Category: Authors

Véronique Olmi, Beside the Sea (2001/10)

4th May 2010 / / 4 Comments

This is the launch title of Peirene Press, a new publisher specialising in English translations of short European works. And what a book to begin with. Véronique Olmi’s Beside the Sea, first published in France in 2001, and now available in Adriana Hunter’s superlative translation, is the story of a single mother taking her two sons to a seaside town. But all is not as happy as it sounds. Here is how Beside the Sea begins:

We took the bus, the last bus of the evening, so no one would see us. The boys had their tea before we left, I noticed they didn’t finish the jar of jam and I thought of that jam left there for nothing, it was a shame, but I’d taught them not to waste stuff and to think of the next day. (9)

Ordinary enough details, but with dark undertones — why leave so furtively? Why dwell on the unfinished jam? Even in this first paragraph, the seeds of the ending are sown, but the power of Beside the Sea lies in how the journey unfolds. Olmi gradually reveals just how fragile is her protagonist’s psyche: the narrator is a woman ill at ease with the world, reluctant to engage with other people, simultaneously protective of her children and at times uneasy around them.

Reading this character’s story is an intense, discomforting experience; her words spill out in a torrent of clauses, pushing inexorably on to the conclusion, which has no less impact for being anticipated (and may actually have more). Beside the Sea is a superb character study that marks out Peirene Press as a publisher to follow. Recommended.

Link
Peirene Press

Adam Roberts, New Model Army (2010)

3rd May 2010 / / 10 Comments

I can safely say that New Model Army is like no other book I’ve ever read. I know this because I have no name for the feeling I was left with after I’d finished it. That’s a recommendation, by the way.

A few decades hence, a new kind of fighting force has emerged: organised on democratic principles (Athenian democracy, that is), New Model Armies (NMAs for short) have no command structure, and no specialisms; soldiers communicate with each other in the field via private wikis, and all decisions are put to the vote. A row over the royal succession has led the now-independent Scottish government to hire a New Model Army named Pantegral to fight the English, which the NMA has been doing very successfully. The novel’s narrator (though not, he is at pains to stress, its hero) is Tony Block, a member of Pantegral. Block tells of his exploits in the battles of south-east England, and it gradually becomes clear that he has been captured by the enemy, who have their own plans for him.

Having read that description, you may now have a conception of New Model Army in your mind which is nothing like the actual text. This is a novel in which the story is mediated through the voice in which it is told, and Block is as inclined to talk about his philosophy of democracy, love and war, as he is to describe his involvement in Pantegral’s military campaigns. As a result, we see both Tony’s ideas about war, and the effect those ideas have had on him.

Block is convinced of the NMAs’ superiority (both martial and moral) over conventional ‘feudal’ armies, and, indeed, Pantegral is winning the war in south-east England. But the New Model Army is also fallible – the majority vote isn’t guaranteed to be the ‘correct’ one, and such mistakes have consequences, as Roberts shows. There is no definitive ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ side, here, which makes the novel all the stronger.

At a deeper level, we see how being in the NMA has affected Tony psychologically. His narrative voice veers from being highly learned to making daft pop-culture references (the silliest is perhaps a burning building being described as ‘a field of spiky yellow flame: a hologram of Bart’s haircut on a Brobdingnagian scale’ [71]). This technique is presumably meant to represent the mish-mash of experiences and ideas engendered by the structure of the NMA; but another effect it has to undercut the harsh reality of what’s being described. Tony says that, in the heat of the moment, he can’t afford to think about the damage being caused by all the fighting; his pop-culture frames of reference may be another means by which he de-sensitises himself.

The effect of this on the reader can be quite suffocating, as the emotion coming from the narrative voice is inadequate for the horrors it relates. It’s made all the more suffocating by how little we learn of Block’s life before he became a soldier – there’s little true sense of a life beyond this moment, and hence of a way out of Block’s mindset. His resolve not to think too hard about certain things ebbs and flows tantalisingly throughout the novel – and then New Model Army turns in a direction that requires a different sort of imagining; the implications of the ending are chilling, but also somehow uplifting.

New Model Army is different, in the best sense of that word – it does something I haven’t come across elsewhere, and does it very well. It’s another fascinating read from the singular imagination of Adam Roberts.

Links
Adam Roberts’s website
Roberts’s review blog, Punkadiddle
Interview with Roberts at Kamvision

Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers (2009)

2nd May 2010 / / 3 Comments

The Solitude of Prime Numbers tells the story of two young people who have been scarred (both physically and mentally, in their different ways) by events in their childhoods: Alice Della Rocca, who survived a terrible skiing accident; and Mattia Balossino, whose twin sister Michela (who had learning difficulties) was never seen again after he abandoned her on the way to a party.

