Category Book Review

George Orwell, Obsolete Socialist — But Great Writer!

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The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell

The more of Orwell’s writing I read, the more I like.

This book is not his best: it’s one of his earlier pieces, requested by a Socialist publisher that wanted a piece describing the life of the English coal miners in the northern parts of the country, around Manchester and Leeds and Sheffield. And inasmuch as Orwell did as asked, the book is outstanding: he went to the coal mining town of Wigan, as well as several others; he got to know the miners and their families, he went into their homes, he went into the mine, and he reported what he saw: and if nothing else, Orwell was an amazing reporter. His perception and description are as good as anyone’s has ever been. He makes you feel what it was like to go into a mine: to fall down a shaft, in an elevator car going up to 60 miles per hour straight down, controlled by a man on the surface who was essentially guessing how close you were to the bottom of the shaft, half a mile or so into the Earth: and then, once you hit the bottom, you could be anywhere from half a mile to five or even seven miles away from the actual coal: and in all of that distance, the ceiling never rises above five feet or so, except for a few incidental pockets, natural caverns and the like: everywhere else, you have to duck and walk hunched over.

And that’s before you even start mining.

Orwell makes you understand what the miners go through, and how truly impressive they are. Then he takes you to their homes, and shows how truly desperate and hopeless they are: their meager diets, their broken-down slum houses, often without running water, always without enough beds, generally without enough food. It’s heartbreaking as well as inspiring: because it shows you the strength of the human animal and the human spirit, and then it shows you how we are wasting that, making people dig rocks out of the ground so we can burn them.

That’s the good part. The less good part is when Orwell gives his opinion about why the Socialist movement in England is failing. And honestly, that part is good, too; partly because I have no doubt that Orwell’s criticisms were right on the money, and partly because that guy really threw down some sick burns: his description of Socialists who had grown up, as he had, in the bourgeois class in England, and who therefore talked up the rule of the proletariat while simultaneously despising those same people, is incredibly cutting and harsh and probably exactly right. Just the parts when he talks about how working people smell is enough to prove his point.

The problem is, the book was written in 1935. So much has changed since then in our understanding of Socialism and what it can do and what it should not do, that reading this was an interesting insight into history, but not very helpful.

So the book was an interesting read, a good read, and for me, an inspiring one, as Orwell helps to push me personally closer and closer to socialism; but it wasn’t Orwell’s best. I’d recommend it only for history buffs.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

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Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk
by David Sedaris
Illustrations by Ian Falconer
In one way, I loved this book. And in another, I have probably never been as shocked and appalled by anything I’ve ever read.

It starts off so nice: it is “A Modest Bestiary,” as the subtitle calls it. All of the stories, and they are all quite short, are about animals. Animals that stand in for people in various ways: they work, they talk, they go to hairdressers, they wait in line to complain about shoddy products. The title story, for instance, is about a couple that try to date, but they really don’t understand each other — and not because they are a squirrel and a chipmunk, though that does cause trouble; the chipmunk’s mother forces her to break it off with him partly because he is a squirrel, and not appropriate for a young chipmunk. No, they break up because he loves jazz, and she doesn’t know what jazz is. And the story tells of how someone goes through various versions of understanding based on different circumstances: when she’s with the squirrel, it is something mysterious and probably wonderful; after they break up, it becomes everything bad, and she is horrified that she ever told the squirrel that she was fond of it (Because after all, she can’t just admit she doesn’t know what jazz is). Over the course of her life, “jazz” changes twice more. And the best part? All of these different ideas are, in some way, reasonable definitions of what jazz is, with the last being the best. It’s a great story, both sweet and insightful. The other beginning stories are also about human foibles: the way service people suck up to their clients and how we let them; the way married couples tell stories, and collect stories to tell; the way people react differently to frustrations — that one, “The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck” is freaking hilarious.

And each story has at least one lovely illustration by Ian Falconer, the artist who created Olivia. The illustrations are beautifully done, and adorable; they bring the stories to life and are worth looking at even without the stories for context.

