Commitment Hour, by James Alan Gardner
Title: Commitment Hour
Series: League of Peoples (stand-alone in the universe)
Author: James Alan Gardner
Publisher: Avon
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Year: 1998
Pages: 343
Genre: Science Fiction
Subgenres: Soft SF, Post-Apocalyptic
Challenge Information: Science Fiction Challenge category "SF dealing with gender roles"
Full Disclosure: N/A
Jacket Description
In the twenty-fifth century, Tober Cove is a wonderful place to be. With most of Earth's population long since departed for other planets, and with them the technology that makes such a journey possible, life here is simple and serene -- especially for Fullin, a gifted musician whose talent commands many times the wages of a farmer or fisherman. But Fullin is twenty years old. And at that age, each person in Tober Cove must make the most important decision in life. Ominous winds of change swirl toward Fullin's idyllic existence, carrying dark secrets that will upend his beliefs, alter his view of reality, and threaten his very life. But for the boy himsef, there is no more room for indecision. The time has come to take an irrevocable stand and seal his fate forever. The hour of commitment is here.
My Review
This book was pure joy for me to read. I loved everything about it -- the world, the characters, the very idiosyncratic voice. After I came down from my reading high I found myself poking holes in some of the assertions about the world, suspect of the ways Gardner chose his characters to discourage the reader from thinking about aspects of it, but that didn't dampen my love for the experience. However, I cannot talk about the book without spoiling something that the back cover plays very coy with: the nature of the Commitment. It's revealed on page two, but if you don't want that spoiled, don't read any further. (Also, don't read any other reviews; I've only seen one that avoided the spoiler.)
The Commitment Fullin must make is choosing his gender for the rest of his life. This year he is male; but last year he was female, and in fact every summer of his life he has gone off with his gods and had his gender switched. Every person of Tober Cove spends their childhood this way, learning what it means to be both male and female (all aspects of each -- sexual exploration is encouraged, and in every person's last year as a female she bears a child), and then at twenty each person must commit to one gender or the other for the rest of his/her life.
(Technically, a person can also commit to "both" and become a hermaphrodite; but 150 years ago that choice was outlawed, and any person that chooses both is immediately exiled from the community and can be killed on site if they return.)
So this book is one in the long line of SF novels that looks at gender roles -- one of my favorite SF conversations to have.
It's a first-person narrative, and that narration is, I think, the best thing about the book. Fullin is an incredibly well-realized character with a very distinct voice I found completely charming. The first page is an absolute gem; I'd quote it here, but that would take up way too much space. He's also a bit of a jackass, and the fact that I still loved reading him makes Gardner's achievement more impressive. And through a quirk I will not spoil, we also get to be inside Fullin's head as a woman. She is much more likable than he is; she is also, in both obvious and subtle ways, a very different person than Fullin as a man.
One of the many things that make Fullin different in each gender is that Tober Cove has very strict gender roles -- stricter than the rest of the world, where the gender-switching does not take place. Men fish and hunt; women are caregivers. Men are politicians; women are priestesses. But, because the characters have practiced both roles all their lives, the system is not dystopic; after all, if you really want to be Mayor someday, you can just choose to be male at your Commitment ceremony. If you want to be Mayor and a stay-at-home Mom, well, the Mocking Priestess has a saying: "You can get what you want most in life; not even the gods can guarantee you get your second choice too."
There isn't anything tremendously groundbreaking about the treatment of gender here; most of the book focuses on the lost third choice, and what that loss has done to warp an otherwise utopic society. Still, I loved the way Gardner handled it because many of the characters were so conscious of the processes at work; Leeta, the Mocking Priestess, and Fullin-as-a-woman all have wonderful moments where they become exasperated at the outsiders' confusion about how gender works in Tober Cove and break character, so to speak; they fill their roles to the hilt, but they do it consciously, because that keeps their society in balance.
That self-awareness isn't only limited to gender roles either. This is science fiction, for all the talk of gods and demons, and the characters know that too. The gender-switching process is a technological rather than mystical one, and generally in books like this the process of discovering the technology underlying the religion causes people to lose faith; I loved the way Gardner created characters whose faith is elastic. An outsider dismisses the solstice dance as "charming" neo-Paganism, but Fullin responds with:
"Everyone knows its not hard to make the gods sound ridiculous. It just takes sarcasm, exaggeration, and a
determination to be vulgar. . . But that's kid's stuff. . . After a while, as with most things at thirteen, the memory
of how you behaved makes you squirm; even if you know that seasons come from a tilting planet whirling
around the sun, the old stories still mean something to you. . . The gods aren't jokes; they're people you walk
around with every day. Insulting them is like insulting family."
And the religion the characters follow, neo-Pagan or not, artificially constructed or not, is one I can believe keeps the characters warm at night. The solstice dance; the way the Patriarch's Man and the Mocking Priestess balance each other; the whole ritual Hush for Mistress Snow; Gardner shows how those pieces, so easily mocked, bind the community together. It's not a perfect community -- people are people, and every community has its misifts, its damaged souls; and, of course, there is the unsightly scar of the outlawed third choice. And as I pointed out on my personal blog, Gardner shaped his world very conveniently so he would not have to address a significant chunk of his characters' identity. But my overall experience was one of warmth, and hope, and joy.
My Rating
Overall Satisfaction: ★★★★1/2
Intellectual Satisfaction: ★★★1/2
Emotional Satisfaction: ★★★★★
Read this for: The characters, the world-building
Don't read this for: The mystery
Bechdel Test: Pass
Johnson Test: Fail
Books I was reminded of: The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Will I read more by this author? Absolutely.