Alice and Mattia meet at school, and grow… well, ‘close’ isn’t really the right word, because both find relationships awkward. Mattia, a maths prodigy, reflects that the two of them may be like twin primes, existing in such close proximity, yet never able to close the gap that separates them. And, when the adult Mattia is offered a position at a university in northern Europe, the gap between him and Alice looks set to widen irrevocably further.

Paolo Giordano’s first novel (translated into English by Shaun Whiteside, who has done a superb job) carries a certain weight of expectation, having won the prestigious Premio Strega in Italy. However, whilst I found it a good read, it never quite took off in the way I’d hoped. The characterisation of the two protagonists is key, and I think Giordano does particularly well with Mattia, whose cold personality and difficulty relating to other people are strongly evoked. This passage, for example, relates to a conversation he has with Alice when they are at school:

He wanted to tell her that her liked studying because you can do it on your own, because all the things you study are already dead, cold and chewed-over. He wanted to tell her that the pages of the schoolbooks were all the same temperature, that they leave you time to choose, that they never hurt you and that you can’t hurt them either. But he said nothing. (102)

Giordano weaves in some aspects of the protagonists’ characters particularly subtly, which makes their impact all the greater. But Mattia seems more fully-formed than Alice to me, in that I can trace the development of his character over the course of the novel more clearly. And I just think overall that, though it’s a very eloquent book at times, The Solitude of Prime Numbers doesn’t say as much (or in as much depth) as it would like to. Giordano is definitely a name to watch for the future, I would say, but his debut is promising rather than excellent.

Link
Video interview with Giordano

Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones (2009)

30th April 2010 / / 7 Comments

This is a story about growing up, but also one about stories: the stories we tell about people, and how the image held of a person in the mind’s eye may not be the truth of who they really are – or might be all the truth there is, as far as someone else is concerned.

The year is 1965; the place, Corrigan, a mining town in Western Australia. Charlie Bucktin is 13, a bookish, studious boy – which doesn’t make for an easy life amongst his peers, for whom  sporting prowess is the key measure of status. One night, there is a knock on Charlie’s bedroom window; it’s Jasper Jones, the half-Aboriginal boy  considered the town’s main troublemaker, asking for Charlie’s help.

Jasper leads Charlie to his secret clearing, where he has found the body of Laura Wishart, daughter of the shire president – hanging from the very rope Jasper uses to swing across the river, and about which nobody else is supposed to know. Jasper swears he had nothing to do with this, but is well aware that no one is likely to believe him; so he wants Charlie’s help in uncovering the truth (Jasper is convinced the culprit is Mad Jack Lionel, a bogeyman among Corrigan’s children, who lives alone in a cottage on the edge of town). So, Charlie becomes burdened with a dark secret he can’t disclose to anyone, and the problem of working out how he can talk again to Laura’s sister Eliza, on whom he has a crush.

There are two aspects of Jasper Jones that make it stand out as one of my favourite reads of the year so far. One is Craig Silvey’s skill with characterisation and dialogue. Charlie in particular leaps off the page as a character: a boy who finds that he’s suddenly lost part of his innocence about the world, and wishes desperately that he could have it back; whose frustrations that the world is unfair on other people have selfish undercurrents that Charlie might not care to acknowledge (and perhaps he doesn’t even realise they’re there);  who knows he’ll take a beating from the bullies for being too clever, but continues to provoke them anyway, because it’s the only power he has. The banter between Charlie and his best friend, Jeffrey Lu, is a delight to read; the flow of it rings absolutely true, to me – and the way Charlie gets tongue-tied when talking to Eliza Wishart is just as good.

The second aspect of Silvey’s novel that I particularly like goes back to what I said earlier about the images we have of people. Almost every character in the book has a story believed about them which is shown to be not quite the truth; even Charlie’s parents are different from the idea he had of them, so perhaps it’s no wonder that Jasper (of whom Charlie thinks he can see past the popular perception) comes to be such an anchor in his life. Over the course of the novel, we see how pernicious these myths about people can be (for example, Jeffrey may be a superb cricketer, but his Vietnamese family still face abuse), but also how they can change things for the better.

Jasper Jones is Craig Silvey’s second novel; it makes me keen to check out his first – and to recommend the present book to you.

Links
Silvey talks about the novel
Windmill Books

Clarke Award 2010: And the winner is…

29th April 2010 / / 1 Comment

It was a full house last night at the Apollo Cinema on London’s Lower Regent Street, as a bunch of interested parties (including your correspondent) attended the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award ceremony. Clarke Award history was made as China Miéville became the first author to win three times (and all in the same decade, no less).

This could be a major year for Miéville — The City & the City had already won the BSFA Award for Best Novel, and I’m almost certain it will win at least a couple more awards. And deservedly so — it’s a very good book, genuinely unique (as far as I can judge), and one of its author’s best.

A good winner of a literary award should, in my view, be a book that you could give to any reader interested in quality fiction and say, ‘You must read this.’  The City & the City is such a  book. You won’t read another book quite like it, you won’t read the same book that I (or anyone else) did — but you should read it.

Index of my Clarke Award 2010 posts

Nikki Dudley, Ellipsis (2010)

27th April 2010 / / 0 Comments

Well, how could I resist a novel that shares its name with the punctuation mark I overuse the most?

At 15.32 precisely, Daniel Mansen is pushed into the path of an oncoming train by Alice, the young woman who has been following him covertly for several weeks. As he falls from the platform, Daniel says one thing:  ‘Right on time’ – as though he were expecting it.  After the funeral, Thom Mansen begins to find out more about the cousin he never really knew, and uncovers evidence suggesting that Daniel somehow knew in advance that he was going to die. Alice enters Thom’s life under an assumed name, searching for answers of her own;  by novel’s end, both will uncover truths that they might wish had stayed hidden.

Ellipsis is an interesting debut from Nikki Dudley that (happily) never quite settles into the shape you might expect. It has its flaws:  for example, and particularly towards the beginning, the prose is can be weighed down with so many metaphors and similes that the impact of the imagery is diluted. But, once the novel hits its stride, we discover not only how fragile is Alice’s state of mind (her first-person voice is marvellously disconcerting), but also that Thom’s character isn’t as straightforward as it appears to be at first (I’d say that this becomes apparent a little too slowly, leading to a couple of moments where one thinks, ‘Why did he do that?’ – but that’s a minor problem).

Dudley also makes some neat observations about character; for example, here’s Thom reflecting on his choice of job (working in a call centre for an insurance firm), and his difficulty in talking about his parents’ death: ‘Perhaps that is why he has a job where he always knows what to say because there is a handbook.’ (27)

What’s particularly striking about the central mystery is less the actual events of the plot than the way Dudley plays with the reader’s perception; one is led to conceptualise the story in a particular way, then finds that it’s not the right way – but it’s hard to shake off the original interpretation, so strongly has it been established. And the ending produces a further twist that leaves us on shifting sands once again.

As its title suggests, Ellipsis revolves around gaps in knowledge – in the reader’s knowledge of what happens, and in the characters’ knowledge of events, people, and even of themselves. And those gaps add up to an intriguing, satisfying read.

Links
Nikki Dudley’s blog
Contrary Life interview with Dudley
Sparkling Books

Clarke Award 2010: in review

26th April 2010 / / 9 Comments

The commentary I’ve encountered on this year’s Clarke Award generally agrees on two things: that it’s a five-horse race, and that Chris Wooding is the author who’s written the also-ran. Having read all the shortlisted novels, I must concur with that view. Retribution Falls is a good book on its own terms — a superior sf adventure story — but it seems lacking in the context of this shortlist. It just doesn’t have the extra depth that the others, in their different ways, all have. For that reason, Wooding’s book is first out of the running for me.

The favourite to win the Clarke this year is The City & the City. This is a fascinating, innovative novel (the first, as far as I’m aware, to engage so explicity with the crtical taxonomy of fantasy that has emerged in the last fifteeen years), possibly China Miéville’s best-written to date. I like it very much… but I don’t think it should win. The reason I don’t think it should win is that the Clarke is an award for science fiction, and The City & the City doesn’t make sense if read as sf — one is forced into an unsatisfactory psychological interpretation. However, the novel does make sense — and is much more interesting — if read as fantasy (see my review for more on this); I’d be happy for it to win any fantasy awards for which it may be nominated, but I don’t see it as a good fit for the Clarke.

I intended to review the entire shortlist, but, in the end, I’m one title down. The reason I haven’t written previously about Gwyneth Jones‘s Spirit is that I really struggled to get to grips with it. I grasped the basics of the story, but there’s so much else about which I’m not sure that I can’t see my way to giving the novel a proper review. Why I experienced this difficulty, I don’t know; maybe it was because of all the associated books I hadn’t read (Spirit is a re-interpretation of The Count of Monte Cristo, and is connected to both Jones’s earlier Aleutian Trilogy and her Bold as Love sequence), maybe something else. Whatever, though I’m not able to comment on Spirit in detail, I do gain an impression of a significant work.

Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson combines fictional historical biography with far-future sf, to what I found was mixed effect. It is an excellent work at times, but tries one’s patience at others, and its two aspects don’t integrate as well as they might. But there’s a lot about the book that I know I missed (I didn’t pick up on all the sbutext, for example), so I’m quite willing to accept that Galileo’s Dream is a stronger book than I found it to be, and hence a strong contender for the Clarke.

There’s also a lot about Adam Roberts‘s Yellow Blue Tibia that I know I missed — but, all the same, I thoroughly loved it. Of all the shortlisted title, this is the one I enjoyed the most, both for its humour and for what it does as a work of imaginative literature. I can’t judge in full how successful it is, because for that I’d need more knowledge of its historical setting, and the science fiction with which it engages — but it’s worthy of winning the Clarke as far as I’m concerned.

Finally, Marcel Theroux‘s excellent Far North, which is my other pick of the shortlist. A post-disaster novel which is less about the effect of change on the world than itseffect on humanity, this is a quiet book that makes its point subtly and with force. It works superbly as an aesthetic whole, to a greater extent than perhaps any other novel on the shortlist. A win for Far North would be thoroughly deserved.

So, I’d most like to see Roberts or Theroux be awarded the Clarke this year, but, really, it’s an open field, and I would not like to predict who will win. The winner will be announced this Wednesday, and I look forward to finding out whom it will be.

Chris Wooding, Retribution Falls (2009)

24th April 2010 / / 4 Comments

When first we meet Darian Frey, freebooting captain of the Ketty Jay, he is being held captive by a smuggler. That can’t last for long, of course, as there’s a story to get underway; sure enough, a bit of artful escaping later, and Frey is back on the run with his raggle-taggle crew of misfits. Over the course of the novel, the Ketty Jay will be drawn into a far-reaching conspiracy, which will see her crew being hunted by some of the world’s most feared individuals, including the pirate captain Trinica Dracken, who just happens to be an old flame of Frey’s.

The stage is set for Retribution Falls to be a fine adventure story, and Chris Wooding does not disappoint in that regard. He imbues his prose with the requisite amount of energy and colour, and knows just when to move the plot in another direction. Quite often, a significant event may happen in between chapters or scenes, which is a neat way of sustaining momentum, as it constantly shifts events beyond the reader’s understanding (albeit for only brief amounts of time). Although the characters aren’t overly fleshed out (this being primarily a plot-driven novel, and the first in a series), they have their share of flaws and interesting back-stories. And Wooding’s world of airships, electricity and magic, is not without its quirks (magic in this world takes the form of ‘daemonism’, a semi-scientific practice in which all effects are achieved by binding daemons, who take a little of the practitioner’s energy for their trouble). There is enough here to keep one engrossed to the end of the book.

The thing is, though, that Retribution Falls lacks that certain something which would take it beyond being a fine adventure story. The plot is not so surprising, the characterisation not so rich, the setting not so distinctive, as to make the book truly shine. In other words, the novel is good as far as it goes, with both the positives and negatives that stem from that. But, if you’re looking for an entertaining tale of swashbuckling adventure, Retribution Falls is most definitely a title you should investigate.

Links
Chris Wooding’s website
Ketty Jay blog

This book has been nominated for the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award. Read all my posts on the Award here.

Mercurio D. Rivera, ‘Dance of the Kawkawroons’ (2010)

21st April 2010 / / 4 Comments

A pair of human scientists visit a world occupied by the Kawkawroons, sentient bird-like creatures. They communicate with one through a translation device, and ask to see its nest — but what is their real motive? I found this a breezy, enjoyable story: Rivera tells the tale from both human and Kawkawroon viewpoints; the contrast of mentalities is interesting and nicely evoked — and there’s a neat twist at the end. A fun read.

Link
Mercurio Rivera’s website

This story appears in issue 227 of Interzone. Read all my blog posts about that issue here.

Jon Ingold, ‘The History of Poly-V’ (2010)

20th April 2010 / / 3 Comments

In Jon Ingold’s story, Poly-V is a drug that enables people to relive their memories, recalling events in much greater detail than in the conventional process of remembering. The narrator, Will Sheppard, is one of the scientists who developed the drug and tested it on themselves; his account of that development is interspersed with scenes of his memories, as experienced under the influence of Poly-V. But can Will trust what he remembers?

Ingold is especially good with voice in this piece; Will’s character comes through strongly in the matter-of-fact, slightly detached narration, and I particularly liked the way the author retains the essence of Sheppard’s voice in a scene narrated by the four-year-old Will, even as it adopts a more child-like tone.

However, I’m not sure that the story is successful at a more structural level. Its secrets are revealed in a pattern that makes the tale less disorienting than I think it aims to be, though I appreciate the way it treats the fallibility of human memory.

This story appears in issue 227 of Interzone. Read all my blog posts about that issue here.

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