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tachyondecay
As we dove into summer I read my first Atwood novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, thereby establishing some ground rules for our relationship. We decided to agree to disagree when it comes to style so that I could continue appreciating her strong motifs and themes. Now as we dip our toes into autumn, I am now one more book into Atwood’s oeuvre, and this truce appears to be holding. If anything, Cat’s Eye is preferable according to my own tastes in style—and I really enjoyed the story too. This is a book that wallows in recounting childhood—much like Never Let Me Go or, more broadly, any John Irving novel. Those types of stories are, almost by definition, easily able to invoke an atmosphere of nostalgia, of loss and regret, of pain and yearning for the happy and sad days of yore. Atwood plays this instrument with all the skill of a virtuoso.
I’m having a difficult time writing this review. Maybe Atwood coated this book in a non-stick polymer: everything I write quickly degenerates into plot summary. The trouble is just that Atwood manages to capture the bizarre mainstays of childhood traumas (including rivalry, peer pressure, and bullying) and develop them so organically that all my attempts at commenting on this just fall flat. We’ve all been there, and while not all of us had experiences similar to Elaine’s—my childhood was, on the whole, rather good and uneventful—we can still identify with what happens to her.
I do love the gradual way Atwood develops Elaine’s relationship with Grace, Carol, and Cordelia. At first the teasing she endures seems to be typical of children, but soon one realizes that it has gone past that: Cordelia, assisted by Grace and Carol, is a bully. Hindsight allows the adult Elaine to acknowledge this, but childhood Elaine, even if she knew subconsciously that Cordelia’s treatment was wrong, refused to stop calling them her “friends”. Even after child-Elaine realizes that Grace’s mother knows the score and refuses to stop it—ostensibly because it’s supposed to “civilize” the heathen child—it isn’t until Elaine has a close brush with hypothermia before she and her mother realize the severity of the situation. But nothing is black and white, and the bully from childhood becomes a companion in high school—albeit one who is not necessarily all that close.
Cat’s Eye takes place in that interesting first-person style where none of the other people feel all that real or even essential to the narrative beyond their roles as characters in the protagonist’s personal drama. Elaine’s father, mother, and even her brother, Stephen, are more like shadows than people. The same goes for her ex-husband, for her first lover, etc. They act and react act; they have lines of dialogue, but there are really only two characters in this book: Elaine herself, and Cordelia.
There are times when the frame story to Elaine’s childhood narrative seems completely unnecessary. It would be impossible to jettison it entirely—after all, that part of the story has some significant discussion of Elaine’s impressions of the fledgling feminist movement, not mention a broader look at authorial intent and artistic interpretation. (I seem to reading rather a lot of books about artists lately.) Nevertheless, the older Elaine is a frustrating protagonist, because she is so very passive. She seems to let everything happen to her. She goes along with her retrospective because she feels it is an honour not likely to be repeated. Although she offers a little resistance to other people’s attempts to fit her into their rigid ideas about middle-age, female artists, I never feel like she actively attempts to define an identity for herself. Maybe that’s why I preferred the childhood sections of the book. There, at least, child-Elaine’s passivity is juxtaposed with the furious ticking clock of her advancing age: as the months fade into years, we can forget that Atwood chooses a very tight focus for her story.
Really, it’s all about her and Cordelia. The more I attempt to parse and encapsulate this book into neat, sentence-length criticisms, the more I realize there is nothing more important than Elaine’s obsession with how their relationship went wrong. She sees Cordelia around every corner, in every face; Cordelia is always present in apostrophe. Losing Cordelia—or perhaps, from Elaine’s perspective, failing her—was an event even more traumatic than the bullying Elaine received from Cordelia when they were children. If their high school friendship was a type of second chance, a way for them to reconnect, then according to Elaine, she let Cordelia down. As a more objective set of eyes, I would say that isn’t the case at all, that Cordelia’s tragic downspin was something Elaine could not have halted by herself. But so it goes: as we grow older, we begin to develop myths about our past, stories based on memories that in turn influence how we think of ourselves. And Elaine, who in the present day seems so isolated and lonely, has put the younger Cordelia on a pedestal, raised her upon a mountain of regret. Oh, the things we would do differently if we could do it over again….
Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye seems a lot more open-ended, less overt in its themes. The two novels are different, then, in how they interact with the reader. Both share that style of Atwood’s that I have decided to tolerate for now. The cover of my edition proclaims Cat’s Eye as a “mesmerizing international bestseller”. I like that choice of word: mesmerizing. There is something tranquil and enchanting about the way Atwood has her narrative unfold, and that, along with how Elaine’s memories influence her sense of self and identity, really kept me interested in the book. This is the perfect sort of book for the dog days of summer, something into which one can immerse oneself and enjoy over the course of a few languid days as the vacation drifts to a close.
I’m having a difficult time writing this review. Maybe Atwood coated this book in a non-stick polymer: everything I write quickly degenerates into plot summary. The trouble is just that Atwood manages to capture the bizarre mainstays of childhood traumas (including rivalry, peer pressure, and bullying) and develop them so organically that all my attempts at commenting on this just fall flat. We’ve all been there, and while not all of us had experiences similar to Elaine’s—my childhood was, on the whole, rather good and uneventful—we can still identify with what happens to her.
I do love the gradual way Atwood develops Elaine’s relationship with Grace, Carol, and Cordelia. At first the teasing she endures seems to be typical of children, but soon one realizes that it has gone past that: Cordelia, assisted by Grace and Carol, is a bully. Hindsight allows the adult Elaine to acknowledge this, but childhood Elaine, even if she knew subconsciously that Cordelia’s treatment was wrong, refused to stop calling them her “friends”. Even after child-Elaine realizes that Grace’s mother knows the score and refuses to stop it—ostensibly because it’s supposed to “civilize” the heathen child—it isn’t until Elaine has a close brush with hypothermia before she and her mother realize the severity of the situation. But nothing is black and white, and the bully from childhood becomes a companion in high school—albeit one who is not necessarily all that close.
Cat’s Eye takes place in that interesting first-person style where none of the other people feel all that real or even essential to the narrative beyond their roles as characters in the protagonist’s personal drama. Elaine’s father, mother, and even her brother, Stephen, are more like shadows than people. The same goes for her ex-husband, for her first lover, etc. They act and react act; they have lines of dialogue, but there are really only two characters in this book: Elaine herself, and Cordelia.
There are times when the frame story to Elaine’s childhood narrative seems completely unnecessary. It would be impossible to jettison it entirely—after all, that part of the story has some significant discussion of Elaine’s impressions of the fledgling feminist movement, not mention a broader look at authorial intent and artistic interpretation. (I seem to reading rather a lot of books about artists lately.) Nevertheless, the older Elaine is a frustrating protagonist, because she is so very passive. She seems to let everything happen to her. She goes along with her retrospective because she feels it is an honour not likely to be repeated. Although she offers a little resistance to other people’s attempts to fit her into their rigid ideas about middle-age, female artists, I never feel like she actively attempts to define an identity for herself. Maybe that’s why I preferred the childhood sections of the book. There, at least, child-Elaine’s passivity is juxtaposed with the furious ticking clock of her advancing age: as the months fade into years, we can forget that Atwood chooses a very tight focus for her story.
Really, it’s all about her and Cordelia. The more I attempt to parse and encapsulate this book into neat, sentence-length criticisms, the more I realize there is nothing more important than Elaine’s obsession with how their relationship went wrong. She sees Cordelia around every corner, in every face; Cordelia is always present in apostrophe. Losing Cordelia—or perhaps, from Elaine’s perspective, failing her—was an event even more traumatic than the bullying Elaine received from Cordelia when they were children. If their high school friendship was a type of second chance, a way for them to reconnect, then according to Elaine, she let Cordelia down. As a more objective set of eyes, I would say that isn’t the case at all, that Cordelia’s tragic downspin was something Elaine could not have halted by herself. But so it goes: as we grow older, we begin to develop myths about our past, stories based on memories that in turn influence how we think of ourselves. And Elaine, who in the present day seems so isolated and lonely, has put the younger Cordelia on a pedestal, raised her upon a mountain of regret. Oh, the things we would do differently if we could do it over again….
Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye seems a lot more open-ended, less overt in its themes. The two novels are different, then, in how they interact with the reader. Both share that style of Atwood’s that I have decided to tolerate for now. The cover of my edition proclaims Cat’s Eye as a “mesmerizing international bestseller”. I like that choice of word: mesmerizing. There is something tranquil and enchanting about the way Atwood has her narrative unfold, and that, along with how Elaine’s memories influence her sense of self and identity, really kept me interested in the book. This is the perfect sort of book for the dog days of summer, something into which one can immerse oneself and enjoy over the course of a few languid days as the vacation drifts to a close.
This is such an amazing concept, and when I first heard about it, I was taken aback by how unbelievably awesome it might be. Some of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters face off against each other in a desperate race to find a wizard named William Shakespeare. Othello, Juliet, Falstaff, and others believe that “Will” will deliver them from the tyranny of King Richard III. Richard, along with the Macbeths and Iago, plot to kill Shakespeare and obtain his quill—and with it, his magic. Thrust into the middle of this conflict is Hamlet, initially rescued by Richard and dubbed “the Shadow King”, prophesied, according to Richard, to kill Shakespeare and free England from the wizard’s tyranny. Later, Hamlet escapes from Richard’s grasp and learns that not all is what it seems with the King of England. But the question remains: whose side is he on, and who is this elusive Shakespeare?
Would that I could give this book the rating it deserves for its concept alone! Alas, in execution Kill Shakespeare leaves me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. There’s plenty to like about this book: witty dialogue, crafty villains, humorous situations, and allusions to many of Shakespeare’s plays. Yet beneath all these myriad elements of farce, the central element of story suffers.
Hamlet’s indecision is probably the most compelling conflict in this first volume. Exiled from Denmark for the murder of Polonius, Hamlet ends up in England, essentially a “guest” of Richard III. To both Hamlet and us (except, if you know who Richard III is, you know better), Richard seems like the good guy: a philosopher-king desperate to save his kingdom from the oppressive magic of this mysterious wizard. Only Hamlet, the shadow king, can save them by killing Shakespeare! Hamlet, still understandably traumatized, is not enamoured with the idea of becoming a contract killer. Still, he begins to form a friendship with Iago as they ride across the countryside in the company of Richard’s men.
