Embassytown by China Miéville

Published by Del Rey on May 17, 2011

China Miéville is a master of the strange tale. Fortunately, the madness that drives his stories is shaped by purpose. I could be completely wrong (and not for the first time), but I think Miéville's last novel, The City & The City, illustrates the point Ralph Ellison made more directly in Invisible Man: that we pretend not to see those we identify as "the other," those we deem unworthy of our attention because they are different. I read Embassytown as another parable: a demonstration of the power of language, both as an instrument of control and as an instrument of change.

Human communication with the Areikei is difficult because the Areikei form words by making two different sounds simultaneously with their two mouths. Since humans have only one mouth, Ambassadors to the Areikei are cloned twins who are trained to speak the Areikei language together. Language is power, but one pair of Ambassadors, Ez and Ra (collectively EzRa), find that the power they wield is a destructive force that threatens Areikei society. From that creative view of language Miéville's story flows.

We learn in school that language is symbolic, that a word is a symbol that stands for a thought. To Miéville's Areikei, however, language is inseparable from thought: a word is only a sound that has no meaning unless it is spoken with the intent to communicate. The Areikei have no written language. They do not understand words synthesized by computers because absent a mind to create the words as they are spoken, the sounds lack content. Because the Areikei do not use words as symbols they cannot easily lie, although they delight in the human ability to claim that something is red when everyone can see that it is blue. They also feel enriched when humans become identified with similes (when the Areikei do what they are told to do, they are "like the girl who ate what she was given"). For humans, it is a small step from simile to metaphor, from "I am like a rock" to "I am a rock." For the Areikei, it is a nearly impossible leap. It is unnatural for the Areikei to understand that something can be true yet untrue -- literally false yet metaphorically true. As a writer of fiction, Miéville tells lies for a living, yet the untrue stories he tells reveal truths. Through the Areikei, Miéville explores the relationship between language and truth, between language and understanding -- and perhaps more importantly, between language and free thought.

Of course, it isn't necessary to read the novel as a parable; it works on a simpler level, as the story of a human who struggles against danger on an alien planet. Miéville is a capable craftsman who uses language effectively to entertain. His aliens are unique, although his human characters are a bit thin. While conflict pervades the story, the novel isn't filled with conventional "human versus alien" battle scenes; much of the action takes place offstage. If daring feats executed by exciting characters are what you crave, you won't find it here. None of that disturbed me given the nature of the story.

Miéville's novel encourages us to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, of our personal and cultural relationship with language. The desire not just to entertain but to make the reader think is Miéville's signature. It is for that reason that Miéville's novels are (with apologies to Spock) fascinating. If you read Embassytown not just for the story it tells but for the ideas with which it plays, your time will be well spent.

RECOMMENDED

The Coffins of Little Hope by Timothy Schaffert

Published by Unbridled Books on April 19, 2011

The Coffins of Little Hope adds an interesting twist to the "missing child" story. Lenore has disappeared from Daisy's farm, apparently abducted by an aerial photographer who resembles (and thus comes to be known as) Elvis. But as the story gains worldwide attention (attracting reporters, psychics, and the merely curious), people start to wonder whether Lenore actually existed ... and if she did, whether Daisy is responsible for her disappearance. The townspeople don't much care about the truth; the legend of Lenore holds the hope of keeping their dying town alive. A cult-like group (the "Lenorians") begins to gather on Daisy's farm, never searching for Lenore but attesting to the reality of her existence.

The story swivels around twin fulcrums. Lenore is one. The other is a book: the eleventh and last Miranda-and-Desiree book, a popular children's series that (to maintain security) is secretly printed by the newspaper in the small Nebraska town where the novel takes place. The newspaper that does the printing is The County Paragraph; its obituary writer, 83-year-old Essie, is the novel's narrator. Wilton Muscatine, the author of the Miranda-and-Desiree series, has been corresponding for some time with Essie and eventually plays a role in the story. So does Essie's grandson, "Doc," who inherited the newspaper and now acts as its editor/publisher, a job to which he is unsuited.

Doc's sister Ivy and Ivy's daughter Tiff round out the list of important characters, all of whom are quite believable. Timothy Schaffert gives life even to his minor characters, including a Lutheran minister who is too fire-and-brimstone for his staid congregation. The rural community in which the story takes place may, like Lenore, disappear, leaving others to wonder whether it ever existed.  When the newspaper is gone, there will be no record of the townspeople's quiet lives.  When Essie is gone, there will be nobody to write the town's obituary.

As an elderly obituary writer, Essie has an interesting perspective on aging and death. One of her thoughts on the subject gives a nice taste of Schaffert's writing: "A sophisticated civilization wouldn't ridicule senility, it would elevate it, worship it, wouldn't it? We would train ourselves to see poetry in the nonsense of dementia, to actually look forward to becoming so untethered from the world. We'd make a ceremony of casting off our material goods and confining ourselves to a single room, leaving all our old, abandoned space to someone new, someone young, so that we could die alone, indifferent to our own decay and lost beauty." A bit gloomy, perhaps, but Essie's thoughts about aging are a bit more upbeat by the novel's end.  (I loved the last paragraph.  To avoid spoilers, I won't reveal its contents, but it is worth reading the novel just to appreciate that paragraph.)

