Much like Cat’s Eye, I’m finding The Blind Assassin difficult to review. It won the Booker Prize, one of only three Canadian books to do so. And this Margaret Atwood person, she’s no slouch either. Apparently she’s some bigshot Canadian author with plenty of novels and short stories out there, somewhere, just winning awards and acclaim left and right. But even if one stripped away all such accolades and attempted to deal with the text itself, The Blind Assassin would still be an imposing story, intimidating because of its intimacy. It’s the perfect kind of ambiguous tragedy that most fictional memoirs try to be, and there are moments that are truly heartbreaking. Yet I still struggle with Atwood’s style, and that made it difficult for me to embrace The Blind Assassin in the way it might, one could argue, deserve.

Atwood employs an arsenal of storytelling techniques. Wrapped around the entire narrative is the frame story of 82-year-old Iris Griffen (née Chase). She begins telling this story without knowing for whom she is writing (eventually she arrives at a poignant if trite answer). Starting with an overview of her family’s rise to power in Port Ticonderoga, Iris delves into her own life, from childhood to adolescence to the tumultuous trap of adulthood, maturity, and marriage. Always lurking in the background is the rock that diverts the river of Iris’ life: her sister, Laura, one of those high literary versions of the Creepy Child (TVTropes) who is not always there. Laura’s death is the fixed point in time around which Iris’ tempest turns.

Next we have Laura’s posthumously-published novel, also called The Blind Assassin. Within that novel itself the characters work together to spin what Margaret Atwood would call a science-fiction story. So for those of you playing along at home, that means we have a story within a story within a story within a story: the sci-fi story within the posthumous novel within Iris’ narrative within the Atwood novel itself. Kinky. Well, maybe for some. It doesn’t quite do it for me. I enjoyed the sci-fi tale of Zycron and its blind assassin, but I could never invest anything in it, for I knew it was merely a plot device that Atwood would sacrifice at the proper moment.

Also, I make no secret of the fact that I find it very difficult to be interested in the second, third, and fourth decades of Canada’s twentieth century. (What can I say, I liked Laurier!) As an educator-in-training I’ve been sensitized to the way that poor teaching can cause education to backfire and turn a student off of a subject or topic. My history teachers were far from poor, but I’m still not enamoured of the emphasis our high school curriculum placed on military history of the early twentieth century. The bulk of The Blind Assassin takes place during the Great Depression, which is a crucial plot point. And to be fair to Atwood, she actually manages to make it interesting and intriguing. But setting is always more than scenery, and I’m sure this setting proved a stumbling block for me.

There is one aspect of The Blind Assassin that touched me. Iris is eighteen. It’s the height of the Depression, and her father’s factories are failing. His only option is to seek some liquidity from a business rival, 35-year-old Richard Griffen. And Griffen acquiesces, but as her father eventually reveals to Iris, this assistance comes with a steep price tag attached. And so Iris gets traded away. She goes “willingly”, doing her duty for the family, for her sister. But that makes it no less bitter for her or for the reader; there is that sharp moment of acrid realization that she has been sold, bartered like a possession.

And that is exactly how she gets treated while she is married to Richard. He and his meddling, controlling sister, Winifred, run Iris’ life. They treat her like a child, concealing crucial information from her. At times Atwood plays up Iris’ powerlessness and marginalization in ways that feel over the top, mostly in her characterization of Winifred. Yet this part of the story still gets to me and is still the most compelling. I couldn’t care less about Iris and Laura’s relationships with the orphan, Marxist Alex. I don’t really care what happened to Richard. It was always about Iris, about the way she seemed to begin to fade away, and then Laura’s death changes everything, and she finds a reason to strike back.

I’m not sure what else I could say. It’s a long book, and it’s a good book, and unlike some books I’m confident I can predict how others will feel about it. I wish I could endorse it more thoroughly, but there’s just something about The Blind Assassin’s obvious attempt to be a story that rankles. The blurb, from The New York Times, on the back of my edition calls it “Virtuosic storytelling on display”, and that is exactly what it is: showy (albeit not necessarily flashy) and loud in its skill. There are many layers to this book, but the dividing lines are neat and recognizable even if every layer’s meaning is not. The Blind Assassin is good enough that it defies my feeble attempts to classify and categorize it. But as with some other works of great literature, it is a novel whose greatness I can recognize but cannot fully enjoy, at least not right now. I don’t regret reading it, but it’s not my favourite of Atwood’s, and I hope the best is yet to come.

Valar morghulis. All men must die. And in A Dance with Dragons, everyone dies.

OK, I'm teasing you. But I'm also being completely serious.

N.B.: As always, this review does not contain spoilers for this book, but there are significant spoilers for previous books in the series. I know you're still going to read it though, Dad, even though you haven't read the books and it's going to spoil the TV show for you.

A Feast for Crows focuses on the political situation in and around King's Landing in the aftermath of the Battle for the Blackwater and the Red Wedding. With Tywin dead, the Lannisters are melting down in a big way: Cersei feels she can't trust anyone, and she is desperate to stymie the growing influence the Tyrells have over her precious Tommen, our Boy King. This ultimately gets her into a lot of trouble, and later in A Dance with Dragons we learn the consequences. But first we get to catch up with all the characters absent from A Feast for Crows: Jon Snow and Stannis at the Wall; Daenerys, Barristan, and Jorah in Meereen; Tyrion the fugitive; and Theon. Yes, Theon. You didn't think he was dead, did you? When Martin kills a character, he does so in a bloody, onscreen way. Heads roll—literally.

There is more than one way to die. We see this emphatically across the cast of A Dance with Dragons, in Jon, Theon, Arya, Gilly's boy, Tyrion, Daenerys, Cersei—you know what, I'm just going to stop, because I could probably list the whole cast. Here's what I mean though, and this is why A Dance with Dragons, even with some very noticeable flaws, not a disappointment. The entire cast is undergoing a cataclysmic crisis of identity. For some, like Arya and Sansa, this has been happening since A Storm of Swords. For others, like Tyrion (or Brienne), it has been a part of them their entire lives, because they do not fit into the normative moulds, but lately even their carefully-constructed senses of self have been eroded by events. Others are merely overwhelmed by the enormity of the tasks they face: Jon Snow is now Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and must deal with a flood of refugee wildlings; Daenerys must decide whether to stay and defend Mereen against the slaving masters or cut and run for Westeros. Martin is not afraid to kill off characters for real—there are a few well-established characters who meet their deaths, and a few who are, by the end of the book, not quite dead but in definite mortal peril. Nevertheless, practically every member of the main cast is dramatically changed between the beginning and the end of this book.