Once Hamlet hears the other side of the story from Falstaff and Juliet, he—surprise, surprise—becomes indecisive! He’s a stranger to this land; he has no quarrel with either side, or with William Shakespeare. That being said, I feel like my background knowledge of these characters (and it’s rather obvious even if you aren’t familiar with Shakespeare’s plays) upset the dynamic in this moral ambiguity. It seems so obvious that Juliet and the Protagonists (as they are called, hah) are the “good guys” and that Richard and Lady Macbeth are Evil. In fact, when I think about it, there’s nothing all that original or unique about the overall plot here—one might as well have used some different, generic characters and still arrived at the same ending. What do the Shakespearean characters add to this story?
Not much. However, the opposite is true. I quite liked seeing Othello having to confront Iago, Juliet giving a speech about how much she has lost and how she needs to believe in this “Will”, Hamlet struggling with his guilt over the death of Polonius and his father’s death and in general being quite useless. Kill Shakespeare gives these characters a brand new environment in which they can continue to explore their motivations and grow from their experiences in their respective plays. (Of course, since most of Shakespeare’s tragic figures end up driving a dagger betwixt their breasts, they need a miracle exemption.) Not every character fares so well in this type of adaptation: I’m not a fan of Lady Macbeth’s recasting as some kind of evil sorceress. Yeah, in the Scottish Play she coveted power—perhaps more so even than her husband—but her role in Kill Shakespeare seems rather forced. The same might be said for Juliet: exactly how she went from weeping maiden to warrior maiden (TVTropes) isn’t clear. I’m willing to cut the authors some slack here, because Shakespeare is much like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: versatile and mutable, changing to fit its medium and its audience.
I’m completing my final year of my undergraduate degree, at the end of which I’ll be certified to teach high school math and English. So while I read Kill Shakespeare, I evaluated it not only as a book but with the eye of possibly using it to engage students with the world of Shakespeare. Let’s face it: the Bard is difficult, because he’s writing in a language (and meter) 400 years removed from us, for a style and form that has evolved well beyond the Elizabethan playhouse. So reimaginings, adaptations, and mashups of Shakespearean works are valuable tools for conveying Shakespeare’s plays to modern day audiences. I’m not certain Kill Shakespeare retains enough of the flavour and content of Shakespeare’s plays to be worth teaching on its own, but it would definitely make an interesting supplementary aid.
I suspect that ultimately my feelings about this story will be swayed by the final volume. Do they actually kill Shakespeare? (Probably not.) Will we get to see characters from some of his other works, such as King Lear or The Tempest? (A short comic included at the end implies that the dagger Richard gives to Hamlet to use on Shakespeare is the same dagger that Brutus used to stab Caesar.) I’m sure that half the fun the writers had was trying to come up with ways to include various characters—and there are so many of them—so I’m looking forward to seeing more of that in Volume 2. Kill Shakespeare didn’t blow my mind like I was hoping it would, but it this first volume is still a decent enough example of how, 400 years on, William Shakespeare is still rocking my world.
Would that I could give this book the rating it deserves for its concept alone! Alas, in execution Kill Shakespeare leaves me feeling somewhat unsatisfied. There’s plenty to like about this book: witty dialogue, crafty villains, humorous situations, and allusions to many of Shakespeare’s plays. Yet beneath all these myriad elements of farce, the central element of story suffers.
Hamlet’s indecision is probably the most compelling conflict in this first volume. Exiled from Denmark for the murder of Polonius, Hamlet ends up in England, essentially a “guest” of Richard III. To both Hamlet and us (except, if you know who Richard III is, you know better), Richard seems like the good guy: a philosopher-king desperate to save his kingdom from the oppressive magic of this mysterious wizard. Only Hamlet, the shadow king, can save them by killing Shakespeare! Hamlet, still understandably traumatized, is not enamoured with the idea of becoming a contract killer. Still, he begins to form a friendship with Iago as they ride across the countryside in the company of Richard’s men.
Once Hamlet hears the other side of the story from Falstaff and Juliet, he—surprise, surprise—becomes indecisive! He’s a stranger to this land; he has no quarrel with either side, or with William Shakespeare. That being said, I feel like my background knowledge of these characters (and it’s rather obvious even if you aren’t familiar with Shakespeare’s plays) upset the dynamic in this moral ambiguity. It seems so obvious that Juliet and the Protagonists (as they are called, hah) are the “good guys” and that Richard and Lady Macbeth are Evil. In fact, when I think about it, there’s nothing all that original or unique about the overall plot here—one might as well have used some different, generic characters and still arrived at the same ending. What do the Shakespearean characters add to this story?
Not much. However, the opposite is true. I quite liked seeing Othello having to confront Iago, Juliet giving a speech about how much she has lost and how she needs to believe in this “Will”, Hamlet struggling with his guilt over the death of Polonius and his father’s death and in general being quite useless. Kill Shakespeare gives these characters a brand new environment in which they can continue to explore their motivations and grow from their experiences in their respective plays. (Of course, since most of Shakespeare’s tragic figures end up driving a dagger betwixt their breasts, they need a miracle exemption.) Not every character fares so well in this type of adaptation: I’m not a fan of Lady Macbeth’s recasting as some kind of evil sorceress. Yeah, in the Scottish Play she coveted power—perhaps more so even than her husband—but her role in Kill Shakespeare seems rather forced. The same might be said for Juliet: exactly how she went from weeping maiden to warrior maiden (TVTropes) isn’t clear. I’m willing to cut the authors some slack here, because Shakespeare is much like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: versatile and mutable, changing to fit its medium and its audience.
I’m completing my final year of my undergraduate degree, at the end of which I’ll be certified to teach high school math and English. So while I read Kill Shakespeare, I evaluated it not only as a book but with the eye of possibly using it to engage students with the world of Shakespeare. Let’s face it: the Bard is difficult, because he’s writing in a language (and meter) 400 years removed from us, for a style and form that has evolved well beyond the Elizabethan playhouse. So reimaginings, adaptations, and mashups of Shakespearean works are valuable tools for conveying Shakespeare’s plays to modern day audiences. I’m not certain Kill Shakespeare retains enough of the flavour and content of Shakespeare’s plays to be worth teaching on its own, but it would definitely make an interesting supplementary aid.
I suspect that ultimately my feelings about this story will be swayed by the final volume. Do they actually kill Shakespeare? (Probably not.) Will we get to see characters from some of his other works, such as King Lear or The Tempest? (A short comic included at the end implies that the dagger Richard gives to Hamlet to use on Shakespeare is the same dagger that Brutus used to stab Caesar.) I’m sure that half the fun the writers had was trying to come up with ways to include various characters—and there are so many of them—so I’m looking forward to seeing more of that in Volume 2. Kill Shakespeare didn’t blow my mind like I was hoping it would, but it this first volume is still a decent enough example of how, 400 years on, William Shakespeare is still rocking my world.
My previous reviews of the Recluce saga have been brutally honest when it comes to how L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s writing is disappointing a second time around. So I want to begin this review by praising The Order War for being the best book so far in the series, in terms of both story and writing! After three repetitive, somewhat dull books, Modesitt has finally produced a volume that drew me into the conflict, made me care about the characters, and found a balance between his intriguing magical system and the drama around its usage.
I knew The Order War would be unlike its predecessors almost from the beginning. Justen begins the book as an experienced engineer in Nylan, the city that Dorrin founded back in The Magic Engineer. Unlike Lerris, Creslin, and Dorrin, Justen doesn’t leave his home because he has to “find himself” (although he ends up doing that) or because he’s being sent away. No, Justen leaves as part of a detachment to help an independent country in Candar resist the White Wizards. The detachment fails miserably, and Justen is stranded in a particularly inhospitable part of Candar. He manages to find his way to the Druids of Naclos, where he meets his soul mate and becomes a Gray wizard.
I love that Modesitt begins this book with a healthy amount of action. There’s no tedious travelling through the countryside with the occasional episode dealing with bandits; visits to an inn and the accompanying yet excruciating exchanges that deal with menu selection and counting coppers and golds are few and far between. No, we begin with Justen on Recluce, learn about his family, then join him on the mission to Candar. There are plenty of battle sequences and some political machinations on both sides. Although both smithing and woodworking make cameos, neither craft is the focus of Justen’s spare time. Mostly Modesitt devotes his exposition to Justen’s growing understanding of the Balance between order and chaos.
The Balance has been a common thread running through all of the Recluce books. Sometimes it has been addressed explicitly, particularly by Justen himself in The Magic of Recluce. In other instances, such as Creslin’s experimentation in The Towers of Sunset, it has been there as an afterthought, something that reacts to a perversion of order or chaos. I feel like The Order War serves a very important role in this series, because it ties together all of these ideas about the Balance and closes the circle first opened by The Magic of Recluce.
One of the reasons this series is so compelling is that there are two oppositional groups, one of which uses chaos and the other order. Yet according to the Balance, that is a self-defeating proposition, like global thermonuclear war. Increasing chaos only increases—and concentrates—order, and vice versa. So the more order that the Black Mages concentrate in Recluce, the more chaos foci who appear in Candar. You can’t win; the only way to win is not to play and embrace the Balance, as the Druids do. It might seem like a somewhat trite and obvious conclusion, but Modesitt develops the theme in potent, poignant way.
The Order War still suffers from many of the same flaws as the previous books. As in The Magic of Recluce, where Lerris’ questions were thwarted by Justen’s combative responses, Justen doesn’t always get a straight answer to his inquiries either (so that’s where he learned it!). The final act of the book, with Justen and his brother racing toward Fairhaven in a steam-powered “land engine” of Justen’s design, drags. And of course, there are the White Wizards. Oh, the one-dimensionality of the White Wizards! I eagerly await the books later in the series that, if I recall correctly, look at the events in The Magic Engineer from Cerryl’s point of view, helps to make the wizards of Fairhaven far rounder characters. As it stands, they remain moustache-twirling caricatures, barely worth taking the time to discuss them.
I’m beginning to think about the reading order I would recommend for this series. Like the Chronicles of Narnia, we could have some heated debates about this, drag in the spectre of authorial intent and publishing constraints and that pesky thing about time being linear. If one has the inclination, one could read the series in several orders, of course. But I do know that The Order War is really good and The Towers of Sunset is really bad (in relative Recluce terms), so I’d probably advise new readers to skip the latter and read the former either before or after The Magic Engineer (but probably after).
