Alan Dean Foster: Spellsinger (1983)

Edition: Orbit, 1984
Review number: 467

My memory of reading Spellsinger the first time, in my early teens, has left me with an impression of a rather better novel than is really the case. It is enjoyable, but distinctly unchallenging. It has one of the more annoying central characters in a fantasy novel (and, indeed, series) and though it sets up some potentially interesting situations, doesn't really resolve them or even use the tension which could quite easily be generated (for example, between Jon-Tom's desire to return home and his enjoyment of the clearly more interesting and fulfilling adventures he is having).

The plot is a humorous version of that staple of the fantasy genre, the normal Earth person who suddenly finds themselves in another world, where there is magic and where they are expected to be a saviour hero. (The sort of humour involved can be seen in this example: the summoning magician is searching through other worlds for an engineer, and finds student lawyer Jonathan Thomas Merriweather, who works in his vacations as a caretaker with the job title "sanitary engineer".)

Spellsinger fits comfortably into the tradition of non-satiric humorous fantasy which uses the absurdities of the conventional gestures of the genre to generate laughter. It is not up to the standards of the best of these stories (examples such as de Camp and Pratt's Incomplete Enchanter), but is enjoyable.

Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children (1981)

Edition: Jonathan Cape, 1981
Review number: 466

Being born in Bombay at midnight (to the second) on August 15, 1947 makes Saleem Sinai a special child, for he comes into existence at precisely the moment of Indian and Pakistani independence. This fact has an obvious symbolic significance linking him to both countries, and he grows up having a life which mirrors the history of the two countries (and later three, after the separation of Bangladesh).

Like the other children born between midnight and one in that morning, Saleem has strange magic powers, stronger in him because his birth came so close to midnight. This amounts in him to the telepathic ability to tune into the thoughts of others, making him feel uniquely qualified as a chronicler of the history of the subcontinent following independence.

Rushdie's novel combines the realist, symbolic and magical in a unique way, and Midnight's Children is probably the best example of how he does it. Through the coalescence of Saleem's bizarre peronal history with the world around him, he is able to say something about what independence has meant to the three countries. Having something to say perhaps motivates the novel so that it is more effective than his later writing.

The roots of the magical realist style lie in science fiction and fantasy, yet it is difficult to point to any specific author as a direct influence. The idea of a hidden group with special powers is quite common (examples can be found in John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos and A.E. van Vogt's Slan), and a mundane world with magic in it is a commonplace of fantasy. The non-genre author of whom I was constantly reminded by Salim's autobiography is Lawrence Sterne; there are many echoes of Tristram Shandy. It is principally the style which is reminiscent of this book, but it is the way that the fantastic is blended in which makes possible Rushdie's blurring of the distinction between reality and metaphor, which in turn gives the novel the ability to make satiric points.

Michael Moorcock: The Steel Tsar (1981)

Edition: Granada
Review number: 465

The final Oswald Bastable novel is, unfortunately, the most disappointing of the three. In it, the hero once more finds himself involved in a cataclysmic war in an alternate universe. This time, the First World War hadn't happened, as Britain and Germany became allies while France declined as a power. Then Japanese imperialism, symbolised by the destruction of the modern showpiece of enlightened colonialism at Singapore, leads to war, and Bastable joins the Russian airship navy. (The success of airships is common to all the Bastable alternate histories.) There, he is imprisoned by the rebel leader Dugashvili, known as 'The Steel Tsar' (and of course, Stalin means steel and Stalin's real name was Dugashvili).

Neither the background nor the secondary characters are as
interesting or as convincing as in the previous novels. Dugashvili is a convenient evil megalomaniac, followed by others for their own ends or because they too are on the brink of insanity. He makes the plot rather two dimensional, unlike the far better (fictional) 'Black Atilla' character of The Land Leviathan.

Alexander Kent: The Flag Captain (1971)

Edition: Hutchinson & Co, 1971
Review number: 463

It is inevitable that any novel written about the British navy in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century will be compared to Forester's Hornblower novels, to such an extent that endorsements of a novel saying that its hero rivals Hornblower are virtually meaningless. The genre is quite a narrow one, and Forester dominates it overwhelmingly.

Of the better known practitioners of this genre, Alexander Kent is perhaps the most like Forester and his hero Bolitho most like Hornblower. Patrick O'Brien has brought in a twist with the espionage in his novels; Dudley Pope has lightened the Ramage novels to the point of triviality. Bolitho is more heroic than Hornblower, yet his strengths to the modern reader are similar. Like Hornblower, for example, he finds the harsh punishments of the Navy at this time abhorrent; he possesses the ability to make brilliant strategic plans far beyond the grasp of his superiors and those around him; he rises quickly through the ranks despite the disapproval and incomprehension of hidebound superiors; he has the knack of inspiring devotion among those who server under him.

The tone is a little lighter than Hornblower, and Bolitho has an easier time of things (this may not be the case in the novel preceding this one, in which his beloved wife dies, but I have not read it). Worth reading if you like that sort of thing, Kent does not quite match up to the standard of Forester.

Anne Brontë: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848)

Edition: Granada
Review number: 464

Anne Brontë's best known novel is much less famous than those of her sisters. It is easy to see why; though it contains much which is praiseworthy, its faults are far more obvious.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall starts with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, apparently a widow, at the nearly derelict, remote, Wildfell Hall. After inital antipathy, local farmer Gilbert Markham senses a growing attraction between Helen Graham and himself. She eventually feels that she needs to reveal her past to him, and gives him a diary covering her disastrous marriage to the alcoholic Arthur Huntingdon. Then she receives word that Huntingdon, from whom she had fled to safeguard her son, is dangerously ill, and returns to their marital home to nurse him.

The novel falls into three sections: the initial friendship between Helen Graham and Markham; the diary of the Huntingdon marriage; and the events following the reading of the diary by Markham. The major strength of the novel, also an important feature in the works of Anne's sisters, is the depiction of gradually changing emotion, particularly in this case Markham's changing attitude to Helen Graham. The diary section is also very powerful in evoking Helen's growing despair at her husband's descent into alcoholism. This, and Huntingdon's initial charm, are modelled on Anne's brother Branwell, and it is a sufficiently honest and unredeemed portrayal to have caused trouble between Anne and her sisters.

The weaknesses of the novel are more structural. It supposedly takes epistolary form, being a collection of letters sent by Markham to a friend. The problem is that it reads more like a (fairly) continuous narration than a series of letters, for a large number of reasons. Markham also reveals things to his friend which he has been asked to keep secret, and which he has not even passed on to his mother and sister. (He definitely desires to do so, because he wants to refute malicious gossip about Helen Graham which is passing round the neighbourhood.) We learn nothing about the friend to whom the letters are addressed, not even where he met Markham, and no one in Markham's circle seems to know him at all. (No information about other people is ever passed on except incidentally as part of the main story.) Markham never responds to anything written by his friend (whose letters are not included), and he never writes about anything which is not germane to the novel's plot, so we don't even know what interests Markham (other than good looking widows). The inclusion of the diary is a little strange, as there is no real way that it can be included among the letters. So Anne Brontë has to include it as though it were written out from memory, which is absurd (it forms over a hundred pages of the novel). She more or less abandons the idea of the letters at the point when the diary is introduced, by remarking that it should begin a new chapter. The diary itself suffers from similar weaknesses where its content does not fit its supposed form. It is confused, for example, about whether it is a diary written at the time of the events it records, or a commentary written much later. Remarks such as "I have found it much easier to remember her advice than to profit from it" imply the latter, while the external descriptions of the diary and its dated entries imply the former.

Though the reader is conscious of these defects while reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, it remains an engrossing read. Its picture of the virtuous woman trapped by society in a marriage with a rapidly degenerating alcoholic is very powerful, particularly as the cruelty with which she is treated is principally mental stress rather than physical abuse.

Anthony Powell: Books Do Furnish a Room (1971)

Edition: Heinemann, 1971
Review number: 462

The final, postwar, trilogy of A Dance to the Music of Time opens with Books Do Furnish a Room. Nick Jenkins returns to his literary endeavours by researching a book on Richard Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, at his old Cambridge college. However, he soon becomes involved in a left-wing publishing company, partly financed by Kenneth Widmerpool, now an MP in the new Labour government. He helps to run the short lived literary magazine Fission, whose editor's nickname forms the title of the novel (he once spoilt a seduction by being surprised by his surroundings into making this comment at a passionate moment).

Thw war seems to have changed relatively little in Nick Jenkins' world, though it had more effect on Widmerpool: much of the novel is taken up with the strange behaviour of his beautiful but neurotic wife Pamela, whom he married suddenly during the fighting.

Pamela Widmerpool adds a measure of interest to an otherwise rather dull group of characters, but I still find it hard to see the significance perceived in the series by so many critics of the time.

Richard Zimler: The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon (1998)

Edition: Arcadia, 1998
Review number: 461

In the early sixteenth century, Portugal was an extremely bad place to be a Jew. Enforced conversion a few years earlier had not reduced the level of persecution of New Christians, as they were now called. Instead, the Inquisition, active in Portugal in the same way as more famously in Spain, continually looked for evidence that Jewish religious practices were continuing. Then, famine in Lisbon sparked off riots, and hundreds of New Christians were killed in the belief that a Jewish sorcerer had caused the failure of the harvest.

This is the background against which Zimler's novel is set. Its protagonist, the teenage Berekiah Zarco, is apprenticed to his Jewish kabbalist book smuggler uncle. He finds the body of his uncle during the riot, yet it is soon clear that his death is not caused by the Old Christians: not only is he in the secret room in his home used as a refuge and a place to secretly carry out rituals, but his throat has been cut in the manner of a shohet, or kosher butcher. Berekiah has to investigate in the extremely dangerous atmosphere of Lisbon after the riot.

The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon must inevitably be compared with The Name of the Rose, as is done by the reviews quoted on the back cover. Both are medieval mystery stories with a literary twist. The comparison is reasonable, and shows that the standard against which Zimler's novel should be judged is high. However, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon is nothing like as intellectual as Eco's writing, and the background is far less convincing. This is partly because of small factual errors - for example using a simile about a theatre building well before they reappeared in Europe - and the illiterate copy editing - "you're" for "your", "ascent" for "assent". These are only minor if irritating details, but the book as a whole is not able to hold the interest as well as Eco's. The terrible persecution which forms the background is made too impersonal; this is probably to make it possible for a detective story to take place in the foreground. The main use of the background is to give a reason why so many potential witnesses and suspects are missing or dead, and this trivialises the suffering of these people.