Jon Snow has long been a somewhat problematic character for me. He is endearing, both for his earnestness and his loyalty, and I cheered when he became Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. But let's be honest: he's also a little of a Marty Stu (TVTropes alert). I mean, he's been a member of the Watch for how long? He's how young? And he still gets elected Lord Commander? It's a bit of a stretch—one that Martin uses to demonstrate how truly desperate the Watch is for men and for leadership. If they are electing the green Lord Snow as their commander, things must be dire indeed. Jon is gone though, and Lord Snow is now in charge: Master Aemon advises Jon to "kill the boy", and Jon takes this to heart. We were fortunate enough to get a glimpse of Lord Commander Snow in A Feast for Crows, when he dispatches Sam to Oldtown. We relive that conversation from Jon's perspective this time, and it's an interesting experience, because we see which parts of the conversation Jon gives priority in contrast to Sam's perspective. But sending away arguably his best friend (not to mention his best adviser, Master Aemon) and forcing Gilly to switch her baby are just the first of Jon's hard choices. The entire book is a litany of Jon attempting to do what he considers right for the Night Watch, and for the realm, even though he knows it will be unpopular. He must walk a careful line as he treats with Stannis—the Night's Watch shall take no part in the affairs of the realm—and attempts to make peace with the wildlings.

I'm also really intrigued by Arya's continued mission to become no one. Both she and Jon are children of Eddard Stark who seem to be pursuing a path that irrevocably severs them from their former lives. There are … opportunities, perhaps one might even call them temptations, for Jon to abandon such a path before it is "too late", if ever it will be too late for him. Arya, on the other hand, maintains her identity as a Stark—for now. But who will she be tomorrow? The next day? She is being trained to do more than kill, to be more than an assassin; she is an acolyte in a religious cult that worships a god of death and brings that god's gift to those who ask. It's creepy and compelling to see what's being done to someone who, remember, is still just a child.

Everyone's identities might be in flux, but that doesn't mean they're all in flux an equal amount, or with an equal amount of interest for the reader. Theon Greyjoy begins A Dance with Dragons as Reek, a creature of Ramsay Bolton. He has been tortured and flayed and treated like less than an animal. Yet circumstances require "Theon" back, and so he is slowly brought out of his shell, and I find this recovery far too hasty if Theon is really as far gone as Martin depicts. He too quickly regains his sense of individuality and volition, and I'm aware that A Dance with Dragons is already long enough as it is, but it still felt rushed.

At the other extreme, Daenerys' story advances more slowly than I'd like, and it's not just because I'm on Team Dany. I think she'd make a kickass Queen of Westeros, and I'm anxious to see her descend upon the Seven Kingdoms. I am looking forward to Cersei Lannister learning that Daenerys fucking Targaryen has returned on the back of a dragon and leading an army of freed slaves. I understand, however, why she feels she must linger in Meereen. Firstly, she does not want to abandon the city or let her subjects feel she has abandoned her. Daenerys has begun to turn herself into a legend: she is the Mother of Dragons; she is the Mother of us all. That is a tough act to live up to. Secondly, Daenerys has been on the run her entire life. The closest she has come to home has been a house in Braavos with a red door, or maybe it was Drogo's tent on the Dothraki sea. In either case, Daenerys has always been on the move, and she has never had control over where she was going. For once she has an opportunity to rest and choose her own moment of departure. I think she is relishing this new type of freedom, even if that is not the wisest way to spend her time.

Still, if there is any big problem with A Dance with Dragons, it has to be the paucity of dragon scenes. Dany gets one big crowning moment of awesome that I won't spoil, and Quentyn Martell has the audacity to try to steal Dany's dragons and bring them back to Dorne. (Yeah, that doesn't work out well.) But come on, Martin! We've been waiting for these dragons since they hatched at the end of A Game of Thrones! I'm not asking that Dany tame all three of them and start riding them into battle immediately. So far, however, they seem like more of a liability than an asset, and I keep waiting for someone with some dragon lore, like Tyrion, or that maester who left to find Daenerys at the end of A Feast for Crows, to show up and become her dragon whisperer. I like to think that I am someone who can appreciate the slow burn, the gradual but incessant build up to a final, gratifying climax. And I know Martin is working toward that. But I just wish he could have thrown a little more dragon dancing our way. Or maybe just some dragon cavorting. Dragon promenade? I'm flexible.

Last time, I mentioned that Cersei sucks at the game of thrones. In A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin makes it clear that everyone sucks at the game of thrones. But it's not their fault, not really.

The dramatic shifts in POV with each chapter offer us a unique sense of duality when it comes to viewing the political situation in Westeros. In King's Landing, the councillors squabble over the threat from the Iron Islands and how to finally dispatch Stannis. Thanks to Cersei, the Iron Throne's debt continues to grow, and she has somehow managed to empower the High Septon even as she incurs his disapproval. Good job! So among the inner circle around Tommen, there's a certain sense of unease; no one is feeling secure at the moment.

In the North, there is a similar atmosphere, but the insecurity is directed toward Stannis. Davos becomes an emissary and attempts to secure some support for Stannis, but Stannis' strength seems to be flagging: he has few men, little coin, his fleet is in tatters, and winter is coming to the North in a big way. So even as Stannis continues to wage his war, because he is a man governed by duty and not sense, the consensus among the North seems to be that he's not destined to rest his laurels on the Iron Throne.

What this, along with Cersei's own situation, shows is that all of the claimants to the throne are in a precarious position. Even those who have the Iron Throne at this moment aren't sure they can keep it. Meanwhile, every other claimant, from Dany to Stannis, has more immediate problems to face before they can march on King's Landing. And, just to shake things up, Martin tosses a new claimant into the mix. We finally get a glimpse into Varys' machinations, and while the new contender does feel like he's coming out of left field, it totally fits with Martin's motif of mistaken identity. I stand by what I said in my review of A Storm of Swords: it doesn't matter so much who finally ends up ruling Westeros as it does how much of Westeros will be left when the dust settles. The Seven Kingdoms are fracturing, crumbling, and decaying. And winter, and the Others, are coming.

A Dance with Dragons doesn't deliver what I expected. Somehow, though, it still manages to deliver enough to make me enjoy and appreciate the book, as well as its contributions to the Song of Ice and Fire. Martin indulges in a peculiar new way of titling his chapters, using somewhat fanciful names like "the Prince of Winterfell" or "the Queensguard" instead of proper character names. To be fair, it's not exactly hard to discern whose POV it is. Perhaps this is supposed to emphasize each character's shifting identities and priorities. Because A Dance with Dragons lacks a watershed moment like the Red Wedding, but just like A Storm of Swords, I finished this book with a clear conviction that nothing is ever going to be the same, and that we are heading to one hell of a final confrontation.

My Reviews of A Song of Ice and Fire:
← A Feast for Crows | The Winds of Winter → (forthcoming)

He’s just this guy, you know?

My Spiritual Journey is a collection of the Dalai Lama’s writings, speeches, and thoughts as they pertain to his life as a human being, as a Buddhist monk, and as the Dalai Lama. This is not a traditional autobiography or memoir. Instead, some of the chapters (passages? sections?) are quite short—even less than a page—but no less meaningful or inspiring. Rather than looking for some kind of chronological theme, it helps to view this book in those three stages outlined above (and emphasized in this book by the Dalai Lama himself). I read each passage in quick succession over the course of about three days, but this could easily work as the sort of book that you read over the course of weeks or even a month or two. Many reviewers have mentioned that this book is repetitive in sections—and I agree. But it’s repetitive for a reason: as the Dalai Lama mentions, everything is interdependent and connected; the passages in this book are no exception. Each one alone is a small snippet of wisdom, but together they form a more cohesive window into the philosophy that drives one of the most illustrious and interesting people alive today.