Had I read this alone, or as the first book to the series, I might have been less charitable. It does not improve my opinion of Modesitt as a writer by much. Yet considered as part of the larger series, this book contributes a lot to the ongoing mythology, and I actually managed to stay interested for most of it. I’m sure that many of those who share my opinions probably didn’t last past book 3, if that (that is when I gave up on Wheel of Time). That’s a shame, because with The Order War, the Recluce Saga is just beginning to get good.
My reviews of the Recluce Saga:
← The Magic Engineer | The Death of Chaos → (forthcoming)
I knew The Order War would be unlike its predecessors almost from the beginning. Justen begins the book as an experienced engineer in Nylan, the city that Dorrin founded back in The Magic Engineer. Unlike Lerris, Creslin, and Dorrin, Justen doesn’t leave his home because he has to “find himself” (although he ends up doing that) or because he’s being sent away. No, Justen leaves as part of a detachment to help an independent country in Candar resist the White Wizards. The detachment fails miserably, and Justen is stranded in a particularly inhospitable part of Candar. He manages to find his way to the Druids of Naclos, where he meets his soul mate and becomes a Gray wizard.
I love that Modesitt begins this book with a healthy amount of action. There’s no tedious travelling through the countryside with the occasional episode dealing with bandits; visits to an inn and the accompanying yet excruciating exchanges that deal with menu selection and counting coppers and golds are few and far between. No, we begin with Justen on Recluce, learn about his family, then join him on the mission to Candar. There are plenty of battle sequences and some political machinations on both sides. Although both smithing and woodworking make cameos, neither craft is the focus of Justen’s spare time. Mostly Modesitt devotes his exposition to Justen’s growing understanding of the Balance between order and chaos.
The Balance has been a common thread running through all of the Recluce books. Sometimes it has been addressed explicitly, particularly by Justen himself in The Magic of Recluce. In other instances, such as Creslin’s experimentation in The Towers of Sunset, it has been there as an afterthought, something that reacts to a perversion of order or chaos. I feel like The Order War serves a very important role in this series, because it ties together all of these ideas about the Balance and closes the circle first opened by The Magic of Recluce.
One of the reasons this series is so compelling is that there are two oppositional groups, one of which uses chaos and the other order. Yet according to the Balance, that is a self-defeating proposition, like global thermonuclear war. Increasing chaos only increases—and concentrates—order, and vice versa. So the more order that the Black Mages concentrate in Recluce, the more chaos foci who appear in Candar. You can’t win; the only way to win is not to play and embrace the Balance, as the Druids do. It might seem like a somewhat trite and obvious conclusion, but Modesitt develops the theme in potent, poignant way.
The Order War still suffers from many of the same flaws as the previous books. As in The Magic of Recluce, where Lerris’ questions were thwarted by Justen’s combative responses, Justen doesn’t always get a straight answer to his inquiries either (so that’s where he learned it!). The final act of the book, with Justen and his brother racing toward Fairhaven in a steam-powered “land engine” of Justen’s design, drags. And of course, there are the White Wizards. Oh, the one-dimensionality of the White Wizards! I eagerly await the books later in the series that, if I recall correctly, look at the events in The Magic Engineer from Cerryl’s point of view, helps to make the wizards of Fairhaven far rounder characters. As it stands, they remain moustache-twirling caricatures, barely worth taking the time to discuss them.
I’m beginning to think about the reading order I would recommend for this series. Like the Chronicles of Narnia, we could have some heated debates about this, drag in the spectre of authorial intent and publishing constraints and that pesky thing about time being linear. If one has the inclination, one could read the series in several orders, of course. But I do know that The Order War is really good and The Towers of Sunset is really bad (in relative Recluce terms), so I’d probably advise new readers to skip the latter and read the former either before or after The Magic Engineer (but probably after).
Had I read this alone, or as the first book to the series, I might have been less charitable. It does not improve my opinion of Modesitt as a writer by much. Yet considered as part of the larger series, this book contributes a lot to the ongoing mythology, and I actually managed to stay interested for most of it. I’m sure that many of those who share my opinions probably didn’t last past book 3, if that (that is when I gave up on Wheel of Time). That’s a shame, because with The Order War, the Recluce Saga is just beginning to get good.
My reviews of the Recluce Saga:
← The Magic Engineer | The Death of Chaos → (forthcoming)
One of the nice things about writing reviews on a place like Goodreads is the audience. I can pontificate about a book, and about subjects like feminism, for as long as I like, which is something I can’t do with my friends in person—at least, as I discovered empirically, not if I want to have friends in person. (Call me!) But you people, you crazy people, are different, because no one is forcing you to read my reviews, so I am going to assume that if you are still reading, it’s because you are generally interested in what I have to say about The Beauty Myth, or perhaps you are some kind of search engine spider indexing this review for Google. (Hello there.)
I’ve thought for a long time about what I want to say about The Beauty Myth. I am a young, white, reasonably well-off male who performs gender in a conventional way, which means in general my life is not all that bad. Part of my ongoing relationship with feminism and gender studies involves acknowledging the privilege and social capital I have in our society, and learning how I can act to mitigate the effects of that privilege. Also, I’m young. Like, I was a year old, if that, when The Beauty Myth first came out. A lot has happened in the past twenty years, and although many parts of this book still ring true, it’s important to note that I have no baseline for comparison. Anything I know about the world of the 1980s is second-hand knowledge. So I had no choice but to read The Beauty Myth as someone firmly grounded in today: this is the only world I have ever known.
For someone like me, who is so young and technophilic, the absence of Internet and World Wide Web in this book is conspicuous. I could not stop thinking about that while I was reading, because it’s a technology I take for granted; I’ll even go so far as to contend that the mainstream adoption of the Web is the most fundamental social change since The Beauty Myth was written. And so how has this change affected the Beauty Myth that Wolf outlines?
In some ways it hasn’t, of course. The double standard of dress, the professional beauty qualifications, is still there. Ads on television and now the Internet are still relentlessly gendered. (Pink beer, anyone?) Cosmetic surgery has only gotten more complicated and more accessible, while botox treatments and tanning parlours abound. The beauty myth is still in operation.
In some ways, however, the advent of the Internet has had a huge impact, particularly when it comes to how the media influences the beauty myth. Wolf criticizes women’s magazines for running so-called “editorials” about a product next to ads for that type of product, lamenting the fact that this is often a condition of getting the advertising. (She quotes Gloria Steinem as saying that advertisers are dubious of the idea that women will look at ads for shampoo without an accompanying article about hair washing!) Yet she adds an interesting counterpoint: we can’t condemn such magazines entirely, because
This preciousness of media that we otherwise want to criticize for supporting the beauty myth is an interesting point. However, the Web has resulted in an explosion of available spaces for women to congregate and converse. True, it’s not without its disadvantages: by and large websites and blogs continue to be a male-dominated phenomenon. But just the fact that any woman can create (often for free, which removes the need for beauty-related advertising) spaces for discussion among women is something that did not exist twenty years ago. Now there are countless blogs devoted to feminism or other issues of women’s, gender, and sexuality rights. The Web is certainly not an equal space or a level playing field in any sense of these terms, but it is, for the moment, open. That is incredibly uplifting, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of ways the Web has exacerbated the effects of the beauty myth. In the same chapter (“Culture”), Wolf mentions that the pornography industry has the unfortunate side effect of creating unrealistic standards of beauty. Men watch pornography and get this idea of what women are “supposed” to look like nude (and what sex is “supposed” to sound and look like), which puts pressure on women to conform to these fantasies. Of course, we all know that the Internet is for porn, and so in that capacity it has only made the spread of this misinformation easier.
I’m focusing on the media aspect of The Beauty Myth because this is what grabbed me, both because of my fascination with the Internet and because I’m taking an Education, Media, and Gender class right now. One week the professor asked us to come to the next class performing gender differently, to “break the gender dress code”. I wore tights with my shorts; many of my other male classmates wore articles of feminine clothing or even makeup. What about the women? Well the class concluded the exercise was more difficult for them—I don’t know what fashion was like at universities in the 1990s, but these days sweat pants and a T-shirt are quite acceptable for members of any gender, especially given the late nights one stereotypically expects of students! It was more difficult for the women to break a dress code when no such code really existed at the university; some wore jerseys or baggy clothing, and one wore her Carhartt overalls. Nowadays women can wear pants without anyone blinking, but it is still rather uncommon to see men wearing a dress.
Now we enter the dangerous waters of feminist discourse. When I drop the F word in casual conversation, quite a few of my friends (who are mostly women) wince: “feminist” still connotes “man-hating woman” or, less extremely, someone who is concerned with women’s rights more so than rights in general. There is a great deal of resistance to the connotation of feminism as gender equality for all, and at the risk of making a straw man, I think this is why we get “men’s rights” advocates. I have come to the conclusion, however, that there is no proper way to consider feminism except as a movement for total gender equality. Wolf herself makes this point in The Beauty Myth: the myth needs men to continue dressing in very bland, restricted ways, because this prevents men from expressing themselves. It reinforces the false dichotomy of man/stoic and woman/empathetic. If we are to defuse and deconstruct the beauty myth, Wolf opines, then one thing we have to do is start accepting that men can dress up, wear colourful clothing, etc. Suddenly something that was a “men’s rights” issue actually turns out to be a women’s rights issue when considered from a different perspective: it’s not about one gender “winning” over any others; it has to be about equality.
That’s as prescriptive as I’m going to get though. I have been reading a lot about discourse around feminism—the “meta-feminist” discussion, if you will—both because I feel that it better equips me to participate in these discussions and because, as a lover of language and philosophy, it provides insights into where feminism has been and where it is going in the twenty-first century. And I want to avoid attempting to lock my idea of feminism or anyone else’s idea of feminism into a strictly-defined, concrete role. That way lies trouble! However, I just wanted to express the reasoning that let me put to rest any latent concerns about the role of feminism vis-à-vis alternative terms to describe gender equality. Whew. Semantics can be exhausting!
