First the good news, as they say.
I'm grateful to Peppermint Ph.D. for a glowing review of A Hangman for Ghosts. What's intriguing to a writer about this review is the list of "Historical 'stuff' I've Been Googling." It's a pleasure to see the nuggets of historical detail one scatters, large and small, being picked up by a reader.
Now, my normal response to a review such as this, among other things, would be to click the G+ button, which adds a "like" to your stream on the Google+ social network. Google+, however, as many of us will know, is condemned, and the executioner is little moved by the small and active communities among writers and others that found a home there.
I should assure readers that Blogger, and Displaced Pieces, are going nowhere, but the option to share and +1 posts on Google+, as well as any Google+ comments coming back to the blog, will be deleted as of February 4.
If you are a follower of my work through Google+, please keep coming back to Displaced Pieces, and the excellent network of blogs around historical and mystery fiction.
Showing posts with label historical fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label historical fiction. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Friday, September 16, 2016
Unfinished, not unread
I firmly believe that writers should be readers, that reading is an act of faith in writing and essential to the craft.
And while I dislike leaving a book unfinished, it sometimes happens that, due to work, writing, or other contingencies, a book has to be set aside. Sometimes, this is because a book is dull, unreadable, or impossible, but mostly not.
At the moment, I'm coming close to the end of a revision of A Hangman for Ghosts, and so I have less time than usual for reading. But, as a record of my efforts, here are three partial reviews of three books started and left behind, through no clear fault of their own.
Catton's model for the Victorian multi-plot novel, however, is not Dickens but George Eliot. Middlemarch springs to mind, for the breadth interaction and the close attention to the minutia of human interaction. The danger here, for Catton, is that much like Eliot she often describes the secret key, the inner nature of her characters, in subtle terms, but – unlike Eliot – she cannot quite reflect the inner character in their outer actions.
And while I dislike leaving a book unfinished, it sometimes happens that, due to work, writing, or other contingencies, a book has to be set aside. Sometimes, this is because a book is dull, unreadable, or impossible, but mostly not.
At the moment, I'm coming close to the end of a revision of A Hangman for Ghosts, and so I have less time than usual for reading. But, as a record of my efforts, here are three partial reviews of three books started and left behind, through no clear fault of their own.
The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
I owe a significant debt of allegiance to this, an historical novel, also a literary mystery, by a New Zealand author. It is a considerable work, with a deep and complex narrative, rich structure, and sensitive voice. It probably deserves greater attention that I could spare at the time.Catton's model for the Victorian multi-plot novel, however, is not Dickens but George Eliot. Middlemarch springs to mind, for the breadth interaction and the close attention to the minutia of human interaction. The danger here, for Catton, is that much like Eliot she often describes the secret key, the inner nature of her characters, in subtle terms, but – unlike Eliot – she cannot quite reflect the inner character in their outer actions.
The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro
A literary fantasy by a significant author. Certainly there is something haunting and evocative about his post-Roman Britain, a land where fantastical beasts and terrors are real, and where the culture is as contained and occasionally fearful as the upper-classes of England before the Second World War, or in 1930s Shanghai. But there is, I think, a limit to the effectiveness of Ishiguro's rigorously affectless prose. His characters may have fenced off their memories and feelings, but in a world of magic and looming strangeness, should their feelings also be fenced off so effectively from us?
The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss
Completing the move to more commercial fantasy, The Name of the Wind is engaging, highly readable, a perfect traveling companion (which is how I started reading it). The fictional world suggests depth and interest, and the work is well-written, occasionally poetic, which serves it well. Unlike Ishiguro, however, Rothfuss does not quite grasp the mindset of the pre-technological, mythic era he describes, and occasionally lapses into odd anachronisms, or drops modern phrases ("Okay" is particularly jarring) into his dialogue. If Rothfuss has embraced the need to make his imagined world coherent and believable, it seems to have been imposed from the outside rather than growing from an inward imaginary.
But, as the book moves on, it begins to solidify some of the cliches that it appears at first to eschew, and attention wanes. The hero at first becomes a Harry Potter-esque magical prodigy, complete with a visible physical tell, is then violently orphaned, then finds his way to the University (of magic – which operates more like a modern American college than a medieval school), and then teaches a lesson to the stuffy and insular faculty, and so on. This may indeed be an "adult Harry Potter", but others, such as A Wizard of Earthsea or The Magicians sequence, have made more original work of this.