When I was born in 1989, the Dalai Lama was already thirty years into his exile. The Berlin Wall came down two months afterward. The Rwandan genocide happened when I was too young to follow what was going on, if the media had bothered to give it the coverage it truly deserved. I think the first big military action of which I was really aware, in a political sense, was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I remember listening to the radio at night as I was trying to fall asleep and hearing the hourly CBC news report discussing the bombing of Baghdad. As someone who has been lucky enough to grow up in a country and a socioecomic situation where I don’t have to worry about war, poverty, or oppression, it’s difficult for me to put myself in the place of the people of Iraq, of Rwanda, of Tibet. I’m aware, intellectually, that genocides and invasions and games of the worst sort of politics are happening … but that is a far cry from understanding the plight of these people who are, after all, human beings just like me.

My Spiritual Journey is valuable because of its juxtaposition of the atrocities in Tibet with the Dalai Lama’s own pacifist beliefs. It is amazing listening to him speak with such empathy and compassion toward everyone—not just his own people, but toward his Chinese brothers and sisters. He is very careful not to generalize, to distinguish between the Chinese people and their government. Even with the government of the so-called “People’s Republic” of China, the Dalai Lama stresses that he is always open to communication, to discussion, to reconciliation. From all of his writings, whether he’s talking about his childhood in Tibet or his attempts to bring the Tibetan plight front-and-centre on the world stage, one gets this incredible sense of resoluteness from the Dalai Lama. He exudes a steadfast confidence in this idea that we, humans, can have a positive influence on the universe and that, through compassion, we can help prevent suffering. Having just finished Robopocalypse, in which an AI decides to destroy humanity in order to preserve life on Earth, this optimism is incredibly reassuring and comforting.

What’s not comforting, of course, is his story of the struggle of Tibet. I must confess I find it difficult to keep track of all those oppressive regimes around the world. It seems like no matter where one turns, bam, there’s a government oppressing its people. (And I know that we could have a nice little debate about what the American, Canadian, British governments are trying to pull these days—even if we are generous and give them a free pass, democracy is a fragile creature in this world.) Hence, while apathy is a real and present danger in today’s society, it is also important to acknowledge that we cannot all be aware of everything that’s happening. So I welcomed this chance to become more familiar with the history of Tibet; with its history with China, India, and Britain; with its struggle for independence or autonomy. This book is informative and eye-opening, making me wonder if we are so used to the situation in Tibet that, as a global society, we have largely become apathetic—because if not, then why aren’t we doing anything about this?

The Dalai Lama may have a penchant for peace and compassion, but he is no pushover: that resoluteness is like a core of steel. In his calls for negotiation, for independence, and for autonomy, he displays the mind of a statesman and a philosopher. Politicians would learn a lot from observing how the Dalai Lama comports himself and operates—it’s a little something called dignity. He has it. Most politicians, sadly, seem to have sacrificed this attribute in favour of a more flashy style of showmanship. The Dalai Lama is candid about how, in the past, he was innocent or somewhat naïve in his expectations. Even as his age has brought more experience and more wisdom, however, he does not allow hope and optimism to atrophy.

My Spiritual Journey is inspiring and insightful. It informed about all these subjects with which I have only a cursory familiarity: Tibet, Buddhism, the office of the Dalai Lama. Better yet, I got to learn about these through the eyes of the Dalai Lama himself, glimpse the processes that give rise to his thoughts and his feelings. The staccato rhythm created from this collection of his writings and speeches necessarily makes this book different from your typical memoir or autobiography. I’m honestly not sure if that makes it better or worse (you decide!). I’ve decided to give My Spiritual Journey five stars because, to put it simply, I do not think there is anything I would change about it to make it “better”. It is an open, honest, and intensely personal look at a man whose life has been political from the moment he was identified as the fourteenth Dalai Lama. What more could you desire?

Finally, this seems like a good starting place if one wants to read something by the Dalai Lama but isn’t sure where to start. I’m making note of some of his other books I’d like to read now—he has some fascinating thoughts on the convergence of science and spirituality and has written at them at length elsewhere.

There is a new buzzword making the rounds these days: gamification. It refers to the trend of turning quotidian tasks into games. Usually the end goal of the game maker is profit, of course, but often gamification has benefits for the players—it turns an otherwise boring or dull task into something fun. CBC’s Spark has explored gamification. They’ve also interviewed Jane McGonigal, who has some interesting ideas about how gaming is changing our society. (She also has a book I intend to read but had forgotten to add to my list until now! She was on The Colbert Report recently.)

But I digress. I bring up gaming and gamification because it seems like an appropriate way to examine Halting State. In the 2018 of this book, Scotland has gained independence, and gamification has saturated Scottish society. Mashups and crowdsourced reviews have become the go-to source for information and recommendations. Augmented reality is also in full bloom, with police using googles to look up information and communicate via an AR layer called “CopSpace”. (Do not view this as far-fetched: Brazil is rolling out facial recognition glasses for the World Cup—although it remains to be seen whether they work as well as advertised.) World of Warcraft-style MMORPGs are popular and profitable, with entire companies existing solely to manage their economies. Hayek Associates is one such company, until an in-game bank robbery that should have been impossible.

Halting State is a slippery chimera of a novel. It begins as a straightforward mystery, or as straightforward as a mystery can be when the perpetrators are orcs in the world of Avalon 4. Sue Smith is the Edinburgh cop on the case, but she quickly finds herself in over her head. This proves to be a recurring motif throughout the book, which quickly morphs from mystery to thriller as Elaine and Jack enter the story. Elaine is an auditor—the exact relationship of her firm with Hayek eludes me now, nearly a week after reading the book, but she goes in to investigate in the wake of this robbery on behalf of her clients (who are, I believe, insurers). Jack is the programming whizkid she hires to be her “native guide” through the system. Eventually this unlikely trio uncovers the truth behind the Hayek heist—and it is neither pretty nor simple. That’s when Halting State undergoes its final metamorphosis into a story of espionage and intrigue.

Whether one is willing to follow the book as it undergoes these transitions will ultimately determine the extent of one’s enjoyment. I quite enjoyed Halting State’s opening, its milieu and mood and sense of mystery. Its final form of a spy thriller was less interesting for me. As with many such books, Halting State makes use of the conspiracy-implicit idea that the main characters, having seemingly been thrown together by chance, were actually manipulated into meeting and groomed to play their roles from the very beginning. It takes some of the excitement out of the novel for me—also, I feel this trope is rather overused. And while I’d like to say good things about Stross’ characterization—I did like Sue and Elaine and Jack—it just seems all over the map. (For example, Jack has this weird but trivial criminal record that seems entirely irrelevant to the plot or even to him as a character.)

