Vellum

[coalescent]

My travel reading over the past week has been Hal Duncan's debut novel, Vellum. It's a book which has been attracting a fairly significant amount of attention in the sf world, and it's also getting a big marketing push from Pan Macmillan (the proof copies, from a limited run of 600, are things of beauty). You can read a very short extract here, and

Comments

[snurri]

Interesting take. My feeling on this was that, rather than trying to encompass all of Story, Hal was making the point that so many stories are really built upon other stories. I felt as though he was pulling up the cracks so we could all see how much wiggle room there was in them; whether, in fact, stories are fated/doomed to repeat themselves, or whether we (or the unkin) can actually step out of the story. Phreedom's story, I think, is most about this; we see her try to escape the war, and yet we realize in the end that she is only repeating Inanna's story. (And yet, in the same way, her story is the most outward-moving of the stories in the book, with the numerous little stories-in-progress which she and her paramour move through, offering alternative and largely unexplored narratives. Reynard's own journey through the Vellum also explores this, particularly in the first book.) The word I kept thinking of, and I'm certain Hal intended this though I don't recall it showing up in the book, was palimpsest; the idea that this had

[coalescent]

Hal was making the point that so many stories are really built upon other stories

Oh, absolutely. I was vaguely alluding to that when I mentioned stories echoing other stories, but it was a long post already and I didn't want to add another 500 words by going into it in more detail. I like the way that the characters move through stories-in-progress. But I don't think that excludes what I was talking about in the main post, it's just that all of the many stories he's dragging into the vellum can be traced back, through layers, to increasingly primitive ur-stories. That's exactly what happens with Seamus in the second half of the novel, after all.

You may well be right that the overall arc is one of escape, in which case Ink could end with the mother of all conceptual breakthroughs. If it does I'll be right there with him. ;-)

[snurri]

True, that doesn't exclude your point; I'm mainly saying that I wasn't bothered by it because I felt the focus was elsewhere. It's a many-layered and complex book as it is, and I think that it would have been difficult to step very far outside the main story to call attention to something "beyond human" without diffusing it entirely. Similarly, to call attention to the lack of same would fall outside the concerns of the book, it seems to me.

But there's also the point you make, that the next book could prove either or both of us entirely right or entirely wrong in our readings. :-)

[ninebelow]

I didn't want to add another 500 words by going into it in more detail.

Who are you and what have you done with Niall Harrison?

[coalescent]

I also like that the book encourages you to think about its relation to other stories. I kept seeing other parallels or reflections or twists on other things I've read or watched--as with Time--and I liked that effect. The Seamus stuff made me think of Firefly, 'War Stories':"Have you ever read the works of Shan Yu?"
"Shan Yu, the psychotic dictator?"
"Yep. Fancied himself quite the warrior poet. Wrote volumes on war, torture ... the limits of human endurance."
"...that's nice."
"He said, 'live with a man 40 years, share his house, his meals, speak on every subject. Then tie him up and hold him over the volcano's edge. And on that day you will finally meet the man."
"What if you don't live near a volcano?"
"I expect he was being poetical."
"Sadistic crap legitimised by florid prose. Tell me you're not a fan."

-- Book and Simon

[snurri]

I hadn't noticed the Firefly resonances, but Yes. I think that's one reason the book worked so well for me; it was able to evoke and incorporate so many stories while still telling one that is very much Hal's own. To reference Lovecraft and Burroughs and Alan Moore etc. etc. without ever becoming sycophant to those creators and their works. Really, it's a testament to the confidence of his storytelling; it's almost as if he were respectfully showing them to their seats, then saying "Look what I can do."