Since this book is still unfinished, the summary is partial and unfair. My biggest hope is that eventually Rothfuss will begin to unwind the tropes he summons.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
The main character—it would be too much to say he is the protagonist—of Umberto Eco's novel The Prague Cemetery is flatly despicable. This is not to suggest that Simone Simonini is an anti-hero; he is simply a hateful man, a murderer, misanthrope, misogynist, opportunist, glutton and forger, whose cynical masterwork, the racist slander of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is one of the bricks in the foundation of the greatest mass murder of the 20th Century.
The Prague Cemetery has particular relevance today, as crimes of hatred and the politics of bigotry are on the rise, for the theme of the novel, amidst all the riot of detail and incident, is not only hatred but the generation and circulation of the fictions that support and validate it.
Having said that, it is not easy to analyse the roots of Simonini's hatred, except that he is brought up at the table of a bigoted, autocratic grandfather in isolation from other children. This is enough to explain why he is repulsed by women and yet obsessed with food, and lacks any sympathy for other human beings. Simonini inherits his grandfather's antisemitism, but racial hatred is only one aspect of his contempt for humanity, which manifests itself in his willingness to betray and murder, preferably—though not always—by remote means. Eco illustrates not so much the banality of evil as how bland and matter-of-fact such evil is; how the absence of empathy is also an absence of self-reflection. Perhaps in response to this, Eco introduces an element of psychological depth in Simonini's attempt to puzzle out his apparent split-personality. One of his disguises, as the clerical Abbe Dalla Piccola takes on a narrative life of his own, but this suggests not so much psychological complexity as the way a hollow man like Simonini assumes and discards false identities at will.
With characteristic verve, Eco drives Simonini, the only fictional character, through a gallery of late 19th Century historical figures: soldiers, terrorists, spies, agitators, propagandists, extremists, anarchists, fraudsters and opportunists. It's something of a treat for the reader to check any of the monstrous and extraordinary events Eco describes in Wikipedia to find that they are all historically accurate. The plot therefore is somewhat episodic, and the whirl of conspiracies, plots, counter-plots, frauds and intrigues can be exhausting to follow. In all of this Simonini goes relatively unscathed, whereas a significant few of his associates end up dead in a sewers beneath his apartments. It is in the conflict between radicals and reactionaries, in the clash of regimes, that Simonini plies his trade: false intelligence, fabricated conspiracies. Eco is at his most deft in illustrating how these falsehoods are truly nothing new, but plagiarized, copied, re-circulated. The old lies need no innovation, only selective editing, because they merely reflect to the reader and validate what their prejudices and politics demand.
Antisemitism is Simonini's masterpiece, but without asserting equivalence we could also draw parallels with the anti-muslim hysteria of Donald Trump or homophobia. Forgeries and fictions, in The Prague Cemetery, stand very close together. Where hateful forgeries are joined with state power or ideologies that validate themselves through violence, they turn monstrous. We need no more illustrations of that. What we need are more complex, self-aware fictions like Umberto Eco's, which can help us begin to unravel this pernicious combination. That's the real puzzle at the heart of this thriller. If The Prague Cemetery lacks anything, it lacks a figure like William of Baskerville, a skeptical humanist who can help us unpick the ramifications of the story and express our confusion. Instead, we're left alone as readers to do this, which is how the work might educate and entertain but bring us no closer to its loathsome principal character.
The Prague Cemetery has particular relevance today, as crimes of hatred and the politics of bigotry are on the rise, for the theme of the novel, amidst all the riot of detail and incident, is not only hatred but the generation and circulation of the fictions that support and validate it.
Having said that, it is not easy to analyse the roots of Simonini's hatred, except that he is brought up at the table of a bigoted, autocratic grandfather in isolation from other children. This is enough to explain why he is repulsed by women and yet obsessed with food, and lacks any sympathy for other human beings. Simonini inherits his grandfather's antisemitism, but racial hatred is only one aspect of his contempt for humanity, which manifests itself in his willingness to betray and murder, preferably—though not always—by remote means. Eco illustrates not so much the banality of evil as how bland and matter-of-fact such evil is; how the absence of empathy is also an absence of self-reflection. Perhaps in response to this, Eco introduces an element of psychological depth in Simonini's attempt to puzzle out his apparent split-personality. One of his disguises, as the clerical Abbe Dalla Piccola takes on a narrative life of his own, but this suggests not so much psychological complexity as the way a hollow man like Simonini assumes and discards false identities at will.
With characteristic verve, Eco drives Simonini, the only fictional character, through a gallery of late 19th Century historical figures: soldiers, terrorists, spies, agitators, propagandists, extremists, anarchists, fraudsters and opportunists. It's something of a treat for the reader to check any of the monstrous and extraordinary events Eco describes in Wikipedia to find that they are all historically accurate. The plot therefore is somewhat episodic, and the whirl of conspiracies, plots, counter-plots, frauds and intrigues can be exhausting to follow. In all of this Simonini goes relatively unscathed, whereas a significant few of his associates end up dead in a sewers beneath his apartments. It is in the conflict between radicals and reactionaries, in the clash of regimes, that Simonini plies his trade: false intelligence, fabricated conspiracies. Eco is at his most deft in illustrating how these falsehoods are truly nothing new, but plagiarized, copied, re-circulated. The old lies need no innovation, only selective editing, because they merely reflect to the reader and validate what their prejudices and politics demand.
Antisemitism is Simonini's masterpiece, but without asserting equivalence we could also draw parallels with the anti-muslim hysteria of Donald Trump or homophobia. Forgeries and fictions, in The Prague Cemetery, stand very close together. Where hateful forgeries are joined with state power or ideologies that validate themselves through violence, they turn monstrous. We need no more illustrations of that. What we need are more complex, self-aware fictions like Umberto Eco's, which can help us begin to unravel this pernicious combination. That's the real puzzle at the heart of this thriller. If The Prague Cemetery lacks anything, it lacks a figure like William of Baskerville, a skeptical humanist who can help us unpick the ramifications of the story and express our confusion. Instead, we're left alone as readers to do this, which is how the work might educate and entertain but bring us no closer to its loathsome principal character.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
History, fiction, revelance
It's interesting, if disconcerting, to find oneself living in a state of Australia under an administration which seems intent on resurrecting regressive notions in criminal law that were part of the eighteenth century background to The Raven's Seal, or even my new work.
A writer is always on the hunt for new ideas, but this shows me that ideas of crime, law and punishment are always in flux, and that historical attitudes can find currency, and relevance, today. Hence historical fiction is not always about the dead past but instead a dialog between past and present, the character of ourselves as we were and as we are now. Sometimes, the past in fiction illuminates, as we glimpse of ourselves in the historical mist.
For example, the eighteenth century of The Raven's Seal was a period of great economic growth and upheaval: in many ways the foundation and apex of modern capitalism. But the cost of this growth was massive and growing inequality, a broad process of dispossession – an issue more than familiar to us today. In this case, as the few gain extraordinary wealth and the many lose prosperity and stability, I wanted to ask who the real criminals were: where was the invisible hand moving like a pick-pocket's, who could guide it, and who really grew wealthy at the expense of others? This mystery persists with us today, although the causes and policies that contribute to it are not particularly opaque, only the solution. What stands out from the eighteenth century experience is that though the markets are a game, they are by no means a neutral game: those who get to set the rules come to disproportionately reap the prizes, and at the same time label their play by the illusory name "fairness". In the case of The Raven's Seal, the codes of crime and punishment, privilege and service, were part of these rules.
We still live with the legacy and attitudes of the deep eighteenth century. In A Hangman for Ghosts, I'm interested in the "System" as a notion and a mystery, and the system of penal transportation which transplanted whole blocks of the "criminal classes" from one land to another. The task is to weave the story of crime and discovery around it. But as a character notes in The Raven's Seal, if you want to find who's guilty, first ask: "who profits?".
A writer is always on the hunt for new ideas, but this shows me that ideas of crime, law and punishment are always in flux, and that historical attitudes can find currency, and relevance, today. Hence historical fiction is not always about the dead past but instead a dialog between past and present, the character of ourselves as we were and as we are now. Sometimes, the past in fiction illuminates, as we glimpse of ourselves in the historical mist.