I could probably go on at quite a length about The Beauty Myth. As I said above, I focused mostly on what Wolf says about media. As a future teacher, I am keenly interested in the effects media will have on my students, as well as how our society in turn influences those media. So that was the perspective with which I read The Beauty Myth. There is a lot more to this book, however, then just a treatment of media. Wolf covers so many different aspects of society! This is not a niche book but a broad picture, one which she has organized into eight different chapters. I only wish the chapters themselves were better organized; their internal structure borders at times on the incoherent. The Beauty Myth is not an easy book to read, because some of the facts and stories that Wolf relates are quite visceral in their effect—but she also seems to have so much to say that she can get carried away. The result is both fascinating and frustrating at the same time.
I am reluctant to attach any type of recommendation to this book, because I feel like there would be far too many qualifiers. This is probably not the best introduction to feminist polemics; it is not that accessible and quite academic. Moreover, although it still remains relevant, it cannot but help being dated by now; I think people would be more satisfied seeking out more recent books first. That being said, if you’re like me and interested in questions of standards of beauty, then this could be a rewarding experience. My schedule and my own reading habits made me plough through this book in days when it would probably be something best lingered over while one reads other material, but that’s up to you. As it is, The Beauty Myth definitely earns its memorable status, but how you judge and remember it will depend entirely on the effect it has on your personal philosophy of feminism and gender.
I’ve thought for a long time about what I want to say about The Beauty Myth. I am a young, white, reasonably well-off male who performs gender in a conventional way, which means in general my life is not all that bad. Part of my ongoing relationship with feminism and gender studies involves acknowledging the privilege and social capital I have in our society, and learning how I can act to mitigate the effects of that privilege. Also, I’m young. Like, I was a year old, if that, when The Beauty Myth first came out. A lot has happened in the past twenty years, and although many parts of this book still ring true, it’s important to note that I have no baseline for comparison. Anything I know about the world of the 1980s is second-hand knowledge. So I had no choice but to read The Beauty Myth as someone firmly grounded in today: this is the only world I have ever known.
For someone like me, who is so young and technophilic, the absence of Internet and World Wide Web in this book is conspicuous. I could not stop thinking about that while I was reading, because it’s a technology I take for granted; I’ll even go so far as to contend that the mainstream adoption of the Web is the most fundamental social change since The Beauty Myth was written. And so how has this change affected the Beauty Myth that Wolf outlines?
In some ways it hasn’t, of course. The double standard of dress, the professional beauty qualifications, is still there. Ads on television and now the Internet are still relentlessly gendered. (Pink beer, anyone?) Cosmetic surgery has only gotten more complicated and more accessible, while botox treatments and tanning parlours abound. The beauty myth is still in operation.
In some ways, however, the advent of the Internet has had a huge impact, particularly when it comes to how the media influences the beauty myth. Wolf criticizes women’s magazines for running so-called “editorials” about a product next to ads for that type of product, lamenting the fact that this is often a condition of getting the advertising. (She quotes Gloria Steinem as saying that advertisers are dubious of the idea that women will look at ads for shampoo without an accompanying article about hair washing!) Yet she adds an interesting counterpoint: we can’t condemn such magazines entirely, because
they represent something very important: women’s mass culture. A woman’s magazine is not just a magazine. The relationship between the woman reader and her magazine is so different from that between a man and his that they aren’t in the same category: A Man reading Popular Mechanics or Newsweek is browsing through just one perspective among countless others of general male-oriented culture, which is everywhere. A woman reading Glamour is holding women-oriented mass culture between her two hands.
This preciousness of media that we otherwise want to criticize for supporting the beauty myth is an interesting point. However, the Web has resulted in an explosion of available spaces for women to congregate and converse. True, it’s not without its disadvantages: by and large websites and blogs continue to be a male-dominated phenomenon. But just the fact that any woman can create (often for free, which removes the need for beauty-related advertising) spaces for discussion among women is something that did not exist twenty years ago. Now there are countless blogs devoted to feminism or other issues of women’s, gender, and sexuality rights. The Web is certainly not an equal space or a level playing field in any sense of these terms, but it is, for the moment, open. That is incredibly uplifting, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of ways the Web has exacerbated the effects of the beauty myth. In the same chapter (“Culture”), Wolf mentions that the pornography industry has the unfortunate side effect of creating unrealistic standards of beauty. Men watch pornography and get this idea of what women are “supposed” to look like nude (and what sex is “supposed” to sound and look like), which puts pressure on women to conform to these fantasies. Of course, we all know that the Internet is for porn, and so in that capacity it has only made the spread of this misinformation easier.
I’m focusing on the media aspect of The Beauty Myth because this is what grabbed me, both because of my fascination with the Internet and because I’m taking an Education, Media, and Gender class right now. One week the professor asked us to come to the next class performing gender differently, to “break the gender dress code”. I wore tights with my shorts; many of my other male classmates wore articles of feminine clothing or even makeup. What about the women? Well the class concluded the exercise was more difficult for them—I don’t know what fashion was like at universities in the 1990s, but these days sweat pants and a T-shirt are quite acceptable for members of any gender, especially given the late nights one stereotypically expects of students! It was more difficult for the women to break a dress code when no such code really existed at the university; some wore jerseys or baggy clothing, and one wore her Carhartt overalls. Nowadays women can wear pants without anyone blinking, but it is still rather uncommon to see men wearing a dress.
Now we enter the dangerous waters of feminist discourse. When I drop the F word in casual conversation, quite a few of my friends (who are mostly women) wince: “feminist” still connotes “man-hating woman” or, less extremely, someone who is concerned with women’s rights more so than rights in general. There is a great deal of resistance to the connotation of feminism as gender equality for all, and at the risk of making a straw man, I think this is why we get “men’s rights” advocates. I have come to the conclusion, however, that there is no proper way to consider feminism except as a movement for total gender equality. Wolf herself makes this point in The Beauty Myth: the myth needs men to continue dressing in very bland, restricted ways, because this prevents men from expressing themselves. It reinforces the false dichotomy of man/stoic and woman/empathetic. If we are to defuse and deconstruct the beauty myth, Wolf opines, then one thing we have to do is start accepting that men can dress up, wear colourful clothing, etc. Suddenly something that was a “men’s rights” issue actually turns out to be a women’s rights issue when considered from a different perspective: it’s not about one gender “winning” over any others; it has to be about equality.
That’s as prescriptive as I’m going to get though. I have been reading a lot about discourse around feminism—the “meta-feminist” discussion, if you will—both because I feel that it better equips me to participate in these discussions and because, as a lover of language and philosophy, it provides insights into where feminism has been and where it is going in the twenty-first century. And I want to avoid attempting to lock my idea of feminism or anyone else’s idea of feminism into a strictly-defined, concrete role. That way lies trouble! However, I just wanted to express the reasoning that let me put to rest any latent concerns about the role of feminism vis-à-vis alternative terms to describe gender equality. Whew. Semantics can be exhausting!
I could probably go on at quite a length about The Beauty Myth. As I said above, I focused mostly on what Wolf says about media. As a future teacher, I am keenly interested in the effects media will have on my students, as well as how our society in turn influences those media. So that was the perspective with which I read The Beauty Myth. There is a lot more to this book, however, then just a treatment of media. Wolf covers so many different aspects of society! This is not a niche book but a broad picture, one which she has organized into eight different chapters. I only wish the chapters themselves were better organized; their internal structure borders at times on the incoherent. The Beauty Myth is not an easy book to read, because some of the facts and stories that Wolf relates are quite visceral in their effect—but she also seems to have so much to say that she can get carried away. The result is both fascinating and frustrating at the same time.
I am reluctant to attach any type of recommendation to this book, because I feel like there would be far too many qualifiers. This is probably not the best introduction to feminist polemics; it is not that accessible and quite academic. Moreover, although it still remains relevant, it cannot but help being dated by now; I think people would be more satisfied seeking out more recent books first. That being said, if you’re like me and interested in questions of standards of beauty, then this could be a rewarding experience. My schedule and my own reading habits made me plough through this book in days when it would probably be something best lingered over while one reads other material, but that’s up to you. As it is, The Beauty Myth definitely earns its memorable status, but how you judge and remember it will depend entirely on the effect it has on your personal philosophy of feminism and gender.
Ever anticipate a book, then sit down and read the first chapter and get a sinking feeling as you realize your expectations are most certainly going to be dashed? Yeah, that's how Liars and Saints made me feel. Although it was already on my to-read list, I bumped it to the top because I intended to read it and then give it to a friend for her birthday. I think I'll be revising that plan to "read and donate to the library."
To be fair, Maile Meloy is a good writer. Liars and Saints is wonderfully written, lyrical even. Its narrative approach is very episodic, as it focuses on a single character during a particular moment or event in his or her life. And I was very impressed with how she integrated the events of the twentieth century into the background of the Santerre family. Liars and Saints reminded me how difficult it is for me to understand what it would have felt like to be an American adult male during the Vietnam War. I'm lucky to have been born much later than that, and to live in Canada, so I've never had the draft looming over me. Watching Henry's reaction to the Vietnam War was probably my favourite part of this book.
So Meloy's writing shares none of the guilt. It is, as seems so often the case in the books I've been reading lately, a problem of plot. Meloy is trying to tell a sweeping generational story that is large in scope yet intimate in scale. She wants to cover four generations, from Teddy and Yvette down to their great-grandson TJ. My edition is 260 pages long. I won't say it's impossible to do justice to such a goal in such a short amount of space, but it is very, very difficult, and Liars and Saints fails to convince me it has succeeded here.
I'm supposed to sympathize with these characters. Their plights, their mistakes and misdeeds, have to tug at my heartstrings. Maybe I'm a monster, but that doesn't happen here, and this is partly owing to the way Meloy has chosen to tell her story. The narrative is scant and condensed. I feel like I'm watching a film of the book. Margot and Clarissa go from being babies to young adults in less than fifty pages, and I never get any time to know them. One minute Clarissa's being punished by nuns, then suddenly a few pages later, she's going to university. I've heard of children growing up too fast, but this is ridiculous.
For some books, jumping over large swathes of time is fine. For generational stories, it's probably a requirement, unless you want to plod through every single detail: "On Tuesday, Olaf woke up. He milked goat. He ate breakfast. He ploughed field." But the depth of field of this book is virtually non-existent. I don't want to call it shallow, because I don't want to give the wrong impression: I think Meloy invokes some very powerful issues, and the way she handles them is interesting. But I don't feel involved in the story, nor am I invested in the characters. It reads more like plot summary, or a very detailed outline of the book.
