TOF Opening Round 3 - GWO v. Version Control

[Amy]

Round 3: Girl, Woman, Other v Version Control judged by Bob

[Bob]

Confession time: when I first read Version Control in 2017, I gave it 3 stars. I faulted the book for a pedestrian plot rooted in humdrum domesticity with only a hint of some tasty sci-fi elements sprinkled in. As for Girl Woman Other in 2019, I gave it 5 stars. I praised GWO for its novel approach to connectivity, how fiercely black and woman-centric I found it, and it was the number 1 book on my end-of-year Facebook post. When I received the first round assignment I was a little disappointed as I knew how it was gonna go. Worried about that appearance I went back and edited my Goodreads reviews—I know how clever you lot are. I vowed to give the books a re-read with fresh eyes but I found the prospect a little daunting as they’re both about 500 pages. I normally take a break between door-stoppers like this; my favorite books all tend to be sub-250 pages. Frankly, as I’ve gotten older, I find it hard to motivate myself to read something over 350 pages—you have to be an exceptional writer…or a novel shortlisted for the Tournament of Books.

I’m going to proceed with the presumption that anyone reading this judgment has read the books so I will dispense with any recap or introduction to the characters or general synopsizing of the novels themselves. I hope you can forgive me—but it’ll likely make this judgment shorter.

Version Control is a book I originally experienced via Scribd audio. This time I bought a physical copy on eBay and cleared my reading schedule. When it arrived, I uncapped my black Paper Mate Flair! felt-tip and set to it. And from the beginning, I had a smile on my face. Despite the somberness of much of the book (the impending death of a child can be nothing if not somber), it was a pleasure to read. Aware that it was set in an alternate near-future, I kept catching little bits of alternate-reality that got my sci-fi senses tingling: Reagan on the $20 in one timeline; Rebecca having dreams where she is contacted by people “in other histories, where things turned out differently”; the lovability customer whose profile picture won’t load which suggests to him that he is “a lie”; the President actually being a proxy algorithm; Sean being visited by a vision of his father in the second timeline; the two Rebecca’s at the end and Philip and co. getting swept away by whatever nameless branch of the military was on the other end of the phone call.

The writing to me this time around was more fluid, I found the plot more engaging than I did initially, and I found the sci-fi elements not so much sprinkled in as they were nuanced, eased into normal life, with the ramifications of their application more pronounced. I was able to read and re-read the sections of the book explaining the causality violation device, ‘time-travel’, and the resets, and the book became clear to me. Dexter Palmer is a smart writer, but he is also a plotty/pulpy writer, and he marries these two talents quite adeptly in this book. The audiobook experience did not do his writing justice.

The only real problem I had with the book this time was Philip’s characterization--I often found myself comparing him to Sheldon on Big Bang Theory. All over the book, I wrote things like “Oh, Sheldon, what are you doing?” and “That’s Sheldon for you.” He sometimes came off as a brilliant, on-the-spectrum caricature of a physicist.

Enamored by the process of reading like I did in college, and enthused because of how well VC came across, I eagerly jumped into Girl, Woman, Other, a book I loved the first time around. Right off the bat, I found the writing jarring, it’s poetic line breaks unsuited to a flowing narrative. When I read poetry, I treat line breaks seriously, and I pause at the end of a line. If it doesn’t read right, I try again as a normal sentence. Trying this with GWO felt pretty fruitless so I dispensed with that effort right away, but it left a sour taste in my mouth which is at odds with my initial reading. In the commentariat when GWO lost to Lost Children Archive, I cited it’s staccato rhythms as a plus, that it “lent a lot of credibility to the writing.” Not anymore, I guess. I was ill at ease, and after the second chapter, Yazz’s first adventures in college, I think I started looking for excuses to quit the book. Yazz I found simultaneously endearing and a sort of right-wing caricature of contemporary woke feminism, a person who collects friends like she’s trying to curate a Benaton/Rainbow Coalition set (I think that was the point, and she came across as a little precious, a little naive, but with good intentions).

As I read and read, the messaging about equal rights, feminism, domestic abuse, trans rights—don’t get me wrong, I’m a right reader for this book—started to feel didactic and I started to focus less on the narrative. It reminded me of a time capsule—the perfect book to encapsulate a moment. And that moment was 2019, and a more ignorant Bob. In 2021, it felt...outmoded. To be fair, it’s hard-done-by by its own success. Reading the book, feeling the messaging coming at me, I felt like I’d heard it all before--and I had...in GWO, two years ago.

I love the multi-view, multiplicity of voices (I think the characters ranged between 18 and 90), but I wanted more from some of them. Bummi was a favorite of mine, but her chapter felt like a wikipedia article. I loved her startup, I loved the affair she was having with Omofe, but it ends and the story just blasts through the rest of her life. And Winsome, oh, I could do with a book about Winsome. But we just flit from life to life, and even if they’re connected, I wanted more. GWO left me wanting.

