Book Review

  • Lost in a Good Book, Jasper Fforde

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    NEL, 2002, 372 pages, C$14.99 tpb, ISBN 0-340-73357-8

    Jasper Fforde made quite a splash with his 2001 debut novel The Eyre Affair, a dazzling mix of humour, alternate fantasy, thriller and romance in a world where barriers between fiction and reality aren’t quite as solid as anyone would think. This assured debut quickly won him the favour of book-lovers around the world, and the least one can say about the sequel Lost in a Good Book is that it won’t disappoint any of his fans.

    Fforde leads us once more into his madcap alternate reality via the narration of detective Thursday Next, a woman of uncommon abilities and unparallelled contacts. Her father is a time-traveller, her colleague is a supernatural slayer and her pet is a dodo. Given that her enemies range from criminal masterminds to the Goliath mega-corporation, it doesn’t take half a book before her husband is erased from history. Next step? Recruitment by a very special policing force and the impending end of all life as we know it.

    Oh, yes, all the fun of Fforde’s first novel is to be found in Lost in a Good Book, and much much more. This sequel deals heavily with the reality/fiction transgressions that shined so brightly in the first book, playing well to his established crowd of book-loving readers. Picking up scant weeks after the events of The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book fulfils the first requirements of a good sequel by confronting its protagonist with the consequences of her earlier actions.

    Once more, Next has to defy the odds against her and navigate through impossible adventures to make it alive at the end of her novel. What’s new in this volume are her added powers and responsibilities as a junior member of Jurisfiction, an organization dedicated to keeping literature free from tampering. You see, all books in history are kept at the Grand Library, most novels have lives of their own and Jurisfiction is the agency that keeps it all in order…

    This particular subplot leads to one of the best scenes in the entire novel: As Next greets her compadres in literary enforcement, she recognizes them easily from classic works. But then…

    “Welcome to Norland Park, Miss Next. But tell me, as I am not so conversant with contemporary fiction – what book are you from?”

    “I’m not from a book.”

    Upon which her interlocutor “looked startled for a moment, then smiled even more politely” [P.265]

    Heh. And if you don’t think that’s mildly clever, just wait until Next uses decreasing levels of entropy to her advantage.

    But one could quote favourite bits for ages without touching upon how Lost in a Good Book lives up to the expectations raised by its title: There isn’t much in this book that isn’t tons of fun, from the daily details of the protagonist’s life to neat ideas (such as communication through footnotes) and an increasingly sophisticated mythology featuring all, er, creation. Readers should rejoice, because Fforde is writing catnip for bibliomaniacs. (From the title of the third book of the series, The Well of Lost Plots, I’m guessing we’re not done exploring meta-fiction. Particularly absent is the role of the authors in this fictive cosmology, which is probably being kept in reserve for a latter instalment)

    This being said, Lost in a Good Book comes with its share of dark moments, characters being eliminated and a finale that is more of a temporary respite than a conclusive victory, suggesting that this is only a middle tome of a continuing series. While few would designate this series as anything but a comedy, I suppose that every character will have to take a few hard knocks until the grand happy ending.

    But don’t let this discourage you: If you enjoyed The Eyre Affair, it won’t take much to convince you to race through the rest of Thursday Next’s adventures. I myself am rationing all Fforde Ffiction to one per month, and there are regrettably only two more to go. Know simply this, though: During Lost in a Good Book, I never peeked at the page number to gauge my progress through the book. Not once.

  • Salt, Adam Roberts

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2000, 248 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-575-06896-5

    Having been favourably impressed by Stone, my quest in reading the whole Adam Roberts back-catalogue properly begins with his first novel Salt. Even without the benefit of more than two data points, I can see a few trends in the entire Roberts oeuvre.

    The first is, obviously, Roberts’ fondness for weird planetary environment. Salt‘s main claim to distinction isn’t the story (an early-colonization tale of war between cities of different cultures) but the environment in which it takes place. As the title suggests, the human colonists of Salt end up on a planet covered in deserts of fine salt. There are only two main water bodies to provide essential fertile ground and we’re constantly reminded of the difficulties in colonizing what remains a hostile planet. Life on Salt is dominated, well, by salt. Howling winds that can sand-blast everything through fine grains of NaCl. An atmosphere containing mostly chlorine. Vegetation that isn’t much more than an organic salt arrangement. Undrinkable water. High levels of solar radiation. It’s not particularly convincing (you’ll have to suspend your disbelief for a while as the colonists manage to raise the oxygen content of the atmosphere from zero to fifteen percent in a few years, and believe a world map with only a few distinguishing features) but it’s a fine and original playground for a short novel.

    The second of Roberts’ distinctive traits would be a tendency toward gentle stylistic experimentation. Salt‘s tale of strife is told, alternately, by Petja and Barlei, two representatives from opposing sides. The Alists are anarchists without a central government, organized only through strong motherhood rights and computer-selected work rotas. The Senaarans, on the other hand, are ultra-capitalist fundamentalists with an absolute belief in hierarchy and military power. You can see the basic problem between those two factions, and it doesn’t take a long time (say, half the book) before shots are exchanged. Roberts chooses to tell the tale through self-serving alternating viewpoints, with both sides colouring events and perceptions to suit their own beliefs. (With sometimes curious ironies: Petja, we quickly learn, is an anarchist who takes up leadership quite naturally) As with Stone‘s “translation footnotes”, Barlei’s manuscript is occasionally interrupted by vocabulary notes from a transcription machine, raising the possibility of built-in censorship in between the teller and the receiver. It’s easy to be fascinated by the alternating viewpoints, which makes the structure of the book more than an empty trick.

    Unusual world-building and gentle structural/stylistic experimentation are both admirable in a Science Fiction book, and they do much to gain goodwill amongst hard-core fans of the genre. Fortunately, Salt benefits from a certain innate interest beyond those two characteristics: I’m a sucker for colonization stories and so the nuts-and-bolts details of how Salt is tamed into (slight) submission were almost endlessly fascinating. Later, the details of the military engagements between Als and Senaar are similarly interesting, without falling in the usual military SF tediousness. Some may have problems with the pacing (and I do have issues with the last tenth of the book) but hard-SF fans should breeze through Salt.

    But easy reading and a bunch of good ideas aren’t all it takes to deliver an above-average reading experience. In fact, they may make obvious fundamental problems that wouldn’t be so glaring in a badly-written novel. In Salt‘s case, what quickly becomes obvious is that the opposing factions are so unspeakably dumb that all pretences of a realistic conflict are erased. The “negotiations” between the two groups have no basis in reality as we know it; even the most elementary political rudiments are ignored. Heck, all of Salt‘s decks are stacked: think “ADD-addled Hippies” versus “Fundie Patriarchs” and reflect on how such political structures could exist. They can’t (and neither could such monolithic ideologies stay pure in a population numbering at least hundreds) and so Salt feels a lot like a contrived moral lesson.

    And what’s the lesson? Wars are pointless. Many die. Wow. Good thing that the book is only 250 pages long, because as it peters out to its weak ending (including a last twenty pages that tells nothing new), I may have been frustrated by the novel’s lack of a stronger point. Oh, wait, I am.

    No surprise, then, if Roberts’s debut is such a mixed bags of impressions. It fulfils a basic level of expectations, but at the same time contains such fundamental flaws that it’s hard to take seriously as a contemporary piece of SF. As a fable, it may have worked back in the sixties. But with the amount of serious details and sophistication, it simply invites a degree of real-world scrutiny that it can’t withstand. Oh well; on to Roberts’ next novel then.

  • Light, M. John Harrison

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2002, 320 pages, C$24.99 tpb, ISBN 0-575-07026-9

    I seldom check other reviews of a book before I write the first draft of my own reviews: doing so could compromise the integrity of my thoughts as they’re initially set down. (I have no such qualms checking other reviews between the first and final draft, if only to see if I haven’t missed anything, so it’s not as if I’m a purist about this.) The exception in this case is that I read a lot of reviews about M. John Harrison’s Light well before purchasing the book. It was hard not to, given how the book was uniformly lauded by just about every member of the online SF critic community. From Cheryl Morgan to Matthew Cheney, sfsite to scifiweekly, Light scored reviews that read a lot like “Buy it, read it, it’s the best book of the decade, in fact it’s so good that I’ll never read anything as good, aaargh, I might as well kill myself now.”

    Wow. How do you resist such unanimous applause? So I chose not to.

    But a caveat came attached to just about every recommendation: Light was a difficult book. A stylist’s book. A stylistic hologram where every sentence was linked to some other part of the novel.

    Now this is exactly the kind of warning that would mollify my enthusiasm. I’m not a very patient reader, nor much of a stylist. In fact, years of reading have revealed that I have something like a tin ear whenever prose quality is concerned: I’d rather wade through journalistic prose to get to a dozen ideas than to read twelve finely crafted sentences containing a single concept.

    So I set aside an afternoon and waded in Light with a certain amount of apprehension. I ended up satisfied and relieved, though I fear that my own take on the book will prove to be a lot less enthusiastic than the Big Boys (and Girls) of SF Criticism.

    Light is made of three strands of story. The first stars a physicist who murders more people than he does science. The second is all about a starship pilot who, in essence, is so melded to the ship that she barely qualifies as human (and flippantly kills even more people than the physicist). The third is about a burnt-out explorer who lives on the run from the mob. The last two story lines take place in 2400; the first in 1999. But they’re all related, oh yes.

    The first few pages make it clear that we’re in for a long read despite the book’s short length and big typeface: the density of the prose is quite amazing, and Harrison had honed the prose for maximum efficiency. It’s a style that requires some unpacking, so don’t be surprised to rewind and read a few sentences a few times to understand what’s going on.

    And yet, it’s not a bad read. Despite my own problems with fine writing, I had no problems making my way through the book, despite the unpleasant characters, tortured psychodramas and alternating viewpoints. I grew worried that the three strands of the narrative wouldn’t mesh together beyond the obvious ironic value, but the last few pages managed to bring everything in a satisfying whole.

    But as I closed the book, I found myself wondering if that was it. Competent, sure. Satisfying, yes, but hardly worthy of all the hype. Re-reading the raves, I belatedly noticed that most reviewers had far more affection for the previous works of Harrison than I did (whereas I approached it as, essentially, a first novel by an unknown author), which probably had something to do with it.

    But at the same time, I would myself agreeing with some of the most laudatory statements about things I may have dismissed too easily upon first reading. Light increasingly seems like one of those novels that appreciate with time: You find yourself reflecting on what had seemed like an easy trick at the time and realizing that it was, in fact, fiendishly clever of him. Harrison makes it all appear effortless, even matter-of-fact, but isn’t that the mark of great art; to make it seem natural?

    Clearly, my opinion of the book is shifting upward even as I write this. Should Light come bundled with a reader’s guide? Maybe reading a few other reviews could help…

  • A Year at the Movies, Kevin Murphy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Harper Collins, 2002, 362 pages, C$22.95 tpb, ISBN 0-06-093786-6

    Ask two cinephiles about a certain movie and you’ll get at least three different opinions. This is, mind you, before the cinephiles use the films as branching point for discussions about life, the universe and everything. Soon enough, you will find that every film can lead to hours of free-ranging discussion, and it doesn’t take much (“So, hey, how was the last Spielberg?”) to unleash the average cine-geek.

    We’re like that. And I say “we” self-consciously, because it’s a bit useless to deny any association with cinephiles when I consider my weekly movie theatre habit, my movie-reviewing column, my obsessive reviewing and/or my own tendency to use movies as intellectual springboards to just about everything else. So when I saw Kevin Murphy’s A Year at the Movies, I didn’t have to make any particular effort to understand what he wanted to do.

    And his particular premise for the book is simple, insane and admirable: For the entire year of 2001, Kevin Murphy (best known as “Mystery Science Theater 3000’s “Tom Cervo”) saw at least one movie per day. And no cheating: At least one movie per day in theatres, with a backup plan that included a portable movie projector. Whoa.

    It’s a quest that would take him on at least three continents to visit theatres big and small, hot and cold. Assorted challenges (such as seeing the same romantic comedy seven times with seven different women) are included in the mix, and the book takes a chapter-per-week (roughly) approach at telling Murphy’s odyssey. Every chapter begins with an itemized list of movies seen, and usually takes the form of a short essay on this or that aspect of cinema-going. From the onset, it’s obvious that Murphy isn’t interested in the films themselves than in the cinema-going aspect. He seldom discusses the merits of specific films, preferring a broader approach suggested by the week’s experience. In short, this is a book for moviegoers, not critics.

    The first few chapters strike an intentionally jarring note. As Murphy bitches and moans about the sorry state of Hollywood movie-making, doubts begin to creep in: is the entire book going to be like this? Saddled with gratuitous slams at mainstream cinema? It doesn’t help that there are contradictions: more artistically challenging films are alternately praised and dismissed, proving that Murphy has as many conflicting opinions as the rest of us. Then there’s the supplemental amusement value in reading Murphy complaining about modern audience’s talkback and ironic detachment… after spending so many years on MST3K.

