The Time of the Crack

by Emma Tennant

EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE Look!

Look what's happened!

A crack has opened in the Thames!

Hampstead uplifted high in the sky!

Watch the turmoil spread. See the loony psychoanalysts lead their demented flock around the cracked and broken streets. A religious maniac's at large, she's promising her female believers a new and man-less life on the 'Other Side'.

And through it all goes Baba; dear sweet, kind unliberated Baba, leaving a trail of love and destruction in her wake.

Genres: Novels, Fiction, London

144 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1973

About the author

Since the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-thirties, Emma Tennant has been a prolific novelist and has established herself as one of the leading British exponents of "new fiction." This does not mean that she is an imitator of either the French nouveaux romanciers or the American post-modernists, although her work reveals an indebtedness to the methods and preoccupations of some of the latter. Like them, she employs parody and rewriting, is interested in the fictiveness of fiction, appropriates some science-fiction conventions, and exploits the possibilities of generic dislocation and mutation, especially the blending of realism and fantasy. Yet, although parallels can be cited and influences suggested, her work is strongly individual, the product of an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic, attempt to create an original type of highly imaginative fiction.

Reviews

[Forrest Norvell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short satirical novel feels very English; the satire turns on British class politics, and Tennant is very specific in her descriptions of London locales. It's also very much of its time, as much of the action revolves at goings-on at the London Playboy Club, which to an American reader in 2017 feels more like another planet than another country nearly 50 years ago. The ethnological fascination of the descriptions of a posh English gentleman's club is easily the most science fictional thing about the book.

Also English is the reliance that the text places upon your familiarity with the tradition within British fiction of the "cosy catastrophe". Think of John Wyndham's "The Day of the Triffids" for the most notable example – some engulfing crisis sweeps away most of civilization, leading only class relations and teatime unchanged. JG Ballard launched his career with similar deconstructions of British apocalyptic fiction, but he lacked Tennant's feminist eye and rhetorical fire. Tennant seems to be working through some issues here, and the pointedness of her portrayal of poor, "un-liberated" Baba, the Playboy bunny who plays a role here similar to Death in Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" more than counters the shambolic plot, inconsistently grounded surrealism, and the fact that sometimes her barbs don't land.

Recommended for fans of her later work who want to read something with slightly sharper teeth, as well as fans of Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter. If you enjoy British New Wave speculative fiction, or seventies science fiction in general, particularly of the dystopian variety (see also: John Sladek or Michael Moorcock in his more mordant mode), you'll probably get a kick out of this quick read as well.

[Dave Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

"A triumphant literary joke," trumpets the inside cover flap. If that isn't enough to make the heart sink, I'll quote more: "An anarchic, mind-tingling novel... [that outflanks] reality, [...] at once a fable, a social satire, and a strikingly imaginative view of human dottiness."

Well, the catastrophe Tennant describes is original and I liked some of her descriptions. The houses in Cheyne Walk with their pale pink facades and climbing clematis "leaning drunkenly forwards [...] like exhausted guests at the end of a fancy-dress party" and elsewhere (for Cheyne Walk features prominently, perhaps because the author lived there) "leaning over [the drained river bed] like slender trees in a high wind."

To enjoy the story you'd have to like those throw-everything-at-the-wall farces that seem to have flourished at the cusp of the '60s and '70s. (I'm thinking of movies like The Breaking of Bumbo.) You're not supposed to engage with these characters, just observe their antics with a languid smile. No smiles having appeared by halfway through, I gave up.

[Joachim Boaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review: https://sciencefictionruminations.com...

"Emma Tennant’s The Time of the Crack (variant title: The Crack) (1973) takes the form of a series of character vignettes in a transmogrified London. Despite Tennant’s wide-ranging societal critiques, it’s a brief book–my 1978 Penguin edition clocks in at 112 pages–threaded loosely together by the occasional presence of Baba, a Playboy bunny. The cataclysm in question, the appearance of an expanding crack under the Thames, although causing devastation, doubles as a metaphoric birth [...]"

[Megan Rothwell · Rating 2 out of 5]

This read like a fever dream, and not in a particularly good way.

[Liberty Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny and clever, poking holes in academic theories and the need of humans to understand or ignore the unusual in equal measure. Not really to my taste as all of the characters felt more like characatures than fully rounded human beings.

[Rosie · Rating 2 out of 5]

45th book this year baby!! and oh boy did it make absolutely no sense