So in this way Halting State is quite similar to how I felt about the plot of Singularity Sky. The latter had the benefit of including very well-realized and cool ideas about AI, the Singularity, quantum communication, wormholes, and time travel. It was also wider in scope, which any issues with characterization less of an issue. Halting State’s focus on near-future gamification isn’t nearly as interesting. Stross sets the scene well. The idea of someone stealing information in a game in order to make a profit in the real world is clever, and it underscores how we will have to remain flexible in our ideas of what business and commerce mean in the era of digital gaming. And sure, even when that turns out to be a red herring, the real threat to Europe’s infrastructure is still a crypto-geek’s nightmare. There is no question that Stross excels at demonstrating the implications our dependence on networked technology have for how our governments and societies function at their most basic levels. This skill is what keeps me reading even when the story itself is lacklustre.

Then there is the elephant in the room, the one glaring attribute of Halting State that I have yet to mention. This book is narrated entirely in second-person. Judging from other reviewers, your mileage may vary; I didn’t really notice after the first few pages. I have encountered maybe one other book (not that I can name it) that uses this device, and I can see how it would aggravate some people or entice others. (I suspect my brain just decided to translate it all into third-person, which is why I did not have any trouble. Go my brain!)

I don’t mean to damn Halting State with faint praise. As far as the story goes, it grabbed me and made me want to finish reading. That’s an excellent quality for a story to have—but it’s far from sufficient to make a story great. Although I found it enjoyable, I don’t think I will find Halting State particularly memorable.

N.B. All roads (save two) lead to TVTropes. Proceed down them at your own risk.

So, Robopocalypse, we meet again for the first time!

I try to award priority to books that have been sitting around in my overflow bin, gathering dust. But I got Robopocalypse as a Christmas gift from my dad, and I admit I was a little curious about all the attention this book had received. So I let it jump to the head of the queue. Alas, as with most such books, the anticipation was far superior to the somewhat basic taste of disappointment lining my mouth as my eyes skimmed the last sentence on the last page.

The robot apocalypse plays into some of our most primal fears. On one hand, it is the Luddite fear of technology replacing humanity taken to its coldest, logical conclusion (that is, if one can call Ludditism logical). On the other hand, it is the ultimate conception of a war against an Other that we ourselves have created. For our entire history, humans have been the only sentient beings on Earth, as far as we know (and depending how you classify the Neanderthals, I suppose). We have yet to be challenged by another intelligent being or beings for dominion of this planet; our foes are implacable and impersonal: disease, natural disasters, global warming, stray asteroids. An AI antagonist is, by definition, something totally different from what we have ever faced: it is not human yet as intelligent, if not more intelligent, than humans. That’s what makes it, and the robot apocalypse, so scary.

Did you hear the one about the robot apocalypse? Of course you didn’t, because the robots nuked everyone before you had a chance.

This is the fundamental Achilles heel of the robot apocalypse in fiction. For any sufficiently powerful AI, killing all the humans should be easy: place your core intelligence in a shielded bunker, then nuke the surface of the Earth. We certainly have enough nuclear weapons around to do it. And if, for some reason, you want to keep human infrastructure intact for your own nefarious purposes (or perhaps a keepsake for the long, lonely eons ahead), then no problem: use a tidy little neutron bomb.

Or, if you are patient enough and don’t tip anyone off to your existence, you could just wait us out. Sometimes it seems like we are competing to see who can find the most terrifying way to cause our extinction.

Robopocalypse at least manages to justify its AI’s wetwork strategy: Archos wants to kill all humans to save the planet Earth. Interested in studying life itself, Archos has noticed humans are a threat to life. But the same tactics that will wipe us clean off the surface of the Earth aren’t so good for the rest of life, so Archos is taking the slow and dirty approach to total annihilation. It’s also recording the entire thing for posterity.

So points to Daniel H. Wilson for making a plausible reason for a robot apocalypse that demands the gratuitous violence, bloodshed, and creative robotically-induced mayhem required for a book to become a Hollywood blockbuster. I will add my voice to the chorus of reviewers who agree that Robopocalypse is a robot [movie] in disguise. Wilson, with his degree in robotics, knows what he writes and can describe, in detail, all the horrible ways a robot can go berserk. For a book where most of the action comes from robot-on-human carnage (or vice versa), this is a big deal: no one wants to read 300 pages of “and then the robot killed the human”. That being said, as someone who does not visualize what he reads, I also have to point out that cinematic writing can only take an action sequence so far. There needs to be subtext.

Robopocalypse’s problem is not that it lacks subtext but that what subtext it has is spread rather thinly. And it’s not so much subtle as it is … well, text. The novel itself is a series of transcripts of archival footage from Archos. Cormac Wallace stumbles across this archive after they finish off Archos and decides to transcribe it for history. He offers his own analysis at the beginning and end of each chapter. In so doing, while Wilson creates something that is epistolary in form, he also employs an unreliable narrator. From the beginning Cormac makes it clear that he has a theme in mind: when their backs are to the wall, humans pull together and do whatever it takes to survive, work together to beat any odds. Each chapter of Robopocalypse reinforces this theme. So although we are told that this footage comes from recordings made by the robots, Cormac is the one who has filtered and packaged it for human consumption. There is no way to guarantee that what he has transcribed is accurate or that he has told the whole story. Indeed, judging from the limited number of people he follows, it’s safe to say he has been extremely judicious in his selection of footage to transcribe.

I’m not going to engage in the counterproductive exercise of trying to imagine what Robopocalypse might be like with an objective, third-person omniscient narrator at the helm. As it is, however, Cormac’s transcriptions leave us removed from the characters. Instead of showing us the best parts of the story, Wilson elides them by telling us, in Cormac’s words at the end of each chapter. Almost every such comment would be of the form, “So and so would go on to be an important figure in the New War, and make a vital discovery that would benefit all of humanity.” It’s a little bit pompous, and it is so blatant that calling it foreshadowing makes me feel cheap. Certainly, with any story, the author and narrator together choose to highlight some characters, consequently making it their story. Such is the nature of storytelling. However, it’s almost as if Cormac (or Wilson) is afraid we won’t get it unless it’s spelled out for us.

The characters of Robopocalypse are diverse in personality and perhaps even interesting—or at least, that’s what I infer from what little I was allowed to interact with them. We don’t ever really get to know them that well. Tthe external nature of the footage Cormac is transcribing means that he can’t really get inside the heads of the characters. Wilson cheats and allows him to interpolate from interviews with survivors and whatnot, but it is still not enough. We barely scratch the surface of these people. How does Mathilda really feel about her new existence as a cyborg? What is Dawn thinking as she and Marcus create a fledgling New York resistance? Although we get some idea of motivations and emotions, most of the narration is action and exposition. This results in a very unbalanced book, with characters who are ultimately little more than … well, robots.

Robopocalypse adheres to a somewhat unspoken convention of apocalyptic literature: the fall of the government of the United States of America is a microcosm for the fall of civilization everywhere. Zero Hour, as the beginning of Archos’ apocalypse comes to be known, happens on American Thanksgiving. We learn about how the American government gets thrown into disarray. The only two foreign perspectives we get are based in the UK and Japan—both of which are technologically developed countries. We hear nothing about the billions of humans in South America, Africa, southeast Asia, or continental Europe. Wilson had an opportunity to depict an apocalypse that is truly global in scope, but instead he chose to write about characters who are predominantly American and male. He chose to limit the extent of his global perspective to a few token (and somewhat stereotypical) characters. This exposes the gulf in the way that authors like Octavia Butler write vis-à-vis more privileged authors of science fiction—I can’t help but imagine that if an author more sensitive to postcolonial voices had written this, it would be … well, more inclusive. (Butler, of course, did write a post-apocalyptic story, albeit involving aliens instead of robots.)

Robopocalypse has three things going for it. Firstly, it is saturated with action sequences and meticulous descriptions of robotic carnage. Secondly, its antagonist has a valid reason for the slow, drawn-out type of robot apocalypse necessary to create such carnage. Finally, the book unabashedly develops the “humans are survivors, and that makes us glorious” theme extremely well. Most stories that tackle such a theme tend to compensate with levity or outright absurdity, lest they take themselves too seriously. Honestly, I’m not sure what Robopocalypse is doing: sometimes it seems to be plumbing the depths of the human condition, while at other times it is over the top and larger than life. The end result is an uneven and lumpy affair comprising a few exquisite bites surrounded by irregular portions alternatively chunky or chewy. It’s not a coincidence that all four authors cited on the back cover are thriller writers, or that the cover copy compares Wilson to Michael Crichton. Robopocalypse is science fiction in its setting but a thriller at heart. For some people this is perfect; for me, it is a caution that reminds me why I am pleasantly surprised when this turns out to be a fruitful combination.

Childhood is magical.

There is a myth, or at least a misconception, that this is a result of children being innocent. If you have ever been a child, then if you look deep into your heart, you will recognize this as the lie we tell ourselves to conceal the painful truth. Childhood is magical because it is inaccessible. Once gone, it can never be reclaimed, revisited, redone. It is lost to us except through the unreliable route of memories and mementos. Childhood is almost like a separate, first lifetime—a dream of something we did in the past, before we grew up and entered the world of adults.

As children, our world is timeless. We perceive the passage of time, the measurement of time, quite differently. Summers are almost infinite stretches of warm days and improvised games. Winters are endless opportunities for snowmen and snowball fights. Time is fluid and flexible: friends forever, then enemies the next day. In the worlds we create in our backyards, it can be the day before yesterday just as easily as it can be years into the future: our narratives are seldom linear; we’ve yet to yield to the adult idea that fiction needs to “make sense”. Make-believe is a process, not a product, and best done when not entirely serious.

As adults, we can of course strive to retain some of these qualities. I know many people who possess childlike exuberance, as well as a sense of wonder and imagination that serves them well. I try to keep these qualities too. But unless we take the extreme measure, as Charles Darke does in this book, of opting out of adult society, we can never be children. As adults our lives are relentlessly scheduled: transit, meetings, classes, deadlines, duties, chores. We are, all of us, obsessed with the question, “What time is it?” and have developed ever more accurate and precise ways to measure the passage of time so we always know the answer. One might balk at this characterization, but who doesn’t have to be some place at some particular time sometimes? This necessity to be aware of time is a very adult thing, and it is what separates us from our childhood.

The Child in Time puts childhood under a microscope and peers at what separates us from children. Stephen Lewis’ three-year-old daughter was abducted from a supermarket. Years later, he has separated from his wife and finds himself serving on a government committee drafting a report for a new child-rearing document. The British government of the future Ian McEwan imagines is a somewhat paternalistic, authoritarian one: the government knows best. Lewis seems to be sleepwalking through his life, still unable to move on after losing his daughter. He is peculiarly apathetic toward everything: politics, his relationship with his wife, his career as an “accidental” children’s author.

Indeed, most of my issues with this book stem from its unremarkable narrative. Stephen Lewis seems to stumble from scene to scene, and with the story slipping from his past to the present without much knowledge, it can get confusing. His walk is largely aimless, for he does not seize upon a purpose or a desire until the end of the book. Meanwhile, most of the interesting things around him are told to us rather than shown. Thelma tells us about Charles, with Charles himself only briefly making an appearance. Stephen tells us about his parents; his mom tells us about Stephen’s conception … there is a lot of dialogue and exposition. I had trouble enjoying this book simply because it feels so bland.

But at the same time, there is so much happening! The government wants to release a creepy child-rearing manual that’s supposed to restore the morals of the nation. Beggars can get licenses to beg and must wear badges identifying them as such. Stephen’s best friend, Charles, resigns as a Member of Parliament so he can become a recluse seeking to recapture his lost childhood. (Although Thelma eventually explains the reasons, I didn’t find it entirely satisfactory.)

I guess The Child in Time is a fairly interesting smattering of ideas, all of which have something to do with childhood. There is a sense of regret over the loss of childhood, whether it is through maturity or through abduction. There is the difficulty associated with recovering from that trauma, the tension between Stephen and his wife Julie that finally crystallizes and shatters in the novel’s final pages. The ending of this book is really good—disproportionately so compared to the rest of the story.

Like so many other books, The Child in Time falls into that uncomfortable category of books that have some merit even though, alas, I didn’t really enjoy reading them. I can see why others would, but for reasons related to McEwan’s style and characterization, the greatness of this book eludes me.

(Also, I couldn’t stop thinking about Stephen Lewis as I read this.)

Books about special children with magic powers being manipulated by binary forces are kind of boring. There seems to be a glut of them.

As the 18th century draws its final, decade-long gasps, America looks a lot different than our history remembers. Dutch colonies and Aboriginal nations have become states. Washington was executed for betraying his British superiors; Benjamin Franklin was (though he denied it), a “wizard”. Faith and superstition have formed a tense equilibrium that could topple given just the right sort of pressure. The frontier remains wild, for now, but civilization continues its inexorable march west.

Alvin is the seventh son of a seventh son, his father also coincidentally named Alvin. He’s from a family of millers, and he is good at everything—however, he is also prone to accidents, because a malevolent force wants him dead. Unlike certain other boy prodigies, Alvin does not have a love-powered lightning bolt scar on his forehead. However, he does have a well-meaning but anonymous protector who is watching out for him, so that’s something.

I guess I was … underwhelmed by Seventh Son. The first few chapters were difficult, but once Taleswapper came in and Alvin grew up a little, the book fell into a rhythm that I enjoyed. Yet for all the interesting interactions between Taleswapper and the Miller family, between Reverend Thrower and the Visitor, between Alvin and his Shining Man, I never got the sense that the book was going anywhere. There’s conflict and a proper climax and falling action and everything that you need to make a story … but it’s a coming of age tale that never really comes of age, and that left me unsatisfied.

My apathy (or perhaps harshness) might be a result of the setting. Revolutionary America does not tickle my fancy the way Tudor England does, and while I cannot apologize for my preferences, it’s possible those who find this era fascinating will be more charitable towards alternate history about it. But I keep thinking about how Seventh Son stacks up against Ender’s Game, and while that is a battle the former could never possibly win, I think it’s useful to examine why I liked one Card book so much and disliked another (albeit not with proportional intensity).