I enjoyed The Coffins of Little Hope for the characters it brings to life more than the story it tells. By the end of the novel, the story feels like an afterthought, like something not quite finished. But that's life and maybe that's Schaffert's point; sometimes questions aren't resolved, sometimes life just moves on without providing a neat ending. Sometimes it's enough just to know the people we meet along the way. Schaffert's characters are worth meeting.

RECOMMENDED

The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

Published by Other Press on June 21, 2011

The Reservoir is a novel of psychological suspense flavored with a bit of courtroom drama rather than a conventional murder mystery. The opening pages describe Tommie Cluverius standing on an embankment atop a reservoir in Richmond, Virginia, looking down at Lillian Madison's pregnant, floating body. The unsettled question is whether Tommie killed Lillian and, if so, why? John Milliken Thompson's novel is based on historical fact -- Lillian died in 1885 and Tommie became the defendant in a murder trial -- but what actually happened at the reservoir is the subject of Thompson's informed conjecture.

For most of the novel (maybe for the entire novel), whether Tommie killed Lillian remains an open question. As envisioned by Thompson, Tommie isn't the kind of person who commits murder. Since there were no witnesses to Lillian's real-world death, it's possible she went to the reservoir alone and committed suicide (although footprints suggested the presence of another). In Thompson's version of Lillian's death, Tommie is with her at the reservoir. Their relationship is not a happy one, a fact that could motivate suicide or homicide. Whether or not he killed her, Thompson imagines Tommie's understandable regret about the role he played in Lillian's life. As Tommie explains it to his brother in one of the novel's telling passages: "There's strange things that happen in the world sometimes, I've come to understand that, and they don't fit in with the rest of our lives. These things, they're like a burl in a tree, Willie -- they don't belong there." Tommie sees himself as a victim of fate, yet the novel repeatedly makes the point that people make choices and that bad choices lead to bad consequences, however unintended a particular consequence might be.

Fate may have played a larger role in Lillian's life than in Tommie's.  Tompson sensitively portrays Lillian as a woman marred by actions beyond her control -- a modern perspective that might have been less accepted in 1885. Other characters are equally realistic and complex. Tommie's brother Willie -- simpler and steadier than Tommie, but involved in his own way with Lillian -- is torn between his desire to trust his brother and his growing concern that the charges are true. A reservoir laborer finds a watch key and, forming a strange attachment to it (as if he could become close to the dead woman by holding close to the key) fails to turn it over to the police until his boss asks him about it a week later. Some characters succumb to law enforcement pressure and give statements that aren't entirely accurate, while Lillian's embittered father has reasons of his own to fabricate testimony. Thompson has a strong understanding of the factors that impair the truth-seeking function of a criminal trial. His fictional account gives voice to the reality that juries, like witnesses, are imperfect instruments for measuring the truth.

Although the story is tightly constructed, Thompson includes a wealth of detail in his depiction of Richmond and its inhabitants. Thompson drew on a variety of sources to help him craft the novel (he lists them in the final pages), including articles from the Richmond Dispatch and Tommie's own published story. As is often true of criminal accusations, the truth will probably never be known. Thompson's fictional account of the circumstances surrounding Tommie's trial is nonetheless captivating.

RECOMMENDED

Until Tuesday by Luis Carlos Montalván

Published by Hyperion on May 3, 2011

Until Tuesday is much more than the feel-good story about service dogs I was expecting.  Luis Carlos Montalván's book provides a brief but uncompromising look at the conduct of America’s most recent military incursion into Iraq and the impact it had on soldiers who were placed in impossible positions.  It also indicts businesses that discriminate against assistance dogs.  None of that should put off dog lovers who want a feel-good story; Montalván’s relationship with Tuesday, his golden retriever, is at the book’s heart, and it is deeply moving.

The first three chapters imaginatively recreate Tuesday’s training, including a look at Tuesday’s life in prison while he participated in the Puppies Behind Bars program, bonding with an inmate and helping the inmate hold onto his humanity in an inhumane environment.  Tuesday also put in time at Children’s Village, where troubled kids learn about responsibility and success by helping to train service dogs.

The next five chapters tell Montalván’s story.  It mirrors writing that came out of the Vietnam War in its complaint that the nation’s leaders lied to the public, neglected the troops, and did too little to help veterans.

