The Unburied

The Unburied
My final entry in the R.I.P. 2006 Autumn Challenge!

Title: The Unburied

Author: Charles Palliser

Copyright: 1999

Length: 402 pages (link to work on LibraryThing )

Summary: The plot centers around an historian visiting an old friend who has contacted him after a lengthy separation. He visits his colleague at Thurchester with the intent of making good use of his time by researching documents in the cathedral library that will set him on the path to an important discovery relevant to his specialty of early British history, specifically the period surrounding King Alfred (he of the famous burned cakes). During the week he is in Thurchester, there is a murder, a suicide, a corpse unearthed from prior centuries, a crumbling cathedral, a crisis at the choir school and a complex set of revelations to be deciphered and grasped. It is this last aspect of The Unburied that has put off many readers; it is indeed a most complex literary construction. This is not a book that can be skimmed rapidly. As one reviewer put it at LibraryThing, "This isn't a beach read." There are two narratives (the outer frame by a Mr. Barthelm and the lengthier internal story told by Dr. Courtine) and there are several manuscripts and stories (the fragmented historical manuscript, the fairy tale, and the completed manuscript that provides the final explanation of The Thurchester Mystery.) Each narrative unfolds as a segment of another and the result (as many unwary readers found) is a gothic novel that requires extended attention if one is to grasp both the resolution and the author's point.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: This is a gothic novel, not a ghost story. It is on the creepy side, but it is not perhaps conventionally scary (a 3.75 out of 5 on the eerie/creepy scale). There are tragedies and shadowy encounters, but in the final analysis, this is an elegant historical/psychological mystery. One could read this in a house alone without fear of nightmares, but I must say that it might not be a pleasant experience. One would ultimately grasp the final resolution and be somewhat distressed/sickened. As modern Gothic novels go, this one is very well-done.Genre: Definitely a Gothic novel. Definitely adult reading. This one doesn't belong in your average high school library (not that most of them can afford to buy much in the way of books these days).

Extract: Go here for the extract. Do bear in mind that this is *not* the first chapter of the book as the NYTimes' site suggests. It is actually the first chapter within the Courtine narrative. That's relevant when you actually begin the book, because you may assume (as I did) that the editor's foreword is just that. A foreword (as in prefatory material) and not part of the novel's action.

Also Relevant: There were mixed reviews on this book. The New York Times panned it badly although the book showed up on the New York Times bestsellers list published the week following the review. Various other readers, posting well after its initial publication, had both good and bad reactions to the novel. As near as I can gauge it, the general consensus is praise for the construction of the novel but unhappiness with the final resolution. I think I'd agree. I'm not sorry I read it, but neither am I sure that it would be a suitable selection for a general book group. Say that it has niche appeal, and you've probably captured it.

The book's complexity makes it challenging, but a careful pacing of one's reading allows the author to unfold his message which is essentially that perception influences internal and external assignment of guilt. (That's certainly a valid point, but not perhaps news to a modern audience used to discussions of profiling in criminal investigations. This may be why some readers become impatient with his story-telling style.) Palliser makes his point by allowing his characters to focus on and unfold historical events, tracing criss-crossing versions of those events. I do think The Unburied suffers from a lack of distinction between the voices of those attempting to unravel the various threads of mystery. To my ear, all of the voices sounded just a little too like one another. One could barely keep them straight even while one was struggling to remember who was who among the various names (Gazzard vs. Grimlake; Speldrick vs Sisterson). That was indeed aggravating, which is why (I suppose) the publisher provided a list of the various characters at the end of the text. [One final warning: if you dislike tales involving child abuse, you should *definitely* avoid this one.]

As with all Gothic literature, various forms of uncertainty thread through this book. Such uncertainty reflects the fears that accompany an internal recognition that things don't always happen as planned. Actions have unintended consequences which teaches us to watch and proceed with caution. The message for at least one of the characters in The Unburied is that such caution may preclude us from taking the necessary actions to free ourselves from doubt.

As modern renditions of Gothic novels go, I preferred Grange House to this selection. The convoluted narrative is present in both as is the voice of an earlier age, but Blake seems to have the knack of moving her story along at just that slightly faster pace that satisfies the modern reader's need to move along quickly before a daily obligation arises and eliminates reading time.

By the way, I actually learned a new word from this book - pulpitum. Look it up. St. Peter's Cathedral in Exeter (UK) apparently has a very nice one.

The War of the Worlds

The War of the Worlds
Another entry in the Readers Imbibing Peril (R.I.P.) Autumn Challenge

Title: The War of the Worlds (full text at Project Gutenberg).

Author: H.G. Wells (brief biography)

Copyright: 1898 (ie. this work is in the public domain); The Penguin print edition that I used was copyright 2005 (See work on Library Thing ).

Length: 173 pages, excluding introduction, preface, and footnotes.