Ender’s Game is a seductive, heartbreaking book. Card gives us a victory for humanity, but in so doing he breaks Ender in the way a child should never be broken. These are the two foci around which the ellipse of the story revolves: the moral impact of the book comes from that central question of whether Ender’s treatment (and, on the periphery, the treatment of all the children at Battle School) was justified by the threat to humanity. It’s an extremely deep yet also entertaining tale.

In contrast, Seventh Son is about a kid with magic powers who breaks his leg. It has a vast and unknowable enemy that is Satan rebranded as a force of pure, neutral destruction—the Unmaker to Alvin’s role as Maker. It sounds titanic and epic and should be awesome—and that’s just the problem. Alvin’s a boy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He can barely decide to use his power to heal himself, the result of an admirable but perhaps misguided attempt at creating some kind of personal code of ethics. Unlike Ender’s role in his story’s larger conflict, however, I don’t sense much ambiguity over Alvin’s destiny to oppose the Unmaker. As a larger-than-life force that, in some sense, is essentially impossible to defeat, the Unmaker is an ultimate Other.

Unknowable enemies are almost as bad as crazy enemies. It’s unfortunate that Reverend Thrower seems to be going that way, because he starts the book as a fairly interesting character. I enjoyed getting inside his head and seeing his rational mind attempt to reconcile superstition, religion, and science (hopefully he understands why Newton decided to go into alchemy). Yet as the book progresses and the Unmaker seems to get more and more desperate, Thrower degenerates into a Renfield-like character with little intelligence or ambition of his own.

For what it’s worth, Seventh Son is well-written, provided you can tolerate the dialect Card throws in for good measure. There were times when I could ignore my issues with the story and simply enjoy the experience of reading this book—and that is something to write home about. In the end, though, the road Card asks us to walk is a long one, and I’m not entirely sure the destination is worth it.

In my review of Tomorrow: Science Fiction and the Future, I briefly touched on the parallels between the Cold War era apprehension over thermonuclear war and our current generation’s dance with global warming. We are acutely aware of our mortality, as a species, and the science fiction of these eras reflects that. Yet while some of the evidence of global warming has hit the front page—and been met with all the attendant scepticism and political controversy that makes for excellent sound bites—it is, for the most part, a slow global catastrophe. It is not flashy like the detonation of atomic bombs. It is gradual, and that makes it all the more dangerous. We march closer and closer to the point of no return, pushing our luck and pushing the environment. “Just a little more,” we say—but one day, we’ll ask for a little more, and no more will be forthcoming.

As a species, we are shortsighted. Nuclear war can end the world in a day; global warming will do it over a lifetime. It’s difficult for us to understand what that means, to view the planet on the scale of geological time—and it’s that scale that we might need if we are to maintain this planet. We could very well need the types of planet-spanning engineering we see deployed in Spin, both by the Hypotheticals and by humans. But here and now, it’s just so easy for those of us who are exposed to evidence of global warming only through secondhand reports and media snippets to draw in our heads and say, “We’ll deal with it eventually.”

With Spin, Robert Charles Wilson contrives a way to bring the environmental crisis to a head in our generation. Through the wonders of relativity and time dilation, time passes faster beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Protected by a membrane eventually known as the Spin, life proceeds on Earth as usual—except that, once the time dilation effect becomes public, everyone has to come to terms with the death sentence this means for the planet. Because in about forty years from the inception of this phenomenon, five billion years will have passed outside—and the Sun will have expanded to the point where it swallows Earth. Suddenly, the end of the world is a much more tangible thing.

The reactions to this event are as diverse as the number of humans on the planet, and watching them is one of the most pleasurable parts of Spin. Millions flock to millennial cults that declare the Spin as a sign of the End Times, of the Second Coming, of some New Age transition to an alternative form of existence. Many go on about their lives as if nothing has changed—because, aside from not being able to see the stars at night, nothing much has changed. This becomes increasingly difficult as the planet’s deadline draws near and the Spin membrane begins acting strange—if one believes there is no tomorrow, then suddenly those instincts of rational self-preservation don’t seem to matter much any more.

Finally, of course, there are those who seek to understand the Spin and the Hypothetical entities who have instantiated it. At the centre of this group is Jason Lawton, one of the novel’s main characters but also one who is inaccessible to the reader. Instead, Wilson introduces Tyler Dupree as Watson to Jason’s Sherlock (he’s even a medical doctor!). The relationship reminds me a little of that between Adam and Julian in the other Wilson book I’ve read (indeed, re-reading that review, it seems I use the same literary allusion—how repetitive of me). As with Julian Comstock, I reluctantly conclude that this third-party, uninitiated narrator works well for Spin—I say reluctantly because I have some reservations.

Tyler is distant from the real action in this book. His career as a physician is convenient for several reasons, but none of them allow him to conjecture the properties behind the Spin or participate in the design process for the replicators. So all this happens behind the scenes, with Jason filling Tyler (and therefore us) in on the details. I suppose Jason wouldn’t make a very good narrator—he is too clinical, too close to the problem, too obsessed even. And Tyler is a good foil for Jason, not to mention someone through whom Wilson can deliver massive quantities of scientific explanation. In all these respects Tyler is essential to the success of Spin—but it seems to come at the price of pushing the most interesting parts of the book away from the main narrative. I think I preferred how Nancy Kress uses multiple limited third-person perspectives, some following scientists and others laypeople, in Probability Moon and its sequels.

The best parts of Spin are all in the background. This includes the reactions, which I mentioned above, as well as all the exposition that eventually bubbles up to the surface. Let’s face it: the only reason to keep reading the book is to find out who initiated the Spin event and why the entity or entities responsible would do it in the first place. And the most valuable thing about this book is not actually part of the book at all—rather, it’s the thoughts and ideas that one generates as one reads. This is true, I think, of literature in general, although it might be most obvious in science-fiction novels with a tradition of Big Ideas.

I rather liked the explanation that Wilson delivers for the cause of the Spin. It hearkens back to the idea of the meme: at some level, the Von Neumann ecology that the Hypotheticals turn out to be are using the Spin to ensure the expansion of their own ecology. Von Neumann machines are thus memes that we, as sentient beings, have been manipulated into transmitting, much like we transmit cultural memes and, some might argue, genetic memes. Similarly, Jason’s rant about how we are all just machines running various operating systems—and his new operating system has developed a bug—seems very appropriate in today’s app-obsessed technology climate. Like any good science-fiction author, Wilson dangles tantalizing things that aren’t ideas so much as crumbs or seeds of an idea. It reminds me of the nascent cellular technology in The Dervish House.

So this is a novel pregnant with potential in the best possible way. Wilson delivers a coherent and complete story but leaves us with lingering possibilities, loose ends that round out the work rather than detract from it. It it is a little too long. Some of the minor characters, like E.D., seem to be struggling to be three-dimensional but never quite make the grade. But Spin aims quite high and achieves most of what it sets out to do; any problems it has are ultimately quite little compared to the experience it provides. The front cover of my edition, aside from having this horrible generic whirlpool design, has a blurb reading, “The best science fiction novel so far this year.” Seriously? So far? What kind of pathetic bet-hedging is this, Rocky Mountain News? Now, I’m not certain I’d go so far as to call it the best science-fiction novel of the year or declare worthy of its Hugo win—but its competition would have to have been very, very stiff to make it a race worth watching. Spin is not quite sublime, but it’s still an excellent exemplar for how science fiction can shine.

