“A nimble fable...” from every boy should have a man
EVERY BOY SHOULD HAVE A MAN
sexual manifesto. Or religious parable. Or a narrative about the possibilities and limitations of narrative. Or a series of interrelated stories inspired by the cards of a tarot deck. Or all of the above. Yet the reader need have no knowledge of the tarot (or the occult, which pervades the novel) to appreciate its imaginative vision or make sense of the way it hopscotches across genre, chronology, geography and cosmos. It begins and ends with the first-person account of a fictional American science-fiction writer named Larry Zagorski, best known for a novel titled American Gnostic, which attracted a hippie cult following in the 1960s. For the novel, Zagorski drew upon his own experiences with the likes of Robert Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard (the latter, fictionalized in Zagorski’s novel and rendered under his own name in Arnott’s, transforms his science fiction into a religion in both). Also playing key roles in the novel are Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Hess, Ian Fleming and Jim Jones (the prophet of mass suicide). Told through multiple narrators, it is a novel of “quantum leaps, of diverging timelines, alternate futures, and crucial moments when things could go either way.” Yet, it sustains a narrative momentum as it unfolds as fact and fantasy, mystery and revelation, pulp fiction and metaphysical transcendence. Along the way, it traces the thematic arc of science fiction, which has gone “from being about the probable, the possible, the impossible, the metaphysical to the ordinary, the everyday. It seems the one form that can truly grasp the essential strangeness of modern living.” A novel that combines the pleasures of genre fiction and the thematic richness of literary fiction, while blurring the line between the two and exploding the very concept of genre.
Allen, Preston L. Akashic (224 pp.) $23.95 | $15.95 paper | May 14, 2013 978-1-61775-162-2 978-1-61775-157-8 paper
In a world ruled by giant post–human beings, mankind is reduced to mere playthings in this fractured fairy tale. After exploring addiction and religion in his first two outings, Allen (Jesus Boy, 2010, etc.) throws caution to the wind with his bizarre but exquisitely composed fable that uses transhumanism as the prism to reflect on the nature of humanity. In his latest, the world is populated by “oafs,” simple giants who tower above and live in large, crowded assemblies; and “mans,” people who have been reduced to a primitive, sometimes feral state. The novel tells the story of our protagonist, “Boy,” and his three “mans.” The boy’s first man is called Brown Skin and turns out to be the runaway property of the local mayor. When the mayor retrieves him, the boy is inconsolable. To make it up to him, his father arranges for him to have Red Sleeves, a “female man.” But one day, the boy finds her “entangled” with another missing man, and she later becomes pregnant. When the oafs take her child away to slave in the mines, Red Sleeves dies suddenly. Eventually, her daughter, Red Locks, escapes from the mines and takes up with a rascal named Rufus but eventually visits Boy to let him in on some of the great secrets of the world. If it sounds absurd, it is, but it’s also intellectually curious and rather cutting in many of its conceptual and cultural assessments. It’s a world where man is not only pet, but also meat, where religion, wars and empires are just as backward as they are in our own world, and where worlds collide with a temperamental angst that is as uncomfortable as it is alluring. Much like Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel Planet of the Apes, this novel is a sardonic parable on the nature and destiny of the species. A nimble fable whose bold narrative experiment is elevated by its near-biblical language and affectionate embrace of our inherent flaws.
TEN WHITE GEESE
Bakker, Gerbrand Penguin (240 pp.) $15.00 paper | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-14-312267-8 An Emily Dickinson scholar from the Netherlands journeys to Wales, ostensibly to carry on her research but more realistically, to escape from a scandal involving one of her students. Agnes arrives in Wales in November, when days get grim and dark fairly early, an atmosphere that’s well-suited to her loneliness. She rents a farmhouse and soon meets Rhys Jones, who tends his sheep and helps orient her to the small local community. Concerned that the 10 domestic geese are rapidly diminishing in number owing to the predations of a fox, Agnes constructs a crude pen to try to protect them. As she desultorily works on her translation of Dickinson’s poetry, she muses about her past—her brief but intense affair with a student and the hounding that occurred shortly after. Bakker also intercuts scenes with Anges’ husband, still in the Netherlands, who has no idea where his wife has gone, though scurrilous notices on the campus bulletin board make the “why” of her disappearance apparent. Although Agnes has few visitors, another Jones shows up (she wonders whether that’s the only
THE HOUSE OF RUMOUR
Arnott, Jake Amazon/New Harvest (448 pp.) $26.00 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-54-407779-9 An audaciously ambitious novel that takes great creative risks and, against considerable odds, makes most of them pay dividends. What kind of novel is the latest from the British Arnott (The Long Firm, 1999)? Science fiction, most likely. Or World War II espionage. Or Utopian/dystopian. Or 6
|
15 february 2013
|
fiction
|
kirkus.com
|