Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem

My husband enjoys reading Jonathan Lethem, and over the years has tossed a few my way, some of which I read, and some of which (much to his disappointment) I never quite got around to. I read one of his early works a couple of years ago - Amnesia Moon, a post-apocalyptic road movie, where reality was a slippery construct. Lethem is one of those authors you can’t judge based on one book; he doesn’t stick to writing in one genre. Motherless Brooklyn is a detective novel, set in Lethem’s hometown.

Our hero is Lionel Essrog, and we meet him in a car, on a stakeout which goes horribly wrong. He is listening in on a meeting between his boss, Frank Minna, and some unknowns, which culminates in Minna‘s murder. With only the few clues picked up through his wire, Lionel is determined to uncover the truth behind Minna’s death. Except they aren’t really detectives. Frank Minna is a small time crook, using the detective agency (which itself masquerades as a car agency) as cover. Lionel and his three colleagues were recruited as teenage orphans from a home, and have worked for Frank Minna all their lives. Whether or not the Minna Men are all still loyal is only one of the many threads Lionel will have to unravel.

It sounds pretty straightforward so far, and for the most part it is; Motherless Brooklyn follows all the conventions of a detective novel. In his wanderings of Brooklyn, Lionel slowly begins to piece the clues together, which are then revealed to us in a final dramatic set-piece. Lethem throws in a couple of (admittedly sedate) car chases, a fair bit of gun waving, some Buddhist monks and, although there is no blonde bombshell, there is an attractive girl who garners some attention from our hero. The detective element of the story is, well, competent. I’m not sure the reveal was as satisfying as I wanted it to be. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, more that I didn't feel it lived up to my expectations based on the rest of the book.

What makes this novel interesting is the compelling narrative voice Lethem finds in Lionel Essrog. He is no hardboiled detective, or greasy gangster. Lionel is basically an ordinary guy who happens to have Tourette’s Syndrome. I don’t know a lot about Tourette’s, but to me it seemed a very convincing portrayal. Lionel’s ticcing has some physical expressions, like his penchant for tapping shoulders, and eating habits, such as needing to eat the same number of items as others around him. Many of his verbal tics take the form of echolalia, which is repetition of what others are saying. These allow Lethem to engage in a bit of wordplay, as Lionel mangles words and phrases

"I don’t know. Screw Tony. I like you better Lionel. I just never told you.” She was hurt, erratic her voice straying wildly, searching for a place to rest. “I like you, too, Julia. There’s nothing-Screwtony! Nertscrony! Screwtsony! Tootscrewny!-sorry. There’s nothing wrong with that."

Not that Lethem uses Tourette’s as a gag, as we so often see it. It is a central part of Lionel’s character. He is often written off as a bit crazy, meaning he is ignored while he observes everything around him; this is one of the reasons he was so valuable to Minna. Lethem also captures the humour people develop to deal with adversity. Lionel is very self aware, and able to joke about his impulses, even as he craves normality.

Brooklyn, and a sense of place, is another central part of the novel. Lionel knows Brooklyn intricately. There is a sense of geographic detail that, as I have never been to Brooklyn, I’m sure I wasn’t able to fully appreciate. It serves a purpose further than accuracy though, as Lionel has never travelled - his world is a very insular place. The intrusion of Minna’s murderers into this place is initially very shocking, but eventually drags him out into a wider world.

Lethem somewhat reminds me of one of my favourite authors China Mieville, in the way he genre-swaps. I think it must take considerable skill to immerse yourself in the different conventions for each book. In the end though, what all good books have in common is character, and setting. Lethem certainly creates these convincingly.

Railsea, by China Miéville

China Miéville is one of my favourite authors, so I’m pleased to finally be reviewing his latest offering: Railsea. Miéville writes what he calls ‘weird fiction’ - not strictly fantasy or sci-fi, but something that blurs the boundaries. He is attempting, within this, to write a book in every genre; so far he has written novels as diverse as a western (Iron Council), a sci-fi planetary romance (Embassytown), and crime fiction (The City & The City). Railsea is his young adult offering. Unsurprisingly, I enjoyed it; it is well written for the youth market, but is also clever enough to satisfy his adult readers.