But then you get to “The Motherless Bear.” Which is somewhat about human foibles as represented by the animals, but is more about how bloody horrible animal lives are when they interact with humans. And it was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever read. And it had adorable illustrations by Ian Falconer, too. Which just made it worse.

And so it goes: “The Parenting Storks” is cute, “The Vigilant Rabbit” is laugh-out-loud hilarious; “The Crow and the Lamb” makes you want to gouge your eyes out so you don’t have to look at it any more. (If you’ve read the book, sorry about that. And if you read the book, you’ll get that.) Sedaris goes after envy, hypocrisy, adultery, egotism, enabling behavior — every human foible, as seen through animals. He skewers us all, which is probably what makes the book so hard to read at times: it’s honest, and it’s accurate. It’s a tough mirror to look into.

Honestly, this is a hell of a good book. But it is not for the faint of heart.

The Maze Runner

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The Maze Runner
by James Dashner

 

So I picked this book up because my students kept reading it for book projects, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about –and not just from my students; there’s a list of accolades the book and series have earned right inside the front cover. Unfortunately, this may be the book that makes me lose faith in — no, wait. It was a NYT bestseller, but I already knew those weren’t all good . . . it was made into a successful movie, but that says nothing about the book . . . it was named a Best Teen Book, but by Kirkus Reviews, which I already lost faith in . . . and I already knew my students have frequently bad taste in books — okay, never mind; I haven’t lost any faith. I just need to read the blurbs and awards a little more carefully. I thought reliable people were of the opinion that this is a good book.

It isn’t.

It’s not terrible; the idea is interesting, the action is pretty good. But the writing is mediocre, the interesting idea requires far too many shortcuts and McGuffin miracles (That’s when a fantasy/sci-fi story has an insoluble problem, and they find a thing that simply solves the problem; that thing is the McGuffin. Star Trek does it almost every episode.), and the ending is a deep cliffhanger. It reminds me quite a lot of Hugh Howey’s Wool, which was pretty much the same, and which had equivalent commercial success despite its flaws; it makes me wonder if this is the new trend in science fiction, to world-build with more imagination than logic.

So you have these kids who are stuck in this maze. The maze has these monsters in it, that come out mostly at night; also at night, the center of the maze, where the kids are, is safely locked away from the maze. So every day these kids go out and run through the maze, trying to find a path to safety, a solution to the maze, a way out of the whole ordeal. Maze runners. Meanwhile, in the safe place in the center of the maze, the kids are proving that The Lord of the Flies wasn’t always right: they have created a highly organized and successful society, populated only by 17-and-under boys, in which pretty much everyone follows the rules, has a job, does their job, and is satisfied with their lot in life. It’s almost Utopian. Of course, the kids want to get out of the maze, but they’re not really sure why: because they don’t have many memories from before they got into the maze. They have some — they know their names, for instance — but not many.

Two years after these kids start trying to escape the maze, Thomas arrives. Thomas remembers a few more things than the other kids. Thomas is followed quickly by a girl — the only girl, named Teresa — who remembers a few more things than Thomas. It seems the people who put the kids in the maze, and who wipe their memories in this very specific and precise way before depositing them in the maze, want to change the situation. But only a little. And so Thomas, who spends most of his time being angry with everything around him, manages to change the society that has been so carefully and successfully created, and tries to lead the kids out of the maze.

How does it end? Why were they in the maze in the first place? Why does the situation change, but only enough to send Thomas and Teresa with a couple of clues, rather than just opening a door out of the maze? Who are these kids, and where do they come from? Believe me: you really honestly don’t want to know. Whatever enjoyment I got out of the book was pretty much ruined by the revelations at the end.

I would not recommend this book. And I’m going to stop letting my students read it for class. There are too many good books out there to waste time on this one.

