Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Beware novels which announce, “A Novel.”
Today, I finished The Shadow Year: A Novel by Jeffrey Ford. I wanted to read a good fantasy, so I checked out the World Fantasy Awards site. Noting that their 2010 award-winner was China Mieville’s The City & The City, which I liked a great deal, I decided I would trust them for another fantasy. Hence The Shadow Year: A Novel, which won their 2009 best novel award.
Setting: a small town in Long Island, late 1960s. Well, I thought, this should be fun, since I was the protag’s age at that time, too. And yet the moments of resonance were rare: a reference to Bazooka bubble gum (which did indeed cost a penny), occasional mentions of commercials which were on TV at the time. Despite Ford’s efforts to create a rich setting, with regard both to the town and the time, it all felt flat to me.
Plot: the unnamed protag is the middle child of a dad who works three jobs and a manic depressive mom who drinks herself to sleep every night. His younger sister is disturbed (and psychic!) and his older brother is cool, brave, and generic. There’s also a generic bully and a generic mean teacher and a host of generic loonies. Conflict arises first in the guise of a mysterious window peeper, then in the form of disappearances, murders, and a sinister man in a big white car. The brothers set out to unravel the town’s mystery and inexplicably never tell their father, who seems a reasonable sort, nor their grandparents, who are also cool and brave and nearly generic (they and the drunk mom were the only ones in the novel who came alive for me).
Gimmick: the older brother has built a simulacrum of the neighborhood on a model train platform erected in their basement. Movements of their neighbors, the peeper, and the sinister man in his big white car are eerily reflected by changes in the positions of their counterparts in the miniature town.
THEME! THEME! THEME! Why, loss of innocence, of course, which is telegraphed with a bullhorn at the end of the novel’s first paragraph:
. . . . Taking a cast-off leaf into each hand, I made double fists. When I opened my fingers, brown crumbs fell and scattered on the road at my feet. Had I been waiting for the arrival of that strange changeling year, I might have understood the sifting debris to be symbolic of the end of something.
Really, how big a dumb ass am I? I read that paragraph before I ever bought the book, and yet I still bought it. Jeez.
What’s wrong with it: oh, imagine any Twilight Zone episode written by Rod Serling. Got it yet? Smarmy. Rife with predictable ironies. Ultimately moralistic — and two-dimensional.
I’m thinking of reading Jeff Vandermeer’s Ambergris novels. Has anyone here read him? Or do you have any other fantasy recommendations to make?
D.
I have Christmas book tokens, so I’m on the look out for some good reads, too.
Hmm… I’m a bad person to talk to. I am on the second book of GRR Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice, and quite enjoying it. But shades of Robert Jordan, I see an update on his website dated 3 years ago saying that the last book should be done Real Soon Now.
Yes, I’m a bad fantasy reader.
Emma Bull, definitely. Start with Bone Dance.
Philip Bury. Wm Gibson. Bruce Sterling.
you’ve got some fun ahead of you!
CB: thanks for two new names (new to me, that is): Philip Bury and Emma Bull. Sterling and Gibson I know well.