53 The Crimson Petal And The White by Michel Faber
A monster (800+ pages) and hence taken on holiday. Although it flags slightly two thirds of the way through it is otherwise immensely nimble and readable for such a hefty volume. I've often been heard to defame the pre-war novel as false and Faber's chronicle is infinitely more preferable to me to than Hardy or Dickens. I'm not especially familiar with the period but Faber is clearly playing with these novels to some degree and piss and spunk massively improve them.
And it has a happy ending! For the final couple of hundred pages Morrisey was echoing through my mind - "please, please, let me get what I want, Lord knows, it would be the first time - and yes, Sugar did. I might want bodily fluids but I am also a big softy.
#54 The Terror by Dan Simmons
The other side of the coin to Faber. This is another huge cod-Victorian novel but even to a non-expert it rings utterly false. Adam Roberts (an expert) details this in his Strange Horizons review, along with its tedious repetition and (more forgiveable) its breast obsession (although he seems to have liked it).
As in his story ‘On K2 with Kanakaredes’, Simmons takes an inherently dramatic situation (then mountaineering, here the Franklin expedition) and adds very little by introducing a speculative element. Presumably in both cases it was done entirely with an eye toward potential markets. In this case the spec fic aspect is that Inuit mythology is true, although this is only revealed very late on, after the novel has completely reconfigured its shape. Unlike Jeff Vandermeer I am not at all sure that this literalisation avoids treating the main Inuit character as a magical savage.
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I can certainly relate to the experience of approaching the ending of Crimson Petal and wishing desperately for it to have a happy ending, but I'm not entirely certain how much I believe it. Or rather, I wanted so badly to believe that it could be a happy ending that I was willing to ignore its unlikeliness. Interestingly, Faber's follow-up story, "A Might Horde of Women in Very Big Hats, Advancing," (just about the only reason to read the Crimson Petal B-sides and outtakes collection The Apple) solidified my grasp on that ending by undercutting its happiness just a little. I've just read 'A Might Horde of Women in Very Big Hats, Advancing'. It wasn't at all what I was expecting. It didn't really undercut the ending of Crimson for me because I already found it undercut, it never seemed like a happily ever after ending, just an ending with the promise of a new life. It's been years since I read the story so I can't remember the characters' names. My understanding is that the narrator's mother is Sophie, and therefore the woman who raised her is Sugar. My understanding is that the narrator's mother is Sophie, and therefore the woman who raised her is Sugar. If I remember correctly Sugar is 12 years older than Sophie (19 to 7). However, I imagine this difference would be become a lot less noticeable as they aged, particularly to a small child. It does refer to Sophie having received an inheritance from Miss Sugar but is otherwise reticent on the issue. No matter. |