Montalván -- a National Guard officer who had been in uniform for more than a decade -- arrived at Al-Waleed, Iraq, in 2003.  While working to keep arms and insurgents from crossing into Iraq from Syria, Montalván was ambushed and barely escaped assassination.  The severity of his injuries (both physical and psychological) wasn’t immediately recognized -- in part because he refused the requests of medics who wanted him to go to Baghdad for x-rays.  When he returned to Colorado in 2004, the “counseling” he received was brief and ineffective; he feared that requesting more would jeopardize his military career.  Unable to adjust to a quiet life and faced with a failed marriage, he signed up for a second tour in Iraq and was assigned as a liaison officer to the Iraqi Special Forces.  When the Iraqi Army started “a campaign of tribal and ethnic cleaning against the Sunnis” with the tacit support of the American Army, Montalván “could no longer understand what [his] men were fighting and dying for.”  He felt betrayed by leaders who turned their attention to “the media, the message, the public back home -- anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command.”  After he wrote a critical op-ed that was published in The New York Times, he received an honorable discharge and returned home with PTSD:  an umbrella diagnosis that encompassed his feelings of anxiety and paranoia, his withdrawal and isolation, his bitter days and sleepless nights.

The final sixteen chapters tell the story I was expecting and that dog lovers will recognize:  a story of training and bonding, loving and learning.  A dog and man with complementary personalities: codependent companions, mutual providers of support.  Although Montalván tells a serious story, he also takes the time to describe Tuesday’s playful antics, wonderful passages that made me laugh out loud.

Even in those chapters, however, the war lurks.  Some politically-minded readers might not appreciate Montalván's take on the Bush administration … or, for that matter, his disappointment with the Obama administration.  Montalván is a bright, emotionally honest man who isn’t afraid to express a forceful point of view; it didn’t bother me but it might anger some, so be warned.  Not all of this book has a "feel good" quality.

Until Tuesday tells a personal story; it isn’t filled with generalized facts about service dogs or PTSD.  I can’t say I learned anything new from it, but that might be because I once helped someone with a social anxiety disorder who can’t leave his home without the calming influence of a service dog.  He was experiencing the same discrimination that Montalván describes:  restaurant managers, worried about violating health codes, mistakenly (and illegally) claim that a dog isn’t really a service dog unless its owner is blind.  I also live next door to a service dog that assists a woman in a wheelchair.  Based on those experiences, and having a golden retriever of my own, I believed every word of Luis Carlos Montalván’s account of how his relationship with Tuesday made it possible for him to reclaim his life -- despite the discrimination he encountered.

Tuesday reminded me so much of my own golden (particularly the description of Tuesday breaking training to dive into a swimming pool to steal the other dogs’ toys) that I have no choice but to recommend this book.  Fortunately, the book merits that recommendation; the story it tells may not be packed with fresh information, but it is memorable and moving and richly rewarding.

RECOMMENDED

Phoenix Rising by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris

Published by Harper Voyager on April 26, 2011

Phoenix Rising is the first in a series of steampunk novels featuring The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.  I’m not a big follower of the steampunk “movement,” nor do I go out of my way to read this science fiction subgenre, but Phoenix Rising sounded even quirkier than most steampunk so I decided to give it a try.  It turned out to be moderately entertaining but less interesting than I thought it might be.

The novel starts with field agent Eliza Braun rescuing the Ministry’s archivist, Wellington Books, from a cell in Antarctica, where he was being held by the House of Usher.  Braun disobeyed orders by rescuing him; she was supposed to execute him to assure that his knowledge didn’t fall into evil hands.  To punish her transgression, the Ministry’s director, Basil Sound, reassigns her to the archives (an assignment that does not permit her to indulge her passion for dynamite), where she must serve under Books’ tutelage.  When Books tasks Braun with filing unsolved cases, Braun decides it would be more fun to solve them.  In particular, she wants to take on a case that her former partner had been investigating before his admission to an asylum.  She enlists Books’ help and, working on their own (without the Ministry’s knowledge or support), they attempt to infiltrate The Phoenix Society, a secret organization whose members conspire to restore the faded glory of the British Empire.  Their self-assigned mission provides an excuse for the novel’s various fights and chases, as well as constant bickering (and thinly-concealed desire) between Braun and Books.

One of the charms of steampunk is inventive gadgetry; surprisingly little of that turns up in this novel, and the mechanical devices that finally appear are unoriginal.  Much of the novel seems familiar:  from the “difference engine” to serrated blades that extend from carriage wheels, from a secret society bent on world domination to Dickensian street urchins, a fair amount of this novel has been done before.  Even The Phoenix Society’s orgy scene seems like a pale replica of Eyes Wide Shut.  With the exception of that scene and some other references to passionate encounters, the novel resembles an episode of the old British television series The Avengers.

Despite its setting in time and territory, Phoenix Rising is not written in the Victorian prose style that characterizes many steampunk novels.  I imagine some readers prefer reading modern English but it somehow seems untrue to the steampunk mystique.  The novelists’ writing style is adequate to the task but it isn’t exceptional.  I give the writers credit for telling a fun story, one that held my interest, and for creating a couple of winning characters in Eliza Braun and Wellington Books.  The novel’s end sets up the next in the series; I’ll leave it to others to read it.  This one wasn’t bad but it never rose above ordinary.  I would recommend it only to true devotees of steampunk.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS