Zero History

Zero History. The perfect blanket for the novels of William Gibson (well, all two that I have read, upon which it is feasible to develop a seasoned opinion. Shush). Less out-there than Philip K Dick (and perhaps more sensical), but more cryptic than Margaret Atwood, with worse dialogue than Robert Heinlein. (These being the authors of the canon I have read, with a few sidekicks - and no, I'm not including Hugh Howey here, because obviously success, even when unedited, is to be scorned.)

(I did read all nine, fyi, and didn't hate the ending. Did hate the editing.)

Corralling mind back to point. It's not thrilled. (Ok, I'll stop interrupting.)

Book first. You may remember that I am one of the few people I know who rate Neuromancer highly. Or not. I do. I suspect this is partly because success is to be scorned, as aforementioned. We love an underdog precisely because he is not top dog (notice how the movie always cuts off before the dog reaps his rewards). It doesn't help that they made a movie tenuously linked to the book which itself is within arm's reach of a philosopher's thought experiment.

I rate it (not because others don't, although I am otherwise like that) because it had a wider lens than the Matrix - it didn't depend on the premise that we are all slaves to 'the machines' (get it? Very subtle) and need to sign up to fight a war that requires shooting surprisingly unintellegent artificial intelligences (that always surprises me). In fact, that felt like a B or C plot. An A plot in my books, but D plot in others', is that question I don't have the answer to and am beginning to suspect won't ever be answered.

In Zero History, there are so many moments like these, forming an undercurrent (ridden by red herrings) of suspicion. For example, I am still waiting for the fruition of an exchange where a hotel receptionist takes one of the protagonists'  (Milgrim - again, very subtle, my man Gibson) passport into the back to photocopy. To justify my paranoia, American passports are microchipped and can be read by devices in the vicinity, so Milgrim keeps it in a pouch designed to tangle those signals.

Maybe I'm missing something? Maybe I'm not. As a person, I don't like surprises. As a reader, I do, but I prefer to have the satisfaction of figuring it out first. (I'm just otherwise like that.)

And here we have Gibson's skill: of immersing you in paranoia, until you're paranoid about being paranoid. Which is incidentally crucial to the plot. The two main characters, Milgrim and Hollis (really), are being manipulated by two or three (it's very confusing) deeply dodgy and steeply wealthy conmen, who are fighting against one another to get a military contract. Or sell adspace. Or clothes. Surveillance technology is built into everything, including a figurine of an ant and a phone, but not laptops apparently.

A government agent (of some underground agency, for which y'all are paying taxes, congrats) has also taken personal leave to jump into the fray. She's mostly interested in... Clothing piracy, I think.

One of the main characters (let's keep some surprises in our relationship) seems to be morphing into an autonomous being. Which is disturbing pretty much every involved who should be disturbed by their own behaviour. Like a dog chewing its tail. Maybe an hyaena. Except their tails are short. The other main character has pretty much been spared the drama, except as tales over breakfast and that bug in her ant figurine.

As mentioned, the dialogue is like cardboard. Every character uses one of two modes: one-word answers or staccato but meandering sentences. Usually the response does not tie in with the previous utterance, so people often have to ask one another to explain what they just said, to which they usually get a feint. But this works nicely to raise the paranoia up like the baboon raising the cub in The Lion King, forehead marking and all. It's not clear whether they're being evasive or just distracted, or in the case of the dodgy dealers (I couldn't resist the alliteration) are setting up situations in which to test others.

Love it. You can't pick at a single characteristic of this book that doesn't unwind into pure mind effortness. Technology, autonomy, power, lack of power, progress... All themes that have and will continue to keep philosophers busy (and out of politics), wrung up but not released. Sometimes, these themes are really flung in your face (hence the marking), but usually while you're distracted by something else, maybe a something that has flown into your eye to keep the metaphor afloat.

I'd bet money on the author laying these wrung-up themes down in a pattern locked in his mind. And I don't gamble. Perhaps he is really good at poker and keeping a straight face, his 'tells' under control, but I hope not because then I've just lost some cash. Which is why I don't gamble. (The house always wins. Always. And when it doesn't, it phones your parents, pretends to be the government and says he's going to break your legs. True story.)

Neuromancer told a similar story: a character or two controlled by some dodgy conmen with some cash, squished in with a drug addiction, motorbikes and leather. In that one, though, the story is set in an unrealised future. Zero History was published in 2010 and features iPhones (no mention of Samsung, Sony, Huawei or HTC), as well as other surveillance technologies that are plausible. Except for a floating silver mercurial penguin. As a result, there is much the narrative doesn't need to explain, leaving room for the undercurrent with the flying red herrings.

Oeuvre next. Beginning each book requires a reset, to make space for whatever world awaits you, futuristic or modern. It is a bit like having no history, which incidentally, now that I think about it, is how Milgrim appears at the beginning of the book, acquiring memory by memory. You have to keep resetting as you read, to take in new information but also anticipate it. You can't take anything for granted, which takes up a lot of trunk space.

The word 'zero' is loaded - thanks philosophers. It's completely abstract, since what isn't there, well, isn't there. There are languages that don't have a word for it (English being one of those that names everything, including the things that aren't there). It occurs meaningfully in Descartian geometry, where it gets a partner, and where it fits so well within a flat world and you can draw its portrait.

But meaningful it is not when it describes human experience. Swapping philosophers for English lit students, everything has an history, even stories. Some of the paranoia of Zero History is that there are allusions to events that have bearing on the story but are omitted. Everyone knows some of the story but not all (except the author, who I am betting writes like he might put a jigsaw puzzle together). And as all good lit students know, absence is where the juicy stuff is (not meaty, because I am a vegetarian).

This Point is disappointing in its focus - I apologise. My mind is settled with a clump of carrots and a horse blanket. Perhaps it is just worn out.

Zero History is part of a trilogy, which will probably bend to include more, if the publishers have anything to do with it. I haven't read the other two, so perhaps I will have to put this post down to an erratum and write you a new one. Regardless, and regardless of Gibson's success and un-underdog-ness, and considering no one has made a movie of this (yet and I think), I'm betting a set of handmade how-to origami diagrams hang above the author's desk: an ant, an hyaena and a baboon, and a horde of dodgy conmen and confused protagonists.

The War of the Worlds

I know you have heard this story before, but every good piece of writing should lay out its premise in an attempt at inclusivity, no matter how so-so. Back when various countries felt that wars that targeted the world they too inhabited made sense (yes, I know, now they just call their forces the UN and their weapons sanctions) and when the radio (a transistor-type thing with an aerial) was a key source of information, not just top-20 music shows and public-interest debates...

I ran out of space. No one is going to read a 20-line introduction. Assuming you read this five-line one.

Orson Welles, author of the book and the radio play

A radio drama broadcast of War of the Worlds caused widespread panic (this was also when Britain and the US were the only worthwhile parts of the world, before Britain kindly withdrew from countries like Africa - sorry, continents - all continents look the same). War of the Worlds being an invasion of Earth (only the important parts) by Martians whose intelligence ranks off the MENSA charts. Not that there were was time to check, but one can only assume.

Again, I ran out of space.

The drama was an abridged version of Orson Welles' novel (even then we had remakes and probably complained that the narration was not as we had imagined), a blatant critique of war and the desperate flailings of human beings to save themselves, updated to time and place. Unfortunately, the scenario was a little too realistic: the play included a weather report, the music and conversations of a dance hall (like a club slash hoe-down with ginger beer) interrupted by the report of an astronomer, followed by news broadcast about the touch-down of a meteorite.

