even better than they are on paper.

This is not my first time to the Mark Twain rodeo, but it has been a long time since I last visited. Twain is not high on my list of priorities, sorry to say. However, this lovely edition of The Prince and the Pauper found its way into my possession, so I decided to challenge those priorities. While I don’t think I will be rushing to devour the rest of Twain’s oeuvre just yet, this book has certainly given me a more mature appreciation of Twain as a writer. After all, the last time I encountered Twain, I was a child or adolescent, with corresponding tastes. (No, I don’t know why I used a cowboy metaphor with a New England author. I’m wild and unpredictable!)

Whenever I think of Mark Twain, particularly of Tom Sawyer or The Prince and the Pauper, I think of the 1990s PBS series Wishbone. I grew up with Wishbone, and it was right up there with Bill Nye the Science Guy and The Magic School Bus as a formative television show that I loved beyond all reason. I mean, it’s about a talking dog that re-enacts great works of literature in a way young people can understand and enjoy. How amazingly awesome is that? Consequently, my first—and usually most memorable—exposure to many classics came as a Wishbone adventure. When I think of The Hound of the Baskervilles, I don’t picture any of the innumerable human Sherlock Holmes actors; I see Wishbone dressed in a deerstalker.

So everything I remembered about The Prince and the Pauper came from dim recollections of its Wishbone episode (“The Prince and the Pooch”). This disposed me favourably the book in general, but it also left me quite surprised. I did not expect a book like this to have endnotes or to be so meticulous in its research. Twain is cites works of English history and law by people like Hume and Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull! It is much more like a work of historical fiction I would expect to see today, complete with author’s note and caveats about the liberties the author has taken. Billed by Twain as “A Tale for Young People of All Ages”, this book has plenty of historical details for an adult reader as well. The story itself, in terms of structure and conflict, is simple, but the world Twain creates is rich and complex.

Aside from the milieu, the best part of this book is clearly the two titular characters, Tom Canty the pauper and Prince Edward (later King Edward VI). We sympathize with both of these boys when they are thrust out of their element by Edward’s rash decision to exchange clothing with Tom. We are supposed to, and I did, find it hilarious that Tom, after a hard life in Offal Court with an abusive father and grandmother, finds court life dull and vexing. Similarly, Edward is a good lad, but initially he suspects that Tom planned to impersonate him on purpose, and he spends a good deal of the first part of the book railing against his usurper. In general, Edward’s insistence upon his true identity is a source of endless amusement to the people around him. Meanwhile, Tom has no choice but to accept his identity as a slightly-addled Edward and cope as best he can until the true Edward turns up again.

We all dream of being princes and astronauts and dragon-slayers when we are kids, but Twain adds a dose of reality to Tom’s sudden fortune. Being a prince is hard work! And as someone accustomed to the freedom of one’s own agency, the obligations of royalty—both in terms of how he must act and how he must let others act for him—weigh heavily on Tom. We like the idea of having servants and sumptuous clothing and administering justice, but we also tend to like feeding ourselves, scratching our own noses, and not having a nosy Lord Protector trying to run the country for us. Conversely, Edward is quite used to being assisted—he is a capable and intelligent child in his own right, but he is not quite the independent person that Tom was on his way to becoming. Indeed, notice how the narrator follows Tom’s perspective very closely during his chapters, only occasionally delving into the thoughts of Lord Somerset or others. In contrast, most of Edward’s experiences come to us via Miles Hendon, once he and Edward meet and, later, when they reunite. Hendon gives us that perspective of Edward as a troubled, mentally ill child, whom he is nevertheless going to shepherd because, hey, he’s a nice guy.

I also get a very Shakespearean vibe from The Prince and the Pauper. We have mistaken identities, a displaced king/pretender to the throne, reversals of fortunes, etc. Twain employs his own take on colloquial Early Modern English that you will find either endearing or distracting (or perhaps both) depending on your tolerance for such accented dialogue. The language in general, both of the characters and of the narrator, has that dramatic, Shakespearean flair. A random example: “Whithersoever Tom turned his happy young face, the people recognized the exactness of his effigy’s likeness to himself, the flesh and blood counterpart, and new whirlwinds of applause burst forth.” Notice how much action there is in this sentence and how violent it is: people aren’t just clapping; there are whirlwinds of their applause, and it bursts onto the scene. I imagine that some of the vocabulary, not to mention the archaic style of the dialogue, might be daunting for a younger reader, but Twain's style in general lends itself well to avoiding boredom. I think this is one of those books that would make great bedtime reading between a parent and a child, because the parent can explain or decipher the parts that are difficult for a child to follow.

I suppose writing historical fiction for a younger audience must be quite difficult. (My recent experience with The Stolen One corroborates this.) There is a tension between striving for the accuracy that makes one’s fiction “historical” rather than merely fantastical or speculative and striving to retain the reader’s comprehension. I love fiction set in Tudor England, but I also know quite a bit about how Tudor England differs from the present day, so I am very used to reading stories set in Tudor England. For a young reader, new to this period, I imagine this can be difficult. The Mark Twain rodeo offers a very nice compromise between accuracy and comprehensibility, one that both adults and children can enjoy.