    But Murphy’s initial snobbishness proves to be an integral part of the book’s main dramatic arc. By the time new year’s eve rolls in, Murphy has learnt to appreciate cinema once more, with perhaps a little bit less condescension. Still, he suffers for his art: his travels take him to googolplexes and the world’s coldest theatre (in Canada, obviously), from Australia’s outback to the long Scandinavian day. It is, indeed, a moviegoer’s odyssey, and from what I could gather from the narrative, he only missed his self-imposed objective once, stuck deep in Italy with a broken projector.

    As a fellow movie geek with plenty of stories to tell (2001 was also a big cinema year for me, from plenty of free screenings, movie dates, first movie-reviewing column, 9/11 at the movies, to breaking out of mild depression during ZOOLANDER), it was remarkably easy to cheer for Murphy one the initial unpleasantness rubbed off. In a year that included JOE DIRT, FREDDY GOT FINGERED, CORKY ROMANO and PEARL HARBOUR, I kept saying: Oh, poor you! But imagine my whoops of laughter as Murphy managed to smuggle an entire Thanksgiving dinner to a screening of MONSTERS incorporated, or his fabulous adventures at the world’s classiest theatres.

    I may be considerably softer on the commercial imperatives of the movie industry (I would love, for instance, to spend time at the business side of Sundance or Cannes) and my threshold for entertainment is far more lenient than Murphy, but there’s no denying that we’re part of the same tribe of cinephiles. A Year at the Movies is an example of great film writing. Read it and cheer. Heck, no, Murphy and I don’t have the same opinions, but that’s how it should be… and I certainly enjoyed disagreeing.

  • House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pantheon, 2000, 706 pages, C$29.95 tpb, ISBN 0-375-70376-4

    Reviewing books on this site for the past few years, I’ve said plenty of ignorant and silly things about a mythical group of “literary types” who would (I imagine) snottily read pretentious literature, pooh-pooh genre fiction and cling to their English Literature degree as if it had any real-world relevance. As I grow older, weaker and softer, I’m ready to admit that this confrontational attitude may not be the best, and that I do no one any favours by opposing the worst clichés of “mainstream literature” to an idealistic image of “genre fiction”. In the real world, isn’t it all middle ground anyway?

    Certainly, books like House of Leaves do a lot to bridge the gap between the two mythical groups I have the unfortunate tendency to oppose. At its heart a horror story merged with a suburban romance, Mark Z. Danielewski’s debut novel also earns the distinction of being one of the most playful literary experiment I’ve ever read, all categories combined. A dazzling mixture of book design, subtle jokes, mixed storytelling and erudite writing, it’s also devastatingly effective as a horror novel.

    Where to begin to describe the unique features of the book? How about this: all mentions of house in the book’s 706 pages (in all languages) are printed in blue. It has footnotes, footnotes within footnotes, circular footnotes, “transparent footnotes”, sidenotes and endnotes. It purports to be a manuscript studying an eerie film about an impossible house, commented by the discoverer of the manuscript, further commented by the editors of the book. It consciously mixes fonts according to the author, features struck-out passages and accelerates the pacing through fewer words per page during action scenes. Pages are printed sideways, at an angle and upside-down. It includes pictures, letters, manuscripts and tons of spurious references to things that don’t exist.

    It is, in short, a book that you can’t read passively. It’s constantly playing along with the audience, daring it to follow as it gets weirder and weirder. One of House of Leaves‘s best aspects is how it gradually reveals its madness, up to a paroxysm where you have to flip over the book frantically to keep up with the action. Wonderful!

    What is perhaps more amazing for genre readers is how the low-key terror of the book ends up being far more effective than pure out-and-out gore horror fiction. The uneasiness is introduced so seamlessly in the course of the character’s ordinary life that a 5/16” discrepancy in measurements is almost unbearable. Then delicious shivers start as shelves don’t meet the walls. Latter scenes featuring a multiplicity of closing doors and (later) a wall dissolving in nothingness produce reactions that have everything in common with the best shock horror movies. There’s never been such a haunted-house story before, and there’s seldom been more efficient ones. But you’ll have to read the book to find out why a line like “Ftaires! We haue found ftaires!” [P.414] can produce an audible “whoah!”

    It’s not all effective, mind you: As playful as it is, House of Leaves often gives the impression that it’s just screwing with the readers for the author’s own perverse pleasure. Most footnotes are supremely gratuitous, but few are so useless as the ones extending for pages on end, simply enumerating names, places and things that are or aren’t of relevance at this point in the story. Sadly, the book is also overwritten: As a big believer in the “Less is more” philosophy, I could have lived quite well without most of the Johnny Truant passages, or some of the most self-conscious passages that exist solely to demonstrate the author’s erudition.

    But it’s easy to forgo even those problems when considering the overall impact of House of Leaves. As a stylistic experiment, it’s not just impressive: It’s compulsively enjoyable. This may not be the most fun you’ll get from a novel this year, but it’s almost guaranteed to be the most fun you’ll have with a novel. (I’m also fascinated by the idea that House of Leaves may be just about impossible to replicate satisfyingly in electronic form for years.) As a genre novel (romance or horror; take your pick), it’s quite good. As a bridge between mainstream and genre, it’s just about perfect. What do you know,maybe it extends forever…

  • The John Varley Reader, John Varley

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2004, 532 pages, C$23.50 tpb, ISBN 0-441-01195-0

    Let’s make this very simple: If you have never read anything by John Varley, you should get this book. If you have read everything by John Varley, you should get this book.

    If you even nominally consider yourself a Science Fiction fan, I don’t have to explain Varley to you. How he was the Larry Niven of the late seventies; how his short fiction effortlessly slapped around the rest of the genre through limpid writing, audacious concepts and relentless optimism; how vital he was at a time where SF was still trying to sort out the fallout of the New Wave. He combined mature gender politics with Heinleinian verve, anticipated cyberpunk (never being properly credited for it) while writing SF that was decades before its times, shocking and delighting contemporary audiences. His combined body of short stories is, even today, an amazing piece of work. And now The John Varley Reader brings a lot of it together: Seventeen tales spanning thirty years of writing, including three Hugo-Award-winning stories.

    If you haven’t read Varley yet, this is the best place to start: His short-story collections are woefully out of print (Heck, I had to read The Barbie Murders in French translation, and I’ve never seen a copy of Blue Champagne to this day) and trying to accumulate his fiction on a piecemeal basis is an exercise in frustration. (Especially when you consider his sporadic publishing history, with novels published in clusters half a decade apart.) This anthology presents a dynamite assortment of stories that have not lost one whiff of relevance even decades later. This last point seems particularly important, so allow me to rephrase it: The is no nostalgic value in The John Varley Reader: Every one of these tale is as current and hip today as they were when they originally appeared. Even now-historical pieces such as “Press Enter []” have an immediacy that remains current to this day.

    And this goes to everyone, including non-SF readers. John Varley is one of the rare SF writer I would confidently recommend to any sufficiently daring non-genre reader. Now you can just give them a copy of The John Varley Reader and wait until their minds explode from all that accumulated pure-SF goodness. How do you explain something like “The Persistence of Vision”? As the description of an alien society made out of humans? As a realistic piece marred by the inclusion of an explicitly SF element at the very end? Heck, Varley’s take on gender roles alone (what with casual gender-switching so prevalent in his “Eight Worlds” universe) is still amazing today, not to mention his gentle brand of optimistic let-live philosophy. He’s not just an excellent SF writer; he’s -in many ways- the example of what a SF writer should be. His stories are readable, clever and provocative: true models of the short Science Fiction form.

    But for die-hard Varley fans, The John Varley Reader includes another bonus in the form of lengthy autobiographical passages. Varley hasn’t led an easy nor a conventional life, and the autobiography that emerges is both heartening and surprising. As he describes his adventures, we’re privileged to get a glimpse behind the fiction and be amazed once again, this time not at the fiction but at the writer. But wait; there’s more. There are previously-uncollected stories, such as the nifty “Just Another Perfect Day” or “The Bellman”, rescued from the time-capsule that is Harlan Ellison’s mythical The Last Dangerous Visions.

    I bought the book planning to read only the introductions and the stories I hadn’t yet read. But I found myself sucked into the whole thing, even the classic stories, re-reading all once more just for the sheer pleasure of it (Ah, “The Barbie Murders”, ah, “The Phantom of Kansas”).

    Hopefully, this collection also signals a return to form for Varley, whose output has been marked by lengthy periods of quiet followed by bursts of excellence. And maybe it’ll even lead new readers to his other work, from the succinct brilliance of The Ophiuchi Hotline to the wide-screen eccentricity of Steel Beach and The Golden Globe. Every half-decade or so, SF critics collectively say something like “thank goodness John Varley is back”. Now let’s hope he’s back to stay.

  • Pen Pals, Olivia Goldsmith

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Dutton, 2002, 360 pages, C$35.99 hc, ISBN 0-525-94644-6

    With the untimely demise of Olivia Goldsmith in early 2004, we can expect her literary output to become a finite set (allowing for the usual posthumous publications). As a reader who likes to make sweeping generalizations about one’s life work, this places me in an advantageous position: I just have to “complete the collection” and I’ll be ready for a scathing assessment. I’m not there yet, but Pen Pals ends up being Goldmith’s last novel published in her lifetime (with Dumping Billy already in the publishing pipeline), leading to a cautious preliminary assessment.

    Unfortunately, the pattern of Goldsmith’s book follows the typical downward arc. From her capable debut with The First Wives’ Club (1992, adapted in a movie, etc.), Goldsmith toned down the “female revenge fantasy” aspect of her first novel to produce a trio of rather moralistic-but-enjoyable docu-fiction studying different industries, from fashion (Fashionably Late) to TV/cinema (Flavour of the Month) to the publishing world (The Bestseller) As the nineties grew to a close, she went back to (poor) female revenge fantasies with Young Wives (2000). Pen Pals ends up being a mixture of both female revenge fantasy and docu-fiction.

    This time around, poor Jenifer Spenser is the victim of a plot hatched by her male bosses: She takes the rap for corporate malfeasance, goes through what is anticipated to be an abortive trial and walks away free in exchange for future considerations. Alas, as you may guess, things don’t go as planned and she ends up serving three-to-five in the pen. Ideal conditions for a revenge plot and a study of the carceral environment? Why, of course: Within pages, Jennifer meets her crew, suffers through the American prison system, engineers a corporate takeover, toughens up and ends up punishing her no-good traitorous boyfriend. Good times, good times.

    As pure entertainment, Pen Pals sustains interest much better than Young Wives (which got old really fast), providing at least the basic requirements of that sort of books. But it’s not quite as fascinating as her previous docu-fiction because the sense of wilful deceit is far greater than it was in, say, Flavour of the Month: Despite a few bad moments early on, prison life turns out to be a blast once snappier outfits are delivered. If we were to believe Goldsmith’s characters, most women in prison are victims of the system, innocent wallflowers that either killed their men when they deserved it, or got lifelong sentences for selling pot to their ailing kids. The few violent and mentally disturbed prisoners can be safely isolated in their own wing (they, of course, are nothing like the heroines of the novel.) Once prison management gets its act together, all can live in peace and harmony.

    Pardon me as I raise an eyebrow.

    Now, it is true that I don’t know much about the subject, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that writing a feel-good novel in a prison environment just begs for selective vision. Even Goldsmith acknowledges as such in the after-word. What compounds this basic problem, of course, is Goldsmith’s knee-jerk repetition of the female revenge theme. While there are ways to make it palatable and not too derivative (see her docu-fiction trilogy for examples), it doesn’t even take ten chapters for Pen Pals to fall into familiar plot templates.

    Goldsmith should be applauded for at least trying to raise awareness of problems related to the modern justice system, the increasing privatization of prisons and the plight of prisoners in an overburdened, underfunded environment. But really, the vehicle she has built to share her concerns actively works against what she’s saying: Whoever remembers Pen Pals weeks after reading it won’t recall an impassioned plea for better prisons: They’ll either remember a heart-warming tale of female empowerment, or a bad novel.

    What’s equally worrisome is that Goldmith’s latter work itself will be remembered more as bad fiction than good entertainment.

  • For us, the Living, Robert A. Heinlein

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pocket, 2004, 329 pages, C$11.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-7434-9154-8

    Wonders are all around us if we know where to look, and so that’s how the wonderful capitalistic system conspired to allow me to buy, in very late 2004, a paperback copy of a brand-new Heinlein novel at the local grocery store. Imagine that.

    I may never fully understand what possessed me to got check out the paltry selection of books at the neighbourhood Loblaws during an uncharacteristic salad-dressing-and-soy-sauce buying expedition, but there it was, in a smart hip cover: For us, the Living, by Robert A. Heinlein, “the author of Starship Troopers”. Imagine my thrill at dropping the novel onto the conveyor belt at the checkout. “Found everything you were looking for?” asked the clerk as per store guidelines. Yeah, I was tempted to answer, I’m buying a brand-new Heinlein paperback and it tickles me.

    It’s not as if I hadn’t heard about For us, the Living previously. The unexpected discovery of a copy of the original 1939 manuscript, shortly before the 2003 Worldcon, was widely discussed in the SF&F field. Reviews seemed unanimous in saying that it wasn’t a very good novel, but it was a mesmerizing piece of work for all Heinlein fans.

    I quickly found out what they meant by that. Yes, For us, the Living is a shoddy novel. A study of a 1939 man somehow thrown in a weird and wonderful new future, it’s not dissimilar to the utopian musings of H.G. Wells’ The Sleeper Awakes and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Structurally, it’s what I’d call a walkthrough novel, designed to show the audience the achievements of a new age: the plot is loosely arranged to allow the hero to explore facet after facet of Heinlein’s imagined 2086, a world where everything seems to be working remarkably well.

    As fiction, thus, For us, the Living isn’t a marvel of plotting, or even of characterization: Our protagonist is designed to be a bland stand-in for the readers. The heroine is saddled with -believe it or not- a three-page footnote explaining her life history. (Yikes!) Dialogue is often of the “As You Know, Bob” variety. (Or, more accurately, “Bob, you ignorant twentieth-century dweeb, this is what you should know.”)

    This being said, the fiction may not be gripping, but there’s no mistaking Heinlein’s gift for compelling prose. Even at its most didactic (and believe me, few things are more didactic than a chess game being used to demonstrate the fundamentals of Social Credit), For us, the Living retains an essential interest: It’s just plain fun to read. And some predictions ended up hitting surprisingly close to the mark. Take a look at this quote, for instance: “…if those bankers who were killed in the raid on Manhattan had expected to be bombed and gassed, there wouldn’t have been any war, But they didn’t. They thought the war would be fought far away by the professionals.” [P.88] Hmm!

    For Heinlein fans (and I classify myself as only a mild one), For us, the Living is a virtual treasure chest of early discoveries. Pay attention, and you’ll find the early outline of Heinlein’s “Future History”. Nehemiah Scudder is mentioned by name, as is Coventry. Rolling roads are introduced. Open marriages caps off the novel’s last chapter. If none of these things mean anything to you, well, you’re not the target audience for the book.

    No, the target audience for the book is composed of SF fans who just want a look at Heinlein’s first finished manuscript, and who will nod in agreement when Spider Robinson, in his introduction, refers to the novel as Heinlein’s “literary DNA.” The kind of SF fans who, upon reading the last line of Robert James’ excellent afterword, “A clean sweep at last.”, will know exactly which of Heinlein’s law of writing is being invoked, and what it ultimately means. The kind of SF fans who, in considering the meaning of “a clean sweep at last”, will feel a rush of blood to their heads and maybe even a dab of salty water in their eyes. A clean sweep at last.

    Oh yes, marvels all around us.

  • The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    NEL, 2001, 384 pages, C$14.99 tpb, ISBN 0-340-73356-X

    Every book has an intended audience, and it’s not hard to see that The Eyre Affair is best dedicated to hard-core book lovers, avid readers and English Literature majors. Who else could appreciate this mixture of romance, adventure, mystery and fantasy in an alternate universe where the Crimean war still unfolds in 1985, where time travel is not unheard of, where the written word is still the dominant form of entertainment and where people can travel in and out of novels?

    Oh yes, Jasper Fforde’s fiction is aimed straight at the intellect of people who wish that coin-operated Shakespeare quoting booths were installed in every train station. That Richard III showings had the popularity of camp ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW revivals. That there would be such a thing as a “literary detective”, ill-paid would it be.

    In the meantime, we can live vicariously through the adventures of the capable Thursday Next, a SpecOps agent with curious family relations, much historical baggage and a messed-up sentimental life. A classified assignment with SO-9 quickly turns ugly as arch-criminal Acheron Hades (such a great character name!) kills off her partner and escapes in the wilderness. It gets more complicated when the original manuscript of Jane Eyre is stolen and Hades starts messing with the novel, changing all copies of the book worldwide…

    Oh, what a charming alternate universe is weaved by Fforde in this first volume of what looks like an open-ended series (three more volumes have been published so far; reviews forthcoming). Satiric and believable, with enough hooks to allow further development if needed, Thursday Next’s universe is a book lover’s fondest wish come true. Barriers between fiction and reality are malleable, the written word reigns supreme and one never quite knows what’s going to happen next.

    As you may guess, the reading pleasure derived from The Eyre Affair is considerable. Narrator Next is a capable heroine with just enough problems to make her sympathetic and even the avalanche of convenient coincidences (let’s see: her father is a renegade time-traveller, her uncle is a genius inventor, she’s an ex-student of Hades and all of those things come into play as the plot unfolds) doesn’t do much to dampen our amusement.

    Perhaps the best thing about it is the sense that this is unabashedly high-brow comedy. I may not have caught all the literary references, but it doesn’t change the comfortable sense of being in an imagined universe that’s utterly sympathetic to hard-core readers. References fly high and low, but catching them all isn’t necessary in order to derive considerable enjoyment out of the whole tale.

    Also worth noting is the easy way Fforde mixes and matches genres in order to develop his story. While a thriller template forms the backbone of The Eyre Affair, it also features a substantial romance and borrows the atmosphere of classic comedy. The alternate universe in which Thursday Next operates is introduced through techniques borrowed from the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, leading to a book you can equally lend to SF fans and mainstream readers.

    Some will say that this book could only have been written in Great Britain, and they’re probably right: It co-exist comfortably alongside the dry wit of series such as Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld sequence while possessing its own distinct identify.

    What else is there to say in order to convince you to go out and buy this book? You know you you are. You already know if a trip to an alternate universe in which books are wildly popular appeal to you. If not, what are you doing reading this review?

    (Sequel: Lost in a Good Book)

  • America (The Book), The Daily Show (and Jon Stewart) presents…

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 2004, 227 pages, C$34.95 hc, ISBN 0-446-53268-1

    Reading America (The Book), I kept flashing back to historian J. Barlett Brebner’s saying that “Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.” I mean; here I am, good little Canadian, reading a parody of an American civics book and laughing at American politics as if they were my own.

    But when you’re in a country sharing a border with the elephant known as the United States of America, there’s not much of a choice: We Canadians know that even the slightest American tremor will have repercussions everywhere else in the world, starting here. Watching America isn’t just a Canadian pastime rivalling hockey: it’s sheer national self-defence. The USA may not care too much about Canada, but we’re still the ones getting shoved around when the elephant gets prickly.