An Oldie but a Goodie

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Front Cover

Castle Rackrent and The Absentee

by Maria Edgeworth

I bought this book at a library book sale really just because it was beautiful. I loved the binding, the endpapers, the fineness of the pages and the print. Reading into the introduction, I found out that Maria Edgeworth was one of the first female novelists, as well as a crusader for education and for Irish rights under English rule; and her novel Castle Rackrent is one of the first historical novels written in English, and is actually considered groundbreaking and influential for some of the choices the author makes – one of the first novels set in Ireland; covering multiple generations of one family, making this a “Big House” novel, with a servant as a narrator; having that servant be biased, describing the family as noble and honorable and beloved even as they act like a pack of crazed, starving weasels, etc. So hey, awesome! I picked a good one.

Then I read it. Okay, it may be groundbreaking and influential, but it’s also terribly annoying. Those people, the Rackrents, really are obnoxious, and so, therefore, is the servant, Honest Thady, who describes them to us, pining for the long-gone days when the lord of the manor would throw enormous parties that he couldn’t afford, passing the debt onto his heirs – you know, the good old days. I was struck particularly by the rather ridiculous refusal of the Rackrent men to actually deal with reality: they spend too much damn money, and when it comes to their debts, they just shake their heads and refuse to discuss such plebeian matters, disgusted that anyone would even think of asking them to honor their obligations – and there’s Honest Thady, saying, “How could they ask my noble master something so callous! How could they ask him to lower his noble visage, to consider their peasant-concerns. We should all just drink to My Lord’s health!” Another thing that struck me: they drink a whole lot of health in this book. There’s one scene when they celebrate the elevation of a new Rackrent heir by drinking his health for the entire evening; I can’t even picture that. Every time they get a new drink, it’s just “To my lord’s health! Wot wot huzzah!” and down the hatch. Then twenty minutes later, “Long life to my Lord Rackrent! Pip pip hullabaloo!” And this, to Honest Thady, at least, is a good evening.

But on the plus side: it has a glossary, which together with the narrative offers some interesting insights into the time and place; and it’s really short.

The majority of the volume is actually taken up by a later book by the same author called The Absentee. That book was much, much better, even without being so innovative and groundbreaking. It’s the story – again, which is a tad annoying for the repetitiveness – of the Clonbronys, an Irish lord who can’t handle thinking about money affairs, and his wife, who also refuses to think about money, but really loves spending it; she is trying to get in good with English society by being the most fashionable and throwing the best parties, and so she has forced her Irish nobleman husband to leave his country estate in Ireland and live in London so she can be one of the girls. Sadly, the people she wants to hang out with – well, they suck. It’s a lot like a two-hundred-year-old version of Mean Girls: they mock Lady Clonbrony’s accent and heritage behind her back (She was born in England, but is from an Irish family and married to an Irishman), they roll their eyes at how hard she’s trying to be cool, which of course prevents her from being cool; they titter at her attempts to be fashionable which are all so yesterday. Meanwhile her husband is running around with an English military man who seems like a lot of fun, but is apparently uncivilized according to Milady, who can’t stand to be in the same room with his gaucherie without getting a case of the vapors. Though his every appearance in the actual novel makes him seem like a perfectly nice man and a very good friend to her husband. I suppose we’re just supposed to know the distinctions made by the upper classes between what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Meanwhile, the son of this couple, Lord Colambre, is just about to come of age and inherit his part of the family estate, and he is in a bit of a pickle. You see, he can’t decide who to marry. Which is, of course, really the only decision that people of this class ever have to make on their own, and so naturally it is fraught with weighty momentousness. This guy has the following options: he could marry his cousin, whom he actually loves, but she doesn’t think of him THAT WAY; he could marry Lady Sophia, who seems the perfect gentlewoman but whose mother is a crass boor; he could marry an extremely wealthy young heiress whom he respects but does not love. What, OH WHAT! Is Lord Colambre to do!

Well first, he goes back to Ireland and visits his father’s estate, and the neighboring estate that is soon to be his. And though this part is probably a little too on the nose in its social critique, I thought it was by far the most interesting, as it gets into people’s real, actual lives, the troubles that the Irish people faced when their lords lived in England and simply demanded money be sent to them so they could buy their fashionable doodads, without worrying about where exactly the money was coming from or how it was hurting the little people to have to come up with it. Lord Colambre finds that there are two important factors: one, having a good agent, or manager, a guy who actually wants people to do well versus one who is corrupt and only interested in maximum profit with minimum cost – a slumlord, in essence; and two, having the lord actually live on the estate, rather than too far away to oversee matters and keep an eye on things. Lord Colambre, who’s actually a pretty good protagonist, determines that he will not be an absentee lord, and that he will convince his father to fire the bad agent he currently has and hire the good one.

All of this comes about, and Colambre even overcomes the most difficult challenge, that of convincing his stubborn and dimwitted mother to give up her dream of being the belle of London society – I call her dimwitted because as she is ripping through her husband’s money, forcing him to squeeze the little people back on the estate for more to cover her debts, all she says about money is, “Well, when I married him he had plenty, and I brought even more into the marriage! So surely there’s no problem! Now order me that ivory-handled backscratcher with the gold trim!” – and just go back to Ireland where they can live within their means and with some shred of dignity. She finally agrees, and the bad agent is driven off so that the good agent can take over. Everything’s great! So hooray! A happy ending!

But wait (gasp): who will Lord Colambre marry?!?!?!?!?!?!? So he gives up on the rich heiress, even though his mother is disappointed that he fails to carry on the family tradition – and apparently the national pastime of the upper class – of marrying money to solve all overspending problems, because he doesn’t love her and a friend of his does (and that’s the guy she marries); and he finds out that the seemingly lovely girl with the crude mother is in fact a bitch, so she’s out too. So now it’s his cousin. But horror of horrors! He found out that – that – oh, I can’t even bear to write the words . . . she was born –out of wedlock! Her mother was NOT BEYOND REPROACH! She was a FALLEN WOMAN! Don’t you understand?!? She had THE SEX WITHOUT THE MARRIAGE! Gasp! Shudder! The vapors! Oh, pardon me while I faint dead away. There are several conversations where Lord Colambre is convinced that he can’t even consider marrying a woman whose mother was of less than perfect morality, as that same nature will surely appear in his bride. And this seems to be a given, which means that alas, his love is off the table as a marriage prospect. But then, through a series of rather absurd coincidences (but what the hell? It’s basically a romance novel, anyway.), it turns out that her parents WERE married, and therefore her blood is not tainted with whorishness – and what’s more, she actually stands to inherit money, and isn’t even his cousin! Huzzah!

So yeah, happy ending all around. And it was cheesy and all, but very sweet. I liked it quite a bit. Pip pip and all that folderol.

Counting Syllables is Fun! Really!

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Zombie Haiku
by Ryan Mecum

I’ve read many books.
Often zombie-related.
But never like this.

Zombie Haiku. Yeah.
I thought it would be silly,
and it was. But wait:

Hey, this is clever!
A man keeping a journal
all haikus; until —

Things start to get weird.
The zombie apocalypse
has begun. He runs:

Still writing haikus,
because writers write, always,
But now they’re — not nice.

“Strangers lunge for me
as the gas station explodes.
Maybe I’m dreaming.

“They surround the car
and are all moaning something.
Is that the word ‘trains?'”

Nope: they’re saying “brains.”
And though he runs, he gets trapped,
then he gets bitten.

He becomes zombie.
But somehow he keeps writing
Haikus about it.

“One thing on my mind,
only one thing on my mind.
I’m going to eat you.”

“I can remember
good food that Mom used to make
I bet Mom tastes good.”

It’s sad, because
The haiku journal was meant
As a gift for Mom.

But now that he’s dead,
it tells the chronicle of
zombification.

And it’s excellent.
His haikus better than mine;
written the right way:

Not just syllables,
5/7/5, but snapshots
of the world around

Each one a small slice
(Maybe I should say “a bite”)
of life. Or, well, death.

They capture the feel
Of slow death and becoming
the hungry undead.

He eats people’s brains
Then hunts for more, always more,
Growing less human

And more zombified
Less coherent, and yet still
Writing haikus. Like:

“Blood is really warm
It’s like drinking hot chocolate
But with more screaming.”

That’s my favorite.
But there are many good ones
The book’s short, but great.

