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alexandraerinSo, I promised to make a post about Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Needs More Names Cooney's novella The Big Bah-Ha.
The best review of it (and the highest praise for its author) that I could offer have already been said in the introduction to the book by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Specifically, the first three paragraphs. I'm just going to excerpt some of the key ideas here:
You can see why I like her so much, no?
I reviewed a Cat Valente book one time by pointing out the number of things she'd done wrong, the number of accepted storytelling conventions she'd ignored... not "subverted" or "inverted", but in a truly subversive act she just quietly ignored them. This is another story like that. I mean, it's really nothing like Palimpsest except in the sense that they're both barrier-smashing works and they're both quite good, but a book that defies convention is almost by definition a book that is good in a way that other books aren't.
What's it about? Well, I'm not going to tell you. Never trust a synopsis. Any story that can be summed up in two to four sentences isn't worth telling over the course of a hundred pages.
Okay, maybe I'll let some things slip, but I just want to get this out of the way: no, this isn't like The Stand. And it's not like that TV show Jeremiah, or that bit of Randian masturbation The Girl Who Owned A City. Yes, it has a plague. Yes, clearly supernatural figures come out in the aftermath of what was seemingly a mundane plague. Yes, that plague wipes out all the adults leaving only children behind. That doesn't mean that this story is like those stories.
This is the other reason you should never trust a synopsis. By the time you've shaved enough off of a story to fit it into a nutshell, what's left is going to look an awful lot like things that it really couldn't have less to do with. If I were to name authors whose works this story put me in mind of, the first one that comes to mind is Clive Barker. Did Clive Barker ever write a story about the survivors in a post-plague world? Not that I ever read. But he wrote things that are more like this story than any ten stories you can name that do have a plague-ravaged earth in them.
Stories aren't about what they're about. They only seem like they are because so often they're following the same formulas, the same playbooks, and so if you know that a story contains elements X, Y, and Z, you can infer that N, O, and P will happen. Maybe it's reassuring. The Big Bah-Ha is, strangely, a very reassuring story in its own way by the end, but it doesn't give the audience what we expect, what we maybe think we need from it, and that is part of what makes it worth reading.
Here is something new under the sun, and it's not just new, it's good.
The introduction classifies it as a a katabasis story; that is, a hero's journey down into the underworld, and it's got that in it. It could also be classified as a post-apocalyptic story. Or maybe a mid-apocalyptic one. Now roll those two ideas around your head: the world has ended, or is ending, and the protagonists of this story stop what they're doing to descend into the underworld.
Now, doubtlessly anyone who's read much fantasy adventure fiction has some ideas of how this might go. Apocalypse + underworld? Maybe the forces of heaven and hell are making war over the earth, and in hell there is some kind of super-weapon, or grail-like token, or some imprisoned soul who can put things right, end the fighting, or force one side or the other to retreat. Awesome story, right?
Yeah, no. That's not this story.
The world is full of stories like that, but there is a curious dearth of stories where the world ends and stays ended, where the hero dies and stays dead, and where life goes on, which is really what this story is about. It's a slice of life. We don't see the beginning, though What Has Gone Before is conveyed fairly masterfully to us throughout the text. We don't see the ending, though it's in sight. This is like A Day In The Life Of story... only it's A Day In The Life Of an idiosyncratic gang of urchins playing in the ashes of a world vacated by adults, waiting for the days when each of them comes of age and is claimed by the plague that killed their parents. There's no reassuring glimmer of hope that maybe the plague died off with its first round of victims, because the story begins as the oldest of their number has died from it.
It's A Day In Her Life, too. A Day In The Life of a plague victim who finds herself in the antechamber to eternity in a world that's gone horribly wrong.
And still there is a conflict and there is a resolution and everybody goes home (for certain values of "home") happy (for certain values of "happy").
I don't want to mislead any readers into thinking that this book gives an incomplete glimpse at its world. It is a very complete glimpse into a very complete world, with a history and mythology all its own. So little is belabored but so much is shared.
Lest anyone think that I'm recommending this book solely because it is unconventional, I'll say again, shortly and simply: this is a good book. It is well worth the modestish asking price and the time it takes to get through it.
The Big Bah-Ha is available as an e-book from Drollerie Press, with advanced orders for print editions available.