Summary: An academic gentleman experiences the invasion of his safe, secure existence by Martians who view the local population as a food source rather than as any equal entity with whom they might negotiate. The academic interacts with a curate and with an artilleryman, each of whom has a unique perspective on how to manage and/or survive the unforeseen circumstances. Ultimately, Man survives but with a changed sense of his position in the universe. This is a good read; it fits within the context of the RIP criteria on the basis of the atmospheric, melancholic series of destructive events. Man as a race does not perform with overmuch nobility in this crisis. Naturally, as Englishmen, the narrator and his brother maintain a certain sense of duty and maintain a certain level of responsibility for those about them. But the internal check on civilized behavior slips as the narrator himself admits when it comes to the question of basic survival or death.

Eerie/Creepy Quotient: Perhaps a 3.5 or even just a 3. Not overly scary in the sense of monsters in the night, but there's a definite sense of suspense and fear present in the narration. Certainly, there's no reason *not* to read this book in a house alone at night. Our modern sensibilities are less apt to believe in the Martian invasion than in the ghost of some previous tenant wringing his hands over his wealth left behind. But the writing is very good and pacing is consistent. There is some sense of character granted to the narrator although the curate and the artilleryman are clearly intended to represent schools of thought or archetypes rather than being fleshed out as recognizable individuals. The fear I suppose that is inherent to this book is the fear that comes with recognition of one's own vulnerability rather than fear of any BEM (bug-eyed-monster). Or for that matter, the fear that arises at the idea of war coming to one's familiar area. Eerie/Creepy aren't appropriate words to apply here; Uneasy might be.

Genre: Speculative Fiction -- Appropriate to 10-13 year olds and older could benefit from some of the discussions that emerge here with regard to human response to crisis.

Extract (from Book 1, Chapter 16):

There were sad, haggard women tramping by, well dressed, with children that cried and stumbled, their dainty clothes smothered in dust, their weary faces smeared with tears. With many of these came men, sometimes helpful, sometimes lowering and savage. Fighting side by side with them pushed some weary street outcast in faded black rags, wide-eyed, loud-voiced, and foul-mouthed. There were sturdy workmen thrusting their way along, wretched, unkempt men, clothed like clerks or shopmen, struggling spasmodically; a wounded soldier my brother noticed, men dressed in the clothes of railway porters, one wretched creature in a nightshirt with a coat thrown over it.

But varied as its composition was, certain things all that host had in common. There were fear and pain on their faces, and fear behind them. A tumult up the road, a quarrel for a place in a waggon, sent the whole host of them quickening their pace; even a man so scared and broken that his knees bent under him was galvanised for a moment into renewed activity. The heat and dust had already been at work upon this multitude. Their skins were dry, their lips black and cracked. They were all thirsty, weary, and footsore. And amid the various cries one heard disputes, reproaches, groans of weariness and fatigue; the voices of most of them were hoarse and weak. Through it all ran a refrain:

“Way! Way! The Martians are coming!”

Also Relevant: This is an interesting read on a number of levels. For one thing, just as there are numerous attempts to dramatize for screen The Island of Dr. Moreau, there have been similar attempts at dramatization of The War of the Worlds. There was the admittedly successful radio show by Orson Welles which created such havoc in 1938. (For more information, go here.) One of the amusing things I encountered when browsing this book initially was the shock of recollection that the story was actually set in England -- in Woking rather than in Grover's Mill, New Jersey. Somehow internally, I had classified War of the Worlds as a twentieth century American experience, rather than a nineteenth-century British novel despite my knowledge of Wells and his timeframe. At the same time, even before reading the original novel, I had never thought that any of the movies of War of the Worlds were very good. The movies present The War of the Worlds as a story about Bug-Eyed-Monsters and our vulnerability in the face of greater technological weapons than our own.

I think that Wells was writing here to make a different point about an immediate issue in his time and culture (ie. integration of Darwinist thought into the popular consciousness). He uses the invasion by more advanced creatures as a trigger device for introducing a new idea to his fellow Victorians and as a philosophical suggestion as to how they might go on once the idea had been fully integrated. Rather than being the apex of God's creation, the invasion by the Martians suggests that man is neither at the top of the biological family nor at the bottom. His lack of characterization in portraying the curate and the artilleryman is to suggest that the right response is neither to surrender to despair (as the curate does) nor to indulge one's baser instincts (as he suggests when he accuses the artilleryman of gluttony). There is the middle ground found by the narrator in the end of the story which is neither surrender nor a ratlike survival. Instead Wells offers the recognition that we can only progress from where we are as creatures, being aware that there are forces in nature which take over and we must submit to the limits of our own knowledge of those forces and consequent lack of control. He was examining that idea for strength as one might test a bridge to see if it can hold one's weight.

Wells presents an England in chaos due to the arrival of the Martians. But in the chapter, The Man on Putney Hill, he reasserts the place of a human being. Hubris is dangerous as there are those forces in nature that we cannot and may never control, but cowering in fear is equally unacceptable. Humankind should neither be arrogant nor frightened by their place in nature -- just recognize that such is the situation and act accordingly.