Also, I'm going to throw this out there: we really need some genre-savvy literary fiction siblings (maybe that's an oxymoron, considering that "literary fiction" is exactly the mainstream answer to the ghettoization of genre). If you are a character in a literary fiction novel and you have a sibling of the opposite sex, do not sleep with them. If you have a niece or nephew, an aunt or an uncle, who is actually your cousin, do not sleep with them. Why? Because in literary fiction, a single make-out section results in a 100% chance of conception. It's, like, the law.
I'm being tongue-in-cheek, and I probably shouldn't be too harsh on Meloy for the constant sexual consequences she rains down upon her characters like disasters in SimCity. This is, after all, fiction (and literary fiction at that), so it's meant, to some extent, to be contrived. Nevertheless, I have to admit that reading a book as contrived as Liars and Saints requires a certain mood, a certain willingness to enter not so much suspension of disbelief as tolerance for the trite and improbable. It's like a soap opera, except without the amnesia or fake dead relatives, and Meloy at least has a handle on some sort of theme.
This review is shorter than what I usually write, and it's not as detailed. There's just not a lot I want to say about Liars and Saints. I didn't like it all that much, but it didn't make me hate it with a passion, so I can't even enjoy writing a snarky, scene-by-scene rebuttal! It's tolerable, maybe even good, but a little bland and boring: there is nothing about it that I feel particularly recommends it above any other book of its kind. In fact, after the first chapter, it reminded me in tone of [b:Fall on Your Knees|5174|Fall on Your Knees|Ann-Marie MacDonald|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517999s/5174.jpg|941309]. And you know, I keep going around saying that Fall on Your Knees is one of my favourite books, but it has been years since I read it, and my memory is very hazy. So I thought, why not buy Fall on Your Knees for my friend's birthday gift? And why not read it forthwith? So that's the best thing I can say about Liars and Saints: it has motivated me to finally re-read a treasured book. That's some kind of praise, I suppose.
To be fair, Maile Meloy is a good writer. Liars and Saints is wonderfully written, lyrical even. Its narrative approach is very episodic, as it focuses on a single character during a particular moment or event in his or her life. And I was very impressed with how she integrated the events of the twentieth century into the background of the Santerre family. Liars and Saints reminded me how difficult it is for me to understand what it would have felt like to be an American adult male during the Vietnam War. I'm lucky to have been born much later than that, and to live in Canada, so I've never had the draft looming over me. Watching Henry's reaction to the Vietnam War was probably my favourite part of this book.
So Meloy's writing shares none of the guilt. It is, as seems so often the case in the books I've been reading lately, a problem of plot. Meloy is trying to tell a sweeping generational story that is large in scope yet intimate in scale. She wants to cover four generations, from Teddy and Yvette down to their great-grandson TJ. My edition is 260 pages long. I won't say it's impossible to do justice to such a goal in such a short amount of space, but it is very, very difficult, and Liars and Saints fails to convince me it has succeeded here.
I'm supposed to sympathize with these characters. Their plights, their mistakes and misdeeds, have to tug at my heartstrings. Maybe I'm a monster, but that doesn't happen here, and this is partly owing to the way Meloy has chosen to tell her story. The narrative is scant and condensed. I feel like I'm watching a film of the book. Margot and Clarissa go from being babies to young adults in less than fifty pages, and I never get any time to know them. One minute Clarissa's being punished by nuns, then suddenly a few pages later, she's going to university. I've heard of children growing up too fast, but this is ridiculous.
For some books, jumping over large swathes of time is fine. For generational stories, it's probably a requirement, unless you want to plod through every single detail: "On Tuesday, Olaf woke up. He milked goat. He ate breakfast. He ploughed field." But the depth of field of this book is virtually non-existent. I don't want to call it shallow, because I don't want to give the wrong impression: I think Meloy invokes some very powerful issues, and the way she handles them is interesting. But I don't feel involved in the story, nor am I invested in the characters. It reads more like plot summary, or a very detailed outline of the book.
Also, I'm going to throw this out there: we really need some genre-savvy literary fiction siblings (maybe that's an oxymoron, considering that "literary fiction" is exactly the mainstream answer to the ghettoization of genre). If you are a character in a literary fiction novel and you have a sibling of the opposite sex, do not sleep with them. If you have a niece or nephew, an aunt or an uncle, who is actually your cousin, do not sleep with them. Why? Because in literary fiction, a single make-out section results in a 100% chance of conception. It's, like, the law.
I'm being tongue-in-cheek, and I probably shouldn't be too harsh on Meloy for the constant sexual consequences she rains down upon her characters like disasters in SimCity. This is, after all, fiction (and literary fiction at that), so it's meant, to some extent, to be contrived. Nevertheless, I have to admit that reading a book as contrived as Liars and Saints requires a certain mood, a certain willingness to enter not so much suspension of disbelief as tolerance for the trite and improbable. It's like a soap opera, except without the amnesia or fake dead relatives, and Meloy at least has a handle on some sort of theme.
This review is shorter than what I usually write, and it's not as detailed. There's just not a lot I want to say about Liars and Saints. I didn't like it all that much, but it didn't make me hate it with a passion, so I can't even enjoy writing a snarky, scene-by-scene rebuttal! It's tolerable, maybe even good, but a little bland and boring: there is nothing about it that I feel particularly recommends it above any other book of its kind. In fact, after the first chapter, it reminded me in tone of [b:Fall on Your Knees|5174|Fall on Your Knees|Ann-Marie MacDonald|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165517999s/5174.jpg|941309]. And you know, I keep going around saying that Fall on Your Knees is one of my favourite books, but it has been years since I read it, and my memory is very hazy. So I thought, why not buy Fall on Your Knees for my friend's birthday gift? And why not read it forthwith? So that's the best thing I can say about Liars and Saints: it has motivated me to finally re-read a treasured book. That's some kind of praise, I suppose.
Maybe it's unfair to compare them, but having read this hot on the heels of The War of the Worlds, I liked The Time Machine better. On thematic grounds it's a close battle, but The Time Machine is a far superior story, hands down.
I'm not even going to touch the whole "time travel" concept as Wells presents it in this book, both because it was written in 1895 and because science fiction has so thoroughly confused the matter that trying to claim something "accurately" depicts time travel is always going to be specious. The main character has a time machine and he goes forward (then backward) in time. Got it? Good.
As with The War of the Worlds, precious few characters have names. In fact, I counted a grand total of two named characters: Filby, "an argumentative person with red hair" and Weena, an Eloi woman who befriends the Time Traveller. We never learn the name of the Time Traveller or the narrator of the book. Still, Wells somehow manages to pull this off with aplomb. And this time, he's even somehow acquired a story to mix in among his speculation and political theory!
Wells' Time Traveller builds his time machine in the hopes of going into the far future, where humanity will have solved all the problems looming ominously in the near future as Britain enters the 20th century. So when the Time Traveller arrives in 802,701, naturally he's pleased to find out that humanity has split up into two species, neither of whom retain the capacity for abstract thought, let alone solutions to all our problems. The happy-go-lucky, child-like Eloi live in a state of daytime bliss punctuated by their nightly Fear of the dark-loving, subterranean Morlocks. The Morlocks make off with the Time Traveller's machine, so he has to live with the Eloi while he plots to recapture it.
The Eloi and the Morlocks are the result of the ultimate separation of humanity, according to the Time Traveller, into a leisure-loving aristocracy (the Eloi) and the service-loving labourers (the Morlocks)—capitalism carried to its logical evolutionary extreme. Political theory aside, there's unquestionable, if unoriginal, validity in the statement that "the cause of human intelligence and vigour" is "hardship and freedom." Unfortunately, Wells never really advances beyond this basic thesis. We never learn if the example he sets during his confrontation with the Morlocks inspires the Eloi to improve themselves or not.
Despite Wells' enthusiastic confidence that the march of science would one day provide the answer to our problems, the Time Traveller, as his representative of the scientific genius, is far from a paragon. Indeed, he displays almost instinctual vitriol toward the ape-like Morlocks. The Eloi, on the other hand, "had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy" despite "their intellectual degradation." To the Time Traveller, Beauty is Good and Ugly is Bad. Some readers may take this as a lack of depth on Wells' part; I interpret it as evidence of depth of character in the Time Traveller—that is, he's not all the virtuous hero; he occasionally succumbs to the prejudices of his era.
The Time Machine is a conflict-laden adventure backed by some interesting ideas, the best of both worlds, unified by Wells' trademark descriptive style. It's a "what if" story, a story of wonder—one-hit wonder. And in that limited respect, while short, it's satisfying.
I'm not even going to touch the whole "time travel" concept as Wells presents it in this book, both because it was written in 1895 and because science fiction has so thoroughly confused the matter that trying to claim something "accurately" depicts time travel is always going to be specious. The main character has a time machine and he goes forward (then backward) in time. Got it? Good.
As with The War of the Worlds, precious few characters have names. In fact, I counted a grand total of two named characters: Filby, "an argumentative person with red hair" and Weena, an Eloi woman who befriends the Time Traveller. We never learn the name of the Time Traveller or the narrator of the book. Still, Wells somehow manages to pull this off with aplomb. And this time, he's even somehow acquired a story to mix in among his speculation and political theory!
Wells' Time Traveller builds his time machine in the hopes of going into the far future, where humanity will have solved all the problems looming ominously in the near future as Britain enters the 20th century. So when the Time Traveller arrives in 802,701, naturally he's pleased to find out that humanity has split up into two species, neither of whom retain the capacity for abstract thought, let alone solutions to all our problems. The happy-go-lucky, child-like Eloi live in a state of daytime bliss punctuated by their nightly Fear of the dark-loving, subterranean Morlocks. The Morlocks make off with the Time Traveller's machine, so he has to live with the Eloi while he plots to recapture it.
The Eloi and the Morlocks are the result of the ultimate separation of humanity, according to the Time Traveller, into a leisure-loving aristocracy (the Eloi) and the service-loving labourers (the Morlocks)—capitalism carried to its logical evolutionary extreme. Political theory aside, there's unquestionable, if unoriginal, validity in the statement that "the cause of human intelligence and vigour" is "hardship and freedom." Unfortunately, Wells never really advances beyond this basic thesis. We never learn if the example he sets during his confrontation with the Morlocks inspires the Eloi to improve themselves or not.
Despite Wells' enthusiastic confidence that the march of science would one day provide the answer to our problems, the Time Traveller, as his representative of the scientific genius, is far from a paragon. Indeed, he displays almost instinctual vitriol toward the ape-like Morlocks. The Eloi, on the other hand, "had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy" despite "their intellectual degradation." To the Time Traveller, Beauty is Good and Ugly is Bad. Some readers may take this as a lack of depth on Wells' part; I interpret it as evidence of depth of character in the Time Traveller—that is, he's not all the virtuous hero; he occasionally succumbs to the prejudices of his era.
The Time Machine is a conflict-laden adventure backed by some interesting ideas, the best of both worlds, unified by Wells' trademark descriptive style. It's a "what if" story, a story of wonder—one-hit wonder. And in that limited respect, while short, it's satisfying.
It's easy to be a jaded reader of science fiction, especially if you grew up with the conveniences of Star Trek, Star Wars, and the reality of spaceflight. So it's important to remember that writers like H.G. Wells never got to see the famous Blue Marble photograph of Earth; they never got to see what our planet looks like from space—something most of us take for granted in this era. This awareness, our conception of the Earth as a big blue marble, has become so pervasive as to make descriptions like this seem ... odd:
(Emphasis mine.) Wells didn't grow up with the Apollo missions; he only dreamed of men walking on the moon. So to write a story about Martians invading Earth, one saturated with speculation that uses the most cutting-edge science available to him in the 1890s, is all the more amazing and deserving of praise. The War of the Worlds is not a novel of the ages because of its story or characters—indeed, it lacks both—but because it is a testament to the power of one's imagination.
It's a good thing The War of the Worlds is short, because a book at any length in this style quickly becomes dull. The first thing that struck me is how Wells names so few of his characters. I'm pretty sure under ten characters in the book are named, and all of them are killed off in the first couple of chapters. The narrator and his wife go nameless; supporting characters are simply identified as "the boy" or "my brother," "the curate," "the artilleryman." That's not to say the characters lack personalities. Although none seem three-dimensional, Wells takes the time to invest the main characters with a cynical sort of human nature: the narrator vacillates between misguided optimism and extreme pessimism; the brother soon finds his own altruism erode in the face of Martian-induced anarchy; the curate goes mad; the artilleryman seizes upon impractical, Nietzschean visions. In a way, the dearth of names is appropriate to what Wells accomplishes: set pieces, scenery with dialogue, rather than actual characters decorate the scenes of The War of the Worlds. Through these inanimate beings, Wells shows us how he thinks civilization—because this is Britain, after all!—would behave during an apocalypse.
The narrative itself is extremely procedural. In addition to the nameless characters, who lend to the narrative its feeling of an anonymous article recounting "the terrible Martian invasion," the narrator often goes off into clinical descriptions of the events that befall him and his own interactions with the Martians. This book is all tactics and no strategy.
No, where Wells truly excels is his portrayal of the Martians as the Other and his exploration of how humanity reacts to the invasion of the Other, to absolute and utter catastrophe. The Martians never parley with humanity, neither to threaten nor to deliver ultimatums. They are taciturn and methodical, ruthlessly organized in their effort to dominate the Earth. Our entire understanding of them is predicated on the narrator's perception, on his perhaps fallible assignation of thoughts and desires to the Martians. They are, he supposes, doing this out of a need to survive—Mars being a dying planet—but it's worth noting that this is total supposition; for all we know, the Martians were utterly malevolent and their planet was fine.
The Martians certainly bring out a certain malevolence in humanity. There's no shortage of books that show the dark side of humanity, of course. But the alien invasion story is unique because of its ability to render us, as a species, totally impotent:
This is not the first time Wells compares us to animals; earlier in the book he compares his initial underestimation of the Martians as tantamount to the dodos' lackadaisical attitude toward the first sailors on Mauritius. However, the sentiment doesn't truly sink in until Wells' narrator re-encounters the artilleryman, who sums it up: "We're beat.... This isn't a war. It never was a war, anymore than there's war between man and ants."
From here, the book briefly digresses into a dim vision of humanity's future under the heels of the Martians. The scary thing is, I can see it happening. Our greatest strength as a species is how adaptable we are—but that strength can also be a disadvantage. Civilizations have grown comfortable under the rule of tyrants (just don't ask for the recipe for Soylent Green...); I was ready to envision humanity under the Martians.
It's worth remembering too that this all happens, and was written, before World War II. But does this sound familiar?
Finally, everyone knows how the story ends, even though few people probably even read the entire book: the Martians are felled by tiny, microscopic bacteria, because "there are no bacteria in Mars." Of all the science in this book—much of which is accurate, by the way, if not precise—that is the most ironic statement, for scientists currently searching for life on Mars, past or present, are focusing on finding that life under a microscope. So fortunately for us, I don't think the Martians will be aiming their rockets at Earth anytime soon.
...our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas.
(Emphasis mine.) Wells didn't grow up with the Apollo missions; he only dreamed of men walking on the moon. So to write a story about Martians invading Earth, one saturated with speculation that uses the most cutting-edge science available to him in the 1890s, is all the more amazing and deserving of praise. The War of the Worlds is not a novel of the ages because of its story or characters—indeed, it lacks both—but because it is a testament to the power of one's imagination.
It's a good thing The War of the Worlds is short, because a book at any length in this style quickly becomes dull. The first thing that struck me is how Wells names so few of his characters. I'm pretty sure under ten characters in the book are named, and all of them are killed off in the first couple of chapters. The narrator and his wife go nameless; supporting characters are simply identified as "the boy" or "my brother," "the curate," "the artilleryman." That's not to say the characters lack personalities. Although none seem three-dimensional, Wells takes the time to invest the main characters with a cynical sort of human nature: the narrator vacillates between misguided optimism and extreme pessimism; the brother soon finds his own altruism erode in the face of Martian-induced anarchy; the curate goes mad; the artilleryman seizes upon impractical, Nietzschean visions. In a way, the dearth of names is appropriate to what Wells accomplishes: set pieces, scenery with dialogue, rather than actual characters decorate the scenes of The War of the Worlds. Through these inanimate beings, Wells shows us how he thinks civilization—because this is Britain, after all!—would behave during an apocalypse.
The narrative itself is extremely procedural. In addition to the nameless characters, who lend to the narrative its feeling of an anonymous article recounting "the terrible Martian invasion," the narrator often goes off into clinical descriptions of the events that befall him and his own interactions with the Martians. This book is all tactics and no strategy.
No, where Wells truly excels is his portrayal of the Martians as the Other and his exploration of how humanity reacts to the invasion of the Other, to absolute and utter catastrophe. The Martians never parley with humanity, neither to threaten nor to deliver ultimatums. They are taciturn and methodical, ruthlessly organized in their effort to dominate the Earth. Our entire understanding of them is predicated on the narrator's perception, on his perhaps fallible assignation of thoughts and desires to the Martians. They are, he supposes, doing this out of a need to survive—Mars being a dying planet—but it's worth noting that this is total supposition; for all we know, the Martians were utterly malevolent and their planet was fine.
The Martians certainly bring out a certain malevolence in humanity. There's no shortage of books that show the dark side of humanity, of course. But the alien invasion story is unique because of its ability to render us, as a species, totally impotent:
For that moment I touched an emotion beyond the common range of men, yet one that the poor brutes we dominate know only too well. I felt as a rabbit might feel returning to his burrow and suddenly confronted by the work of a dozen busy navvies digging the foundations of a house. I felt the first inkling of a thing that presently grew quite clear in my mind, that oppressed me for many days, a sense of dethronement, a persuasion that I was no longer a master, but an animal among the animals, under the Martian heels. With us it would be as with them, to lurk and watch, to run and hide; the fear and empire of man had passed away.
This is not the first time Wells compares us to animals; earlier in the book he compares his initial underestimation of the Martians as tantamount to the dodos' lackadaisical attitude toward the first sailors on Mauritius. However, the sentiment doesn't truly sink in until Wells' narrator re-encounters the artilleryman, who sums it up: "We're beat.... This isn't a war. It never was a war, anymore than there's war between man and ants."
From here, the book briefly digresses into a dim vision of humanity's future under the heels of the Martians. The scary thing is, I can see it happening. Our greatest strength as a species is how adaptable we are—but that strength can also be a disadvantage. Civilizations have grown comfortable under the rule of tyrants (just don't ask for the recipe for Soylent Green...); I was ready to envision humanity under the Martians.
It's worth remembering too that this all happens, and was written, before World War II. But does this sound familiar?
It may be that in the larger design of the universe this invasion from Mars is not without its ultimate benefit for men; it has robbed us of that serene confidence in the future which is the most fruitful source of decadence, the gifts to human science it has brought are enormous, and it has done much to promote the conception of the commonweal of mankind.
Finally, everyone knows how the story ends, even though few people probably even read the entire book: the Martians are felled by tiny, microscopic bacteria, because "there are no bacteria in Mars." Of all the science in this book—much of which is accurate, by the way, if not precise—that is the most ironic statement, for scientists currently searching for life on Mars, past or present, are focusing on finding that life under a microscope. So fortunately for us, I don't think the Martians will be aiming their rockets at Earth anytime soon.
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I read this book in a single night, which is a pretty good testament to how much I enjoyed it. I won't be the first person to compare Little Brother to [b:1984|5470|1984|George Orwell|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165522327s/5470.jpg|153313] (Doctorow himself does it, alluding to it in the story by giving his protagonist the handle w1n5t0n and through the title of the book itself), but it's a very apt comparison. Little Brother is 1984 updated to take into account September 11th, the Internet, and the Department of Homeland Security. I'm not saying this book supplants 1984; you should read both.
First, a caveat: Little Brother is polemical in a way that occasionally compromises the story. Sometimes the main character, Marcus, gets a little too caught up in his explanation of how he's accomplishing something. Doctorow wants to educate his readers about modern security measures and ways to thwart them. Nevertheless, I'm giving this book five stars because it still managed to keep me entertained and package all of the emotions I feel when I think about the United States' reaction to terrorism in the past eight years. Little Brother hits you in the heart, because you read it and think, "This is my world" and wonder what will happen next, not in the book, but in reality.
Most of Doctorow's antagonists are fairly stock characters (who even get generic names!) and are two-dimensional set pieces against home his protagonist reverberates. For example, the Chavez High School vice-principal is an uncool blowhard who represents "the Man" and Marcus' desire to thwart the institution. The Man ultimately replaces the teacher who sympathizes with Marcus' freedom-of-speech ethics, of course, the first step to turning education into indoctrination. Doctorow's conflicts are far from organic. Rather, Little Brother reads more like an action movie where the action scenes have been plotted first and their transitions woven in afterward. Although I'm not convinced it could stand up as a movie, that's how it feels to read the book (not a bad thing). This is not a work of great literature, and although Doctorow is an entertaining writer, he's not a perfect one by any means.
What he is, however, is a good storyteller. He makes you feel. Oh, and he uses phrases like "teh suck" in the narration, which raises his cool quotient by a considerable amount.
The brilliance of Little Brother is that it's science fiction, but it's not set in the future. This is happening here, now--much like in Heroes, only without the bad acting and horrible storylines. And for the most part, I think that the situations Doctorow depicts are fairly plausible. In between his thinly-veiled lectures and arguments about freedom of speech and the effects of terrorism on a free society, Doctorow shows us how the government's attempts to catch terrorists are ultimately helping terrorists by sowing fear and hindering true investigation.
Above all, he emphasizes how the government can use technology not just to track us, but to profile us and our habits. Imagine a world where you're investigated not because you do something illegal but because your movements just happen to be "abnormal" compared to your past few months of activity. This isn't Luddite fear-mongering either; Doctorow's addressing real concerns about the intrusive nature of new-old technologies like RFID. These aren't issues that affect only the military or upper class white-collar workers or secret agents; these issues affect everyone, rich or poor, desk or factory, government or private sector. And they affect us here, now, today--not tomorrow. Doctorow is clearly on one side of this issue, but even if you eventual come to stand on the opposite side, at least you'll be choosing a side. If you remain apathetic, then you will have no voice in this silent revolution. And if you have no voice, how can you really call yourself free?
Oh dear, my review appears to have turned polemical as well. I can't help it, I suppose. Little Brother made me passionate; it's moved me in the way that only a good book can, and that's why I'm giving it five stars.
First, a caveat: Little Brother is polemical in a way that occasionally compromises the story. Sometimes the main character, Marcus, gets a little too caught up in his explanation of how he's accomplishing something. Doctorow wants to educate his readers about modern security measures and ways to thwart them. Nevertheless, I'm giving this book five stars because it still managed to keep me entertained and package all of the emotions I feel when I think about the United States' reaction to terrorism in the past eight years. Little Brother hits you in the heart, because you read it and think, "This is my world" and wonder what will happen next, not in the book, but in reality.
Most of Doctorow's antagonists are fairly stock characters (who even get generic names!) and are two-dimensional set pieces against home his protagonist reverberates. For example, the Chavez High School vice-principal is an uncool blowhard who represents "the Man" and Marcus' desire to thwart the institution. The Man ultimately replaces the teacher who sympathizes with Marcus' freedom-of-speech ethics, of course, the first step to turning education into indoctrination. Doctorow's conflicts are far from organic. Rather, Little Brother reads more like an action movie where the action scenes have been plotted first and their transitions woven in afterward. Although I'm not convinced it could stand up as a movie, that's how it feels to read the book (not a bad thing). This is not a work of great literature, and although Doctorow is an entertaining writer, he's not a perfect one by any means.
What he is, however, is a good storyteller. He makes you feel. Oh, and he uses phrases like "teh suck" in the narration, which raises his cool quotient by a considerable amount.
The brilliance of Little Brother is that it's science fiction, but it's not set in the future. This is happening here, now--much like in Heroes, only without the bad acting and horrible storylines. And for the most part, I think that the situations Doctorow depicts are fairly plausible. In between his thinly-veiled lectures and arguments about freedom of speech and the effects of terrorism on a free society, Doctorow shows us how the government's attempts to catch terrorists are ultimately helping terrorists by sowing fear and hindering true investigation.
Above all, he emphasizes how the government can use technology not just to track us, but to profile us and our habits. Imagine a world where you're investigated not because you do something illegal but because your movements just happen to be "abnormal" compared to your past few months of activity. This isn't Luddite fear-mongering either; Doctorow's addressing real concerns about the intrusive nature of new-old technologies like RFID. These aren't issues that affect only the military or upper class white-collar workers or secret agents; these issues affect everyone, rich or poor, desk or factory, government or private sector. And they affect us here, now, today--not tomorrow. Doctorow is clearly on one side of this issue, but even if you eventual come to stand on the opposite side, at least you'll be choosing a side. If you remain apathetic, then you will have no voice in this silent revolution. And if you have no voice, how can you really call yourself free?
Oh dear, my review appears to have turned polemical as well. I can't help it, I suppose. Little Brother made me passionate; it's moved me in the way that only a good book can, and that's why I'm giving it five stars.
Stonehenge is one of the most compelling landmarks on Earth, unique and instantly recognizable. We don’t know much about its builders, why they built it, or indeed even how they built it. We have lots of archaeological evidence and plenty of theories, but unlike their Egyptian contemporaries, the Neolithic builders of Stonehenge neglected to leave behind any writing explaining why they erected a bunch of stones on Salisbury Plain.
Aubrey Burl, it turns out, is a leading expert on Stonehenge and indeed stone circles throughout Britain. I didn’t know this before I started reading the book, but it’s obvious within the first few pages that Burl knows what he’s talking about. This is a man who has spent his lifetime absorbing all he can about Stonehenge, from the history of its exploration and excavation to the archaeological investigation into the culture that constructed it. If you’re going to learn about Stonehenge, you should learn from the best.
So don’t let my somewhat lukewarm rating deter you from this book: it isn’t bad, just not as enchanting as I was hoping. If I were in a different mood, not so distracted by school and the siren song of other books on my shelf, this might be a book I could really get into. As it is, Burl’s A Brief History of Stonehenge is actually an Incredibly Detailled History of Stonehenge. And he includes measurements. Oh, so many measurements—in metric and Imperial units! I confess that I prefer my popular history books to be more narrative and less descriptive; if I wanted to know the dimensions of Stonehenge, I would look them up in Wikipedia.
This seems like an excellent starting place, however, for anyone looking to do research into Stonehenge. It’s written by a foremost expert, and it is supersaturated with information. Burl takes us through each of the theorized “phases” of Stonehenge’s construction, from a basic circle in 3000 BC to the later sarsen trilithons that give Stonehenge its unforgettable appearance. He pays particular attention to the controversy surrounding the bluestones—the general name given to all the non-indigenous stones found at the monument. Burl himself subscribes to a theory that the stones were deposited there by glaciers and used by the builders out of convenience, but he acknowledges that others believe the stones were quarried and transported to the site (what a feat, if that’s the case).
I cannot fault this book for its accuracy or its commitment to providing a truly stunning history of Stonehenge. This isn’t a book I intentionally sought out—I inherited it from a friend who moved away, but I figured, hey, I can learn more about Stonehenge—and I’m not sure what else the market has to offer for histories of the monument, though I suspect there are plenty. All I can say is that this seems like a useful book; it’s definitely a thorough book, and indeed it’s the detail that made it difficult for me to enjoy it at this time.
Aubrey Burl, it turns out, is a leading expert on Stonehenge and indeed stone circles throughout Britain. I didn’t know this before I started reading the book, but it’s obvious within the first few pages that Burl knows what he’s talking about. This is a man who has spent his lifetime absorbing all he can about Stonehenge, from the history of its exploration and excavation to the archaeological investigation into the culture that constructed it. If you’re going to learn about Stonehenge, you should learn from the best.
So don’t let my somewhat lukewarm rating deter you from this book: it isn’t bad, just not as enchanting as I was hoping. If I were in a different mood, not so distracted by school and the siren song of other books on my shelf, this might be a book I could really get into. As it is, Burl’s A Brief History of Stonehenge is actually an Incredibly Detailled History of Stonehenge. And he includes measurements. Oh, so many measurements—in metric and Imperial units! I confess that I prefer my popular history books to be more narrative and less descriptive; if I wanted to know the dimensions of Stonehenge, I would look them up in Wikipedia.
This seems like an excellent starting place, however, for anyone looking to do research into Stonehenge. It’s written by a foremost expert, and it is supersaturated with information. Burl takes us through each of the theorized “phases” of Stonehenge’s construction, from a basic circle in 3000 BC to the later sarsen trilithons that give Stonehenge its unforgettable appearance. He pays particular attention to the controversy surrounding the bluestones—the general name given to all the non-indigenous stones found at the monument. Burl himself subscribes to a theory that the stones were deposited there by glaciers and used by the builders out of convenience, but he acknowledges that others believe the stones were quarried and transported to the site (what a feat, if that’s the case).
I cannot fault this book for its accuracy or its commitment to providing a truly stunning history of Stonehenge. This isn’t a book I intentionally sought out—I inherited it from a friend who moved away, but I figured, hey, I can learn more about Stonehenge—and I’m not sure what else the market has to offer for histories of the monument, though I suspect there are plenty. All I can say is that this seems like a useful book; it’s definitely a thorough book, and indeed it’s the detail that made it difficult for me to enjoy it at this time.
Often I go into novels with expectations. If they’re by an author I know and like, or if they came highly recommended from a trusted source, then I might have very high expectations. If they’re something I plucked from the library’s “New Books” shelf, then I’ll be less hesitant. Sometimes, however, I go into a book with few or no expectations. This is not because I am being open-minded; I am a huge literary snob and have the Umberto Eco reviews to prove it. No, when I go into a book without expectations, it’s because I’ve simply forgotten what expectations to have. Fragment is an example of this situation: I learned of the book from an io9 review, shelved it, then promptly forgot about it until I got it at the library last week.
It’s a good thing I had few expectations for this book, because Fragment does not aim high. Warren Fahy attempts to combine a science-fiction thriller with social commentary on the abundance of reality television and popular scientist sound clips—in other words, the shallow, consumer-driven nature of our culture. This is where I’m supposed to say that the combination doesn’t work but each element is fine when considered on its own—that would be a lie. Fragment, considered in whole or in its components, is just a big mess, and while it is probably totally possible to ignore that and enjoy the book, it was not something I was capable of doing.
Fragment is set mostly on Henders Island, named after the captain of a British naval vessel who spotted it while out looking for the HMS Bounty. He didn’t actually land there, which proved to be a good decision, since it turns out Henders is the last extant fragment of a supercontinent that has been isolated from the rest of Earth’s landmasses for millions of years. The bottom line? Evolution has diverged so drastically on Henders that life on that island is just not compatible with life on the rest of the planet. It’s seriously alien, seriously aggressive, and seriously dangerous.