    Hence our national amusement at TV shows like The Daily Show, a blistering look at American politics front beneath a veneer of silly humour and parody. Hence (I imagine) the good sales figures of an America-centric humour book north of the 49th parallel. Some of us know the American political process better than most US citizens. Part of our national pride (I hate to say) is based on not being part of it.

    What the writers of America (The Book) intended was a picture-perfect parody of your usual Civic Education textbook, down to the full-colour hard cover case binding, wide layout and abundant use of photo clip art. There’s even class exercises and a topical supplement covering the 2004 presidential election. Physically, it’s a wonderful design job. Fortunately, the content is up to the presentation.

    America (The Book) is a sarcastic look at the American political process, from its historical origins (“For purposes of this chapter, ‘person’ still means ‘white males’ up until 1870, then ‘males’ until 1920, then ‘all people but really still just white people’ until 1964” [P.62]) to its current implementation. There’s usually one or two good gags per page, and two or three audible laughs per chapter.

    But as you may guess, it’s not all gags and giggles for the masterminds writing the book: America (The Book) is at the same time a sharp criticism of the less-salient aspects of the US political process, starting with the influence of lobbyists, the way amendments are grafted upon unrelated bills and the structural factors discouraging anything but a two-party system. There’s plenty of serious material in the book, as long as you’re willing to see past the jokes. (Sometimes, you don’t even need to: The pixelicious “Third Party Graveyard” [P.110-111] is worth framing by itself.)

    Ironically (or not), the only let-down offered by America (The Book) happens once it starts looking outside its borders. Canada is gratified with recurring and appropriately self-depreciative “Would You Mind If I Told You How We Do It In Canada?” segments, but passages like “All governmental business is conducted in both French and English, because a small minority of Canadians, called ‘Québécois’, never wanted to learn English, and we thought it was rude to ask them to.” [P.59] don’t exactly betray a witty understanding of the situation. Still, it a comfort to realize that all other countries fare worse; Chapter 9 (“The Rest of the World: International House of Horror”) tries to satirize the appalling isolationism of some Americans, but it merely comes across as a lamer, less funny section. Oh well. Also worth noting as a weaker element is the appearance of some Daily Show regular characters, an inclusion that could puzzle readers who aren’t familiar with the TV show.

    But never mind the above: as self-effacing Canadians, we’re just grateful to be able to buy your wonderful books and find mentions of our country in them. It would never occur to us to have the nerve and write, in bold capitals, FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR DEMOCRACY AND THE FATE OF THE REST OF THE WORLD, BUY THIS BOOK AND UNDERSTAND THE POINTS IT’S TRYING TO MAKE BEFORE YOUR BIPOLAR POLITICAL DISORDER ENDS UP LEADING TO THE DEATH OF THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT FOREIGNERS!!!

    Oh no. Never. We’ll just read the book and laugh respectfully. Tee-hee.

  • Guts, David Langford & John Grant

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Cosmos Wildside, 2001, 173 pages, C$20.00 tpb, ISBN 1-58715-336-X

    Horror novels got you down? Can’t stomach yet another exotic supernatural threat to humankind? Won’t stand the dour pretentiousness of King wannabes? Trust David Langford and John Grant to churn out the most awfully hilarious parody of the entire splatter-shock sub-genre and make you like it!

    There is no cover plot description for Guts and you won’t need one as long as you know cheap horror novels: If, say, you see a horror novel named The Rats, does it take a rocket surgeon to figure out what’s the big concept of the book? In fact, when half the novel on these particular shelves are named The [Something], do you need a plot description other than the classic “[Something], which you thought was harmless and maybe even useful, turns out to have an evil mind of its own and start killing just about everyone in the world”?

    I don’t think so. Hence the previous spoileriffic “spoiler-free” paragraph.

    But onward; suffice to say that Langford and Grant have delivered the ultimate horror novel parody. It combines elements of bad SF, awful writing and wickedly sharp satire for what may very well be an unforgettable reading experience. Silly characters (including clueless scientists, cheap bimbos, broad stereotypes and a journalist who just won’t die) are nice, but it’s the consciously over-the-top nature of the writing that makes Guts such a success. I haven’t yet been disappointed by a Langford book yet and Guts is no exception: If you’re a fan of horror and British comedy (and especially British horror that cries out for comedy), this is the book for you.

    “Warning: Offensive Content!” says the brown-bagged cover, and it’s not kidding. Sensible minds and weak stomachs may be best-served by avoiding this book forever. Langford and Grant pull no punches in serving funny horror on a dripping plate of blood and gore. Perhaps the best scene of the book comes along in Chapter Five, which includes the single best parody ever written of those interminable that-guy-should-be-dead knock-down drag-out brains-hanging-out fights between protagonist and unspeakable horror. It’s as bloody disgusting as it’s compulsively hilarious, and that’s exactly the kind of effect Guts is looking for. It’s so over the top that it’s impossible to mistake for anything but self-conscious satire. If you think that DEAD ALIVE and the EVIL DEAD series were a bit on the wussy side, Guts is what you’re looking for.

    Unfortunately, like most humour novels, it’s not lacking in weak moments. The novel is front-charged with good stuff; the latter sequences leading to the explosive ending (involving a sentient cheese, though that’s already saying too much) are a bit of a let-down. Not all plot-lines are equally compelling; I was a bit underwhelmed by the neo-Nazi segments myself. (Don’t worry; this is a perfectly understandable statement in the context of the book.)

    Published by small-scale house Cosmos Wildside, you can bet that Guts won’t be available at your local chain bookstore anytime soon. If the idea of a splattery horror parody appeals to you, if you’re already familiar with Langford’s typically dry British wit, if you love self-conscious take-offs of bad fiction, you can probably figure out if Guts is likely to appeal to you. It’s a wonderful take-off on a sub-genre that has long deserved some humorous disgrace, and a savvy comment on the tools of lazy horror writers. That it’s unbelievably funny is just a bonus.

    Somewhere, an owl hoots (for you).

  • Utopia, Lincoln Child

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Doubleday, 2002, 385 pages, C$37.95 hc, ISBN 0-385-50668-6

    It would be easy to make a wisecrack about how theme park are like catnip for techno-thriller authors, but that would be designating Michael Crichton as “all techno-thriller authors”. It’s not because the guy has made a career writing about theme parks, from WESTWORLD to Jurassic Park, that one has to tar an entire genre with the same brush.

    Still, when Lincoln Child decided on a theme park as the setting of his first solo effort, he had to be aware that reviewers around the world would use Crichton’s oeuvre as a lead-in to their reviews. So there we are.