My reviews of the Spin trilogy:
Axis → (forthcoming)

At the beginning, A Thousand Splendid Suns did little to win me over. Its characters seemed shallow, transparent: Mariam’s mother was vindictive and manipulative, her actions and reactions shockingly outsized. Mariam marries Rasheed, who turned out to be exactly the kind of one-note bully I expected him to be. Even when Laila entered the story and began her slow, awkward, inevitable dance with Tariq, I was still not convinced. But then the communist regime fell and Afghanistan once again descended into civil war and anarchy, and suddenly I started to pay more attention to Khaled Hosseini’s juxtaposition of national turmoil with personal strife.

I really like the movie Charle Wilson’s War, and not just because Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is hilarious. It is a fascinating account of a senator’s struggle to fund the mujahideen, the “freedom fighters” who opposed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In many ways the film is inspiring: facing scepticism, political opposition, and the spectre of treading where only Congress should go, Charlie Wilson managed to change U.S. foreign policy and contribute to the mujahideen’s success. But as always the universe wants the last laugh. Wilson and his allies helped to create a power vacuum, which was eventually filled by the oppressive Taliban regime. The film ends on this bittersweet note, leaving us to recall how often the taste of triumph and hope turns sour as certain groups attempt to seize power and twist freedom to their own ends.

A Thousand Splendid Suns begins when Afghanistan is still a monarchy, albeit one on shaky, treachery-ridden legs. As the story progresses, the monarchy fall to communism, the invasion by the Soviets, the mujahideen uprising, the rise of the Taliban, and the interstitial civil wars. Finally, we arrive at 2001 and the American invasion. Each time the country changes hands, various characters reflect upon how they anticipate life becoming better (or worse). This book is by no means a history lesson, though as someone born in 1989, I did find it somewhat enlightening. But it does give a good idea (at least as far as I can tell), of how the Afghan people might have been reacting to the global events of which their country was a central part. And it exposes the diversity of political attitudes that took hold of Afghanistan.

In particular, women’s rights metamorphosed a great deal. As Mariam is growing up, she hears about women who go to university, women who wear “Western-style” makeup and clothing. When the communist PDPA are in power, they do not respect civil liberties and freedom of thought all that much, but they support women’s rights, particularly education. This is a sharp contrast to the Taliban, who imposed a severe Islamist vision upon the people of Afghanistan, reducing women to little more than the property of their male relatives. Indeed, one of the most chilling parts of this book (and there are so many) comes in the form of a proclamation posted about Kabul, forbidding the publishing or reading of books, and severely limiting the rights of Afghan women. These events accompany a darker episode in Mariam and Laila’s marriages to Rasheed, and Hosseini manages this microcosm very deftly.

Hosseini deals a deluge of setbacks to all of his characters; they have to put up with a lot of hardship from him. This includes Rasheed, who is for me the most problematic character. On one hand, he is almost a caricature of the stereotypical, oppressive, abusive husband. He beats his wives, treats them like less than dirt, dotes over his son, ignores his daughter. I can understand why Hosseini might see Rasheed as a necessary character; with a nicer man in his place the story would not have worked. Perhaps this is why he balanced, to some extent, the darkness of Rasheed with the lightness of other men in Mariam and Laila’s lives, such as the Mullah, Babi, or Tariq. Hosseini shows us very bad men and very good men—I wish he had shown us good but flawed men trying to do right and making some mistakes. One could argue, strongly, that Jalil falls into this latter camp—but we barely get to know him.

That sense of abridgement persists to other areas of A Thousand Splendid Suns. After a brief time spent with Mariam following her marriage, we skip forward fourteen years before seeing her again. To his credit, Hosseini telegraphs how Mariam’s marriage has progressed in the interim and how this has affected her as a person. Yet I can’t stop wishing I had seen this gradual transformation instead of witnessing the end result and hearing some of the highlights. It’s interesting: much like movies, books can have “deleted scenes” (whether or not they were actually written) that add different interpretations or dimensions to the story. What a writer chooses not to say can be as important as what ultimately makes it to the page.

There’s something about A Thousand Splendid Suns that reminds me of A Fine Balance. Both novels are set in tumultuous Asian countries during the latter half of the twentieth century and follow a close-knit group of characters fallen on hard times. And it sucks for Hosseini, because A Fine Balance is just so damn excellent that anything similar shrinks by comparison. Yet I still feel I am being fair, because by looking at the two together, I can see what A Thousand Splendid Suns lacks that prevents me from celebrating it as much as Mistry’s novel. Just consider their respective lengths: Mistry chose to include details that Hosseini, in comparison, omitted or elided as I described above. There is no one right choice, but A Fine Balance demonstrates that a story like this can work even as a much longer book.

Then there’s the ending. If I were charitable I might call it romantic, but slapsdash slides off the tongue so well! I have issues with what Mariam and Laila’s relative fates. Laila discovers that Tariq is alive—surprise, Rasheed, the lying bastard, paid someone to convince her that Tariq was dead! But Rasheed discovers Tariq’s return and takes it out on Laila so severely that Mariam finally takes matters into her own hands: she kills Rasheed. There is a moment of stillness when this happens that is perhaps the best part of the book’s third act. But then Mariam goes to turn herself in and Laila and Tariq live happily ever after in Pakistan for a little while. Oh, Hosseini tries to build some marital conflict into their life, but it’s the same type of half-hearted characterization that mars the earlier part of the book.

I did not intend to be this harsh, honestly. Yet every time I go to praise A Thousand Splendid Suns, I find this praise eroding into criticism. I guess I have to conclude that this is a good book with numerous flaws; your enjoyment will, as usual, depend on whether you think the flaws detract from the larger themes. For example characterization could be better—by which I mean fuller, deeper, and in more detail—but, in my opinion, Hosseini’s ability to depict his characters in the context of Afghanistan’s successive governments mitigates this problem. While not a literary masterpiece, this is a stunning novel with emotional and historical resonance. I may not be able to rave about it, but I will remember it far longer than I do most books I read.

Reading is one of the best ways to expose oneself to new perspectives. Good literature summons pathos for characters, even when their situations differ from our own—perhaps especially when. I’m not just talking about science fiction and fantasy, spaceships and magic wands; all literature is ultimately about experiencing the Other through an author’s prose. This is the transformative act that is reading.

I’m getting all literary critic here because As for Me and My House is one of those transformative works. It is quintessentially a “Great Depression novel”, a work that pulls you from your present time and thrusts upon you the perspective of one who is attempting to keep it all together in the face of economic and social vicissitudes. The book is deceptively slim: owing to its epistolary form, it is mostly description with little dialogue. The result is something that works quite well as a glimpse at the Depression—but it still leaves me with some reservations.

I shall start and end with Mrs. Bentley.

