M.T. Anderson
Candlewick Press
$17.99 hardcover, available now
Rating: 4.5* of five
The Publisher Says: It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his mother — a princess in exile from a faraway land — are the only persons in their household assigned names. As the boy's regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the house scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments — and his own chilling role in them.
Set against the disquiet of Revolutionary Boston, M. T. Anderson's extraordinary novel takes place at a time when American Patriots rioted and battled to win liberty while African slaves were entreated to risk their lives for a freedom they would never claim. The first of two parts, this deeply provocative novel reimagines the past as an eerie place that has startling resonance for readers today.
My Review: I am always up for history, especially if it's presented from an unusual viewpoint or in a fresh manner. I thought this would be a fairly conventional and thus mildly tedious slave-comes-of-age, resists-tyranny thing. But there was that raver...surely someone who bothers to come to LT won't be that impressed by the usual thing....
So I got it, and I am so glad I did. The author recapitulates the bizarre upbringing of Octavian in a place called "The College of Lucidity" which is located in Boston (which is how you know it's fiction, Boston being the least lucid place I've ever been) in the faintly modernized voice of the youth himself looking back on the experience.
It's troubling, to put it mildly. It's flat creepy. But it's all he knew as a childhood, though life has taught him it's not what others knew as a childhood. He even quotes his mother saying he's never been a child. (He, Octavian, our narrator...these are interchangeable references in this review.) His very...well, ummm, inputs and throughputs are weighed and measured and logged for reference. His education is that of the most privileged, enlighted prince of his age. He stresses in presenting us with these facts that he felt no strangeness or otherness to his life. He was, so far as he knew, the object of no untoward interference or unusual interest.
The object speaks. It is a very unsettling reading experience.
As the story progresses and our narrator recalls his budding awareness and emotional growth as regards self and others, it becomes evident that Octvian and his mother are gilded captives. It's a realization that doesn't gall...yet...on him, but the author's subtlety with his emotional flensing knife is such that the older narrator's awareness of his feelings presages quietly the events at the end of the book. (No spoilers...but look carefully at the disturbing jacket illustration.)
Anderson's stated aim in writing this book is that he wished it had been around when he was a young reader. I wish it had, too. It's wonderful writing, no matter it's supposed to be "for" YAs. From p96 of the hardcover edition:
Shortly after two o'clock on June 3rd, 1769, Venus descended into the plane of the ecliptic and came between the Earth and the sun. It is with awe that I treat of the event -- so minute, so silent here upon the Earth -- but there -- one can scarce imagine the roaring of that vast orb through those frigid depths, tumbling, flung through the plane of our orbit; the glaring heat, the searing glare of Sol -- and the gargantuan prodigiality of that body, consuming its own substance ceaselessly while planets whirled like houris, veiled and ecstatic around the throne of some blast-turbaned, light-drunken king.
Our narrator...a youth, a stripling...so beautifully educated that he can create sentences like these! Such a huge bar is set for the youth reading this, but not one that's so far above and beyond comprehension that it's discouragingly impossible to meet. It's a nice sight to see the lack of condescenscion in this type of writing.
So how do the adults fare? Not too well, from the foolish and clueless Mr. Gitney to the aptly named and evil Mr. Sharpe, whose words from p338 (hardcover) I reproduce here that he may damn himself from his own lips:
We have labored too long under a government that has sought to curtail exchange; such interference is unnatural. We shall see a brave new day, Octavian, when the rights of liberty and property are exercised, and when all men are free to operate in their own self-interest. And as each individual expresses his self-interested will, so does the democratical voice speak, the will of the common people, not kings and ministers; and when the self-interest of every citizen speaks together, then and only then does benevolence arise.
So sayeth the free man to the slave. The prosecution rests. Recommended, and most highly.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Candlewick Press
$14.00 trade paper, available now
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Fearing a death sentence, Octavian and his tutor, Dr. Trefusis, escape through rising tides and pouring rain to find shelter in British-occupied Boston. Sundered from all he knows — the College of Lucidity, the rebel cause — Octavian hopes to find safe harbor. Instead, he is soon to learn of Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join the counterrevolutionary forces.
In Volume II of his unparalleled masterwork, M. T. Anderson recounts Octavian's experiences as the Revolutionary War explodes around him, thrusting him into intense battles and tantalizing him with elusive visions of liberty. Ultimately, this astonishing narrative escalates to a startling, deeply satisfying climax, while reexamining our national origins in a singularly provocative light.
My Review: Well, second books often don't rise to the level of the first in inventiveness and freshness. This one is typical of the syndrome.
Beginning where the extraordinary and original The Pox Party left off, The Kingdom on the Waves makes the adventures of Octavian Nothing complete. His best efforts are thwarted, his noblest desires unfulfilled, his quest for justice failed. All very true to history, but all very easy to predict. It's not that this is a bad book; it's a very good book. It's not clear to me why Anderson took 561pp to tell this story. I think the book sags a bit under the weight of its tale. It could easily have clocked in under 400pp and led us the same place.
I *love* that this is a YA book, written in so challenging and uncondescending a voice. Octavian is a very erudite narrator. I loved the structure of the book as a reader; it's in tasty-morsel-sized chapters. It's a very good book, and I recommend it.
I am firmly on record in many places as disliking the obesity of modern literary production. It's not that all books should be short in my opinion; it's that there is no reason for many, if not most, books to be as bloated with redundant and sometimes pointless verbiage as they are *stares pointedly at the Outlander books*. This book takes as its canvas a richly colored (no slur intended) part of American history. It's trying to fit a giant Technicolor extravagaza into a TV show. I think the editor would have done better to focus the author's obvious familiarity with the period on fewer episodes and left it at that.
But still, better a flawed and oversized story than none at all. The pleasures of the tale are many and savory, and I really hope you'll venture into YAdom to find this book soon.
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