While Curiosity happily pokes holes into Mars (I don't mention the Japanese attempt to sweep up intergalactic dust because I doubt they want that #epicfail mentioned), in this 1930s version we don't have a chance because Cyclops slash snake things wiggle their way out of the meteor and begin firing at anything that moves (thus destroying a lot of the land they hope to inhabit, double #epicfail). And so on and so on.

The actors and sound effects are so good that people believed that Earth was being attacked by sophisticated unanthropomorphic beings and it was every man, woman and child for themselves. The story was then picked up by another broadcaster - which, of course, according to the two-source rule means the story is legit. Apparently, people legged it out of the city, their favourite donkey, wife and cutlery set in tow. Pregnant women went into premature labour. Ostensibly because of the fright. The mind boggles.

This story took way longer to tell than I thought. If you had heard it before, I hope you had the sense to scan, in which case, YOU CAN START READING AGAIN HERE. If not, sorry for you.

Facetiousness aside (in arm's reach because I will need it again), people had just been through a war of epic proportions (hence why it was called a 'world' war) and the Great Depression, and a second war was brewing. Governments already had access to atomic bombs, which they would shortly drop on Japan. That is crazier than believing in an alien invasion, from my perspective.

Hats off to Orson Welles for creating a critique of war so realistic it created panic (although perhaps he should have peppered it with disclaimers like 'this is only a critique; all resemblance to people or nations is intended, but only in so far as they are the weakest link in the survival of humanity'). Unfortunately, the wrong people listened.

Assuming that your only knowledge is this story and the Tom Cruise version, please reset said knowledge now.

The book is thin, more of a novella, and usually sold together with The Invisible Man and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. They all derive from the same time period and are loosely considered fantasy. I read it a few years ago but I have the memory of a coffee filter (by which I mean it contains coffee grounds). But (from what I do or don't remember) it is more different to the movie you know than even the two versions of World War Z.

In some ways I felt 'underwhelmed' by the book (since 10 Things I Hate About You this is now a valid word), because it had none of the action we have come to expect since Star Wars (4-6, to clarify). The basics of the book match up with the display of Tom Cruise's machismo, but the main character is an astronomer who plays a much more important and intellectual role - the explanations for what is happening being more important than the shooting at special effects. There is none of the thundering intrusion that sparks off alleged machismo, although there are many thundering explosions and crashing buildings. More important than all this is the sense of helplessness (i.e. negative machismo) the characters fall deeper and deeper into as they realise that one of humanity's usual tactics work - even an atom bomb (we resort to this quickly).

Spoiler alert: it is Mother Nature that triumphs. Now, I am no great fan of casting processes as thinking feeling entities, but in this instance even I got goosebumps from the sense that the world is far greater than us - that even intelligent beings are subject to the law of survival. The more we prod at Mother, the more we discover there are processes beyond our imagining happening under our noses. Literally. We act like a runny nose is the harbinger of doom, but scientists keep discovering new bacteria we couldn't function without. And isn't it (facetiousness buried) amazing that our bodies are so finely attuned to this 'other world', too?

A week ago, I watched the first movie adaptation from the 1950s. I confess I didn't expect much - I was really just boosting my movie cred. I watched it after Terminator II - don't judge - that series of movies is a seething mass of debates about what qualifies as life, what cost are you prepared to incur in search of greatness... Mind running away; trip mind with rope.

The movie begins with a short narrative, in this booming voice that might convince me of anything, even that politicians don't hand over their hearts at the first session of Parliament. The scene is a town that our astronomer hero happens to be visiting. (What a coincidence in a world of coincidences.) One night a meteor crashes into the national park nearby. Nonplussed, some police and other officials trudge out to look, thinking they might start a theme park around it (not a joke).

But our scientist is suspicious because he can work out how fast a meteor of that size should have been travelling in his head and works out that it should have made more of a mess. However, he is equally oblivious to the danger. At the site, he meets the heroine, who kicks ass. She lectures at a nearby university but smoothly switches roles to wartime nurse when needed, and near the end organises their retreat and even drives the bus to safety. