The Apple is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, I enjoyed the seven stories contained in it for the additional glimpse they provide into the lives...moreThe Apple is a hard book to rate. On the one hand, I enjoyed the seven stories contained in it for the additional glimpse they provide into the lives of the characters of The Crimson Petal and the White, one of the best novels I've read this year. On the other hand, they don't provide nearly enough glimpses for my liking, and I doubt they'll appeal much to people who haven't read The Crimson Petal. So. Yeah. Conundrum!
Three of the stories in The Apple are set before the events of The Crimson Petal. They show Sugar treating Christopher to a nice Christmas meal at Mrs Castaway's, Sugar having to deal with proselytising evangelists, and Emmeline writing letters to American slave owners. They're nice enough stories, but to my critical eye, they look rather like outtakes from the book with which Faber couldn't quite part. The remaining four stories, which take place after the ending of The Crimson Petal, are much better in my opinion. I delighted in seeing the unpleasant fate of Clara, the Rackhams' evil servant. I grinned at Mr Bodley's unenthusiastic visit to a brothel, which culminates in a laugh-out-loud encounter with a Malaysian prostitute who hasn't had a chance to learn proper English yet. I nodded with satisfaction at the poetic justice of William Rackham's fate. And most of all, I relished the opportunity to see what had become of Sophie Rackham, and how she had implemented the lessons Miss Sugar taught her. Sophie's is an interesting, occasionally poignant tale with some nice historical tangents -- the best in the collection, I think. But as much as I enjoyed the various vignettes, they didn't satisfy me. I wanted more. I wanted to hear what had become of Caroline and the Rackhams' lecherous driver. I wanted to hear what had become of Christopher, the young brothel boy. And most of all, I wanted to hear -- in detail! -- what had become of Sugar, The Crimson Petal's heroine. Amazingly enough, Sugar's post-Petal life hardly gets a mention in The Apple. We learn where she took Sophie and that they did a bit of exploring together, but we never find out what Sugar ended up making of herself. Nor do we get a full account of Sugar's post-abduction relationship with Sophie, or find out what Sophie really felt about the abduction, because the one time the subject is brought up is in a story which isn't told from Sophie's point of view. Seriously, how sucky is that?
As for the stand-alone value of The Apple, I don't think it has any. Sure, the stories have their charms, and the one about Sophie's later years is actually quite interesting from a historical point of view, but I doubt they'll mean much to people who aren't already familiar with the characters. Nor do I think they make particularly good examples of the short story in general. Faber may be a fabulous novelist, but short stories aren't his forte, and it shows here. The seven stories in The Apple are a very nice try, but they don't live up to the expectations raised by The Crimson Petal. Then again, very few things do.
I know Faber has said he won't write a sequel to The Crimson Petal and the White, but I'm harbouring a secret hope that the fact that there's hardly any information on Sugar's post-Petal life in The Apple means that Faber intends to write a full-length account of it elsewhere. If that ever happens, I'll be first in line to read it.
-------
ORIGINAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Short stories about the characters from The Crimson Petal and the White, which you should all read because it's amazing!(less)
If I had to give a one-word response to the big, sprawling monster of a faux-Victorian novel that is The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW...moreIf I had to give a one-word response to the big, sprawling monster of a faux-Victorian novel that is The Crimson Petal and the White, it would be 'WOW'. (With capitals. Yes.) At 895 pages, it's a big book, and it's not without its flaws, but such is the quality of the writing, the characterisation and the staggering amount of research that went into it that I was enthralled from beginning to end and stayed up until 4am on a weekday night to be able to read the last four hundred pages. I don't regret the sleep I lost that night; if anything, I regret that there weren't four hundred more pages to stay up for. That's how much I liked the book.