I don’t think the reading order hurt GWO’s chances, but coming after VC didn’t help much either. The experience of reading these books the way I did (open-eyed, felt-tip at the ready) was invigorating if not exhausting. I read for substance, surely, but largely I read for pleasure—the pleasure of the book itself, the pleasure of engaging with others, here and in the world, that have read the book, the pleasure of engaging those that have not. This time around, Version Control gave me the most.

WINNER: VERSION CONTROL

[Kip]

Very well done Bob. Really loved Dexter Palmer's subtle sci-fi elements, not once trying to show you how smart or clever he can be. But always, always, always there only in benefit of the story. An author I had never heard of before ToB who has written 2 of my very favorite books.

[Amy]

Yay! I'm so pleased your experience shifted on Version Control! I found the speculative future pieces to be so much more the point of the sci-fi than the 'time-travel' - though I love the implementation here (similar to that of Recursion which I highly recommend as more of a sci-fi thriller) - enough so I think it needs it's own moniker in the vein of "Back-to-the-Future vs. Time Cop Rules."
I think about the pervasive social media and Rebecca's dating app company that was scraping user's data constantly, especially in light of the recent Facebook scandals. And VC was the first time I truly pictured a near-future of self-driving cars and what that would look like in 5-10years.

[Phyllis]

Bob wrote: "Confession time: . . . WINNER: VERSION CONTROL."

Yes!!! Here's to you, Bob, for being able to clear your memory of your original conclusions and keep an open mind while re-reading these two books. That your judgment today differs from your original reading of the books seems to speak to several things. First, it highlights that there is definitely a perceivable difference between listening to a book on audio and holding it in your hands to read with a pen. Second, it shows how books age over time and in light of the intervening events, both personally for the reader and in the wide wide world at large. But thirdly I think it illustrates how reading a single book and deciding your own enjoyment of it is a very different enterprise from reading two books to determine which you like best between them.

I really enjoyed both of these books. To me, they each take a unique story-telling approach and use of prose & timelines -- something not found in just every literary novel -- and I enjoyed the uniqueness of each of them. But I found Palmer's Version Control to be far more nuanced & subtle in its handling of the big issues of humanity. It seemed as if Evaristo was more formulaically checking all the social issue boxes in Girl, Woman, Other, even as she did so with astounding skill. Like you, I voted for Version Control in this round.

[Jan]

Three outstanding judgments! What a group!!

[Heather]

Yay! I love both of these novels and would have been hard-pressed to pick a winner between them, but I suspect I would have reacted similarly to a reread of GWO at this particular moment in time. Whereas Version Control, man, that book never goes out of style.

[C]

WOW - I saw the brackets and really thought Bob would pick GWO but 'Version Control' is my favorite of this tournament, so I'm happy for the switch. I'm very appreciative that you gave 'Version Control' the paper re-read!

WHO KNEW that the arbitrariness of the ToB would also extend to individual readers during re-reads? Uncanny. It's interesting the timing of reading GWO - I also read it in 2020, so maybe reading it in 2020 or later it didn't hit me like it would have in 2019.

[Nadine in California]

My first (and only) reading of both books gaveme the same feelings as Bob, so now I really need to re-read Version Control - I get the sense we may overlap again! But I don't want a re-read of GWO, just in case my five star feelings for it change ;)

[Elizabeth]

Such a fantastic judgment, Bob, thank you! And I'm so glad you got to re-read and appreciate VC, which was my favorite book in the year I read it. It really is just such a pleasure, and there's so much under the surface of that fun story. Dexter Palmer is a genius, he's one of my top 5 authors and I'll pre-order anything he writes going forward.

At first I was surprised to see you chose it over GWO, but letting the decision sit I absolutely get it. I adored GWO when I read it, it was easily my favorite that year as well. I loved the interweaving stories and characters, I'd be sad when one storyline ended but then I'd immediately be sucked up in the next. Unlike you I really liked her use of language, to me the structure and flow felt like poetry.

But in the end, when deciding what to re-read for Favorites, I found myself balking at the idea of re-reading this (but excited about VC!) I wasn't sure why, since I'd loved it so much in the first go, but maybe it's for the reasons you brought here. Its messages are important, and they'll always be important, but I don't need to hear them again in the same way, without going deeper. (If she wrote another novel just furthering Bummi's story, though? I'd be all there for it.

[Bob]

Elizabeth wrote: "If she wrote another novel just furthering Bummi's story, though? I'd be all there for it."

Your lips to Bernadine's ear.

[Lauren]

Cheers to your confession, Bob! I will work on forgiving you for writing in your books and purchasing them on ebay (which I didn't know still existed)... ;) I'm with you on hesitancy to pick up those longer books. In keeping up with this group and four book clubs my print-book-reading-time is limited to few extras each month and I can either read one long book or two or three short/mid-length books, so I tend to go with the latter.

It's fascinating how the re-reads here changed your mind. I also listened to VC on audio and see how I might enjoy it even more (it was a four-star read from that), if I went back for the print version. As with Elizabeth, I think I'd prefer not to re-read GWO since I was so enchanted by it with my first read, and I wouldn't want to change that feeling. I might flip through it a bit to study her skills in character development though, which was a key takeaway for me with that book. She sucked me in and got me to care about those characters in about one page, time after time, so I was highly impressed by that.

Thanks for your thoughtful judgment here!

[Bryn]

Great write up!! I wish I had time to reread both of these novels.

[Bob]

Lauren wrote: "Cheers to your confession, Bob! I will work on forgiving you for writing in your books and purchasing them on ebay (which I didn't know still existed)... ;) I'm with you on hesitancy to pick up tho..."

Yeah, I wanted a hardcover so I went to eBay!

[Heidi]

This was a great judgement. It’s fascinating to think about how much the rereading impacts the experience, trying to relearn a lesson you had already learned from the same source… Something about subtlety. These are rambles, but your thoughts were great to follow, Bob. Thanks!

[Nicholas]

Really enjoyed reading this judgement, Bob, and you've convinced me to give Version Control a go. (Not a big sci-fi guy)

As strong and pleasurable as the writing is in GWO, the book's relentless social issues box-ticking to which you refer undermined both the message and the artistry for me in the end.

Unnecessarily long books are a new-ish bane for me too. Too many books that are over 300 pages shouldn't be. Writers should respect their readers precious time and edit themselves judiciously. With that being said I'm currently reading the 900-page monster 'City on Fire' so go figure. I'll never learn.

[Bretnie]

What a tough decision!

I very rarely re-read a book, and your description at first thought I should do it more (maybe I'll enjoy a book I didn't like as much!) or less (what if I don't love my favorite books as much anymore?!). Maybe the moral is to re-read books that were just ok, but not your favorites? Hm, I think that might be tough for me...

Anyway, well done with an impossible choice. Loved both of these books!

[Bob]

Nicholas wrote: "you've convinced me to give Version Control a go. (Not a big sci-fi guy)..."

Do it!

[Kyle]

Version Control was a really great surprise (and the only one out of the Favorites that I hadn't read). Granted I shouldn't have been shocked at its quality - I had already loved Mary Toft - but I loved how each chapter had some sort of clever insight or unique take on "modern" life. Certainly not a "sci-fi" book as we usually think of them.

I will say that there should be a content warning (dealing with the loss of a child) - I'm never a real fan of that, given that I'm a dad, but the book was good regardless.

[Ellen]

The perfect judgment, Bob, and not just because I agree with every word!

[Ann A]

I thought both books were great, but would also pick VC. I stand (or bow) in awe of Dexter Palmer's genius.

And might I add our judges are amazing!

[Care]

Applause and up-vote for Bob! I really enjoyed reading this judgement. Excellent. I will read anything by Dexter Palmer. I thank the TOB for introducing me to his work.

[Risa]

Yes, exactly. I thought GWO was ... fine ... and I was happy for those stories to be told. Version Control has more staying power for me, and that is the main criterion I am personally using as we decide between and among these terrific books. Thanks, Bob!

[Lark]

Bob wrote: "This time around, Version Control gave me the most...."

It's so interesting how your feelings shifted, Bob. I want to read Version Control again now that I've been stunned/amazed by Mary Toft. There is something about Dexter Palmer's books that make me feel I need to teach myself how to read them. His stories are so full of happenings that I forget how well-written they also are--they entertain me, so I think they must be less artful--but they aren't!

Evaristo feels beyond criticism, but in a bad way--she shouldn't be. She's trying to be artful and the trying-ness sometimes gets in the way of the story for me. More so with GWO than with Mr. Loverman, which I loved.

[Peggy]

Yay yay yay!

The discovery of Version Control and Dexter Palmer inspired my undying love for the ToB. It is a book that has stayed with me like few books have and one I randomly think about pretty regularly. I think the passion with which I press it on people makes them back away slowly and actually NOT read it. Ah, well. Their loss.

Another great judgment (and not just because my fave advances), so thanks to Bob!

[C]

Peggy wrote: "Yay yay yay!

The discovery of Version Control and Dexter Palmer inspired my undying love for the ToB. It is a book that has stayed with me like few books have and one I randomly think about pretty..."

Aw, well I wholeheartedly thank you for your enthusiasm for 'Version Control' and your work getting the word out there. :D I wonder what lovely book Palmer will gift to us next...

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

I'm sure the organizer knew you could handle two mighty tomes! I kind of feel like I want to stick with my initial impressions of these two and didn't revisit them. :)