Really, everything about As for Me and My House comes back to our narrator. Stories told in the first person are always more of a relationship between narrator and reader. The narrator asks of the reader a modicum of trust: the reader must trust that the tale is, if not strictly true, then at least worth telling. First-person narratives are inherently narcissistic, because the narrator tends only to focus on the events and emotions important to him or to her. Indeed, when an author does it right, first-person narrators should be, to some extent, unreliable. If not, then what is the point of using a first-person narrator at all?

So in Mrs. Bentley, Sinclair Ross delivers an extremely interesting narrator. Not being a woman myself, I can’t comment on whether Ross successfully captures a woman’s perspective. (I found it satisfying in that regard, but that could be male-pattern blindness.) I know Mrs. Bentley’s missing first name is a source of controversy: some reviewers praise it as a symbol of her desire to remain anonymous, even in her own diary; others see it as another symbol of her oppression by and sublimation to Philip, and perhaps some insensitivity and sexism on Ross’ part. So this book has plenty of room for different interpretations, different schools of criticism. There’s a lot of subtext here, if one has the time and patience to tease it out. (My edition has an afterword by Robert Kroetsch, who is apparently a noted authority of postmodernism. I would like to see an afterword from a feminist author.)

That limiting factor, patience, depends entirely on how one feels about Mrs. Bentley’s voice. She is the novel, and Ross puts her on an interesting trajectory. At the beginning, she is a sympathetic character: capable and handy, but limited by her gender and station. Both she and her husband have other aspirations, but they are forced to get by as wife and pastor. Through Mrs. Bentley’s diary entries, we see the joys and difficulties of living in a small prairie town. They experience the effect of drought on the town’s livelihood, the largesse and the pettiness of neighbours, and the conflicts of religion and class. Toward the end of the novel, however, Mrs. Bentley gradually becomes less sympathetic. She starts obsessing over the nature of the relationship between Philip and country girl Judith West, and she plots to adopt the child that Judith bears out of wedlock.

I confess I’m a sucker for righteous indignation at close-mindedness. The snobbery of the Finleys pushed all my buttons! At every turn it seemed like the Bentleys were at a disadvantage because they were trying to do the right thing, to be good people, when the Finleys were too focused on being proper people (because for them, of course, what is proper must also be good). This is also part of a larger critique of Christian congregations in prairie towns: Philip is a minister who does not particularly believe in the Church, and his congregation has plenty of people who do not necessarily reflect all the Christian values, like charity and tolerance and love. So Mrs. Bentley and I were usually in agreement about these episodes, and it was interesting to see when she chose to rock the boat and when she chose to keep the peace….

As fun as it is to criticize the secondary characters, their flaws are far less fascinating than those of the main characters. As for Me and My House, as its title implies, is about a family. Mrs. Bentley and Philip are the permanent members of this family, with Steve a temporary adjunct and a baby by the end. Close friends of the Bentleys, like Paul and Judith, orbit this arrangement.

Mrs. Bentley’s entries, in both style and subject matter, usually concentrate on the details: her descriptions are meticulous and precise; her concerns are often quotidian, related to budgets and numbers and the pragmatism necessary in an economic depression. We get a good sense of the struggle between living and saving, as well as the thin line between being seen as generous and being seen as extravagant (which would never do for a minister and his wife!). Lately I’ve been applying me “English teacher” eye to everything I read, because we are being trained to think about how we would teach things like novels, and I can see how I would teach this one: it would really speak to detail-oriented, practical students. How did people live during the Depression? What sort of tensions did poverty cause in a town and within a family? (As long as poverty exists, that question will be as relevant in the present day as it is for the era this novel depicts.)

Most of Mrs. Bentley’s entries focus on her relationship with Philip. She gave up a career as a pianist for Philip, but then Philip abandoned his dreams of artistry for the more steady job of clergyman. Twelve years later, their marriage has gone stale. Do they still love each other? Difficult to say (and I won’t spoil it for you). But their lives are not easy, and so neither is their marriage. Even accounting for bias, Philip does things that understandably frustrate his wife—and she is sometimes no better toward him.

Despite her unique position as narrator, Mrs. Bentley is often harsher on herself than she is on Philip. She criticizes and regrets some of her own choices, particularly when it comes to how she handles Philip and Steve’s relationship. She acknowledges when she has probably overreacted, and she tells us when she lies to Philip (to her credit, she usually tells him too).

And then there’s Judith and Paul. Paul and Judith. The other two points in the love constellation—or if not love, then … companionship. Paul and Judith offer Mrs. Bentley and Philip, respectively, the possibility of infidelity in a way that, as far as Mrs. Bentley tells us, has never manifested before. In a somewhat postmodern twist, Ross keeps the extent of these relationships ambiguous: we ultimately don’t learn whether Philip is the father of Judith’s baby or what exactly happens between Mrs. Bentley and Paul.

I think it’s safe to say that Mrs. Bentley is fairly convinced of Philip’s infidelity, for this is the primary attraction of adopting Judith’s child. And this is where As for Me and My House founders: Judith dies; the Bentleys get the babe … and Mrs. Bentley writes this:

For me it’s easier this way. It’s secretly what I’ve been hoping for all along. I’m glad she’s gone—glad—for her sake as much as ours. What was there ahead of her now anyway? If I lost Philip what would there be ahead of me?

Again, there’s that unusual, almost perverse honesty from our narrator: she confesses to feeling relief that Judith has died. Judith—and some might disagree here—never seemed to me like she was intentionally attempting to draw Philip into her grasp. Even if she did, however, it’s a horrible sentiment for Mrs. Bentley to have, and this confession cannot help but colour the sympathy one has hopefully heretofore experienced for her.

I don’t think it makes her a monster though. Her mistakes and her weaknesses are all too human. As for Me and My House catalogues a couple who are constantly struggling not to slip from the principles they have set out before them. They do not always succeed. The result is a thing we call life. Sometimes life is hard because the universe is not fair, society is not perfect, and other people suck. Sometimes life is hard because we make it hard, through our choices as much as through our successes and failures.

It’s interesting to note its publication history, with McClelland & Stewart essentially marketing it into the Canadian classics after they reissued it in 1957. I guess the zeitgeist changed sufficiently in the interim to make this book more appealing—perhaps the additional distance from the Depression helped too. This checkered past dovetails with my own final evaluation: I enjoyed As for Me and My House, but I think it suffers from the Postmodernist Uncertainty Principle. Without generalizing too much, I shall explain: sometimes the ambiguity that often appears in postmodern works constrains the impact of a book even if it frees the reader to imagine the ending. There are times when the confirmation of an event is the bedrock on which its significance and potency rests. It’s that conflict between what a book is and what we want it to be—and if a book can be anything we want, then what meaning does it have?

So this book, such as it is, certainly generated a lot of thought on my part…. I would not go so far as it to call it a classic of Canadian literature, but it is an interesting perspective of life during the Great Depression. The characterization is simultaneously intensely intricate and extremely vague; the relationships are complicated and ambiguous yet delicious all the same. As for Me and My House is a story about a woman who must be introspective; she sets her doubts down on paper to render them powerless over her life.