I had just given up on time travel.
 
I’d been reading Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” and his irrefutable exposition of how nudging just a single atom can impact nearby air molecules, producing a knock-on reaction that extends far and wide, going on to affect the weather and ultimately, with that, people’s decisions and actions. Any retroactive micro-change would thus alter the course of the world, creating another, divergent timeline.
 
So adiós, I thought, to any lingering fictional flirtation of mine with that idea.
 
But then Octavia Butler comes along and does it effortlessly. The trick—if you can call it that—is to have your time-travelled character far too caught up in the danger and drama of what they land in to begin to worry about the physics. And it actually helps that Dana, her protagonist, doesn’t seek to explain it herself. It’s a damnable thing she’d rather be rid of.
 
The real interest is how Dana, a black woman from 1976 Los Angeles, can deal with and survive a 19th century Maryland slave plantation.
 
There are some people whose company you simply enjoy and it doesn’t matter what the hell you talk about. I feel that way reading certain writers, albeit only a very few, and Octavia Butler is becoming one of them. I admire and like the natural storyteller in her that makes the outlandish perfectly believable.
 
What gives the story depth is that Dana is not a one-dimensional black-female-victim cipher, but a complex character whose outrage is susceptible to being tempered by contradictory feelings and understanding — and the fact that she has a vested interest.
 
I imagined while reading—I don’t know—that Butler’s depiction of life on the American plantation has reliable verisimilitude, and seeing that world through the eyes of her time-shifted heroine was that much clearer for not being didactic.
 
Reviving that period in fiction certainly makes for a cautionary tale. Don’t jump back there in time and space if you can avoid it.

Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” gave me an insight into what it is about Philip K. Dick’s style that I like so much. It starts off like one of Dick’s novels and I was immediately interested and wanted to figure out why.
 
Nat is working in a store when a man walks in with an advanced prism he wants to sell. Nat’s coworker is late back from lunch, so she has to deal with it on her own, but she knows the technical specs and is able to value the item.
 
What I like here is: the regular person in a regular everyday urban setting is instantly believable. It’s a neighbourhood store and the colleague getting caught up in traffic or whatever tells you this is the everyday, unremarkable world. The employee is knowledgeable in her field and that professional competence gives further clarity to the situation and a sense of order. But enter the prism, and an almost otherworldly element is introduced: one that is scientifically comprehensible, but challenges one’s sense of the possible. Here is Nat powering the prism on, checking it out and giving the customer a quote, as though a household device that sees into another, divergent, timeline was the most normal thing in the world. After a couple of pages, though, the story itself diverges from its initial Dickian quality and accrues intellectual content that makes it feel top-heavy, if you know what I mean.  
 
Of all these pieces, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” was the only one that worked really well for me, because it reads like a classical Eastern folk tale.
 
Otherwise, what we’ve got here are thought experiments in story form. The challenge is intellectual and abstract. You have to be careful with this sort of writing or your characters, like in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”, risk ending up as voice boxes for ideas. And present tense narration can be interesting when there’s a good reason for it, but it bombs here. It’s like someone sketching out a speculation ad nauseum.
 
Inorganic life forms are the proposition in “Exhalation”. Expounding it at length as a story didn’t really add anything to the original premise.
 
It’s clever and well-thought-out material, but I want stories that make me care and these just didn’t. So meh!

Nine honest, moving stories about people struggling to negotiate relationships and unprivileged lives.
 
Rebecca Ivory is very good at dissecting and laying bare feelings that often lead her characters nowhere. Young women who see the systemic limits on their ambitions and lack the motivation to work at all, or who expect little in a new relationship with a boy and don’t even get that. The disconnect between people is no more evident than on a first date.
 
Tellingly, being imperfect, neither do her people give much of themselves. In this way, Ivory gives a voice to the voiceless many without making them into victims, neither bitter nor definitively resigned, but certainly lost to insecurities and a general feeling of helplessness in a society that does not know how to support one another.
 
The stories tend to end with situations unresolved, leaving us with a sense of having seen into someone’s life during a brief, real connection.
 