I’ve been reading the most extraordinary, eloquent encomia of this book. There is something about Mrs Dalloway that provokes people into passionate reminisces of their own experiences, whether it’s middle age, walking through London, or navigating the perilous minefields of relationships. I wish I could contribute to that corpus. Truthfully, the intense style that Virginia Woolf uses in Mrs Dalloway made it very difficult for me to read, and that has damped my enthusiasm for what is otherwise a very fine book.

The introduction of my edition labels Mrs Dalloway “experimental”, and Woolf’s style is certainly distinctive. Her long sentences are connected into even longer paragraphs, with a liberal sprinkling of colons, semicolons, and such a complicated chain of pronouns and antecedents that reading this book was quite a workout. Woolf has a way of describing things that reminds me of Stuart McLean from The Vinyl Cafe: small, meandering descriptions that are almost but not quite tangents; similes that might be called epic. With no chapter divisions and precious few indications of a change of setting or perspective, the reader must remain alert for such shifts. One moment Woolf is delving into the psyche of Clarissa Dalloway or Peter Walsh, and then the next paragraph delivers us into the mind of Septimus Warren Smith. More than just flies on the wall; the audience experiences a rapid, ever-changing kaleidoscopical view of London, 1923. Finally, it’s worth keeping in mind the fact that Mrs Dalloway takes place over a single day, as Clarissa prepares for her party. This is a compressed yet verbose tale, and it is not to be underestimated.

I can’t say I enjoyed reading this book, because the aforementioned style just doesn’t work with me. That might change—I have a feeling this is a novel I can go back and read at different points in my life, and my opinion will change as I get closer in age to the main characters. Nevertheless, I would be a fool to dismiss the book simply because the act of reading it was not a leisurely one for me. There’s a multitude of heavy themes in Mrs Dalloway, ranging from commentary on the effects of war on soldiers to the treatment of mental illness. Clarissa ruminates over the love she felt, and still feels, for another woman who has since drifted out of her life—a woman who, unlike Clarissa, chose to be bold and speak her mind. Peter Walsh happens to return from India on the day Clarissa, his unrequited love, throws a big party. Mrs Dalloway is an emotionally-charged, socially-critical novel with a fascinating cast of characters.

My difficulties with this book extend to analyzing it, because I confess I didn’t always follow assiduously the progression of the plot. So I’m going to pick one thing about Mrs Dalloway that I liked and talk about it: the parallels between Septimus Warren Smith and Clarissa Dalloway. These were made all the more interesting to me by the fact that, at first, I didn’t know what the hell the back of the book was on about “as she prepares for her party the links between her and the shell-shocked Septimus Warren Smith become ever more apparent”. On the surface, these two characters are the least connected of the entire book; their storylines seem to develop completely independently, connected only by a few people common to both. And at first, at least to me, they seemed quite different: Septimus is suffering from mental illness as a result of his experiences in the Great War; Clarissa is stable—or is she?—if not particularly happy in her marital and social situation. But it’s these contrasts that make these two characters so intriguing.

Woolf portrays Septimus in an extremely sympathetic light. He is surrounded by people concerned for his wellbeing but utterly unequipped to treat his condition. One doctor wants to lock him away in an asylum; the other merely regards Septimus as being “in a funk” and views health as a matter of willpower and attitude, not physiological phenomena. Septimus’ wife, Italian by birth, loves him and doesn’t want to leave him—but at the same time, in his most lucid moments Septimus feels an intense shame that he has brought her into these circumstances. As he drifts in and out of lucidity, Septimus meditates about the evils humans inflict upon one another.

Clarissa has also seen her fair share of human foibles, albeit not in the trenches. She suffered through the influenza pandemic, and now she is the wife of a Conservative MP. She could have married Peter Walsh and been whisked off to India, to live in an exotic lifestyle! But she didn’t. She loved Sally Seton, a girl who was never afraid to speak her mind or blurt out a joke—but that sort of attraction was improper, unacceptable, intolerable. So she buried it. Clarissa, no longer a young woman, finds her mind weighing upon all these turning points of her past. And so, even as Woolf criticizes war and the treatment of mental illness and homophobia, she is also asking a very compelling question: why do we choose one course over another? Actions, as is being stressed to me in my professional year at the faculty of education, speak much louder than the words that describe them or the intentions that inform them. What is it that compels us to act in one way and not the other?

Mrs Dalloway is an intensely reflective novel. The characters are obsessed with their past—but we all are—and this party of Clarissa’s is a locus around which those memories, and their owners, cluster. Parties are effusive social gatherings where the goal, if that is a good term, is to demonstrate one’s happiness to the rest of the world. The “party smile” and “party talk” is exchanged as freely as food and drink, and everyone is civil and amiable and not particularly critical, except perhaps on general, impersonal subjects. This is the society in which Clarissa lives: the society of personae, of roles; she has become a character in her own life. And so, if one happens to wonder if one is happy in life, it seems to me that a party is a particularly poor place to pose such a question, or to attempt to find the answer. Mrs Dalloway demonstrates that happiness is a difficult commodity to lay claim to, simply because it is so difficult to quantify or define.

I cannot, like some of the other reviewers here, endorse this book with such whole-hearted enthusiasm and love. I think if you’re in the proper frame of mind and, like me, need to remedy that situation of not-having-read-Woolf, then this book would work well. I should definitely revisit it in the future, when I’m older, and perhaps at a time where I am at more leisure to read it slowly and thoroughly, to acclimate myself to Woolf’s style like a scuba diver does to the pressure changes beneath the ocean. Only then do I think I can give Mrs Dalloway the attention it deserves, because it might not be an excellent or amazing book, but it is definitely a remarkable one.

Ever discover an author through another medium, like TV or Twitter or the author’s blog, and realize you want to read everything this author has written and you want to read it yesterday? That’s how I feel about Charles Stross. It’s similar to my evaluation of William Gibson in my last review; Stross writes about the present changes facing humanity in such an interesting way. I don’t always agree with him, and his stories don’t always grab me as narratives, but he is definitely near the top of the heap when it comes to authors of posthuman fiction.

Toast is an intense but somewhat uneven collection of Stross stories. Perhaps the introduction, “After the Future Imploded” is the most valuable part of the book: it has exactly the type of lucid futurist speculation I was talking about above. Stross plays his “what if” game fancifully but also with some sincerity. He sees not only the capabilities that we have today but the capabilities we might have tomorrow, and where that might lead us—not only the issues that we’ll confront, like the rights of uploaded personalities, but what will happen when the present becomes our past.

The two technologies that Stross emphasizes in most of his fiction are nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. The former will be a revolution in computing, because we’ll truly free computers from the “dumb terminal” model we use now. In Toast stories, people’s clothing and coffee cups—everything—are computers. Humanity is wetwired, part of the grid and the Web in an entirely new way. The latter technology is a lot more controversial and amorphous in its definition. Trying to determine what exactly “artificial” intelligence denotes is a difficult chore. But if it, too, happens, then it will be another revolution—and not just because of the possibility of the Singularity. As far as we know, we are the only intelligent beings on the Earth—and perhaps in the observable universe. An artificial intelligence would be something new, something alien and strange. That would be fascinating and frightening.

After coming off the high of Toast’s introduction, I was excited by the first story, “Antibodies”. The moment a character exclaimed, “Someone’s come up with a proof that NP-complete problems lie in P!” I grinned and knew the story would be good. Many science fiction authors are also physicists, or have a strong science background, which makes them comfortable talking about the physics that underlies their plots. Stross’ background is in computers, and it shows in these stories. He speaks the hacker lingo, but more interesting for me, he draws in the deeper mathematics upon which algorithms rely. Plenty of science fiction stories talk about neutrinos and exotic matter, but how many reference P versus NP in a meaningful way? So “Antibodies” was a big hit with me.

I wish I could say I was as impressed with the rest of the stories. I was really excited when I started reading, and some of the stories are good, but they don’t hit my buttons the way “Antibodies” did. “Bear Trap” is set in Stross’ Eschaton universe (best known for Singularity Sky). It’s good, but the conflict and the way Stross depicts the wider universe are both so vague and ill-defined that I never got invested. Similarly, “Extracts from the Club Diary” was enjoyable—despite Stross’ questionable faux-Victorian diction—but its direction was somewhat predictable and never quite paid off. “Lobsters” is slightly better, because it raises the intriguing questions surrounding uploaded personalities—both human and non-human. I also like the main character, who is a study in how the Internet is changing the role of the deal broker. Finally, “Big Brother Iron” examines what might happen to the world of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four if Big Brother invented a computer to run the government. Like the other stories I’ve mentioned, it has a really neat premise against which the story doesn’t quite measure up.

Stross writes mostly in the first person, and as a consequence his narrators often sound the same to me. (That might just be me or the mood I was in while reading the book.) It probably doesn’t help that his characters are often the same mould: middle-aged male stuck in a mid-level position, usually has some technology expertise of some kind, who gets into trouble because of external events and has to use his wits to survive. I really need to read one of his novels with a female protagonist, like Halting State. But I suspect my complaint emerges from the similarity in themes among the stories of Toast. They are, in a sense, about looking back during or just after the transition between our current era and whatever comes next (Singularity or not).

Toast isn’t the book I would recommend for a newcomer to Charles Stross (Singularity Sky is pretty good in that respect). Yet if, like me, you are fascinated by ruminations upon our potential posthuman prospects, this anthology might be right for you. It isn’t as amazing as I had hoped. However, it still has that dose of lucid speculation that I’ve come to regard as a hallmark of Stross and of great science fiction in general.