Keep Hoping Machine Running

Monday was a great, if very hot, day to s how Bamberg & Franconian Switzerland to londonkds, Tuesday was for going back to Munich and various rl stuff, so I couldn't get more than my Borgias review finished, and the next few days will be busy as well before the departure to the grand journey of the year on Sunday, so I shall post my book reviews now, before RL strikes again:

Melissa Scott and Amy Griswold: Death by Silver. I hestitate to call this Steampunk because there are actually no gadgety technical inventions in this particular Victorian tale; rather, it is an Alternate Universe with magic in it. Otherwise, it's a good old fashioned Whodunit with two gay detectives (well, technically one is a detective, one is a metaphysician), and also, courtesy of a lot of crucial flashbacks, an entry in the boarding-school-was-hell genre I mostly associate with British writers and their memoirs, since one of our two heroes originally gets hired by the father of their mutual public school nemesis who used to bully them horribly back in the day.

The book reads well paced, and the characters are engaging; I liked both Julian and Ned (who, btw, already have a sexual relationship when the novel starts; the hindrances to be overcome by them as far as their relationship is concerned are emotional in nature), and I thought the authors did something interesting in the way they use Victor (aka the public school bully of old) in the present. Usually such characters either end up as supervillains and/or total losers, or they do a complete U-Turn after having a moral awakening, atone for their bullying by becoming heroes. Whereas while adult, present day Victor doesn't fall in either category. As an adult, he's capable of positve traits and relationships as well, but he clearly never realised that what he did at school was truly horrible, or that Julian and Ned have good reason to despise him (as opposed to going through the old boy, well met school chum routine). Which strikes me as psychologically plausible. Also, the book never belittles just how badly the public school events were, and that Ned and Julian have a right to feel about them they way they do. The sense of powerlessness when the system backs the people having power over you (and indeed produced the abuse of power) in the flashbacks is truly frightening.

In the present day, I was especially intrigued by Victor's wife, of whom we see alas little, but her few scenes hint at so much more that I wish someone would write fanfiction about her. The various suspects and the killer are delivered in a familiar-yet-not-way that comes with liking your Victorian mysteries, and giving them your own spin. Just a great way to pass the time on a lengthy train journey, which was how I read the novel last week.


Neil Gaiman: The Ocean at the end of the Lane. Speaking of familiar-yet-not tropes, this is unmistakable a Gaiman tale: every day life mingling with myths, passive point of view character encountering vibrant supernaturals, cats, a child's emotional landscape intensely written. In the first person, which previously I had only read in short stories of this author, who preferred third person in his longer texts, and in some ways, this feels more like a long short story or novella than an novel. Which I don't mean critically, btw. I'm just remembering my teacher drumming into us that a novella is defined by its focus on one particular "singular event" whereas a novel deals with a longer tale of multiple focus events.

I read it quickly, and loved reading it, which includes loving to be scared. The most disturbing sequence accesses what I think must be an atavistic fear in children and adults alike: your parents turning against you and the realisation of your complete powerlessness, the sense of being trapped. I don't remember who wrote about the difference in the authorial voice of Tom Sawyer versus the one in Huckleberry Finn that in the first novel, the author is looking back on childhood from an adult pov, from the outside, with amusement and affection and awareness of how it felt, to be sure, but definitely from the outside; whereas Huckleberry Finn pullls of creating a child's point of view from the inside. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has a framing narration in which our narrator, who is nameless like the second Mrs. de Winter, is an adult looking back, while the main story is set at a point where he's seven years old; and strangely enough, Gaiman pulls off both at the same time. I.e. you are aware, and believe, that this is an adult looking back on how he felt as a child, with the added difference the years make, but at the same time, the child's feelings and thoughts come across as unfiltered and true.

I think it's perfectly accessible and compelling if you've never read a story by this author before, but if you have, you're bound to be either delighted or annoyed at various points when encountering, shall we say, certain elements one might have read elsewhere in other shapes. Count me in the delighted category: meaning, when I figured out who the Hempstocks had to be, I went "but of course! That's great!" rather than "Here he goes again". (A bit like realising that Silas is a vampire in The Graveyard Book despite the fact nobody at any point in The Graveyard Book calls him that and the word is never used in the narration, either.) I was also tickled by the occasional historical allusion, as when a character mentions "Dickon and Geoffrey and John" as one king's sons, or "Red Rufus" as another king. It's the kind of thing that works if you're aware of the reference but doesn't distract if you're not.

There is a passage in which the narrator brings up the difference between the children's books he reads and enjoys and myths he also reads and loves just that bit better - liking myths because the rules are so different, or rather, there aren't any, the just aren't rewarded, gods are not role models or even good, they just are. He brings up a story of Hathor (the Egyptian goddess) which I hadn't been familiar with, which could be an actual myth or one Neil Gaiman just made up, but one of the reasons why I love his style is that neither would surprise me. And The Ocean at the End of the Lane, while being marketed as his first adult novel since Anansi Boys, to me feels like both a children's book - not just because of the child protagonist, because it does fit the genre - and a myth - because the supernatural entitities in it, be they helpful or damaging, aren't declared to be good or evil, "they just are", to use a frequent Gaimanism.

Lastly: just as you can rely on the cats in Neil Gaiman stories being written with sympathy, he really seems to have an issue with birds. Not that I blame him. Those beaks are scary.