So what's it all about? Well, it's hard to sum up an 895-page story in a few lines, but basically it's about an intelligent prostitute who lives in 1870s London, wheedles her way into a rich man's life and ends up changing several lives, not least her own. She's an appealing (albeit emotionally scarred and manipulative) heroine, and she's portrayed in admirable detail. So are all the other characters, who make up one of the finest casts since the heyday of Dickens. Randy gentlemen, cross-dressing prostitutes, society-obsessed ladies with brain tumours, would-be parsons tormented by sexual fantasies, love-starved children who grow up in the servants' quarters because their mothers can't be reminded of their existence, guards who spend all the days of their lives reciting news of deathly disasters, well-bred ladies who risk expulsion from polite society to help fallen women... they're all here, and they're drawn in shockingly intimate detail. All their thoughts, dreams and fantasies are spilled out on the pages, and for the most part they're riveting. Similar candour is employed in the descriptions of actions and places. Not content with simply providing lush descriptions of Victorian splendours (although he certainly does that, too), Michel Faber gives his book a distinctly modern feel by describing things no Victorian novelist in his right mind would ever have mentioned, such as, well, sex. The Crimson Petal and the White is full of highly inelegant sex scenes, liberally sprinkled with four-letter words. In addition, it features painstakingly detailed descriptions of unmentionable things like the heroine's skin disease, the sounds, sights and smells of London's red-light district, the vaginal douches with which prostitutes tried to prevent pregnancy, the look and smell of used chamber pots, a farting concert, and so on. This may sound off-putting, but the descriptions are so vivid and so, well, interesting that they greatly add to the authenticity and local colour of the book, presenting a truly kaleidoscopic view of London in the 1870s. The result is a rich and fascinating story which is at turns utterly Victorian and thoroughly modern, dirty and elegant, highbrow and lowbrow, disgusting and engrossing. It certainly isn't for the faint of heart, but in its own daring way, it's spectacular. I would even go so far as to call it mesmerising.
As for its shortcomings, well, I guess you could say the book is a bit jarring at times. Faber has an interesting tendency to introduce characters, devote many words to them, and then suddenly and quite randomly to kill them off or otherwise lose sight of them, thus making you wonder what their point was in the first place. In a way, the sudden deaths/disappearances are as realistic as the descriptions of the chamber pots and vaginal douches (after all, death does creep up on us very suddenly, and people do really vanish from our lives like that, don't they?), but it's an uncommon device in literature, and it's a bit jarring at times, especially since it's so thoroughly un-Victorian. Aren't storylines usually tied up neatly in Victorian novels?
Which brings me to the ending. Much has been written about the ending of The Crimson Petal and the White, which is as jarring and un-Victorian as they come. There is no 'Reader, I married him' here, much less a summary of what happened to the main characters after the final curtain. Instead, the story comes to an abrupt halt, leaving the main characters in medias res. Like many readers, I was initially put off by the ending, thinking that the narrator's sudden 'But now it's time to let me go' was a paltry reward for staying with him for nearly nine hundred pages. However, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the ending. After all, what could be more fitting in a book which is largely about fantasies than to leave the reader on a note which has him fantasising about what might have happened to the characters, weighing the pros and cons of each scenario? I definitely agree that Faber should have ended the story on a less abrupt note, but I've forgiven him for the openness of the ending. It works for me, even if many other people hate it.
As for conjectures about the ending... My guess is that Sugar and Sophie end up building a new life for themselves in Australia. What do you think, those of you who have read the book? (less)
You have to give Susanna Clarke props for ambition. In itself, her combination of fantasy and well-researched historical fiction isn’t new. Guy Gavrie...moreYou have to give Susanna Clarke props for ambition. In itself, her combination of fantasy and well-researched historical fiction isn’t new. Guy Gavriel Kay has made a career out of it, and a very good one, too. (If you haven’t read any Kay, do yourself a favour and rectify that situation as soon as possible. Seriously, the man is brilliant.) However, to write a huge historical fantasy novel in the language of the time in which the story is set is a different feat altogether, and in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Clarke almost pulls it off. Almost, but not quite.
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is the story of two wizards who change the course of early-nineteenth-century history while failing to notice the many strange things that are going on in the lives of those around them. The first quarter of the book centres on Mr Norrell, a reticent old man who believes he is the only practical magician in England and longs to do something great and useful with his powers. After a bit of a struggle for recognition, he is employed as a weapon in England’s struggle against France, which is just then getting a bit uppity in Europe. Then, suddenly, a second magician appears on the scene -- the much younger and more likeable Jonathan Strange. Mr Norrell takes Strange on as his pupil, and for a while the two magicians work side by side, until, in the grand tradition of such things, their relationship turns sour and master and student become rivals. What follows will determine not just their fates, but many people’s, and indeed the fate of magic in England.
Clarke tackles many themes in her 800-page book, both genuine and fantastical. First of all, there’s the pseudo-historical angle in which Strange helps the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon, tries to cure the madness of King George III and meets other interesting characters of the time. Secondly, there are various social issues, such as the relationship between the classes and the art of knowing one’s place in the greater scheme of things. Last but not least, there’s a spooky alternate universe with which the magicians get to deal, for as they find out rather late in the book, the good old Celtic world of Faerie is far from dead in nineteenth-century England. Clarke doesn’t go in for the kind of thorough world-building many other fantasy authors favour, but her scholarly take on Faerie (set out in weird but oddly entertaining page-long footnotes and journal articles) is consistent, intriguing and original -- a word one doesn’t often come across in reviews of fantasy books.
That said, it took me a bit of time to get into the book. The main problem (as so often with me) was of a linguistic nature -- to wit, the faux-Austenesque quality of the writing. Clarke has an excellent shot at Austen’s dry, witty brand of English, but for the first one hundred pages I simply wasn’t taken in. Rather than being transported straight to Regency England, I was acutely aware of the artificiality of the language, to the point where I occasionally felt like I was reading an unintentional Austen spoof. It didn’t help that the early part of the book centred on a prim, petty, vain old man to whom I couldn’t relate and that the writing was rather detached. I persevered, though, and I’m glad I did, for about 150 pages into the book things began to fall into place. Not only did I get used to Clarke’s language, but I began to enjoy it, finding pleasure in her subtle satire and in such throwaway phrases as ‘there is no word in the English language for a magician’s garden two hundred years after the magician is dead’, which evokes all sorts of things without actually describing them. Even better, Jonathan Strange finally entered the picture, and suddenly the novel got a whole lot better. It got youth. It got flamboyance. It got fabulous feats of magic. It got rivalry. It got loyalty and betrayal, madness and obsessions and characters being redeemed from zombie-like existences. It got a pretty entertaining take on history. It got a cameo by Lord Byron (a boon to any historical fantasy novel -- see The Anubis Gates). And most of all, it got a heart, although the writing continued to be a bit more detached than I liked. Thanks to all these things, I ended up quite enjoying the book, laughing out loud at some of Clarke’s more entertaining notions, such as generals wishing to replace their cavalry’s horses with unicorns so as to gore Frenchmen through their hearts, or Jonathan Strange temporarily moving Brussels to America to get it out of Napoleon’s way because ‘[America] always looks so empty on the maps’. Jane Austen never came up with anything like that, and that’s a compliment.
In the end, then, I enjoyed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell quite a bit. I didn’t love it as much as I had hoped, but I certainly admired it. If only Jonathan Strange could have entered the story a bit earlier and if only the writing could have been a bit less detached, I'd probably have given the book five stars. Not bad, given my initial frustrations with it.
(One day I’ll learn to write concise reviews. Sigh.) (less)
Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of ninete...moreEver wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of nineteenth-century English literature living in 1983 California, accidentally gets to try his hand at it when he is invited by a mad scientist to attend a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810 London. Needless to say, an accident prevents Doyle from returning to his own time (it always does in these books, doesn't it?), so he is stuck in early-nineteenth-century London, where he gets to deal with gypsies, underground dens of beggars, an unpleasant clown, a body-shifting werewolf, a young woman disguised as a boy, a brain-washed Lord Byron, assassins, homunculi, legendary beasts, life without antibiotics and last but not least, an ancient Egyptian sorceror who seems to want something from him. What ensues is an off-the-wall tale full of outlandish conspiracies, time travel, Doppelgangers and magic, and yes, a bit of poetry. The evocation of nineteenth-century England isn't entirely convincing (there are some glaring historic and linguistic anachronisms), and the narrative gets a bit predictable at times (despite the plot being so insane), but the action is non stop, the story unfolds at a cracking pace and there are enough inventive and amusing links to actual history and literature to make even the harshest critic chuckle. In short, it's a fun read -- not perfect, but perfectly entertaining, with some interesting ideas to ponder afterwards.