This is Ivory’s first published collection. If the arresting cover attracts attention to her book, it is well deserved.

Franzen is always a good storyteller, but this is the least appealing of his books that I have read. I just found it hard to care. The one character who is likeable, the eponymous Purity, nicknamed Pip, has to disappear for lengthy periods to make way for other stories that will eventually dovetail into her own at the end.
 
There’s some political context to the narrative but it feels like convenient padding rather than anything Franzen is passionate about. Most of the book is taken up with the characters’ feelings and hang-ups and I guess that’s what some readers look for in this kind of unchallenging novel. The emotional wrangling ties in with the plot, enough for it to be justified, but I tire of the lives of the well-off who don’t really have much to complain about and yet still do.

These four first-hand accounts stood out for me:
 
William James (The Varieties of Religious Experience), describing his own transcendent experiences with nitrous oxide:
“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness, as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different…. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some mystical significance. They keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles were melted into unity…. To me [this sense] only comes in the artificial mystic sense of mind.”
 
Daniel Breslaw, a student volunteer on psylocibin:
“The heavens above me, a night sky spangled with eyes of flame, dissolve into the most overpowering array of colors I have ever seen or imagined; many of the colours are entirely new – areas of the spectrum which I have seem to have hitherto overlooked.
…. Every five eons or so a nurse arrives (in the aspect of a cougar, a differential equation, or a clock radio) and takes my blood pressure.
…. Here is a fire extinguisher in a glass case, evidently an exhibit of some sort. A bit of staring reveals that the beast is alive: it coils its rubber hose around its prey and sucks flesh through the nozzle. The beast and I exchange glares, then the nurse drags me away. I wave goodbye.
A smudge on the wall is an object of limitless fascination, multiplying in size complexity, color. But more than that on sees every relationship it has to the rest of the universe; it possesses, therefore, an endless variety of meanings, and one proceeds to entertain every possible thought  that there is to think about it.”
 
Eric S., ecstatic on LSD, was told by a voice that humans are “love and light”.
 
Dostoevsky talking to two friends about his epilepsy:
“You all, healthy people, he said, can’t imagine the happiness we epileptics feel during the second or so before our fit… I don’t know if this felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me, for all the joys that life may bring, I would not exchange this one.” Prince Myshkin in The Idiot: “His spirit and his heart were illuminated by an immense sense of light; all his emotions, all his doubts, all his anxiety calmed together to be changed into a sovereign serenity made up of lighted joy, harmony and hope; and then his reason was raised up to the understanding of the final cause.”
 
Anyone who has had such an experience has no need to have its significance explained. Anyone who has not might wish to take note.

I haven’t posted about books in a while because I was struggling with the ones I had, and unless a book catches me like a resting kite by the wind or just gives me an ornery turn, I don’t see any point in wasting our mutual time opining about them. In fact, I don’t care to opine much at all anymore. I’ll probably just show a book, say this and that, and leave it up to you.
 
Anyhows, I ended up exchanging the duds for this one at a store in Siem Reap and got me a kite with tails. That this celebration of the well-intentioned impecunious and the naturalness of sociability found me in Cambodia was apt, I have to say. On every street in the country and on Cannery Row, a family cohesiveness makes getting on together the thing to do.
 
Personally, I go strongly with this man Steinbeck’s poetry of the ordinary, his giving a voice and pages to the odd and the damaged. When you love like this, you don’t need to romanticize, just let the “cats drip over the fences” at first light and frogs blink on the Carmel river. The tragic, too, has its place and is admitted. It is a world where violence is apportioned without ugliness. When Doc has punched Mack, he pours him a beer, and after the ruckus at the party, the ejected tuna boat crew are welcomed back in, such a good fight it has been.
 
For the ending, Steinbeck pulls out all the stops and lets sound all the music his people deserve.

American culture and alienation are not a natural match, which I think explains what makes this such a strange read. There’s something strange as well as understated about it all the way through.
 
We get to know Binx Bollinger as a law-abiding professional in New Orleans, around 1960, whose casual approach to this, that and everything is gradually shown to indicate a hollowness that most probably has to do with this war experiences in Korea, although the malaise feels constitutional to his being. He suggests a commitment to a personal “search” of some nature, but search me if there is one. He remains directionless, uncomplaining, drifting across the surface layer of life.
 
The plot is quite uneventful and it’s our gradual perception of the narrator’s inability to want anything badly enough, his absence of emotional conviction in any normal sense, that make the impression. He’s no rebel. If he goes along with American social norms, it is simply that he lacks any belief system that might question them. The strongest character is his cousin, Kate, whom trauma really has broken. Binx’s active concern for her, a kindred spirit, seems a deflection from his own existential predicament. We see him playing a part for others, but never get to know who he really is. Maybe there’s just this sad estrangement and that’s the point.
 
I did and I didn’t like it. It left me with the sensation of an oddly unwelcome dream that you can’t make sense of on waking and are glad to put behind you.

[English version below]

Un libro sobre el abismo en el que nos puede sumir la muerte, sobre la terrible pérdida, sobre la memoria, que explora en busca, si no de sentido, al menos de significado. «¿Qué puedo entonces esperar salvar del desastre?», escribe la protagonista del libro, Marie Curie, justo después de que su marido falleciera en un accidente de tráfico.
 
El tono, a la vez íntimo y austero, encaja con la personalidad de Curie, mientras transmite la intensidad de una experiencia que compartieron la autora y la científica, a saber, la muerte prematura de sus amores: Pierre, el de Curie, y Pablo, el de Montero.
 
Al escribir sobre el dolor y las luchas de la otra mujer, Rosa Montero parece encontrar una forma indirecta de superar su propia pérdida, recordarlo y, esperemos, encontrar algún tipo de cierre y paz.
 
Marie Curie y su vida son retratadas, entonces, con una especial cercanía y empatía, poniéndonos en la piel de una mujer polaca desfavorecida en la sociedad supremamente patriarcal del París de fin de siècle. Las presiones sociales que se acumulan sobre Curie y que ella interioriza y asume o combate son a veces señaladas por Montero con hashtags para enfatizarlas con claridad  #HonrarALosPadres #HaceLoQueSeDebe #Culpa
 
Mientras el polonio y el radio radiactivos asolan las células de su cuerpo, en el diario que Curie dirigió a su marido inmediatamente después de su fatal accidente, vemos bajo la superficie pública el corazón apasionado de una mujer totalmente comprometida con su amor y su esfuerzo común. Es bueno hablar con los muertos a los que queremos, porque son parte de nosotros.
 
Este diario, reproducido al final del libro, complementa la propia historia de Rosa Montero, una canción de amor que suena discretamente de fondo, al tiempo que conecta con la universalidad de los lectores, pues ¿quién no ha experimentado la terrible desaparición de un ser querido, a quien jamás volveremos a ver?
 
“Breve es nuestro día y la noche es inmensa.”
 
                                                                                       ***************
 
The Ridiculous Idea That I Will Never See You Again – Rosa Montero
 
A book about the yawning abyss into which death can drop us, about the dreadful loss, about memory, exploring in search of, if not sense, then meaning. “What, then, can I hope to salvage from the disaster?” writes the book’s principal subject, Marie Curie, just after her husband is killed in a road accident.
 
The mood, at once intimate and austere, matches Curie’s personality as it transmits the poignancy of an experience that author and scientist shared, namely the premature death of their love: Curie’s Pierre and Montero’s Pablo.
 
By writing about the other woman’s grief and struggles, Rosa Montero seems to find an indirect way to work through her own loss, remember him and, one hopes, find some kind of closure and peace.
 
Marie Curie and her life are portrayed, then, with a special amity and empathy, putting us in the shoes of a disadvantaged Polish woman in the supremely patriarchal society of fin de siècle Paris. The social pressures piled on Curie that she internalizes and assumes or battles are sometimes flagged by Montero with hashtags for emphasis and clarity #HonourThyParents #DoYourDuty #Guilt
 
All the while radioactive polonium and radium are eating away at her body cells, in Curie’s diary that she addressed to her husband immediately after his fatal accident, we see beneath the public surface the passionate heart of a woman utterly committed to her love and their common endeavour. It is good to talk to the dead that we hold fond, for they are part of us.
 
This diary, reproduced at the end of the book, complements Rosa Montero’s own story, a love song which plays understatedly in the background, while also connecting with the universality of readers, for who has not experienced the terrible disappearance of a close, loved one, who we will never see again?
 
“Brief is our day and the night is immense.”

As editor Sam Boyce wrote: this is a comic masterpiece. Comic in the sense of being composed of cut-up phrases and images from 1960s women’s magazines, pasted onto the page, and comic, also, in the sad and funny way of such unique works as A Confederation of Dunces. Masterpiece, because of a story that emerges to exceed all reasonable expectations.
 
The prim and correct milieu of suburban, middle-class 1960s England is prime breeding ground for subversive hilarity and that, reader, is what you’re going to get. But be prepared for the comedy to acquire a dolorous depth.
 
Our heroine, Norma, aspires to nothing more than being the ideal woman as personified within the pages of Woman’s World and other fashion and lifestyle magazines. Her proud enthusiasm for the advertised products and domestic virtue is an unending source of humour, especially if your memory stretches back that far.
 
That she seems to live largely confined to her room, looked after by Mary, whom she refers to rather confusingly as her housekeeper or else her mother, soon introduces an element of uncertainty. At some point in the past, there appears to have been a road accident. The first-person narrative keeps us guessing. It would be a crime to give spoilers and I will refrain, but rest assured, you won’t be disappointed.
 
The book is unusual, Norma is unusual, and Rawle’s turns of phrase in her mouth can surprise by departing from cliché with poetic frills or outright impropriety. “September rain soon passes. It leaves nothing unlovely,” Norma observes, but she also sees in her mind’s eye: “an old man, so entranced by my sophisticated yet coquettish demeanour that he forgets his manners and goes to the toilet in his trousers.”
 
The collage of cut-up magazines means that a word will suddenly be unnecessarily HUGE, which only emphasizes the comic effect. Added to these are occasional commercial images of a lipstick, or a brassiere, or Lux soap flakes.
 
I was drawn to the novel—and it is that: a complete and moving story—by my enjoyment of Graham Rawle’s superb “Lost Consonants” cartoons. With this book, his surreal humour enters another dimension. It is a tremendously satisfying success.

Ambler`s 1938 thriller might not have the cynical, worldly investigator of the type that Chandler invented in that era, still less of Hammett’s hardboiled detective novels, but that’s what makes it work.
 
When Charles Latimer, more at home in the ambience of the English country house murder novels that he makes a living from, wanders out of his comfort zone while in Turkey, his overconfidence and inexperience entice him down a path that he is too mesmerized to turn back from.
 
Ambler leads Latimer gently out of his depth until, a little less than halfway through, Mr Peters overturns Latimer’s expectations and hotel room and the standard plot is simple no longer.
 
There’s a sound structure to the story, which is needful when a variety of places, time sequences and events are involved. Fairly early on, Ambler has Latimer note down the bare bones of the Dimitrios chronology so that we can all refer to it whenever we want. It’s a neat move.
 
Ambler can draw a striking new character—Muishkin, the madame—out his hat and conjure them up in just a few phrases. As for his principal creation, Ambler clearly enjoys fleshing out his portrait of the flabby Mr Peters, whom he describes as “loathsome”, in particular his pained, sweet smile. First conferred upon Latimer like “ a spiritual pat on the head”, it later reappears “as if some obscene plant had turned its face to sun.” It reminds Latimer of “the greeting of an old and detested acquaintance.”
 
The major reveal is one that the reader strongly suspects all along. It has the effect of confirming Latimer’s ingenuity and vulnerability, so that the danger is heightened. Ambler is then good at writing suspense in the moments when Latimer must wait.
 
The only downside of the novelist-gentleman’s simple nature is that it gives us a less than interesting protagonist. The time and place of writing are worth recalling here: the world on the verge of war. Latimer is an Englishman of the old school, venturing into a European wolves’ den, just as the credulous Chamberlain was about to fall victim to a dictator’s artifice in Munich.