Jun 12 2018

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

Like Going Postal, Making Money starts with a deus ex Vetinari. Moist van Lipwig has brought the Royal Post back to life, but the operation is running so smoothly that being in charge no longer satisfies his urge to take ridiculous risks. Lord Vetinari, the Patrician who rules the great city of Ankh-Morpork with a lightly tyrannical hand, sees what is happening and make van Lipwig an offer he can’t long refuse: ensuring the stability of the Royal Mint and, incidentally, expanding credit enough so that long-delayed public works projects can be financed.

As the story opens, the situation at the city’s banking system is anything but minty fresh, and that is having effects on the population, even in a quasi-medieval setting filled with wizards and Guilds and suchlike. Van Lipwig’s success at the Post plays a role, too. The stamps are convenient enough and available enough that people have been using them as a means of exchange, particularly for small transactions. Vetinari explains, “But they keep their money in old socks. They trust their socks more than they trust banks. Coinage is in artificially short supply, which is why your postage stamps are now a de facto currency. Our serious banking system is a mess. A joke, in fact.”

Van Lipwig, who has been both a con man and a showman, often both at once, counters, “It’ll be a bigger joke if you put me in charge.” (p. 38)

Except that it turns out a showman and a scoundrel are exactly what banking in Ankh-Morpork needs. The Lavish family, who have run the Mint since time out of mind have been using it to fund their eponymous spending. The Mint makes a loss on much of its physical production of coins. Its methods are antique, even by local standards. Its customer base is dwindling. It plays practically no role in credit formation.

Early on, Vetinari asks the crucial question, “What does gold know of true worth?” That comes at the end of a short back-and-forth with van Lipwig about tradition and innovation.

“You took our joke of a Post Office, Mr Lipwig, and made it a solemn undertaking. But the banks of Ankh-Morpork, sir, are very serious indeed. They are serious donkeys Mr Lipwig. There have been too many failures. They’re stuck in the mud, they live in the past, they are hypnotized by class and wealth, they think gold is important.”
“Er … isn’t it?”
“No. And thief and swindler that you are, pardon me, once were, you know it, deep down. For you, it was just a way of keeping score,” said Vetinari. “What does gold know of true worth?” (p. 37)

He then touches on the true backing of money, “a large, bustling city, full of ingenious people spinning wealth out of the common clay of the world. They construct, build, carve, bake, cast, mould, forge and devise strange and inventive crimes.” (pp. 37–38) Gold has very little to do with it, no matter what the traditionalists think.

Structurally, the book is a paean to fiat money. As has been said of turtles, it’s promises all the way down. Van Lipwig’s gifts for inspiring confidence come in handy when he is one of the first to discover that there is much less gold in the Mint than has been generally assumed, and not everyone is convinced of the new approach to money, backed by the industriousness of the city. It’s a thing damn’d close to a bank run.

Van Lipwig is not a complete charlatan. Here he is in conversation with Mr Bent, the Mint’s chief clerk and de facto operational head. Bent is also a gold bug of the first order.

Van Lipwig: “Look, I’ve been reading. The banks issue coins to four times the amount of the gold they hold. That’s a nonsense we could do without. It’s a dream world. This city is rich enough to be its own gold bar!”
“They’re trusting you for no good reason,” said Bent. … “There must be something which has a worth that goes beyond fashion and politics, a worth that endures.” (pp. 192–93)

For Bent, that something is gold. Making Money is, among other things, an extended demonstration that Bent’s position is untenable.

There are many other things in the book’s 470 pages, including plenty of humor and adventure. There’s quite a bit about the respectability or lack thereof of various businesses, and the snobbery behind much of banking as it is actually practiced. There is also a long plotline concerning golems and deterrence in international wars. The Watch turns up, in the nick of time, as does a zombie lawyer, who has a rather more expansive view of time. Igor has been there all along.

At the end of the teller’s hours, though, Making Money is all about just what the title says. People make money, full stop.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/12/making-money-by-terry-pratchett/

Jun 11 2018

Circe by Madeline Miller

(I’m quite proud of myself for cramming this book into my schedule before I had to return it to the library, so props to meee!)

Circe is a fantastic meditation on the stages of womanhood and on what it means to be human, bringing a minor character from Greek mythology to the forefront with her own compelling tale. Most people know that Circe is a sorceress who transformed Odysseus’ men to swine but was then charmed by him into not only changing them back but also into helping him continue his voyage. The rest of her story, however, is far less known, even to a mythology nerd like me. Madeline Miller gathers all the information extant on this character and builds a story that not only finds the beating heart of this remarkable figure but also shows with sensitivity and skill how universal are her desires and fears.

