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?

[scribeoflight]

'He sings of the vast void and of seeds, of shatterings and scatterings and gatherings, of seeds of earth and air and sea and flickerings of flecks, the flash, the flux of fire' (242)

I will read further, but isn't this rather purple? It feels hugely over-written from where I'm sitting: "flickerings... flecks... flash... flux... fire..." (?!?!); "shatterings and scatterings" (?!?!?!?).

It just feels tricksy.

[coalescent]

Well, it works for me, and by no means the whole novel is written in that style--big chunks of it are written in various dialects, some of it is straightforward pulp writing, and so on.

[scribeoflight]

I suppose this is the sort of passage that could divide readers:

The road cuts deep into the sharp-carved shadows of tall trees for a second, slices between dark juts of moss-slicked rock and through a concrete underpass; and she takes the circling slip road off to the right and turns and turns, and then she's up and out and on the Blue Ridge Parkway, riding the wide road that runs from mountain spine to mountain spine along the length of the whole range. And the sun is hot but the air is clear and crisp as a cool spring and she can look out to her left and to her right and see the world on either side, the hills in the beyond, the valleys in between, the vast, green, rough, soft sculpture of time and space, of earth and sky.

Earth and air, earth and sky... etc. etc.

I'm not sure what I think of it. I fear reading it would give me a headache. And isn't clear and crisp air a rather over-used cliché?

And yes, if you look to both the left and the right, you will see "the world on either side." Happens to me all the time. :o)

[immortalradical]

I will put that on a handout for my fortchoming 'Not Everyone Can Be China Mieville 101' class ...

[scribeoflight]

Don't forget to send me a copy...

[chance88088]

do people want to be?

*has yet to finish one of his novels*

[immortalradical]

I was thinking of reading Vellum. Now I'm not sure I'll bother. :\

[coalescent]

Well, I'd be interested to see what you make of it. I suspect the main things that bothered me wouldn't even register for you, and you'd have different problems entirely. :)

[fjm]

You'd hate it. It would have you writhing at the pretentiousness and pointlessness of it all.

[ninebelow]

To be honest I don't think the pretentiousness would be a problem. The pointlessness on the other hand...

[mokatiki]

Ok I admit that normally I just glance over these reviews without much interest. Today however I think the words '...a tale of War in Heaven.' jumped out and made the theology hoer in me go 'oOo'. I would probably read it just for that, especially with the looks into imagination

[coalescent]

Ok I admit that normally I just glance over these reviews without much interest.

Not to worry. I think those who read the reviews are a minority. :)

(Hell just by Vast Void I was grinning).

...

Hmm i may have taken the wrong meaning from that,

It's possible. :p

but you have to laugh at that kind of pretension (and yes alliteration to that degree if meant seriously is pretension)

I think it's meant ironically, in a I-know-this-is-OTT-and-you-know-this-is-OTT-but-isn't-it-great? kind of a knowing way.

It's a bit like Illuminatus, but with less of a sense of humour.

Ok now that I have successfully ran away from the point I was going to make I think I’ll go before I get thwaped

If I promise not to thwap you, will you tell me what the point you were going to make was?