Review of The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

 

Title: The Shining Girls
Author: Lauren Beukes
Publisher: review copy published by Mulholland Books; originally published by Umuzi
Published: 15 April 2013 by Umuzi; review edition published 4 June 2013 by Mulholland
Genre: fantasy, science fantasy, crime thriller, historical
Source: review copy via NetGalley
Rating: 8/10

Kirby is a bright girl bursting with life, despite her troubled childhood with a single mother whose “default state of being is absent” and the constant upheavals as they move from one home to another.  It Kirby’s sense of promise, the fact that she’s a “shining girl”, that draws Harper Curtis to her. He visits her for the first time when she’s six years old. He gives her a My Little Pony that hasn’t been invented yet. Fifteen years later he returns to kill her in a brutal attack, as he does with all the shining girls.

Harper is a serial killer travelling through time in the city of Chicago, drawn to girls who ‘shine’ with potential and determination. It’s his destiny to snuff their lives out. It’s the House that drives him. He was living in the shanty towns on the outskirts of Depression-era Chicago when fate delivers him a key that unlocks a seemingly abandoned house. Inside is a room full of objects and women’s names written on the wall in Harper’s own handwriting. The names of the shining girls. The objects are what will lead him to them, and Harper knows that he has to find them and kill them.

But he didn’t kill Kirby. Four years after his attack, she starts tracking him down. She joins the Chicago Sun Times as an intern for Dan Velasquez, the reporter who covered her case. He’s writes for the sports desk now, but Kirby will do whatever she can to find the man who nearly killed her, even if she has to waste time compiling baseball scores.

Kirby gets everything she needs, but Harper still presents a seemingly insurmountable challenge. He started killing in 1931, and with the House he can leap across the decades before returning to his own time, untraceable. Any evidence he leaves behind offers only impossible conclusions, allowing him to murder the girls unhindered.

The Shining Girls is the third of Beukes’s novels, and I think it’s now my favourite too, trumping Moxyland. Beukes writes with a very snarky, edgy style that I loved at first but tired of in Zoo City. The Shining Girls feels more mature, more refined, and offers a better story as a result. That’s not to say it doesn’t have that signature style or that Kirby isn’t smart-mouthed and bold enough to stand-up to her counterparts in Beukes’s earlier novels; it’s just toned down in a way that feels more natural and helps the story flow.

Mind you, it takes a fair bit of concentration to keep a firm grasp on the narrative, because the time-travel aspect means there’s a time shift with almost every chapter. The chapters are short too, keeping you on your toes. The key is to take note of the names, dates, and locations that comprise the chapter headings. I tend to ignore most chapter headings as unimportant, but I quickly learned that these are vital. The story is composed of multiple POVs in various times. Harper’s story begins in November 1931 but constantly moves between that time and 1993 as he hunts the shining girls. I think his story is actually relatively linear, but it doesn’t feel that way because what he experiences as linear time involves multiple time shifts, while the House itself is a atemporal space – a place that exists in all times and no time.

Kirby’s story begins in 1974, when Harper first contacts her. We see her as a child and a teenager, but usually as the scarred (literally and figuratively) 25-year old in 1993. The 1993 narrative is also told from Dan Velasquez’s perspective, as he tries to help Kirby out of his growing respect and affection for her. Then there are several minor POVs, including the shining girls and a junkie named Malcolm who tails Harper in the hope of getting some cash for his next hit.

It sounds overwhelming, but it easy to adjust to. The characters are distinctive and memorable, and there was only one chapter where I was confused about the POV. It’s not essential to understand everything in strict chronological order anyway; the most important events will come together smoothly. Beukes also employs an elegant tactic, using the objects in the House as narrative devices that tie the stories together: “Shining stars linked together through time. A constellation of murder”. The House is an atemporal space where the objects are always present, even when Harper takes them out. We see the links when objects in the room turn up in the shining girls’ stories, or when Harper takes an object from one girl and leaves it with another. Besides their practical narrative function, the objects are also just a pleasure to spot, like putting a puzzle together.

How they came together in the House, however, remains a mystery. The novel leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but in a way that intrigues rather than frustrates. There are hints and ideas that seem to lead to understanding but never quite get there, leaving the reader pondering the possibilities. There is no how and why for the House. We don’t know how it enables time travel, how it came into being, or why it is focused on killing the shining girls. It’s not clear what exactly motivates Harper either, even though we spend so much time in his head. He avoids taking responsibility for his acts, blaming his victims for shining:

“It’s not my fault, sweetheart,” he says, “It’s yours. You shouldn’t shine. You shouldn’t make me do this.”

There’s also a sense in which he’s driven to do what he does by the objects, the House itself and the time paradox it’s entwined him in. The objects call to him and shine in ways that show him what to use and when.

He tells himself he is only looking around, but he knows one of his girls is here. He always does. It’s the same tug in his stomach that brought him to the House. That jolt of recognition when he walks into someplace he’s meant to be. He knows it when he sees the tokens that match the ones in the room. It is a game. To find them through different times and places. It’s a destiny he’s writing for them. Inevitably, they’re waiting for him.

The force exerted on him by the House and the object sometimes makes him uncomfortable, hurts him even, suggesting that he’s being coerced. He certainly doesn’t choose any of the victims himself; they’ve already been chosen and he’s just drawn to them. On a personal level though, Harper is a sadistic psychopath. It’s obvious that he wants to kill and takes a perverse pleasure in contacting his victims as children and then murdering them as adults, destroying the potential that makes them shine.

I will definitely be in the minority here, but Harper is my favourite character. Which isn’t to say I like him – he’s utterly despicable and I like all the other characters a lot more, with the possible exception of a hipster who wants to film Kirby having sex with him so that she can “reclaim what happened to [her]“. Harper disgusts me, but I love a good villain. He’s not especially smart, but he has an intuitive understanding of the House and eschews all gasping disbelief that characters typically go through when fantasy invades reality. When he steps into the House he claims his destiny as if slipping into a perfectly tailored suit. The way Harper hunts and kills the shining girls is so sick and brutal that I find him fascinating and repulsive in equal parts.

The shining girls are wonderful characters too, by virtue of the qualities that make them ‘shine’. Their roles are small, but they would be strong enough to drive an entire novel themselves. Each of them shows a rare sense of determination, typically in defiance of the racial and sexual discrimination prevalent in Chicago across the decades. Zora is a young black woman doing hard manual labour in a shipping yard to support her four children after losing her husband to war. Alice is a transsexual; Willie a lesbian. Some of them shine because of the difference they make in society. Margot arranges safe abortions for girls and women who can’t afford them. Jin-Sook is a social worker changing lives in black communities. Others shine because of their talents. Willie is a promising architect who fought her way into the field at a time when women weren’t normally given such jobs. Mysha is a brilliant botanist.

What makes Kirby shine seems to be something a bit different – her ability to defy Harper, and her potential to find him and stop him. She is the very reason there is a story. Surprisingly though her part of the narrative moves quite slowly, focusing on character development, her internship with Dan on the baseball desk, and his growing affection for her. The investigation takes a back seat. It seems a little odd, given Kirby’s fervour, although we later learn that she’s spent most of her free time trawling through old newspapers and police reports looking for clues and patterns. Nevertheless, it’s not until we near the end of the book that Kirby starts to make real progress, much of which is dismissed because it seems impossible. The book is by no means boring, but I think it relies heavily on Harper and the other shining girls to drive the narrative until Kirby’s story is ready to get into gear for the climactic ending.

The advantage is that you’re kept in prolonged suspense wondering how the hell Kirby is going to find Harper, the seemingly unstoppable serial killer. I didn’t particularly like the way this happened – through chance, rather than Kirby’s deductions – but I can’t deny that the ending was pretty tense and exciting anyway.

There is much to appreciate in the interim – Beukes’s awesome writing, the horror that is Harper, the stories of the shining girls, Kirby’s relationship with her mother, Kirby’s relationship with Dan. I also waited very patiently but with growing anticipation for the chapter where Harper tries to kill Kirby. As much as I’d hyped it up by the time I got to it, it still managed to be shockingly brutal and evocative, leaving me stunned with one of the saddest and most painful images in the book.

Umuzi Collector’s Edition

One final thing I want to mention is how impressive the depiction of Chicago is. Beukes has obviously done extensive research (don’t ignore the acknowledgements; it’s worth seeing how much work went into this). The plot traverses six decades, and in the relatively short space of 298 pages we see several of Chicago’s historical and cultural faces as the city shifts and grows.

I’m glad that I bought the Umuzi signed and numbered collector’s edition hardcover of this. It’s a great story and one of the best South African novels I’ve read. I love its mysterious take on time travel and the way Beukes uses it as a plot device that brings a fresh perspective to both historical and crime fiction. The Shining Girls deserves its status as one of the most talked-about books at the moment, and strongly encourage you to read it and join the conversation.

Review of Cape of Slaves by Sam Roth

Title: Cape of Slaves
Series: Time Twisters #1
Author: Sam Roth (pseudonym of Dorothy Dyer and Rosamund Haden)
Published: March 2012
Publisher: Puffin South Africa
Genre: science fantasy, historical children’s fiction, YA
Source: review copy from Penguin South Africa
Rating: 5/10

In the year 2099, a glowing, green, time-travelling dust escapes into an air vent and travels “through time and space, searching for human skin with which it could connect”.

In present day Johannesburg, the glowing dust finds 12-year-old Sarah, and some of it seeps into her skin. At school the next day, Sarah is inexplicably drawn towards a book entitled Europe in the Middle Ages. When she examines one of the pictures she is pulled into the scene, travelling to the time in which it occurred. Sarah returns moments later, and decides that she needs to find others who have been touched by the dust.

She places a cryptic ad in the personal columns of a local teen newspaper, and that’s how she meets Toby, a street-smart boy from a dodgy neighbourhood, and Bonisile ‘Bones’ Tau (rhymes with ‘cow’), a super-nerdy genius. Toby shows them a newspaper clipping about a girl named Miriam who disappeared from the Cape of Slaves exhibition at a local art gallery. Toby is convinced that Miriam travelled through a portal in one of the paintings and could not get back. Bones and Sarah agree to join Toby on a rescue mission to save Miriam, but when they go through the painting to land in Cape Town, 1825, they do so without an inkling of what kind of society awaits them.

 

Before I go any further, I should put in a disclaimer. The protagonists are 12 and 13 years old, and according to Puffin’s press release for this Cape of Slaves, the target audience is 8-years old and up. I know nothing about the intellectual capabilities or reading preferences of this age group, so I’m reviewing this primarily for older teenagers and adults who read YA. Younger readers are no doubt less demanding and wouldn’t be bothered by the many shortcomings in this novel, but I thought the authors could have been more rigorous, regardless of the fact that they were writing for children. YA and children’s fiction shouldn’t be sub-standard fiction.

The bit of plot I described above already raises a lot of questions and issues for me. I think it’s unlikely that a personal ad in a local youth newspaper would catch the attention of the very few people who were touched by the dust. Who reads those newspapers anyway? Then Toby assumes that Miriam has time-travelled, based on nothing but a newspaper article claiming she “disappeared without a trace” (24). Sarah and Bones accept his assumption without question and agree to join him on a rescue mission, even though these three met each other less than an hour before. They all act as if time travelling is old hat for them, even though they’ve only had one experience with it so far and don’t really know how it works.

When they go to the museum to find the right painting and travel through it, none of them thinks to dress the part, so they all travel 187 years into the past looking like modern kids. What’s worse is that none of them give a single thought to the fact that they’re going to a time of slavery, and the issue of skin colour only comes up once they’ve gone through.

I could, reluctantly, suspend my disbelief to accept that Sarah is capable of this. She lives a life of privilege, where her daily problems involve her stepdad driving her to school in a huge, embarrassing Hummer, walking her to class, and searching her room for sweets and chocolates because he’s a health freak. Because she’s white, discrimination has probably never been an issue for her and 1825 will be far less dangerous for her than for Toby or Bones, so maybe – just maybe – she hasn’t considered the slavery issue.

Toby on the other hand, is coloured and comes from an impoverished background that has made him acutely aware of the racism and discrimination in present-day South Africa. In 1825, he knows full well that his skin colour puts him in danger, so why didn’t he mention it before? Bones, being a genius who attends one of the poshest schools in the country, has actually memorised a historical timeline from 1652 to 1902, so he definitely knows all about slavery. Nevertheless, he arrives at the gallery an hour early and goes through alone, all because he wants “to be the boy who came back from the past, told the world, and won prizes for it”. Of course, he ends up being the boy who is assumed to be a slave because of his skin colour.

Childish optimism aside, are 12-year olds really this dof? Or so ignorant of their history? Did schools stop teaching kids about slavery? Even if that’s the case, or if these three haven’t had those classes yet, then an art exhibition named “Cape of Slaves” and a room full of pictures depicting slavery should have been a giant, screaming clue. Certainly more noticeable than a cryptic ad in the personals column of a youth newspaper.

Perhaps the protagonists’ ignorance is meant to set the stage for an educational experience, since education is presumably one of the purposes of this novel, at least for those who don’t know about slavery or the fact that it was practised in South Africa. Since I already knew the basics, Cape of Slaves wasn’t informative or immersive. The depiction of slavery felt thin, like an impression gleaned from novels and movies on the subject. The authors (or publishers/editors) appear to have favoured ease of reading over historical accuracy in many instances. Sometimes this is understandable. For example, the violence in the novel is mild, to better suit the young audience, and we mostly see the cruelty of slavery in the way black people are treated like domestic animals.  But too often it felt like the novel just glossed over difficulties in a way that felt unnecessarily childish and unrealistic.

Almost all the characters speak perfect English, so the protagonists have no difficulty communicating. There’s only a smattering of Dutch or Afrikaans, and I don’t recall any African languages being used. No one makes a big deal about the kids’ modern clothing, speech or mannerisms. Many people marvel at how well educated Bones is, as if he were a monkey who’d learned to speak, but none of the slave owners find this threatening or even suspicious, and no one asks how or why he was educated. At one point, a slave boy named Elijah runs away from his farm in an attempt to help Bones, and they both end up getting sold at a slave market in the nearby town. Surprisingly, Elijah’s owners don’t ever come looking for him – quite convenient in terms of plot, but I can’t imagine that runaway slaves were treated so casually.

The characters are just as thin and uninteresting as the historical setting. Sarah is a garden variety shy, insecure girl, who gets jealous easily and finds it difficult to think of Toby without some kind of romantic overtone. Bones is a hollow nerd cliché – he’s physically weak, troubled by allergies, dresses like Steve Urkel, and likes to read about “rocket science and global warming” (46). What vague tastes. Poor Elijah, the only slave with a major role, is little more than a plot device put in place to help the readers and characters find their way. Toby, at least, is a little more appealing, probably because he’s the boldest, most socially conscious, and most adaptable of the three time travellers. He’s the streetwise “cool dude” with a sensitive side, but sadly this comes off as a bit of a cliché too. There’s an odd lack of slang in the characters’ speech, and they don’t really sound like kids most of the time, even if they act as such. There’s no real variation in the way they speak either, and this can be confusing, because the narrative switches between first-person narrators every two or three chapters, and it’s only the context that enables you to identify who is speaking.