I won’t spoil the end,
just say: Though this book is gross,
I recommend it.

The Mad Scientists’ Guide

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The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination
Edited by John Joseph Adams

 

This was a real treat to read. It’s a collection of short stories by various authors, including some of my favorites — Diana Gabaldon, Austin Grossman, Naomi Novik — and all about mad scientists or megalomaniacal supervillains trying to take over the world. Determined to show them all just who’s really mad.

Usually them.

Like any collection of stories, there are hits and misses. The Austin Grossman story that starts it off is, not surprisingly, one of the best — Grossman wrote the excellent “Soon I Will Be Invincible,” also about supervillains — and Seanan McGuire’s “Laughter at the Academy” was brilliantly constructed as a series of connected shorts. The Gabaldon story, which ties into her Outlander series, was only thinly connected to the theme of mad science — it’s about the Comte St. Germain and Master Raymond, who are alchemists and wizards in France in the 1700’s — but was superbly written nonetheless. On the other end is a crappy piece from L.A. Banks and a stupid attempt at a joke by Harry Turtledove, and two failed attempts to work an angle on classics, one about the daughters of classic mad scientists — Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein, and Moreau — and one about Superman and Lex Luthor; the first was boring and the second melodramatic and still boring.

Some are heartbreaking: one called “Mofongo Knows,” about the very tail end of a supervillain’s life; and one called “Instead of a Loving Heart,” about a robot built to serve a mad scientist, which is made of the brain of an artist trapped in a mechanical body. Some are genuinely funny, especially “The Angel of Death Has a Business Plan,” about a supervillain trying to save up for her own world domination scheme by working as a life coach for other would-be supervillains. Some had a really good twist, particularly “Letter to the Editor” by David D. Levine, “Rural Singularity” by Alan Dean Foster, and “Rocks Fall” by Naomi Novik, which had both a surprise in the supervillain’s mentality, and then a surprising ending. There’s some good action in Daniel H. Wilson’s “The Executor” and some nice romance in “Blood and Stardust” by Laird Barron. And there’s some frustrating and disappointing attempts, particularly “Homo Perfectus” by David Farland which is a little too dirty-old-man-y, “The Pittsburgh Technology” by Jeffrey Ford, which makes its point early on and then just keeps slapping you in the face with it, and “The Food Taster’s Boy” by Ben H. Winters which has nobody even remotely resembling a sympathetic protagonist: you want everyone in the story to fail and lose, and even when they do, they don’t lose enough.

The editing was good, though each story is prefaced by an introductory entry that completely spoils the story, and which I’d recommend skipping. But they were good stories, and the book as a whole had a generally good arc — though it does end on a down note, unfortunately. But maybe that is fitting, for a book about madmen who seek to destroy the world. Overall, I’d recommend it.

Two Bad Books In One!

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Dark Planet
by John Rackham

The Herod Men
by Nick Kamin
I picked this up on a whim at Powell’s Books in Portland; it’s one of those Ace Double books, where there are two short novels in one paperback, with one printed from the front and one from the back — so you flip the book over, and it’s the front cover of the other book; the printing of each is upside down to the other. I also grabbed this one because I like the idea of The Herod Men, which teases with the line “Planned death vs. unwanted birth in the Overpop Era,” which sounded pretty sweet. And the Dark Planet cover features a terrible 70’s pulp illustration of a giant alien worm thing chasing a scared woman and a ragged man through a kaleidoscopic jungle. Good stuff.

But then I tried reading it, and I understood why I’d never heard of either of these writers before. Because they both suck.

I read Dark Planet first, actually figuring I was saving the best for last; Dark Planet was vaguely interesting in that it had a neat idea for an alien planet, and a great explanation as to why humans couldn’t colonize it and hadn’t found the alien race living there, despite having a manned military base on the planet’s surface: the atmosphere is dense clouds, and is filled with bacteria that devour anything that isn’t actually alive — metal, plastic, cloth, everything. The base is made out of a super-plastic alloy that can survive; everything else has to get in and get out quickly, or else start dissolving. But a rocket carrying Our Intrepid Hero crashlands in the miasma, and soon finds that though his equipment, clothes, and his ship all dissolve, he himself is perfectly healthy. He meets the alien races, and discovers that the planet has quite a lot to offer.