The best review of it (and the highest praise for its author) that I could offer have already been said in the introduction to the book by Nicole Kornher-Stace. Specifically, the first three paragraphs. I'm just going to excerpt some of the key ideas here:
There's a phrase one sees bandied about, time to time, concerning writers. Good solid workmanlike prose. Reading the writers this phrase is rolled out to describe, one comes away with a vague impression of bricklaying, or stonemasonry...
While off in the corner, other writers, writers like C.S.E. Cooney, have got convention in a headlock and are gleefully tearing out its stuffing by the fistful.
You can see why I like her so much, no?
I reviewed a Cat Valente book one time by pointing out the number of things she'd done wrong, the number of accepted storytelling conventions she'd ignored... not "subverted" or "inverted", but in a truly subversive act she just quietly ignored them. This is another story like that. I mean, it's really nothing like Palimpsest except in the sense that they're both barrier-smashing works and they're both quite good, but a book that defies convention is almost by definition a book that is good in a way that other books aren't.
What's it about? Well, I'm not going to tell you. Never trust a synopsis. Any story that can be summed up in two to four sentences isn't worth telling over the course of a hundred pages.
Okay, maybe I'll let some things slip, but I just want to get this out of the way: no, this isn't like The Stand. And it's not like that TV show Jeremiah, or that bit of Randian masturbation The Girl Who Owned A City. Yes, it has a plague. Yes, clearly supernatural figures come out in the aftermath of what was seemingly a mundane plague. Yes, that plague wipes out all the adults leaving only children behind. That doesn't mean that this story is like those stories.
This is the other reason you should never trust a synopsis. By the time you've shaved enough off of a story to fit it into a nutshell, what's left is going to look an awful lot like things that it really couldn't have less to do with. If I were to name authors whose works this story put me in mind of, the first one that comes to mind is Clive Barker. Did Clive Barker ever write a story about the survivors in a post-plague world? Not that I ever read. But he wrote things that are more like this story than any ten stories you can name that do have a plague-ravaged earth in them.
Stories aren't about what they're about. They only seem like they are because so often they're following the same formulas, the same playbooks, and so if you know that a story contains elements X, Y, and Z, you can infer that N, O, and P will happen. Maybe it's reassuring. The Big Bah-Ha is, strangely, a very reassuring story in its own way by the end, but it doesn't give the audience what we expect, what we maybe think we need from it, and that is part of what makes it worth reading.
Here is something new under the sun, and it's not just new, it's good.
The introduction classifies it as a a katabasis story; that is, a hero's journey down into the underworld, and it's got that in it. It could also be classified as a post-apocalyptic story. Or maybe a mid-apocalyptic one. Now roll those two ideas around your head: the world has ended, or is ending, and the protagonists of this story stop what they're doing to descend into the underworld.
Now, doubtlessly anyone who's read much fantasy adventure fiction has some ideas of how this might go. Apocalypse + underworld? Maybe the forces of heaven and hell are making war over the earth, and in hell there is some kind of super-weapon, or grail-like token, or some imprisoned soul who can put things right, end the fighting, or force one side or the other to retreat. Awesome story, right?
Yeah, no. That's not this story.
The world is full of stories like that, but there is a curious dearth of stories where the world ends and stays ended, where the hero dies and stays dead, and where life goes on, which is really what this story is about. It's a slice of life. We don't see the beginning, though What Has Gone Before is conveyed fairly masterfully to us throughout the text. We don't see the ending, though it's in sight. This is like A Day In The Life Of story... only it's A Day In The Life Of an idiosyncratic gang of urchins playing in the ashes of a world vacated by adults, waiting for the days when each of them comes of age and is claimed by the plague that killed their parents. There's no reassuring glimmer of hope that maybe the plague died off with its first round of victims, because the story begins as the oldest of their number has died from it.
It's A Day In Her Life, too. A Day In The Life of a plague victim who finds herself in the antechamber to eternity in a world that's gone horribly wrong.
And still there is a conflict and there is a resolution and everybody goes home (for certain values of "home") happy (for certain values of "happy").
I don't want to mislead any readers into thinking that this book gives an incomplete glimpse at its world. It is a very complete glimpse into a very complete world, with a history and mythology all its own. So little is belabored but so much is shared.
Lest anyone think that I'm recommending this book solely because it is unconventional, I'll say again, shortly and simply: this is a good book. It is well worth the modestish asking price and the time it takes to get through it.
The Big Bah-Ha is available as an e-book from Drollerie Press, with advanced orders for print editions available.
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no subject
on 2011-02-26 08:37 pm (UTC)Stories aren't about what they're about. --exactly!
I look forward to the day when I can read the book!