On the whole, Cape of Slaves has the quality of a made-for-TV kids’ movie, like the ones that M-Net used to play for the two-hour Disney family time on Sunday afternoons. I remember liking those movies, but even then I knew that their stories were kept smooth and simple – sometimes ridiculously so – in order to keep kids happy. Similarly, this could be a good read for pre-teens and younger teens – it’s short and fairly easy to read, has a bit of adventure, and some educational value. For the many adults who read YA though, I would not recommend this.

Buy a copy of Cape of Slaves

 

Lauren & Lu review A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Title: A Wrinkle In Time
Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Published: 1962
Genre: YA, science fiction
Source: Own copy

Plot summary

Fourteen-year old Meg Murry’s father disappeared while doing some experimental research on time travel. No one seems to know how to find him, until Meg’s younger brother, Charles Wallace – a bizarrely intelligent, articulate 5-year old – meets three enchanting, witch-like women known as Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which. Mrs Whatsit visits the Murry family one dark and stormy night, and seems to know something about the work Mr Murry was doing when he disappeared. On their way to visit the three strange women the next day, Meg and Charles Wallace meet Calvin O’Keefe, a friendly neighbourhood boy who has also caught the attention of the Mrs W’s. The women know what has happened to Mr Murry and they take Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin on a a rescue journey through space and time, to new worlds both beautiful and evil. But the Mrs W’s can only guide the children – it’s up to them to find the courage to go forth alone, save Mr Murry and return home.

Please note: the following discussion contains multiple spoilers! 

General Impressions
Lauren: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Seriously?! That’s the first line? A snippet from an older first line now considered so cliche there’s an awardnamed after the man who originally wrote it, and it’s given to the people who can think up the most dreadful first lines. It’s a wonderfully amusing competition in crap writing, but sadly this YA novel is quite unintentionally and unamusingly crap. Of course, it was written 50 years ago and I’m guessing (hoping) that the ‘dark and stormy night’ thing is some kind of joke or parody, but I don’t know what it is, so my very first impression was a bad one and nothing in the novel managed to change my mind. The characters are flat, silly or extremely annoying. The plot felt rushed, childish, and was generally boring. I can understand why it’s considered a YA classic, as it has many wonderful themes/messages for tweens and teens, but for me it failed in pretty much every other way. When I read this for my bookclub’s group read I realised I’d already read it as a child, but all I remembered was the description of the character Calvin O’Keefe and that it was about a weird journey. Nothing else was even remotely familiar, and now I’m not surprised that I found it so utterly forgettable.

Lu: What was going on? Is it just me or was it very confusing? Jumping from one thing to another? I guess it’s supposed to be like that. That the author was trying something new or trying to be different. But it didn’t work for me.

Meg was annoying and bratty, although that was understandable since she had to rescue her father while traveling with her little brother who, in my opinion, is a 40-year old. And with Calvin the heartthrob… shoot me now.

Ah yes, then the three witches. Can I call them witches? Who knows – I lost interest in them the moment they arrived. What was wrong with this book? It’s supposed to be a children’s book? Is this a joke? Did I miss it?

I felt the author was forcing details and events into places where they shouldn’t be. I honestly can’t name one thing I liked about this novel. It is easily the most overrated book I have ever read. I wanted to gouge my eyes out by the end.

Oh, where to begin? How about listing the things we didn’t like and go from there?
Lauren: Charles Wallace, implausible character behaviour, aliens who speak English, the religious message, the super-cheesy ending where Meg saves Charles Wallace with love.

Lu: Very confusing and jumbled up – things just happen randomly. Meg irritating, Charles acting like a 40-year-old. How can this be a children’s book? Author forcing details and events. Contrived escapes and solutions every time.

General Plot:
Lu: What did you think of the plot? I thought the author was trying to be smart and pushed theories and scenes down your throat just so she could get to the end result.

Lauren: I liked the theories about time, but I felt that the plot as a whole was random, rushed and full of implausibilities. I think children tend to be more tolerant of flaws like that or just don’t notice them when they’re reading, but as an adult it annoys me. Why was Mr Murry sent on that mission when the first guy disappeared? Why isn’t Mrs. Murry helping to search for him, when she’s also a physicist and was working on the same research? Why is Calvin so comfortable around a family he met a few hours ago under rather strange circumstances? What prompts him to be so overprotective of Meg? What’s the deal with Charles Wallace?

Lu: You ask all the same questions I want to know! There is a sequel right? Maybe that answers some of it, although I highly doubt it.

Lauren: I’m told you learn more about Charles Wallace and Calvin in later books (there are plenty). Not that I’m going to read anymore.