Seriously.
So of course, a bunch of people poke it with a stick, and the sticks turn out to be animals that poke back. Lots of people die, stupid decisions get made, tactical nukes get broken out, and in the end the only people who really win are the good-hearted scientists and the reality television producers (isn’t that always the case?).
I’ll say this for Fahy: he knows how to take the outrageousness and turn it up to eleven. I guess this is what people expect in thrillers? I don’t know. I struggle a lot with evaluating thrillers and thriller-like stories, because on one hand I don’t want to turn into GENRE SNOB HULK and CRUSH THE THRILLERS for often forsaking depth in favour of a formulaic plot structure and rote characterization. On the other hand … well, what I just said. People reject science fiction and fantasy for being “too unrealistic”, but I feel that there is a great deal of science fiction and fantasy where, while the setting might be less realistic, the plot and the behaviour of the character is a lot more realistic and more engaging than most thrillers. But I’m biased—and Fragment does nothing to help in that respect.
Fragment is also science fiction, of course, and that part of the novel isn’t bad. It isn’t great either. If I had a nickel for every review that contains something to the effect of “I love the premise, but …”, then I would … well, I would have a lot of nickels, and I would probably spend most of them hiring small children to put them into those little paper rolls.
But I digress.
Fragment’s outrageous plot also comes with a matching set of outrageous characters. For instance, there is Thatcher Redmond, a completely spineless (not literally spineless, like the inhabitants of Henders Island) scientist who spends all his time thinking about gambling, how he can rape science for money, and the fact that he indirectly caused the death of his love-child. He is not a nice dude, and indeed, Fahy doesn’t seem to include any redeeming qualities about him. Not once does he even stop to consider if he is doing the wrong thing.
On the opposite end of the scale we have Nell and George. Suffice it to say, they hook up at the end of the book, in a rather awkward way that would be charming if it weren’t so bizarrely out of place. They meet for the first time ever on September 16, and the story ends on the morning of September 18, by which time they have progressed from that awkward, “Wait, your last name is Duckworth?” “What of it, Dr. Bingswanger?” phase to that equally awkward “Let’s kiss while the entire world is watching it as a live feed” phase. Everything about their relationship is trite and contrived, and it feels so inevitable yet forced that this alone is enough to make me dislike the book. Excising this wouldn’t necessarily save it, in my eyes, but at least I could point to it and say, “See? The protagonists don’t have hook up after enduring mortal peril! Fahy defied the genre!!” I can’t do that now.
Fragment does attempt to let slip the surly bonds of thrillerdom and touch the face of satire with its portrayal of reality television. The modern-day ship that stumbles across Henders Island and sets off this entire adventure is the Trident, playing host to a bunch of real-life scientists as part of a reality television show. With its ratings in trouble, a visit to an uncharted island seems like the perfect boost—all the more so when some of the scientists get killed by the indigenous wildlife. But then suddenly the military intervenes and the government shuts down your broadcast, and then what do you do? More re-runs of that awful Crystal Skull documentary, I suppose. (Can’t you at least play Mythbusters?)
Unfortunately, Fahy’s critique of reality television never seems to progress beyond the stage of a shallow portrayal of rabid producers and network executives. Cynthia, much like Thatcher Redmond or George and Nell, is herself a fairly two-dimensional character. The book is very explicit in establishing that she wants all her pet scientists to get involved on television and that she wants drama! and will do almost anything to get it. Aside from a few tentative mentions of pressures on Cynthia to perform despite her stellar track record, we never really get to see much more into her character—and she is essentially our only window on this reality television angle. I think this is a shame, because this is by far Fragment’s most original and intriguing feature. I suspect it is probably what made me want to read it in the first place, and for the most part it feels like a squandered opportunity.
I re-read that io9 review and see where the warning bells should have sounded in my head. This is what happens when books languish upon one’s to-read shelf for two years before one gets around to reading them! I don’t want to be too hard on Fragment, because I have read much worse books. It has a fairly coherent story and a well-defined conflict. The science-fictional part of the premise is stunning, and the reality TV angle is also a cool, albeit underdeveloped, addition. So there’s plenty to tolerate or even like about Fragment depending on where your preferences lie. However, it was frustrating for me to read a book like this, because I had the constant sense it was something that could have been so much more. See, I lied at the beginning of the review. I never go into a book tabula rasa, with no expectations. I always have the highest expectations for my literature, whatever it is. I can see how that might be perceived as a mistake or as additional evidence of my snobbery (but seriously, why would you need that when you already know I read Umberto Eco?). I prefer to think of it, however, as not forcing a book into a more condescending niche because it’s “just” an example of a certain genre. Every book has the potential to be something more—and some books, like Fragment, don’t quite meet that potential.
It’s a good thing I had few expectations for this book, because Fragment does not aim high. Warren Fahy attempts to combine a science-fiction thriller with social commentary on the abundance of reality television and popular scientist sound clips—in other words, the shallow, consumer-driven nature of our culture. This is where I’m supposed to say that the combination doesn’t work but each element is fine when considered on its own—that would be a lie. Fragment, considered in whole or in its components, is just a big mess, and while it is probably totally possible to ignore that and enjoy the book, it was not something I was capable of doing.
Fragment is set mostly on Henders Island, named after the captain of a British naval vessel who spotted it while out looking for the HMS Bounty. He didn’t actually land there, which proved to be a good decision, since it turns out Henders is the last extant fragment of a supercontinent that has been isolated from the rest of Earth’s landmasses for millions of years. The bottom line? Evolution has diverged so drastically on Henders that life on that island is just not compatible with life on the rest of the planet. It’s seriously alien, seriously aggressive, and seriously dangerous.
Seriously.
So of course, a bunch of people poke it with a stick, and the sticks turn out to be animals that poke back. Lots of people die, stupid decisions get made, tactical nukes get broken out, and in the end the only people who really win are the good-hearted scientists and the reality television producers (isn’t that always the case?).
I’ll say this for Fahy: he knows how to take the outrageousness and turn it up to eleven. I guess this is what people expect in thrillers? I don’t know. I struggle a lot with evaluating thrillers and thriller-like stories, because on one hand I don’t want to turn into GENRE SNOB HULK and CRUSH THE THRILLERS for often forsaking depth in favour of a formulaic plot structure and rote characterization. On the other hand … well, what I just said. People reject science fiction and fantasy for being “too unrealistic”, but I feel that there is a great deal of science fiction and fantasy where, while the setting might be less realistic, the plot and the behaviour of the character is a lot more realistic and more engaging than most thrillers. But I’m biased—and Fragment does nothing to help in that respect.
Fragment is also science fiction, of course, and that part of the novel isn’t bad. It isn’t great either. If I had a nickel for every review that contains something to the effect of “I love the premise, but …”, then I would … well, I would have a lot of nickels, and I would probably spend most of them hiring small children to put them into those little paper rolls.
But I digress.
Fragment’s outrageous plot also comes with a matching set of outrageous characters. For instance, there is Thatcher Redmond, a completely spineless (not literally spineless, like the inhabitants of Henders Island) scientist who spends all his time thinking about gambling, how he can rape science for money, and the fact that he indirectly caused the death of his love-child. He is not a nice dude, and indeed, Fahy doesn’t seem to include any redeeming qualities about him. Not once does he even stop to consider if he is doing the wrong thing.
On the opposite end of the scale we have Nell and George. Suffice it to say, they hook up at the end of the book, in a rather awkward way that would be charming if it weren’t so bizarrely out of place. They meet for the first time ever on September 16, and the story ends on the morning of September 18, by which time they have progressed from that awkward, “Wait, your last name is Duckworth?” “What of it, Dr. Bingswanger?” phase to that equally awkward “Let’s kiss while the entire world is watching it as a live feed” phase. Everything about their relationship is trite and contrived, and it feels so inevitable yet forced that this alone is enough to make me dislike the book. Excising this wouldn’t necessarily save it, in my eyes, but at least I could point to it and say, “See? The protagonists don’t have hook up after enduring mortal peril! Fahy defied the genre!!” I can’t do that now.
Fragment does attempt to let slip the surly bonds of thrillerdom and touch the face of satire with its portrayal of reality television. The modern-day ship that stumbles across Henders Island and sets off this entire adventure is the Trident, playing host to a bunch of real-life scientists as part of a reality television show. With its ratings in trouble, a visit to an uncharted island seems like the perfect boost—all the more so when some of the scientists get killed by the indigenous wildlife. But then suddenly the military intervenes and the government shuts down your broadcast, and then what do you do? More re-runs of that awful Crystal Skull documentary, I suppose. (Can’t you at least play Mythbusters?)
Unfortunately, Fahy’s critique of reality television never seems to progress beyond the stage of a shallow portrayal of rabid producers and network executives. Cynthia, much like Thatcher Redmond or George and Nell, is herself a fairly two-dimensional character. The book is very explicit in establishing that she wants all her pet scientists to get involved on television and that she wants drama! and will do almost anything to get it. Aside from a few tentative mentions of pressures on Cynthia to perform despite her stellar track record, we never really get to see much more into her character—and she is essentially our only window on this reality television angle. I think this is a shame, because this is by far Fragment’s most original and intriguing feature. I suspect it is probably what made me want to read it in the first place, and for the most part it feels like a squandered opportunity.
I re-read that io9 review and see where the warning bells should have sounded in my head. This is what happens when books languish upon one’s to-read shelf for two years before one gets around to reading them! I don’t want to be too hard on Fragment, because I have read much worse books. It has a fairly coherent story and a well-defined conflict. The science-fictional part of the premise is stunning, and the reality TV angle is also a cool, albeit underdeveloped, addition. So there’s plenty to tolerate or even like about Fragment depending on where your preferences lie. However, it was frustrating for me to read a book like this, because I had the constant sense it was something that could have been so much more. See, I lied at the beginning of the review. I never go into a book tabula rasa, with no expectations. I always have the highest expectations for my literature, whatever it is. I can see how that might be perceived as a mistake or as additional evidence of my snobbery (but seriously, why would you need that when you already know I read Umberto Eco?). I prefer to think of it, however, as not forcing a book into a more condescending niche because it’s “just” an example of a certain genre. Every book has the potential to be something more—and some books, like Fragment, don’t quite meet that potential.