Railsea takes place in a dystopic future of either our world, or one quite like it. Large bodies of water are nonexistent; instead, the lands people live on are divided by treacherous stretches of earth that may or not be poisonous (as is much of the sky). Crisscrossing these are train tracks, providing trade routes and hunting grounds to the train crews who work on them. Sham Yes ap Soorap finds himself apprenticed to a doctor on the moletrain Medes. They hunt the vicious beasts that live in the poison earth: the most profitable of these being the giant moles, or moldywarpes. While they hunt, Captain Naphi is on the lookout for one particular moldywarpe: Mocker Jack, the giant yellow beast that claimed her arm years ago. While she will stop at nothing to catch him, Sham discovers a quest of his own that will lead him down perilous tracks, perhaps as far as the ends of the earth.

What Miéville does best is world building. Apart from his three Bas-lag novels, all of his works take place within a unique universe. He is an absolute master of invention, and crucially in communicating his ideas in his books. Some of his worlds can take a bit of time to get your head around, but once you have done so they have a completeness and believability to them that is so often lacking in lesser writers’ works. Miéville explains his worlds very well, taking his time to lay the pieces before bringing it all together in your head. I remember reading Embassytown and feeling like I wasn’t quite understanding, then with one particular paragraph everything slotted into place. Talking to my husband later, he had the same feeling at the exact same place in the book. It is a real skill to be able to communicate so clearly his, often very weird, settings.

The book obviously contains a loose homage to Moby Dick, but that is only the start. It is jam packed with tributes to literature: Robinson Crusoe is referenced, and the works of R.L. Stevenson - with Treasure Island in particular coming to mind. It is also unashamedly meta-fictional. Miéville first widens the story to include further characters, such as the Shroake children; he then teases us with snippets of their story while always returning to his central character Sham

At last they pushed on, under a huge night, in the deeps of which upsky predators make sounds. The Shroakes-

-but wait. On reflection, now is not the time for Shroakes. There is at this instant too much occurring or about to occur to Sham ap Soorap

Miéville’s early work is not exactly known for its brevity; this narrative technique helps to keep the plot moving without dropping the Shroakes for long tracts at a time. It’s a clever ploy, and entertainingly written - reeling us in only to drop us again moments later.

One of the things I most admire and enjoy in Miéville’s writing is his language play. He has a knack of twisting words and grammar so they say not what they would normally, but exactly what he wants them to say. He imbues words with meanings of his own, that become important to the plot or ideas in his stories, such as ‘philosophy’ becomes in this book. His vocabulary is extraordinary, although perhaps at times beyond the young adult readers this book is aimed at. One of his quirks is that he has favourite words, and these can vary from novel to novel, but often these words will pop up. This has lead to what I affectionately think of as ‘the chitin game’, after a much used word in Perdido Street Station. Knowing which words in his early works he loves, you look out for them as you read new books. Which leads to scenes like my husband and I announcing ‘chitin’ abruptly into a room where we both had been reading in silence. Other words this can be played with include ‘puissant’, etiolate’, and words that start with ‘un’ but don’t usually.

A stylistic feature of this novel is the decision to use ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. Miéville also often starts his sentences with ‘&’. It is very striking - we are so used to the convention that you don’t begin sentences this way. Writers often deliberately flout convention - it is part of the skill of being a good writer. Just as you get used to it Miéville explains this choice in a short chapter directed at the reader. In which chapter, the antiquated spelling of ‘and’ is explained to have been replaced with ‘&’ because of its connection with the railsea.

‘What word better could there be to symbolise the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the railsea take us but this place & that one & that one & that one & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”?

It is a lovely idea, which after all is what you read Miéville for.

He walks at times a fine line between his cleverness getting in the way of his stories or not. For me he manages to stay on the right side of the line. That’s not to say he isn’t without limitations. Characters can be a little underdrawn in his books. They are sometimes merely vehicles for the ideas he wants to explore, not believable people. This is a fair criticism of Railsea. It is obviously just not what he is interested in as a writer, though I don’t think this prevents his novels from having emotional impact. When it is important he manages to make you feel. I have mentioned he has a degree of vocabulary predictability, and this could also be said for his themes. Miéville is an ardent Marxist and these beliefs are often explicitly expressed in his books, something I find amusing rather than troublesome.