Lu: Yea I think this was the first and last one for me thanks.

Charles Wallace
Lauren: One of the most annoying characters I’ve come across in a while. A 5-year old who is ‘gifted’ with the ability to act just like a pretentious old git.

Lu: I know! The author attempts to mask the fact that he is rude and obnoxious by saying he is “gifted”. A few things these children said to their mother and the witches would be a slap-able offence if they were real!

Lauren: I don’t think I was really that bothered by him being rude, per se, but rather that he’s such an implausible character. Ok fine, he’s gifted, but how is it that he doesn’t really have any of the personality traits of a 5-year-old? I felt that L’Engle should have combined his intelligence and prescience with child-like traits.

Lu: I agree that would have made him more plausible!

Meg
Lu: Meg was the most annoying character for me. She just complained from start to finish! She came across bratty and was met with from groans from my side.

Lauren: I didn’t like her much either, but I have to give the author some credit for writing a character like Meg. She’s described as unattractive and temperamental, prone to getting into fights. She’s very smart, but thanks to the way her father has taught her, her methods are unorthodox and she gets in trouble for not doing things the way her teachers tell her to. All this serves to make her feel like an outsider. What I like about this is that it’s unusual to see this many unfavourable traits in a YA character (at least from what I’ve read) and yet there must be plenty of kids out there who are similar to Meg and feel as much of an outsider as she does. So kudos to L’Engle for writing an unlikeable girl as the protagonist.

Lu: I see what you are saying – she is definitely a fresh YA character for me. But I still couldn’t’ like her.

A Wrinkle in Time as YA
Lauren:  So you don’t think this make a good or appropriate book for children? Why not?

Lu: Hell no! For one the children in this book are anything but exemplary. Also the books makes no sense. There are no lessons, unless you count the ‘love conquerors all’ bit, which is unrealistic.

Lauren: Hehe, I can’t believe I’m the one who is going to defend a YA novel against your criticism but… I felt that the novel’s only redeeming factor was that it had some great messages/themes for children. Firstly, there’s Meg. As I mentioned she’s unlikeable and feels like an outsider, but her parents and the Mrs W’s encourage her to accept the fact that she’s different and play to her strengths instead of just assimilating, as most children would probably be pressurised to do.

Lu: You say this, but would children understand? You would have to explain the deeper themes to children as you read the book to them.

Lauren: Well this is YA rather than children’s fiction, so kids would be reading it on their own and are old enough to get it. Also, I don’t think the themes necessarily have to be explained. For example, kids would just see this character who they’re told is very different from others and seen as unattractive, and yet she’s the heroine of the story and no one’s trying to make her prettier or more obedient. The message is in the example.

You said that none of the children are exemplary, but even though I found Meg and Charles Wallace irritating, while Calvin is kind of weird, it’s good that they’re flawed and get whiny and scared, as real children (and adults) do.

Lu: Children act and do things from example, and I don’t think these children’s actions and words should be read by other children. As prim and proper as that may sound.

Lauren: Hahaha, you make it sound as if they’re shooting heroin! What’s so bad about the way they act, other than being whiny?

I don’t think any child could really imitate Charles Wallace, and 5-year-olds aren’t going to be reading this anyway. Ok, so Meg is whiny, but she does what she has to.

Calvin’s actually a little creepy sometimes – he makes comments that seem inappropriate when he’s only known the Murry kids for a few hours, and he’s strangely overprotective of Meg. But at least he’s caring and willing to go on this journey to help save Mr Murry. It seems implausible, but Calvin himself is a good kid. He’s popular, but not full of himself.

Lu: I just can’t help it. This book just rubbed me the wrong way. I cringed at almost every word. But maybe listening to the audio book in the author’s own voice made it worse, because she knows how she wanted things said and said them in certain tones etc. Mrs Which’s disembodied voice nearly had me drive off the road in frustration!

Lauren: Although I was really, really annoyed that the plot features aliens who speak English, its portrayal of alien lifeforms – particularly Aunt Beast – is all about seeing the world from different perspectives, especially when it comes to those who are very different from you. A great example in the book is when the characters try to explain ‘sight’ to Aunt Beast, an alien who does not have or need this form of perception.

Lu: Here I agree with you. A nice lesson can be taught about blind/deaf etc. kids and how you should be tolerant and understand what they are going through.

Lauren: One of the best YA themes came up when Meg finally finds her father. She’s rather disillusioned – he’s not the perfect man she always imagined him to be. He’s just a regular, flawed human being. Meg was convinced he would know exactly what to do and would take the reins as soon as he’d been freed, but instead he’s almost clueless. Meg, like every child, has to come to terms with the fact that her parent is not perfect and can’t do everything for her. Instead, she has to be the one who acts and saves Charles Wallace.

Lu: True Meg learns something here, but regardless of the ‘lesson’, she had to fight “IT” with love. Really? Kill. me. now

Lauren: Bleh, yeah, I hate how cheesy that is. Although I’d say it’s a lesson in itself. Part of the Christian message?

In addition to this, it’s also a book where children have to save the day. The Mrs W’s guide them, but ultimately the children have to act. The adults tend to be absent, incompetent, or even evil. When I was a kid I loved books like the Famous Five or Secret Seven series where the children were the heroes, where they were brave and smart enough to act on their own initiative.

Lu: I still see this book as having a forced ending. No matter what, love would have saved the day. Whether it was the children, Meg’s father or the W’s it would have ended the same way. So personally I didn’t feel like it was the children, they were just the means to an end for an author who was pushing a point.

Lauren: I see your point, and I agree that it’s a forced ending. However, I’d still say that the book as a whole is about kids who have to act on their own, without relying on adults, even if it’s badly done.

Christian parents might also appreciate the novel’s religious message. I don’t know how parents of other faiths would feel about it and if I had kids I’d be a bit iffy about any religious message, but at least it’s a very liberal Christianity that embraces a things like time travel and intelligent alien life. Oddly enough, according to the Wikipedia article on L’Engle, she gets criticised by religious groups for being too liberal, while some secular critics complain that she’s too religious.

Lu: Wow that’s interesting! Yeah I would be interested to hear what parents of different religions/faiths would think of this.

Lauren: Anyway, on the whole, I think that in terms of themes, this is a great book for children. The downside is that I still found it kind of random and boring, and yeah, that ‘love conquers all’ crap is really lame.

Lu: I don’t think every child would understand this book; hell I don’t understand it. I think it was just a way to push a point and try and be clever and confusing on the way there.

Lauren: I’m no judge of what kids are capable of understanding, but I think the fact that this is a beloved childhood classic speaks for itself – obviously lots of kids both understood and enjoyed it.

Lu: Well I’m just happy it’s over to be honest. Never again.

Buy a copy of A Wrinkle in Time at The Book Depository

Lauren and Lu’s Reviews

Lu (from A Muggle’s Magical Book Blog) and I are very different readers. She’s easygoing, I’m demanding. She loves YA and paranormal romance, I don’t. I love sci fi and dark fantasy, she just dabbles. I want good writing and interesting ideas, while Lu is happy with a great story, interesting characters and a few twists. Together we’ll argue our conflicting points of view in joint reviews and you get the benefit of two perspectives instead of just one.

Review of The Revisionists by Thomas Mullen

Title: The Revisionists
Author:  Thomas Mullen
Published: 28 September 2011 by Mulholland Books, an imprint of Little, Brown
Genre: science fiction
Source: Review copy from publisher via NetGalley
My Rating: 7/10

Zed is a government agent from a future he knows as ‘our Perfect Present’, a semi-utopia built out of the ruins of ‘the Great Conflagration’ – a global disaster that occurs in our own time and begins in Washington D.C. It’s Zed’s job to ‘protect the Events’ – key moments in history that eventually lead up to the Great Conflagration and need to occur if the Perfect Present is to be realised.

Leo too is a secret agent doing morally questionable things in the name of national security. He was kicked out of the CIA after daring to actually ask moral questions about his work, and he’s now employed by a company that handles outsourced intelligence operations.

Tasha is a hard-working young lawyer in a corporation with powerful but shady clients. Her brother was recently killed fighting America’s war with Iraq, and she suspects that the military’s story about his death is just a cover-up for something more sinister and most likely profitable. So when she stumbles across confidential information suggesting that one of her firm’s clients may have let soldiers die just to cut costs, she risks her career by leaking the information to the press.

Sari is an Indonesian immigrant who has practically been enslaved by an abusive South Korean diplomat and his wife. Powerless to do anything about it, she agrees to spy on the couple in return for help.

The stories of these four characters intertwine in Washington D.C., in a post 9/11 world characterised by paranoia, innumerable secret agents, anti-war protests and the question of whether the US government is protecting its citizens or its own power. This plot has the potential to be a dense political thriller, but it turned out to be a sophisticated literary novel about how to deal with the past and the individual’s role in an incomprehensibly complex and powerful system.

In the future world that Zed comes from, the past is both sacred and forbidden. All history is highly classified, and only a few people are given limited access to it when necessary. Even your own past is restricted. When someone dies their loved ones are allowed a brief grieving period before state employees confiscate all evidence of the deceased’s existence from their home and workplace, essentially erasing them from the public mind. The theory is that the past is dangerous. Dwelling on it is psychologically and socially destructive, as proved by the countless conflicts spawned by race, religion, ethnicity, land ownership and anything else with historical roots. When one of Zed’s colleagues suggests that their society should be given access to historical information so they can cease to be ignorant, another protests vehemently:

According to the government of the Perfect Present, the historical Protectors are safeguarding their society’s freedom by protecting the past from any significant change. When time travel was invented, a group of people known as ‘historical agitators’ (hags), tried to use it to prevent some of history’s greatest atrocities from happening.