In all honesty, for long stretches of the book, I found Circe herself to be annoying. But it was sort of in the way I’d look back on my younger self and, if I was being perfectly honest with myself, cringe at how raw and silly I was in comparison to who I am today (tho to my credit, it didn’t take me hundreds of years to sort myself out, Circe.) I wasn’t a huge fan of her parenting style either. I get that being a single mother in exile makes for lonely, even crazy-making work (and God knows I have a lot of sympathy for other moms because children can be little demons,) but I felt that she took her son far too seriously. It isn’t the end of the world if he has a freak out: let him cry himself out in a safe area while you read a book or whatever the ancient Greek equivalent was. Even so, there were enough reminders of the timelessness of the female experience that made me feel for her throughout. By the time Telegonus had grown up and was eager to sail beyond Aiaia, I was 100% Team Circe. And oh that ending!

I was also impressed with the way other female characters were presented, especially Pasiphae and Penelope. Despite Circe being the heroine of the piece, it was clear that the other women, tho ostensibly her rivals, were pretty badass in their own right. I loved how Pasiphae skewered Circe’s self-pitying view of herself, and the relationship between Circe and Penelope was note perfect, complex and fraught until it wasn’t. I also loved how Circe finally confronted Helios, an emancipation that took her waaaaay too long but which I was glad for nevertheless.

Ms Miller writes with prose that is beautiful but rarely intrusive, and when it does jump out at you from the narrative, it’s hard not to stop and admire what she’s doing as her words seem to ring a bell within your heart (or my heart, I should say.) She tackles topics and achieves narrative triumphs that have few parallels in fiction, husbanding the familiar myths to tell fresh new stories that carry so much meaning in our modern world. I’m glad I had time to read this before plunging back into work reading.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/11/circe-by-madeline-miller/

Jun 11 2018

Truly Devious (Truly Devious #1) by Maureen Johnson

Okay, look, I read and review a ton of mystery series of varying quality over at Criminal Element and there is only one rule: each book should solve a major crime. The one exception to this rule that I’ve encountered before Truly Devious was also what I felt was the weakest of Louise Penny’s critically acclaimed Inspector Gamache novels, but even that pretended that it had solved the murder at the heart of its events. I won’t name which book because that would be a spoiler, but I knew the ending was wrong and was greatly gratified to find in the next book that I’d been right. But I also got to binge-read the series and know that if that hadn’t been the case, I would have been pissed (tempered somewhat by the fact that Ms Penny had built up enough goodwill with her previous books that I was willing to overlook my annoyance this one time.)

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Maureen Johnson doesn’t exactly solve any crimes by the end of TD. You get a solid lead on the identities of the people behind the historical kidnappings and murders, but the present day murder doesn’t feel properly solved: it’s mostly conjecture and then drama and then the book ends and you have to wait for the next books to find actual answers. I found that entirely irritating, especially since this was my first exposure to Ms Johnson and I don’t have any reason to believe that I’ll gain any crime-solving satisfaction from reading several hundred more pages in the distant future when the sequels publish. So if you, like me, hate it when mystery novels don’t actually solve their mysteries, consider yourself warned.

But don’t consider yourself warned off, as this is actually a really fun read in the “teenagers solving mysteries at school” subgenre. Ellingham Academy is like a real-life Hogwarts: free tuition and board (with a stipend included) on a Vermont campus where students are encouraged to learn at their own pace. The application process for the two-year school is agonizingly vague. Stevie Bell is thrilled to be accepted, especially as it means escaping from her dully conservative parents, who seem more bewildered than anything else by a daughter whose main aim in life is to solve crimes instead of the usual teenage girl pursuits. Stevie, you see, is enthralled by the decades-old mysteries of Ellingham Academy and aims to solve them all. But then one of her classmates is murdered, and suddenly crime becomes a lot less abstract for her.

My quibbles with presentation choices aside, I really like how Ms Johnson writes people and relationships. Stevie is a great protagonist, well-rounded and realistic. I particularly enjoyed her relationship with the head of security, who both encourages her intelligence while demanding she not risk her life in pursuit of the truth. They have a push and pull that rings much more truly than in other novels where the amateur sleuth exasperates the protective professional.

And, of course, there are excellent depictions of Stevie’s relationships with her parents and with her friends and classmates. The mystery itself isn’t quite as good, as far as we can tell, because we have no idea what the solution might be. I’m still annoyed that they didn’t at least solve for her classmate’s death, but I’m willing to wait for the next book because Ms Johnson has a gift for writing emotions and relationships. I just hope that the resolution is worth the wait!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/11/truly-devious-truly-devious-1-by-maureen-johnson/

Jun 10 2018

Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman

Everything I said here about the greatness of the first half of Life and Fate holds true for the second. What strikes me most is how consistently he captures the contradictions of humanity, in situations both mundane and extreme. Some people are pitiless one moment and turn around and show great compassion the next; they feel exalted by events and then laid low by a chance phrase or an averted glance. This is not to say that his characters are random or that they behave with no apparent motivation; quite the contrary, Grossman shows their interior lives clearly enough that a reader can follow them to the highs and the lows, the betrayals that seem like the highest duty and the acts of mercy that they perform without a second thought, returning life when a much crueller fate might seem deserved.

Grossman’s canvas is as vast as the Soviet Union in the Second World War but most of his scenes are as intimate as a couple walking in the park, or a group of soldiers huddling in a cellar. Few chapters are more than four or five pages long, but together they add up to an epic of life and death during the war that’s as great as any on the subject. Part of Grossman’s brilliance is that he is content not to have all of the parts of his narrative connect, or connect only in the loosest fashion. He shows Soviet prisoners of war without needing to have them affected by their side’s advance, let alone having them rescued by other major characters, as a lesser writer might have done. He presents scenes within the headquarters of German General Paulus, humanizing the adversaries without lightening in the least what his army was fighting for. His sequence in a concentration camp and on the way to a gas chamber is connected only tenuously to the main characters — one of the people, Sofya Osipovna Levinton, is a friend of two women in the family at the center of the novel — but it is utterly heartbreaking without being pathetic or overwritten. Human to the very last, and the guards, the technicians, the attendants, the survivors taken out of the death line, all also recognizably human. The horror is compounded later in the novel when a character asks whether anyone has news of Sofya Osipovna, “she seems to have vanished into thin air.”

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/10/life-and-fate-by-vasily-grossman/

Jun 09 2018

The 13 Clocks by James Thurber

I am sure that I picked up The 13 Clocks because of the positive things that Neil Gaiman said about it among his reviews in The View from the Cheap Seats. I don’t have that text to hand just now, but I do have the introduction that he wrote to Thurber’s tale, even though he closes it by saying that the story does not need one. Gaiman says it’s probably the best book in the world, “And if it’s not the best book, then it’s still very much like nothing anyone has ever seen before, and, to the best of my knowledge, no one’s ever really seen anything like it since.” (p. ix)

“Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda.” (p. 1) The Duke is wonderfully bad. “One eye wore a velvet patch; the other glittered through a monocle which made half his body seem closer to you than the other half. He had lost one eye when he was twelve, for he was fond of peering into nests and lairs in search of birds and animals to mail. One afternoon, a mother shrike had mauled him first. His nights were spent in evil dreams, and his days were given to wicked schemes.” (pp. 1–2)

The story is in a fairy-tale register, leavened by absurdity and words both invented and inventive. It is also, as Gaiman notes, very short. “When I was a young writer, I liked to imagine that I was paying someone for every word I wrote, rather than being paid for it; it was a fine way to discipline myself to use only those words I needed.” (pp. x–xi)

The Duke, naturally, does not want to let anyone marry the Princess. Nevertheless, he has to allow princes to try to win her hand. In turn, he is allowed to set them tasks, and being what he is, he sets them impossible tasks, which is hard. “What makes it even harder is her uncle’s scorn and sword,” sneered a tale-teller. “He will slit you from your guggle to your zatch.” (p. 8)

There aren’t any surprises in this story, except on every page. There is a Golux, who “wore an indescribable hat, his eye were wide and astonished, as if everything were happening for the first time, and he had a dark, describable beard.” (p. 13) More people speak in rhyme than one would at first think, and much is said on the related subjects of tears and jewels. In the end, which is never far away, logic and the 13 clocks both play a role, neither of which works as expected. There is even, perhaps, just maybe, a gleaming glimpse of Ever After.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/09/the-13-clocks-by-james-thurber/

Jun 06 2018

Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski

Sword of Destiny collects six stories that take place early in the personal history Geralt of Rivia, a Witcher; that is, a human who has gained supernatural fighting abilities through a combination of training and magic. He is the central figure of four previous books by Sapkowski: The Last Wish, Blood of Elves, The Time of Contempt, and Baptism of Fire. (The order of publication in their original Polish may be a bit different.) The remaining three Witcher books — The Tower of the Swallow, The Lady of the Lake, and Season of Storms — are now available in English.

I was first introduced to Sapkowski in 2012 by a Russian friend who was surprised, ok, astonished, that such a massively popular author was not widely known in the English-speaking world. The appearance of the later Witcher books nearly two decades after they were originally written means that they are doubly distant: translated from another language and culture, and transported through time. The gap between 1990s fantasy and 2010s fantasy may not be as great as, say, the gap between 1950s science fiction and 1970s science fiction, but it is still noticeable.

Sword of Destiny most closely resembles The Last Wish, as both are loosely connected stories of Geralt’s various adventures. Sword of Destiny lacks the framing narrative of The Last Wish and simply presents the tales; as a book, it is none the worse for doing without the frame. The stories are classic fantasy adventures, including a dragon hunt, a duel, and a tale of misdirection featuring a doppelgänger. Sapkowski subverts each of them, changing the roles and motivations to confound the expectations of readers expecting the typical.

The stories in the second half of the book concern the early life of Ciri, the Child of Destiny who figures so prominently in the main sequence of Witcher novels: where she came from, how she first met Geralt, how that set larger events in motion. There is also an unusually forthright statement of a pro-choice position, which I presume would have been noticeable and controversial in 1990s Poland, when the Polish Pope was still alive and clerical Catholicism very much a force in public life in Sapkowski’s country.

“My mother? No, Calanthe. I presume she had a choice … Or perhaps she didn’t? No, but she did; a suitable spell or elixir would have been sufficient … A choice. A choice which should be respected, for it is the hold and irrefutable right of every woman.” (p. 345, ellipses in original)

All of them are solid fantasy adventures, with the various twists keeping them from feeling too time-worn. For readers of the whole series, the appearance of Ciri adds depth and fills in important pieces of Sapkowski’s longer narrative. For newcomers to the Witcher, Sword of Destiny would be a perfectly acceptable starting point. I enjoyed these stories and look forward to three more books concerning Geralt.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/sword-of-destiny-by-andrzej-sapkowski/

Jun 06 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

Woof, and I thought LIFEL1K3 was gonzo.

The good: I really loved the fact that the two main (human) heroes are both British Muslims tho of vastly different stripes. Catherynne M Valente does a killer job of imagining a future world and, particularly, a future England capable of producing a band as genre- and gender-bending as Decibel Jones and the (unfortunately named) Absolute Zeros. I really enjoyed the ending, even if I felt it a tad under-baked and deserving of further exploration. And I definitely enjoyed this book about a billion times more than the awful Deathless, most likely because the relationships were a billion times healthier. I could speculate that this might have something to do with the ending of her relationship with her Ukrainian ex-husband, but I’m an incorrigible gossip, so what do I know. I’m just glad I wasn’t grossed out by this book’s portrayal of romance and sex and compatibility the way I was with Deathless’.

The bad: this book is A Lot. And if you enjoy Ms Valente, then you will enjoy this surfeit of her style: long, witty ramblings that come to a sharp point, so long as you don’t let your mind drift off along one of the many, many tangents. It is very much a disco ball of a book: glittery and illuminating but do you really want to stare at it for too long? It is a bit too brittle and bright for me, alas, but it’s the kind of things lots of other people (including Doug: hi, Doug!) really go for.

I actually recommended this to a friend of mine who loves Eurovision as much as Ms Valente does. It’s a fun take on an intergalactic competition that could end in humanity’s extermination, and I greatly enjoyed the characters, but it was just So Much crammed into a small space with uneven pacing and emphasis. Like everything at the party that didn’t involve Dess should have maybe been more relevant? I loved that there were heaps of imaginatively created alien species, but some were definitely created better than others: nothing about the Lummuti, for example, stood up to scrutiny, tho I really wanted it to.

Space Opera was fun, I didn’t hate it, but the chances of me going back for more are vanishingly slim. Thank goodness this is a standalone: the book gets extra points for that alone.