I’m something of a Miéville completist. He is also currently publishing a comic series Dial H for Hero that I’m buying, and enjoying. There is so much I love about his books; their inventive worlds being only the start. Miéville is an excellent writer of the dramatic set piece, huge battles and showdowns which are a joy to read. All of this is present in Railsea, so I was pleased to read it. I think it is also well targeted at its young adult audience, whereas I thought his children’s book Un Lun Dun may not have been. It is not my favourite of Miéville’s works, but he is one of my favourite authors writing today. I can’t wait to read whatever comes next. For those of you whose appetite has been whetted by my review, here is Covehithe , a short story published on The Guardian.

The Early Work of Philip K Dick Volume One: The Variable Man and Other Stories

From one sci-fi great to another, this time it’s Philip K Dick. This collection contains short stories from the first two years of his publishing career, 1952-53. They are not the polished science fiction he is known for, but they certainly touch on some of the themes familiar from his later work. It is an intriguing collection of stories; the quality can be, well, variable, but there are a lot of interesting ideas and some of these stories are very successful.

The collection is nicely published. The book has a good introduction (which does give away the first story, but not any others). It also has story notes at the back, with information about when they were published, and how they fit into his body of work. The stories range in length, beginning at only ten pages, while The Variable Man is almost a novella. I would expect they would be new to most people, except for Adjustment Team, which was made into a movie starring Matt Damon last year.

Some of the concerns of Dick’s later works are already cropping up. Robots feature prominently in many of these stories, as do post-nuclear societies. Some though are much more whimsical, such as Beyond The Door, which is about an overprotective cuckoo clock, of all things. One of the unfortunate things about science fiction is it can date rapidly, and Dick’s obsession with a futuristic Soviet threat is an example of this. Mind you, give the world another twenty years and maybe it won’t seem so!

There are some excellent stories in this collection. While sometimes you can see the twist at the ending coming a mile off, Dick knows how to deliver that twist with such panache it doesn’t matter. Even when a story as a whole doesn’t appeal, a scene or image can contain a spark of brilliance that hints at the mature writer he is becoming. Dick’s vision of a man wandering through an office building turning into dust around him in Adjustment Team is a great, creepy, piece of writing

The man slowly collapsed. He settled into a heap, a loose pile of gray ash. Dust. Particles. The two women dissolved when he touched them. Silently. They made no sound as they broke apart.

A favourite of mine is Beyond Lies the Wub, Dick’s first ever published story. It is very short, but a real gem. I don’t want to say too much about it, but it is available to read online and is well worth the time to read it. There were some that I enjoyed less; Of Withered Apples, about a young woman who becomes infatuated with a dangerous apple tree, was particularly weak.

Last year I read Embassytown by China Mieville, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin one after the other. Both books by great sci-fi authors, one newly published about colonialism and language, the other a classic exploring gender. It wasn’t planned, but they made an intriguing double bill. I feel I may have done Dick a disservice. I read this straight after reading The Dispossessed, also by Le Guin. While it is not about gender, feminism is present in the book. To go from that, to Dick’s (admittedly earlier) works I felt incredibly frustrated at his paper thin female characters. There are very few of them; his futures are all very patriarchal. Without exception, every female in this book is either weak or passive. This is part of what annoyed me so much to start with in Of Withered Apples - the story begins with a young woman requesting permission for a walk from her husband, by promising to be home in time to cook dinner. Urgh. On the other side, it adds to my appreciation of Le Guin’s work. While I think her books are anything but heavy handed, it does bring home the establishment she was reacting against. Dick’s stories are hardly unusual in this matter. It is merely a reflection of the society he was living in, but it still annoys me.

Feminist gripes aside this is a fine collection of stories. I’m no expert on Dick’s writing, but I could see the early traces of ideas explored in his later novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep being a particular example. It is also interesting seeing how his career got started. He was able to support himself publishing these stories in sci-fi magazines. While some literary journals still exist (McSweeney’s springs to mind), it is hard to imagine a writer financially supporting themselves from publishing in these. While many lament how the internet and text messaging are reducing our ability to digest longform writing, I wonder, how is our obsession with the novel hindering the careers of the novelists of tomorrow?