That’s all the good stuff. The bad is that the book is written in the late-Robert-Heinlein pulp mode, with the surly alpha male hero and the buxom helpless female who has no choice but to cling desperately to his arm in between screams, and who of course sleeps with her rescuer, as is only appropriate when everyone is necessarily naked on this planet that dissolves all clothing. The aliens, a la Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter books, are inexplicably human, so human that they actually have sex with all of the human humans. There’s quite a long part where the enlightened angelic overlords of the alien races preach free love while having lots of sex with Our Intrepid Hero, and then he is reunited with the buxom scream queen, who even though she has been mated with an alien/human guy, is of course swooningly happy to run into Our Intrepid Hero again and clutches his mighty thews to her heaving bosom and — you get the picture. Basically it’s a story by a lonely nerd with Captain Kirk fantasies, a good concept for a planet, and not much talent.

And The Herod Men? Not only did it follow the same basic theme — surly alpha male who seduces all of the ladies in between killing bad things; lots of Free Love stuff (though that was almost cleverly done, put into context of a bizarre Catholic cult-like church that preached maximum fertility for all humans, and had priests sleeping with the novice nuns in an attempt to impregnate them); pretty good basic concept in this overpopulated post-global-climate-change Earth — but it added a whole new dimension: violent homophobia, as there is a gay character who comes on to Our Intrepid Hero, is rejected (Because our dude only likes chicks, bro. Don’t call him gay, bro. He’ll kick your ass, bro!), and then becomes a bitchy caricature that O.I.H. dreams of killing violently. It’s the second time I’ve seen this weird angry anti-homosexual theme in a book — the first time was in the Shaft novel, where pretty much exactly the same thing happens (Something about hotel clerks coming on to men? Was that a thing in the 70’s? Dunno.); but that book was surprisingly well written.

This one was not. This one, I didn’t finish reading.

Not recommended.

Redwall Book II: Mossflower

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Mossflower
by Brian Jacques

The second Redwall novel is a lot like the first.

Maybe a little too much like the first.

Don’t get me wrong: the most notable and important similarity is that these are both lovely books. This one is a distant prequel to Redwall; it tells the story of how the animals gathered at the place that would become Redwall Abbey, and decided to build that great haven. It is the story of how Martin the Warrior came to be the hero of Redwall, and how he got his mighty sword, the same weapon that Matthias searches for in Redwall. The writing is just as good, and just as sweet; these books read more like fairy tales than anything else, and it makes them great fun — though like the original fairy tales, they are not by any means bloodless, nor do all of the heroes make it to Happily Ever After. There are cute younguns, and amusingly crotchety elders, and the food still sounds delicious.

There are differences, too: in this, the villains are striking out from a castle, rather than trying to win their way into one; it changes the battles and the strategies, and that was well done. This one ranges farther afield, as our heroes quest to Salamandastron, the legendary volcano far to the east, in hopes of finding allies. That was also excellent, particularly the parts with the rabbits, whom I enjoyed tremendously in Redwall when there was only one pommy British fellow with long ears; in this book there are nearly a dozen, and every one is delightful.

But: you’ve still got a horde of weasels, stoats, and ferrets led by one particularly savage tyrant; the weasels, stoats, and ferrets are still clumsy incompetent buffoons who lose battles against the heroes because of their stupidity and cowardice. You still have the great, sinister predator — in Redwall it’s a serpent, in this one it’s an eagle — that threatens everyone who comes near. You still have the badger who carries the battle with its great strength. You still have the desperate quest for allies that goes far afield and comes back at the last second — with shrews, both times. You still have the one bird that is not really trusted but is extremely helpful. And of course you have the mouse who saves the day with a big sword and limitless courage.

I suppose I shouldn’t make too much of this; it is a series, after all, and therefore is going to have common threads that run through all the books. But this one felt a little too familiar, for all that the familiar parts were still delightful.

I’m hoping the next book will offer a little more variety.

Book Review: Riddley Walker

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Riddley Walker

by Russell Hoban

Russell Hoban wrote one of the fondest memories of my childhood: Bread and Jam for Frances. He wrote a number of books about an adorable young badger named Frances, actually, but Bread and Jam was the one I had, the one I remembered, the one that, as a picky eater, I related to.

So when I found out as an adult that Russell Hoban also wrote several acclaimed science fiction novels, well. There wasn’t really any question. Imagine if Dr. Seuss or Shel Silverstein wrote full-length novels. Wouldn’t you be curious?

So I looked them up, found out that the most famous one – the one that won the John W. Campbell award for best sc-fi novel in 1982 – was this one, and then I went out and bought a copy.

And then I tried to read it. And this is what I found.

“On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs anyhow ther hadnt ben none for a long tyme befor him nor I aint lookin to see none agen.”

That’s right: the book is written in gibberish.

And it’s absolutely brilliant gibberish.

The story is a post-apocalyptic coming-of-age novel. Very post-apocalyptic, as it turns out. Riddley Walker is a 12-year-old young man in the ruined aftermath of what used to be England, but is now a feudal society called Inland, people living in small walled communities, hemmed in by packs of wild dogs that hunt and eat any humans who stray too far from their fences. The language they speak and write is in fact English, but it’s an English that has changed as much from our language as our language did from Chaucer’s time. Their myths and legends are of us: the primary one seems to be about the discovery of atomic power with the splitting of the atom; though there is much more to it than that, as there always is in myths and legends. Their world cherishes these legends, but it is a largely oral society; the government, what is left of it, is primarily responsible for spreading the stories that are the basis of their mythology and morality, the Eusa story, which they share ritualistically through traveling puppet shows. The basic canon of the Eusa story is written down and therefore unchangeable, but with each puppet performance, the Eusa men find new aspects to focus on, new morals to be drawn from it, just like preachers with the Bible. The towns where they perform have their own interpreters of these hidden messages and allegories, called “connection men;” when the story begins, Riddley has just become one such, replacing his recently deceased father.

But Riddley only makes one connection: soon he feels an irresistible urge to travel outside the walls, where he seems to befriend a dog pack; this dog pack takes him to Cambry, where he discovers a secret: the Ardship of Cambry, one of the Eusa people. Born without eyes, isolated from all of society, the Ardship has a secret buried deep inside: the secret that brought down the old world, the world that had boats flying in the sky. And the current head of the loose government in Inland, the Pry Mincer Abel Goodparley, plans to tear that secret out of the Ardship, unless Riddley can help.

But maybe Riddley thinks that Goodparley is right. Maybe they have lost much that once existed, and maybe they should try to bring that back. But maybe those secrets are best kept hidden.

I realize now that the book is extremely well known, and that my discovery is not this forgotten novel but rather my own ignorance of it – the thing has over 5000 Amazon reviews, for cripes’ sake – but for me, this book was something of a revelation. It was also a real challenge. That language is freaking hard to read. It makes references to the society that preceded it, but that society, the society of the 1970’s, is in some ways lost even to us: it took me the whole book to realize that one of the phrases, used to describe thinking something through and coming to a conclusion, was “pull data and print out,” as in, “We discussed the matter, pulled data and printed out a plan.” We don’t even print out any more, so it was tough getting the meaning of that and a thousand other words.

But it’s beautifully done, nonetheless. Because the Ardship of Cambry is the Archbishop of Canterbury – but he’s also a man facing hardship, which point Riddley makes in the novel. And the Pry Mincer (Prime Minister) is a man who pries, but also one who minces words. Hoban didn’t just mess with the English language: he remade it. He created something new, and difficult as new things are, but also brilliant.

It’s a hell of a book. I need to keep it and read it again, and I want to do so. Maybe when I do, it will make more sense; on this first reading I felt like there were some pretty serious holes in the story, but there were parts that I just couldn’t understand. But hey: I couldn’t read Shakespeare and understand it all the first time, and the first time I read The Grapes of Wrath or Huck Finn or The God of Small Things, I didn’t fully appreciate them; great literature requires effort. I would call this book an example of that.

Review: Clarence Olgibee

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Clarence Olgibee

by Alan Kessler

 

I was asked to review this book and given a free Kindle copy in order to do so; I wish I hadn’t been. Because if this hadn’t been part of an agreement, I never would have finished this book.

This is not a good book. (If it is too presumptuous of me to actually pass judgment, then it is my opinion that this is not a good book.) The plotline makes no sense. It is purported to be a sprawling epic, and I suppose in that it covers about forty or fifty years and a dozen individual lives, it is. The problem is that there is no reason to connect all of those lives. You start with the title character, Clarence; he has a high school chum named Todd; Todd grows up to work for a man named Walters. So why do we need to hear about Walters? Or Walters’s son, Donald? Walters and Donald are certainly connected to Todd, but they are not in any way associated with Clarence – and the book is called Clarence Olgibee, not Todd Munson. Or perhaps this book is an examination of racism: then why do we spend a full third of the book watching Clarence duck his mother and try to get laid? What has that to do with racism? It seems to me that the author could not decide what his story was really about, and so he included everything that he thought of in relation to it, background material, character development, everything.

Don’t get me wrong: some of it is interesting. The part when Clarence is in the Navy was quite well done, overall, particularly the chapters in the Philippines. The author has a way with description, and also with dialogue, particularly hate speech, which enables him to create some very distasteful villains – and yeah, it was fun to see some of them get their comeuppance. But much of that is ruined by one simple fact: I can’t stand Clarence. He’s a jerk: he uses everyone around him, resents everyone, envies everyone, and complains constantly that he can’t do what he wants – when what he wants to do is nothing. As he gets older, it makes more sense, as people actually treat him badly; but for the first half of the book, when Clarence is a teenager and his only problem is that his mother wants him to do his chores and homework, and the girl he’s lusting after is a shallow, dim-witted bimbo, it’s hard to feel sympathetic as Clarence lies and cheats and manipulates the good people around him – both of his parents (because I agree with his mother) along with his friends Willard and Todd – simply because Clarence’s only influence is a cousin that crashed at his house for a few months. Now maybe that would happen, a teenager deciding to admire Cousin Ortis instead of his mother or father or friends or anyone else; but it’s hard to like him for it.

What drives me crazy, though, is the fact that the author uses this. The story is of Clarence’s redemption. He decides, at a very few times in his otherwise worthless life, to do the right thing; and when he does, it is – well, nice. I appreciated it. I thought, “Good for you, Clarence.” And then I watched him go right back into being a putz. At least when Huck Finn realizes he cares more about Jim than about his reputation, he goes about trying to free Jim. He learns his lesson. What’s the point of a redemption that doesn’t actually redeem the person? And again, if the point was that Clarence was broken by his ill-treatment in a racist society, why is the first half of the book about the villains Doing Your Chores and She Doesn’t Want To Have Sex With You? Any chance of redemption was shot for me in Clarence’s last scene with his parents. I just had to hate him after that. Because I really liked his dad. You putz.

I wasn’t going to give this book that low a rating, because I do definitely see some good things, and I think the author has potential. He needs to work on telling one story that makes sense; this book should either be about racism, or about Clarence. He also needs to work on editing: because I can overlook a lot of things, but the main character’s name is spelled at least four different ways in this book, and that’s just ridiculous. The first chapter comes back around at the end of the book, yes, but only because the first chapter is an entirely artificial situation: the protagonist at that point, Jimmy, has literally no reason to commit the crime that he does. So it’s not a mind-bending use of irony, it’s a stretch, it’s a moment that strains the reader’s suspension of disbelief. And when the ending comes back around to that beginning point, the book should end. I hit that point and my Kindle said 94%. And everything that happens after that, I found just ridiculous and maddening, in the way it completely changed the narrative and asked me to go places I neither expected nor wanted to go, and tried to redeem Clarence when it was much too late to do that. That guy, and this book, were already lost.