I'm now wondering where *I* would go if I could travel in time...(less)
Like many readers, I came to this book after seeing the excellent 2006 film based on it. Like many other readers, I ended up preferring the film to th...moreLike many readers, I came to this book after seeing the excellent 2006 film based on it. Like many other readers, I ended up preferring the film to the book as the film is a lot more tightly woven and provides better motivations for the characters' actions.
The story, for those of you who don't know, centres on two Victorian magicians who strike up a feud and spend the next twenty years sabotaging each other's shows and trying to outperform each other, each coming up with a spectacular disappearing act to which the other wants to find out the secret. The obsessive nature of the two men's relationship is drawn well, first from the working-class Borden's point of view, then from the aristocratic Angier's. Their feud isn't motivated particularly well, but that might be the point of the story; feuds often arise over trivial matters. At any rate, the resulting obsession and its destructive effects are painted vividly. The magic tricks are also presented well, although the words describing them of necessity lack the powerful quality of the film's images of them. And finally, there's a nice sense of mystery surrounding some of the tricks (although again, less so than in the film), bringing to mind the thrilling sensation fiction of the Victorian era, which I happen to love.
Sadly, though, the book has many shortcomings. For one thing, Borden's and Angier's diaries are unconvincing as Victorian documents; the language used is far too modern. Secondly, both of the protagonists are fairly unlikeable characters. I realise it's hard to write a story about an obsessive feud without making the characters quite unlikeable, but still, I think Priest could have done a better job on these two. Thirdly, Angier's part of the story is a bit of a drag. Some judicious editing would have been welcome here.
What really sets the book apart from the film, however, is the fact that Priest saw fit to include a modern frame in which the reader is introduced to two of the magicians' present-day descendants, whose lives are still being affected by the ancient feud. At first I hated the modern frame (which the filmmakers wisely left out), thinking it detracted from the main story. Towards the end I came to appreciate it. I actually quite liked the ending, which is spectacularly sci-fi-ish and gothic. It rather stands out from the rest of the book (which is fairly realistic), and as such could be said to be out of out of character, but as far as I'm concerned, it works. I wish the rest of the book were equally spectacular.
I'd give the book 3.5 stars if I could, but in the absence of half stars, I'm going to be tough and give it 3.(less)
English Passengers is one of the best novels I have ever read. A story told by multiple narrators, it initially focuses on a Manx smuggling vessel whi...moreEnglish Passengers is one of the best novels I have ever read. A story told by multiple narrators, it initially focuses on a Manx smuggling vessel which sets off for England only to get chartered to set sail to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) because some crazy reverend is convinced that Van Diemen's Land is the site of the Garden of Eden. Among the ship's many larger-than-life passengers are the reverend himself, a doctor with some rather alarming racial theories and a captain desperate to keep his secret cargo hidden from his passengers and make a profit from the unexpected detour to the other side of the planet. Their adventures on board the ship alternate with those of Peevay, a Tasmanian Aborigine boy who describes his people's struggle against the white settlers who seek to displace them. Eventually the two storylines intersect, setting the stage for war, mutiny and shipwreck and a very satisfying finale that had me grinning for hours.
English Passengers paints a vivid (and frequently shocking) picture of Australian history and the Victorian era in general, and is worth reading for that reason alone. However, the real reason to pick up the book is Kneale's phenomenal writing. Like David Mitchell, Kneale has mastered the art of telling a story from different perspectives, and then some. English Passengers is told from about twenty vastly different points of view, and while some of them ring a bit false, the majority are utterly convincing, not to mention gripping. Both the characterisation and the use of language are superb. Add a ferocious black sense of humour and a ring of truth (part of the Tasmanian chapters is based on true events) and you have a magnificent book, at turns thought-provoking and funny. Highly recommended to anyone who likes a good, entertaining work of fiction with a message.(less)
Loading...
