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jazzfishJo Walton, Farthing
Much of my distaste for alternate history comes from it involving hinge-points I just don't care that much about. Obvious exception: _The Dragon Waiting_. A book can get around this if it's a story that couldn't be told without the societal changes that come from the hinge point. See, e.g., _The Man in the High Castle_: in general, 'what if Hitler won' is not really a proposition that interests me all that much, since the obvious answer is 'life would suck, a lot.' _High Castle_ actually goes and does interesting things with this premise. But overall I've not got a lot of desire to just read about life in a conquered nation.
Which is relevant to _Farthing_ because its Britain isn't a conquered nation at all. The Britain of the book negotiated a withdrawal from WWII in 1941, leaving the Reich free to consolidate the rest of western Europe under its rule and then get bogged down fighting Russia without having to worry about the western front. So you're left with a Britain that's almost right but not quite: some of the names and policies have changed, but it's far more recognisable than _High Castle_'s America.
It's an English country house mystery, where one of the rich girls has married a (gasp) nice Jewish boy, in a society with rampant anti-semitism. (It is, of course, worse on the Continent.) So _Farthing_ gets to explore the effects of racism, both overt and deeply enough ingrained that you just plain don't realise you're being racist.
The book's all investigation and mystery and ominous fascist stormclouds for the first three-quarters, and then suddenly it becomes very dark and dangerous very quickly.
There is nothing I can say about the prose, which flows like wine and shifts between the first-person diary style of the the rich girl and the limited-third of the detective inspector, or the feels-like-real-people characterizations, because I was too busy being caught up in the world and the events to notice those things.
One of the people Lucy mentions as having been at her coming-out was "that nice Mr Philby from the Foreign Service." I do hope he turns up in _Ha'Penny_.
Much of my distaste for alternate history comes from it involving hinge-points I just don't care that much about. Obvious exception: _The Dragon Waiting_. A book can get around this if it's a story that couldn't be told without the societal changes that come from the hinge point. See, e.g., _The Man in the High Castle_: in general, 'what if Hitler won' is not really a proposition that interests me all that much, since the obvious answer is 'life would suck, a lot.' _High Castle_ actually goes and does interesting things with this premise. But overall I've not got a lot of desire to just read about life in a conquered nation.
Which is relevant to _Farthing_ because its Britain isn't a conquered nation at all. The Britain of the book negotiated a withdrawal from WWII in 1941, leaving the Reich free to consolidate the rest of western Europe under its rule and then get bogged down fighting Russia without having to worry about the western front. So you're left with a Britain that's almost right but not quite: some of the names and policies have changed, but it's far more recognisable than _High Castle_'s America.
It's an English country house mystery, where one of the rich girls has married a (gasp) nice Jewish boy, in a society with rampant anti-semitism. (It is, of course, worse on the Continent.) So _Farthing_ gets to explore the effects of racism, both overt and deeply enough ingrained that you just plain don't realise you're being racist.
The book's all investigation and mystery and ominous fascist stormclouds for the first three-quarters, and then suddenly it becomes very dark and dangerous very quickly.
There is nothing I can say about the prose, which flows like wine and shifts between the first-person diary style of the the rich girl and the limited-third of the detective inspector, or the feels-like-real-people characterizations, because I was too busy being caught up in the world and the events to notice those things.
One of the people Lucy mentions as having been at her coming-out was "that nice Mr Philby from the Foreign Service." I do hope he turns up in _Ha'Penny_.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-09 11:19 pm (UTC)