    Chances are that you have already read something at least co-written by Child: Douglas Preston and him are, after all, responsible for some of the best-selling thrillers of the past decade, The Relic to The Cabinet of Curiosities. What was stopping them from branching off on their own? Why, nothing, and so Child had Utopia out on the shelves in late 2002. (With a very attractive cover illustration which, might I add, shares a non-coincidental look with Swarz and Watkins’s Power Failure. But that’s an observation best left to cover design geeks such as myself.)

    As a thriller, it couldn’t dream of a better setting: Set deep in the Nevada desert within the imaginary theme park of Utopia, Utopia begins as robotic expert Andrew Warne is invited at the park to fix a few persistent problems with the robotic equipment. No, no, the novel has nothing to do with robots taking over the place: you can calm down. It’s merely an excuse to get Warne in place as terrorists make a well-coordinated assault on Utopia. The novel (save for the prologue and epilogue) takes place over a single day packed with thrill-rides, chases and explosions.

    As a setting, Utopia is a whole lot of fun: Child takes an obvious delight in showing us how theme park operate, which is fortunate given how this kind of techno-fetishism detail is exactly what readers likely to pick up Utopia are looking for. Divided in four parts (Gaslight/Victorian, Camelot/Medieval, Callisto/Futuristic and Boardwalk/Beachfront, though most of the story takes place in the futuristic “Callisto” area), the park attracts thousands of visitors per day, depends on the latest technology, makes tons of money, employs thousands of people, bla-bla-blah… The behind-the-scenes details betray either extensive research or a convincing imagination, but there’s not much to complain about given how it’s the setup of the novel. It’s like slipping back in a comfortable story-telling mode. Crichton fans, to name an obvious market segment, are unlikely to be disappointed.

    Things heat up a little bit more when Something Happens and the management of the park receive instructions from carefully-prepared terrorists. They want something, they’re ready to prove how evil they are, they’re obviously getting information from someone on the inside and so the games begin.

    Alas, the novel is never quite as good as its setting suggests. The final goal of the villains seems laughably pedestrian, especially considering the amount of complicated preparations they undertake to achieve their goals when simpler ways to get to it existed. The identity of the traitor can safely be guessed from the very first scenes. The book’s killer-app technology, perfect holography, is used in exactly the same way it’s been used on countless cheap TV series with scarcely any technological believability. Even the pacing of the novel seems to stretch on forever by the end, even as it should go a little bit faster.

    Don’t get the impression that any of this is a catastrophe: if nothing else, Utopia delivers the kind of summertime thriller-reading experience the name “Lincoln Child” has become (half) known for. But there’s something disappointing in putting down the novel and muttering something about how it could have been much better. Hardly essential but, hey, there’s always the next Preston&Child collaboration…

  • Iron Sunrise, Charles Stross

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ace, 2004, 355 pages, C$36.00 hc, ISBN 0-441-01159-4

    Singularity Sky, Charles Stross’ debut novel, was immediately acclaimed as one of the best SF books of 2003 and went on to earn a spot on the Best Novel Hugo Awards nominee list. Its sequel, Iron Sunrise, is even better. Reprising some of the same characters in a different adventure set in the Eschaton universe inaugurated by Singularity Sky, it expands the scope of the series and also shows Stross’ progress as a novelist.

    It starts with a bang, of course, as a sun is detonated in spectacular technical detail. New Moscow has just died, taking along with it billions of people and destroying an entire culture. Who’s to blame for the star-killer? UN investigator Rachel Mansour (co-star of Singularity Sky) is assigned to the case after a messy interlude defusing a nuclear bomb in suburban Geneva. Things quickly get worse when it’s revealed that New Moscow’s destruction has triggered a doomsday device aimed at another star system. As the race against the clock begins to save an entire planet, events spin out of control when the Nazi-like reMastered faction steps onto the stage… and that’s not even saying anything about Wednesday Shadowmist, an exiled teenage girl with a very unusual education who comes to play a big part in the subsequent events.

    There is a lot to like about Iron Sunrise, and perhaps the best thing about it is how it shows Stross’ increasing control over his material. While Singularity Sky told a rather simple story with a lot of padding, Iron Sunrise goes for a more complicated plot and a tighter focus on what’s really important. Rachel Mansour herself is almost a supporting character, what with Wednesday constantly stealing the show. The threat of the reMastered has big repercussions outside the immediate events of the story, and the feeling of the novel is more vertiginous than its prequel.

    A lot of it has to do with the expanded scope of the Eschaton universe as used by Stross, which takes on new shapes and shades. This imagined future is profoundly upsetting, in a way, as it resets the clock on human history and reignites ethnic conflicts on dozens of world without much in a way of impartial mediation. For a writer quickly being known for light-hearted storytelling, Iron Sunrise proves to be surprisingly mean and effective at times: Times of London blogger Frank the Nose’s recollections of Newpeace, for instance, is awful, disturbing and one of the best thing Stross has ever written.

    Sometimes, though, Stross’ quirky sense of humour can get the better of him: I’m worried that the book will age prematurely, what with blogs and slashdotting being bandied about casually in this far-future setting (heck, Iron Sunrise even has a chapter called “Someone set us up the bomb”. Top that!) His energy is contagious, and his gift for putting characters in bizarre situations is getting better. (The sequence in which the characters have to plot inside a panopticon is definitely ingenious.)

    Fortunately, Iron Sunrise keeps moving at a steadier pace than Singularity Sky. The slingshot ending alone is a piece of work, kicking the novel in high gear just as you thought everything was winding down. Alas, Stross confirms on Usenet that he’s grown doubtful about the Eschaton universe and has no immediate plans to return to it. Too bad, but then again we’ve got more than enough to satisfy us with those first two volumes.

    As of this writing, Iron Sunrise looks like a leading contender for the Hugo Awards, helped along with Stross’ physical proximity to Glasgow in time for the 2005 Worldcon. Best of luck to him; the book certainly deserves consideration. It’s a fine piece of modern SF by a rising star of the genre, one who can be counted upon to deliver the good like a true professional.

  • The McAtrix Derided, Adam Roberts (as "The Robertski Brothers")

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Gollancz, 2004, 300 pages, £6.99 hc, ISBN 0-575-07568-6

    I would like to write that after reading Adam Roberts’ Stone, I was so blown away that I bought everything he wrote and then tracked down everything he’s done under pseudonym and ended up with The McAtrix Derided in my hands. It would be a good story.

    Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be true. While I was impressed by Stone enough to buy the rest of Roberts’ SF novels, the truth is that I would have bought this Matrix prose parody regardless of the author. To know that Roberts was the not-so-pseudonymous author of it only made it more amusing to me.

