A pair of Sleators
Jun. 21st, 2009 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraThe essay I read on Sleator (and mentioned previously) is here - it’s more a set of mini-reviews, picking out common themes and tracing Sleator’s writing over a sizeable chunk of time (although the author’s idea about what should have happened in Parasite Pig, apparently inspired by all the bits I found boring and/or self-indulgent in Cryptonomicon, appears to miss the point of who is in control of the protagonist’s actions and their motives). Anyway. I agree that Sleator’s work went downhill (although I like The Boy who reversed himself) in the late 80s – these two (Tests (2008) is the latest, The Last Universe is 2005) are better, but I think he still hasn’t got a firm grasp on what the story needs to be yet, even if the ideas are interesting.
Tests. Ann is studying for XCAS, tests which will determine her entire future and offer her a way out of pollution and insecurity. But a guy on a motorbike with the symbol of the test company on his jacket is threatening Ann on her walk home from school, and her father has been standing up to the corrupt landlord at the building he works at, and the Thai kid at Ann's school, who works at the same building, is somehow getting the answers to the tests...
It's an okay set-up, and I liked the intersections between characters - those based around the apartments actually work better than the school, with Elsie (spoilt daughter of the rich landlord/test company owner) driving much of the action through her fixation on a guy there. The story never takes off, tho', and the resolution - where suddenly all the students join a test boycott, and there's a massive media exposé - never feels like it would actually work. Part of the problem is that the set up is of a corrupt city where no-one cares, with no actual specific detail, and so it's hard to drop back from that into a more conventional and contemporary setting, and also it’s a sudden shift from a few concerned individuals to all the other students and the media. It also felt like a less interesting explanation/resolution than it could have been (it's strangely normal for a Sleator story, for a start).
The last universe. Susan regularly takes her sick brother Gary out into the family garden at his request, although she finds it unnerving and scary. The garden is built by now vanished relatives who studied quantum physics, and when strange things start happening there Gary is convinced he has a chance to get well again.
This felt much more like classical Sleator, and I enjoyed the first two thirds more than any of his other ones I've read recently. The quantum maze is nicely done, and there's a Cambodian character (the gardener) rather than the obligatory Thai one.
And then something falls out of the story, and it's hard to say what. The siblings' discovery that they're changing universes each time they come out of the maze should escalate things, and it does for a little while – but then there’s the universe with alternate versions of themselves, which implies that they do have some sort of permanent origin – and in which case, how can the maze change them? And the ending involves separation, rather than reunion, but not in a way that makes it easy to understand what it means and, in some ways, is almost like a “and then I woke up”.
This is the book dedicated to Sleator’s sister Vicky, after her death, and while it’s difficult to separate my knowledge of that from the book itself, I do think the first two-thirds of this book are sad, and interesting. But it doesn’t follow through, which is sad in a different way.
Tests. Ann is studying for XCAS, tests which will determine her entire future and offer her a way out of pollution and insecurity. But a guy on a motorbike with the symbol of the test company on his jacket is threatening Ann on her walk home from school, and her father has been standing up to the corrupt landlord at the building he works at, and the Thai kid at Ann's school, who works at the same building, is somehow getting the answers to the tests...
It's an okay set-up, and I liked the intersections between characters - those based around the apartments actually work better than the school, with Elsie (spoilt daughter of the rich landlord/test company owner) driving much of the action through her fixation on a guy there. The story never takes off, tho', and the resolution - where suddenly all the students join a test boycott, and there's a massive media exposé - never feels like it would actually work. Part of the problem is that the set up is of a corrupt city where no-one cares, with no actual specific detail, and so it's hard to drop back from that into a more conventional and contemporary setting, and also it’s a sudden shift from a few concerned individuals to all the other students and the media. It also felt like a less interesting explanation/resolution than it could have been (it's strangely normal for a Sleator story, for a start).
The last universe. Susan regularly takes her sick brother Gary out into the family garden at his request, although she finds it unnerving and scary. The garden is built by now vanished relatives who studied quantum physics, and when strange things start happening there Gary is convinced he has a chance to get well again.
This felt much more like classical Sleator, and I enjoyed the first two thirds more than any of his other ones I've read recently. The quantum maze is nicely done, and there's a Cambodian character (the gardener) rather than the obligatory Thai one.
And then something falls out of the story, and it's hard to say what. The siblings' discovery that they're changing universes each time they come out of the maze should escalate things, and it does for a little while – but then there’s the universe with alternate versions of themselves, which implies that they do have some sort of permanent origin – and in which case, how can the maze change them? And the ending involves separation, rather than reunion, but not in a way that makes it easy to understand what it means and, in some ways, is almost like a “and then I woke up”.
This is the book dedicated to Sleator’s sister Vicky, after her death, and while it’s difficult to separate my knowledge of that from the book itself, I do think the first two-thirds of this book are sad, and interesting. But it doesn’t follow through, which is sad in a different way.