Doug was more of a fan. Read his reviews here and here.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/06/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-2/

Jun 04 2018

My Grave Ritual (Warlock Holmes #3) by G.S. Denning

If A Study In Brimstone was the introduction to Warlock Holmes, and The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles essentially his origin story, then My Grave Ritual brings the machinations of The Woman to the forefront. Not for G.S. Denning the consignment of Irene Adler to a single story. She is, instead, a constant, if elusive, presence throughout this book (tho she was, of course, introduced much earlier in ASiB.) Coincidentally, her significance becomes more pronounced at the same time that our hero Dr John Watson’s romantic inclinations do. I am already relishing a Mary Morstan-Irene Adler showdown in the upcoming Sign Of Nine. Assuming, of course, that Mary exists in this brilliant alternate telling of the Sherlock Holmes oeuvre, one that combines John Watson’s excellent deductive skills with Warlock Holmes’ supernatural powers while adding a heaping dose of humor in the process. I loled when the demon Covfefe showed up, not my first shout of laughter with this book and certainly not my last.

With the third book in the Warlock Holmes series, it becomes clear that Mr Denning isn’t merely writing a spoof: he is building a cohesive narrative with his adaptations, adding elements that run through each story to form an overarching plot that is far more interesting to me than the somewhat cold calculations and case-of-the-week nature of the originals. This is actually a departure, as I tend to prefer standalone works to epic series: kudos to Mr Denning for flipping that on its head for me! I’m also really impressed with how he sorted through the many short stories to pick out the ones best suited to his purpose, and am looking forward to seeing where he goes next, since it is very clear that he has a lot of exciting, intelligent plot in store for us, if these first three books have been anything to go by.

See my review of the previous novel in the series, The Hell-Hound Of The Baskervilles.

Interview with the author himself to follow soon!

6/27/18 Here’s the interview!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/04/my-grave-ritual-warlock-holmes-3-by-g-s-denning/

Jun 03 2018

Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente — The B Side

In her “Liner Notes” to Space Opera, Catherynne Valente thanks, “however obliquely … Douglas Adams, or at least his ghost, who looms somewhat benevolently over all science fiction comedy.” He did more than just hover over my review, he provided the framework of the lead paragraph and set the tone for much of the rest of the piece as well. A couple of sentences later, Valente adds, “Good lord, without Hitchhiker’s Guide, I would disappear in a puff of logic.” As someone who still has basically all six hours of the original radio show lodged in his brain, I can relate. I could no more write about Space Opera without picking up some of Adams’ style than I could say “Oolon Colluphid” without adding “trilogy of philosophical blockbusters.”

John Scalzi has often said that Hitchhiker’s was an extinction-level event for humorous science fiction. “It was so clearly, obviously, blindingly popular that it just obliterated everything else in the field.” It’s worse than that, in a way, because even Douglas Adams was really Douglas Adams only about half the time.

So Valente is going full-tilt at a windmill that has bested many a lance in the forty-odd (some very odd) years since Hitchhiker’s was published. Why does it work in Space Opera? Three reasons, I think. First, over-the-top is one of her natural idioms. The long and funny and occasionally random list; the apparent non sequitur that comes to a sharp point; the piling on of absurdist detail and action — all of these are apparent throughout the Fairyland books, for example. When Valente moves this approach to space, it doesn’t mean that she’s doing Douglas Adams. It means that she’s doing Valente in space, which happens to read a lot like Douglas Adams.

Second, much of what she is up to in Space Opera is the obverse of what Adams was about in Hitchhiker’s. The first sequence in Hitchhiker’s is about blowing up the earth. (One of the threads that became Hitchhiker’s was the concept of a radio series, with each episode about a different way that the world came to an end.) All of Space Opera is about avoiding that very outcome. Adams’ British everyman has no trouble with that aspect of his role, it’s coming to terms with everything else that he can’t quite get the hang of. Valente’s everymen struggle hard both to attain and to get away from the remarkable unremarkability that was Arthur Dent’s very stock in trade. By flipping key elements, Valente gives herself more space to sing in the same key as Adams without simply doing a cover version.

Finally, the two authors are telling different kinds of stories, and the difference is right there in the title. One is an opera, the other is a guide. Adams’ picaresques famously went on to become a trilogy in five parts. The open-endedness of the Hitchhiker’s stories and universe meant that the only real limits were Adams’ ability to get the ideas onto a page. The Guide could always be revised. In extremis, new roving reporters could probably have been conjured to cast a slightly hungover eye on the galaxy’s foibles. By contrast, Space Opera is complete in itself. This is no Ring cycle. Once the skinny guy has sung, the curtain comes down and the audience streams out to the after-parties. Taking the opposite approach from Adams’ strengthens Valente’s work, especially in the inevitable comparisons.

+++

One of the book’s additional small pleasures was its depiction of Oort’s cat, Capo. A series of improbable events gives her the ability to talk, to which she attaches as much importance as one would expect from a cat. “The key to a happy life, Capo devoutly believed, was never giving much of a damn what happened in any given day so long as you got in a nap, a kill, and a snuggle, and the snuggle was optional.” A few lines later, Valente sorts out the priority of the remaining two elements of a good day: “The nap was the really important thing. The nap was all.” (Ch. 18)

+++

Late in the story, the temptations of Decibel Jones are accompanied by a drink that is almost but not quite entirely unlike tea. Here is part of Jones telling off the tempter, “Allow me to be one of the few historically significant Britons to say; India is none of my business. Thanks for the tea, Bloodtub. See you on the morrow, as it were. Upon St. Crispin’s Day.” Jones takes up a new kind of Britishness, one that might well have befuddled Arthur Dent as much as the machinations of the NutriMatic.

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Space Opera, douze points.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/03/space-opera-by-catherynne-m-valente-the-b-side/

Jun 02 2018

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Silent House, Orhan Pamuk’s second novel, tells some of the stories of three generations of an extended family. Pamuk rotates among five narrators, each of whom tells their part in the first person. Published in 1983, the book’s main action is set in 1980, just before another military coup shook Turkey.

The house in question is where the family’s matriarch, the grandmother of the other narrators, has lived since she and her husband, the late Dr. Selâhattin Darvinoglu, were exiled from Istanbul by the Committee of Union and Progress (the original “Young Turks”) because of his political views. When Fatma and Selâhattin came to the area, in a time when most Ottoman subjects had no last name (as they did not; Dr. Selâhattin chose one after Atatürk decreed that every Turk should have one), and the surrounding area was nothing but fishing villages. In the intervening decades, the area has become a beach-side playground for people from Istanbul. Many of the plots near their house have been filled with apartment buildings, and indeed some of the younger generation want their grandmother to do the same to prop up the family’s precarious finances.

The first narrator Pamuk introduces is Recep, a dwarf who is the grandmother’s servant. When more of the family comes to visit, he serves them as well, cooking, shopping, cleaning up. Readers soon learn that he is also Selâhattin’s illegitimate child, born to a woman who had served in the household but forced, in Fatma’s younger days, to grow up in a village elsewhere.

Fatma herself is the second narrator. She seldom speaks to the other characters, save for giving orders to Recep, or accusing him of one thing or another. Pamuk allows readers to hear her interior monologue, as she recalls various parts of her life. Married off at age 15 — the process does not seem to have been much more than “he’s a doctor, why not?” — she grows increasingly estranged from him as he embraces science and secularism while she retains the upper-class Ottoman religiosity of her youth. She was a lively and energetic youth, but she’s a mean old lady, and was meaner still in her middle age when she had more physical strength.

The third narrator is named Hasan, and he is the first of three in the grandchildren’s generation. He is the son of Selâhattin’s other illegitimate son, Recep’s brother Ismail, who sells lottery tickets for a living, meaning that he is even poorer than Recep. They live not far from the silent house. Hasan is nearing the end of his schooling, but he can’t be bothered with much of it. He has fallen in with nationalist gangsters, and early on Pamuk shows them shaking down storekeepers, with Hasan desperate to prove himself as tough as others in his little clique.

Faruk is the fourth. He teaches history in Istanbul and has come down to the seaside house with other family members for a traditional summer visit. Faruk also enjoys going to a nearby archive where he does some research into local history, trying to piece together life stories from the traces left in the records. He is heir to his father’s and his grandfather’s predilections: drinking and writing. Selâhattin spent decades trying to write an encyclopedia in the Enlightenment tradition but geared to his countrymen. He believed that there were millions just waiting for him to explain why Turkey had fallen behind the West. He died not long after reaching the letter O, but his manuscript remained unpublished. Faruk is trying to write history, but he is too fond of raki to make much progress.

Faruk’s younger brother Metin is the fifth. Like Hasan, he is nearing the end of his schooling. Unlike Hasan, he is diligent in his studies, and he makes a considerable amount of money tutoring other wealthy high school students. Both Hasan and Metin have big dreams, and are not clear at all about how to attain them. Both are also clueless about and inappropriate around women their own age. More than inappropriate, actually.

I can see the art in what Pamuk is doing; I can admire his technique, especially in just his second book; I can see where approaches that he developed in Silent House flowered in books like The New Life or Snow. But actually reading the book, I struggled not to pronounce the Eight Deadly Words and close its covers. I suppose that’s mostly an illustration that mundane fiction often doesn’t hold my interest, even when it’s written by an author whose later works are undeniably great.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/06/02/silent-house-by-orhan-pamuk/