For example, the eighteenth century of The Raven's Seal was a period of great economic growth and upheaval: in many ways the foundation and apex of modern capitalism. But the cost of this growth was massive and growing inequality, a broad process of dispossession – an issue more than familiar to us today. In this case, as the few gain extraordinary wealth and the many lose prosperity and stability, I wanted to ask who the real criminals were: where was the invisible hand moving like a pick-pocket's, who could guide it, and who really grew wealthy at the expense of others? This mystery persists with us today, although the causes and policies that contribute to it are not particularly opaque, only the solution. What stands out from the eighteenth century experience is that though the markets are a game, they are by no means a neutral game: those who get to set the rules come to disproportionately reap the prizes, and at the same time label their play by the illusory name "fairness". In the case of The Raven's Seal, the codes of crime and punishment, privilege and service, were part of these rules.
We still live with the legacy and attitudes of the deep eighteenth century. In A Hangman for Ghosts, I'm interested in the "System" as a notion and a mystery, and the system of penal transportation which transplanted whole blocks of the "criminal classes" from one land to another. The task is to weave the story of crime and discovery around it. But as a character notes in The Raven's Seal, if you want to find who's guilty, first ask: "who profits?".
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
The past is a dusty window
Working on A Hangman for Ghosts, I'm put in mind of the strangeness of historical fiction. All histories carry particular views; all stories strive to make you see, but how can we make that picture seem complete and compelling?
A Hangman for Ghosts opens on the outermost bounds of the Empire: the prison colony in New South Wales which eventually became the city of Sydney, Australia. Anyone interested in this history knows Robert Hughes's magisterial The Fatal Shore, but Hughes's vivid history of the convict period is a story of administrative cruelty, of transportation, exile and suffering, dispossession, forced labour, hangings and the lash. Grace Karskens, in her new history of Sydney, The Colony, tells the same story quite differently. She focuses on the material development of the colony, the landscape, the story of convicts, emancipists, administrators and settlers who strove to adjust, survive and prosper, and set the foundations of a new nation in a strange landscape.
As a writer working on an historical mystery, I need to drag a story out of this research, to form these different views into one narrative. I want to imagine early Sydney, understand its topography, its bustling, conflicted society, its gaols, barracks, pubs and gallows, its farms and roads and grand houses in their own light, as a lived experience. But the past is a dusty window: we swipe at the pane, we see shapes, motion, flashes of light, activity, human drama unfolding and flowing, but always dim and strange and a little distant.
A Hangman for Ghosts opens on the outermost bounds of the Empire: the prison colony in New South Wales which eventually became the city of Sydney, Australia. Anyone interested in this history knows Robert Hughes's magisterial The Fatal Shore, but Hughes's vivid history of the convict period is a story of administrative cruelty, of transportation, exile and suffering, dispossession, forced labour, hangings and the lash. Grace Karskens, in her new history of Sydney, The Colony, tells the same story quite differently. She focuses on the material development of the colony, the landscape, the story of convicts, emancipists, administrators and settlers who strove to adjust, survive and prosper, and set the foundations of a new nation in a strange landscape.
As a writer working on an historical mystery, I need to drag a story out of this research, to form these different views into one narrative. I want to imagine early Sydney, understand its topography, its bustling, conflicted society, its gaols, barracks, pubs and gallows, its farms and roads and grand houses in their own light, as a lived experience. But the past is a dusty window: we swipe at the pane, we see shapes, motion, flashes of light, activity, human drama unfolding and flowing, but always dim and strange and a little distant.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
A new review of The Raven's Seal
An excellent review of The Raven's Seal from novelist and reviewer Judith Starkston can be found on her blog. Starkston identifies some of the thematic and figurative elements of The Raven's Seal and describes them deftly (if I may say so).
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Guest post on The Maiden's Court
There is a new guest post related to The Raven's Seal on The Maiden's Court, a blog dedicated to reviews of historical fiction and movies.
In this post, I take a closer look at the delicate matter of the relationship between Cassie and Grainger. The interesting thing for me about these posts is how they force even the author to look at their own work from a new angle.
In this post, I take a closer look at the delicate matter of the relationship between Cassie and Grainger. The interesting thing for me about these posts is how they force even the author to look at their own work from a new angle.
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