    Now, I’m told that parody is a hot genre in the UK right now. Driven by such titles as Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody and The Soddit (another Adam Roberts product, as “ARRR Roberts”), the category has known a brief white-hot flash of popularity in 2004, and The McAtrix Derided rides squarely on the crest of that particular wave. I’ll leave it to other scholars to discuss the pop-cultural implications of such a parasitic phenomenon, but the bottom line for me is this: I’m such a whorishly undiscerning fan of THE MATRIX trilogy (despite my progressive disenchantment with the latter volumes) that any parody is all right with me.

    Certainly, The McAtrix Derided has the decency to use the usual tools of parodies: The thinly-disguised puns on characters’ names (here, “Nemo”, “Thinity”, “Smurpheus”, “The Frurnchman” and so on), the roughly-parallel plot structure, the silly alternate explanations, the gentle jabs at the source material’s plot holes and the affectionate take-down of the pop phenomenon surrounding the original work. It’s all quite amusing, especially if you’re ready to be amused. After all, parodies are usually as good as the amount of slack you’re willing to cut them.

    The good news are that I was indeed quite amused by the whole book. It starts before even cracking open the covers of the book: As -I gather- is the case with other parodies, The McAtrix Derided comes in a tiny 6"x5"x1” hardcover scarcely bigger than my hand: if any book format can be called “cute”, this is it. Beyond the twin functions of cutting down on costs while making the thin narrative seem longer than it actually is (most pages contain less than 250 words!), it’s a format that, like most needlessly tiny objects, asks you to smile before you even start reading.

    Given that this is a parody, a summary of the story is probably irrelevant. Suffice to say that as Gordon Everyman (Database Coordinator) discovers the hidden truth about his world, readers are asked to follow along the usual slight gags and silly comedy of an extended MAD-magazine satire. Particular highlight include “Gents” antagonists (as in “Oh no, a gent!”), a mad dancing sequence, perpetual befuddlement from Gordon/Nemo (which allows Roberts to poke holes into THE MATRIX’s most dubious assumptions) and a series of bonus pages treating the book as a DVD release (along with Author’s Commentary, Deleted Scenes, promotional offers, previews of other “Victor Gollum” videos and promotional trailers that had me laughing like an idiot.)

    But the real treat comes late in the narrative: While most of the book is a parody of the first MATRIX film, the latter half touches upon the second film and then leaves the whole original trilogy behind for the conclusion. It’s not for nothing that the third part of the book is titled “The McAtrix Derrida’d”: It’s a clever conclusion that tones down the comedy and works both as a conclusion to the book and an alternate explanation for the original movie trilogy. Most interesting, and I say this despite the deliberately ambiguous conclusion. MATRIX fans will find here a reason to track down the book independent of the appeal of a parody.

    The best part of The McAtrix Derided (why couldn’t they call it The Mactrix Derided?) is that it’s a product by a real SF author, and not simply a literary hack chosen at random: Roberts knows his science, likes THE MATRIX, understands the appeal of a good story and never lets his natural decency as a human being stop him from cramming another lame pun in the story. You have to respect that kind of commitment.

  • Ghosts of Vesuvius, Charles Pellegrino

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Morrow, 2004, 489 pages, C$39.95 hc, ISBN 0-380-97310-3

    Charles Pellegrino’s two biggest gifts as a scientific vulgarizer are his ability to make unlikely connections between seemingly disparate elements, and his tendency to extract the last drops of dramatic intensity from these connections. Used in moderations, they can take any readers’ breath away. Overused, they can transform a book in melodrama. Ghosts of Vesuvius, Pellegrino’s latest and most ambitious work, succeeds despite nearly tripping over these elements of Pellegrino’s style.

    Regular readers of these reviews already know the tremendous amount of respect that I have for Pellegrino as both a Science Fiction novelist (Dust, The Killing Star) and as a scientific vulgarizer (Ghosts of the Titanic, Chariots of Apollo, Return to Sodom and Gomorrah). I was delighted beyond words to see him briefly featured in James Cameron’s documentary GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS. He’s one of the very few writer on my buy-on-sight list; please colour the following review accordingly.

    A quick look at Pellegrino’s bibliography will reveal a fascination for catastrophe: Life on Earth as we know it ends in both of his solo novels while two of his non-fiction books are entirely about the Titanic. In his latest work, Pellegrino tackles nothing less than the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius and, two thousand years later, the tragic events of 9/11. In both cases, Pellegrino goes in the field: first as a member of the team digging and analyzing the remnants of Pompeii and, later, as part of the team investigating the remnants of the WTC. (And as fans may guess, there’s also new Titanic-related material here and there in the book; see GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS for details..)

    The subtitle of the book says it all: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall and Other Strange Connections. A mere summary of the high points of the book fails to do justice at the incredible stuff Pellegrino pulls out of the fire: A dramatic explanation of how Pompeii died, complete with a lesson in high-energy physics. The incredible phenomenon of “shock cocoons” in which people can escape, unscathed, from the worst catastrophes. (Pellegrino himself being a case study in these matters) The heart-wrenching stories suggested by the excavations in Pompeii. The unbelievable events surrounding the collapse of the World Trade Center.

    But as good as this material is, it’s never better than when Pellegrino starts making links between then and now, between this and that, between there and here. Roman and American arrogance, the fragility of existence on a geologically active Earth, the exploration of space and sea are all tied together in a strand of human history that does much to eliminate differences between all. Ghosts of Vesuvius is awe-inspiring in the way great science books often are, by making the obvious marvellous again.

    But Pellegrino, as a humanist, also manages the opposite trick, by finding the human touch in exceptional events. Slaves swallowed by a pyroclastic cloud or firefighters atomized by a falling tower; all are ordinary people in extraordinary situations. There’s plenty of grief and hope in this book, and it doesn’t matter if the tragedies happened three years or two thousand years ago.

    It adds up to an impressive, often disjointed five hundred pages. Pellegrino writes in a scatter-shot stream-of-consciousness style that makes the greatest of connections but can be hard to follow if you’re expecting a structured work. Thankfully, he doesn’t allow the drama to become melodrama, but the tremendous amount of heartfelt sentiment in this book may surprise those expecting a more dryly clinical work. (There’s also a good index, if that helps)

    Fans of Pellegrino will be delighted to find out that the man has been up to much since his last book (Ghosts of the Titanic, 2000) and get even more tantalizing hints about the infamous “Pellegrino Effect”. Newer readers may have to work a bit harder to get used to the flow of the book, but once that’s done, only one thing is obvious: Ghosts of Vesuvius is an exceptional book combining hard science and heart-felt sentiment. Pellegrino triumphs once again. So, when’s the next book due?