The hags’ argument is that lives would be saved and tragedies averted, and they’re right in their short sighted way. They choose to overlook the fact that such changes would destroy our Perfect Present, meaning that the Great Conflagration, or some similar event, would still be happening, and the suffering would never end. All the problems we’ve solved, all the broken aspects of society we’ve fixed, all the effort we’ve made to eliminate human meanness and frailty – these accomplishments must be protected, no matter the cost. (p.39)

The Revisionists, trade paperback

Zed clings to this theory because although the Protectors are told constantly how noble their job is, it’s brutal in practice: “We were sent to ensure that awful events unfolded as originally dictated by history, that the hags did not rewrite the final acts of tragedies to make them comedies. [...] Wherever we went, countless people died in our wake.” (p.37). Zed is referring specifically to the millions who die because the Protectors ensure that things like the Holocaust or the World Wars unfold as they originally did, but the Protectors also act as assassins, killing any of the hags they find.

The Perfect Present, I think, parallels America’s view of itself. Not that its citizens or its government could so easily call it perfect, but there is nevertheless the assumption that it is better than other societies and must therefore be protected against change from outside forces, even at the cost of countless human lives.

But The Revisionists constantly debates these assumptions, in both the future and present societies. Is either society really the ideal? The Perfect Present has certainly made some improvements. There is no race or religion, and therefore no conflict or division based thereon. Agents like Zed are cybernetically enhanced to the extent that their brains function like powerful computers, so clearly technology has taken a huge leap forward. We’re told that people, on the whole, are happy. Washington D.C. is similar in some ways – there are social ills, but it is undoubtedly better developed than many societies and life, on the whole, is good there.

It’s the level of government control and surveillance in the two societies that makes them seem more like dystopias than utopias. Can a government whose activities include invading citizens’ privacy and assassinating revolutionaries be a good government? Are they damaging what they supposedly protect? The parallel therefore extends to Leo and Zed, the kinds of agents who do the spying and the killing. Are they really doing what is best for their societies, given that what they do is so despicable? I’ve already mentioned all the death Zed causes in doing his job. Leo isn’t an assassin himself, but the information he provides to his superiors is used to capture suspects who are then tortured and killed. His current assignment involves the embarrassingly dirty task of spying on anti-war protesters and tracking down the creators of knoweverything.org, a website dedicated to informing the public about some of the US government’s unethical operations. Along the way Leo blackmails Tasha, using her decision to expose corruption against her. He is also the person who meets Sari and convinces her to spy on the diplomatic couple who are abusing her, even though he’s not sure if he can actually help her out as promised.

Both Zed and Leo are forced to question the ethics of their occupations although in doing so they lose the meaning that their work gives their lives. Leo in particular has always rebuked himself as someone who “never did anything” (p.47). He signed up with the CIA in the hope of changing that, but ended up doing things he couldn’t live with. A similar crisis befalls Tasha when she realises that she’s working for the kind of people who may have let her brother and other soldiers die in the pursuit of profit. These dilemmas also bring into sharp relief the characters’ own powerlessness. Actions that they believe might have devastating consequences could actually be almost pointless. At the same time, when they appear to have been influential the consequences are terrible and often reveal them to be pawns of far more powerful forces.

Towards the end, the grand plots are concentrated into more personal concerns. Ideas about society and government give way to thoughts on grief, family, the past and a meaningful existence. Politics are by no means pushed out of the picture, but the story becomes more about the effect that government is having on individual lives and how casually it manipulates and discards them. The characters become increasingly unsure of themselves and although we get a few answers to some of the mysteries in the novel, the whole story seems to fracture into uncertainty, leaving you on shakier ground than when you started. The novel even throws its own genre – science fiction – into question in a single conversation, playing a little mind game that is my favourite thing about The Revisionists.

It doesn’t feel like a world falling apart but rather like one being dismantled so that the characters can escape from the personal dilemmas they’re trapped in and build new lives from whatever’s left. Uncertainty flourish rather than die out, but it’s something they come to accept. It’s not the most exciting of stories, especially if you’re expecting a time-travel thriller, but that should not dissuade you. There’s still a good deal of action and tension, and it’s a well-crafted, pensive novel, something better-appreciated with a little pondering.

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Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Title: Doomsday Book
Author: Connie Willis
Published:  December 1993
Genre: Science Fiction, Time Travel
Source: Own copy
My Rating: 6/10

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It’s 2024, and in Oxford time travel is an academic pursuit, allowing historians to travel to the periods they study. It’s a perilous undertaking. Travellers can only return to the present at a specific place (“the drop”) and time, or they may be permanently stuck in the past. The further back they travel, the more ‘off-schedule’ they are likely to be, arriving hours, days or weeks away from the intended time. To add to that are the inherent dangers of the period – diseases, violent crimes, political and religious conflicts, etc. – and there’s no way of contacting the time traveller while they’re away.

Kivrin is a young historian taking an unprecedented trip to 1320, but Gilchrist, the over-eager Acting Head of the History Department, has waived all the normal tests performed before a trip in his haste to secure a little academic glory before the Head of Department returns. Professor James Dunworthy, one of Kivrin’s instructors, was concerned about her safety from the moment she announced her decision to go two years ago, but he’s powerless to do anything but watch as Gilchrist sends her into the 1300s, “a century which had scrofula, and the plague and burned Joan of Arc at the stake”. As Dunworthy fears, something does go horribly wrong, but no one knows what because soon after Kivrin leaves the technician in charge of the drop collapses in a deadly fever; the first case in an epidemic that sweeps through 21st century Oxford. The narrative alternates between Kivrin and Dunworthy as each tries to deal with the dilemmas they find themselves in.

Doomsday Book is one of those novels I’ve come to feel is practically required reading for those who enjoy and/or study speculative ficton. Connie Willis is an award-winning author in the field, and Doomsday Book alone claimed the Hugo, Nebula, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke awards. I’ve also often seen it cited as an excellent example of ‘literary’ sci fi, and a good intro to sci fi in general, especially for those who look down on the genre.

With a reputation like that behind it, much of the book disappointed me. Willis’s vision of the future is dull. The only major changes besides the time travel technology are a few unimpressive gadgets like books with holos, a jacket that zips itself up, and laser candles. They don’t even have cellphones, just landlines with video – an important detail because much of the plot involves people making many frantic phone calls, trying desperately to get in touch with someone and mostly failing. Dunworthy is worried sick about Kivrin, but with the epidemic, he can’t find anyone willing or able to help him find out what went wrong. Everyone is trying to find the source of the virus that caused the epidemic. I guessed it pretty early on, but that characters take ages to figure it out, and whenever someone seems to be on the right track they get distracted quickly and easily. It’s infuriating.

Meanwhile, in the 1300s, Kivrin also has a problem that could be solved with a simple gadget. She too collapsed with a fever only minutes after arriving in the 14^th century, and she can’t remember where the drop is. If she can’t find it, she can’t go home, so the first half of her story is mostly concerned with her attempt to talk to the man who rescued her so she can ask him to take her back to where she was found.

As it later turns out, this whole problem could have been avoided if she’d simply had a locator! Given that she has a voice recorder designed to look like a bone implanted in her palm so she can record her experiences, a locator should be an obvious addition. That, and cellphones in 2024 could have done away with at least 100 pages of tedium and tightened the plot considerably. If you’re interested in mediaeval life, Willis’s depiction of the 1300s may be enough to satisfy you while the plot recovers from what feels like its own collapse. Kivrin finds that much of what she’s been taught about the period is inaccurate, so Doomsday Book is also taking on the task of setting the historical record straight so there’s lots of trivia. I don’t know much about the period anyway, and unless you’re not interested in it you’re probably going to find the first half pretty boring.

That’s not to say Doomsday Book isn’t worth reading. The plot does eventually pick itself up and becomes much more engaging, thanks to the peripheral characters. In the 1300s there’s little Agnes, an incredibly cute and precocious child who refers to her tiny black puppy as “my hound” and gives Kivrin all the information she wants because she loves to talk and has no sense of propriety. In 2024, there’s Colin, a bold, resourceful teenager who thinks that being under quarantine during an epidemic might be fun (much better than staying with his mother and her boyfriend for Christmas at any rate). Colin helps the other characters by running errands and helps the reader by being humorous and endearing.

The main characters, Kivrin and Dunworthy, are a lot less interesting and Dunworthy is dreadfully boring most of the time, but once the plot picks up speed that doesn’t matter much. I cared about the fates of the other characters, particularly the mediaeval ones and thanks to them I found the latter half of the book to be excellent.

That’s also when some of the novel’s most interesting themes are developed. There’s a good deal  about parents and children, including the relationship between God and Christ and God and humanity in Christian theology, and the responsibilities of a priest towards his community. Dunworthy behaves as if he were Kivrin’s father, worrying about her as he were responsible for her, feeling guilty that he allowed her to be endangered, trying to rescue her. He keeps drawing a parallel between his own situation and the birth of Christ – God sent his Son out into the world where he suffered horribly; Dunworthy thinks he’s allowed the same thing to happen to Kivrin. He wonders if God really knew how his Son would suffer, if He was in fact powerless to prevent it, and unable to rescue him.

In some of her hardest moments, Kivrin regrets not having listened to Dunworthy, and hopes that he will come and get her. There are also lots of children ‘abandoned’ or let down by their parents – Colin, Agnes, Rosamund. It’s even suggested that God may have abandoned Christ, the way he seems to have abandoned humanity, thereby allowing them to suffer from terrible plagues. Doomsday Book muses on these things, on the responsibility of parents towards children but also the idea that mothers and fathers can’t be responsible for everything that happens to their children, and people can’t always place blame on authority figures but have to take responsibility for themselves and accept those situations over which no one has any control.

At the end of it, I thought Doomsday Book was a worthwhile read, and I’d readily recommend it to fans of historical fiction, particularly those who are less familiar with sci fi. They may find the novel’s first half to be interesting simply because of its depiction of life in the Middle Ages, but I wouldn’t blame other readers for getting too bored to make their way to the good bit. My advice is to wait until you’re in a patient reading mood and give the novel a chance.

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