Since I wrote this post about the Missouri Department of Corrections' book ban, I haven't had a hard time finding reading material, but that's more because I lack leisure time than because I'm book rich.
The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again is the 2020 novel by the phenomenal speculative fiction writer M. John Harrison. I mail ordered it last year but only just got around to reading the thing. Nearly two decades ago, I fell in love with Harrison's work via Light, his brilliant take on transhumanist science fiction. I renewed my vows with The Course of the Heart, Harrison's melancholy novel about a failed romantic affair and the characters' unsettling history with dark magic. Somewhere between were other books that moved and fascinated me.
At the level of the sentence, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again bedevils and delights in equal measure. What's it about? I suppose I'd say its about a second set of hominids inhabiting the earth, how human relationships work (and don't), a secret society, Brexit.... Yeah, I'm not sure Harrison has written here what one could properly call a plot. The book contains intimations of movement, sightings and discoveries and mysteries from which the curtains teasingly part just enough for occasional peeks — but nothing's ever really revealed. Regardless, I'll still read anything the man writes.
A Small Place, by Jamaica Kincaid, was my first encounter with the Antiguan author. This book-length essay is Kincaid's ambivalent love letter to her home country and her visceral takedown of colonialism. It was also our May selection for the ERDCC Book Club. From its slender binding we managed to wring two meetings' worth of discussion. Funny, smart, and justifiably pissed, Kincaid brings an ironic sensibility to bear on her small island birthplace; the astute reader, if they've traveled anyplace where the culture's demonstrably different, may experience a frisson of shame at ever having fed into the fiasco that is the tourism industry.
Next up, a Flannery O'Connor novel — assuming I can get through these back issues of The New York Review of Books in a reasonable amount of time.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Byron does not have Internet access. Pariahblog.com posts are sent from his cell by way of a secure service especially for prisoners' use. We do read him your comments, however, and he enjoys hearing your thoughts very much.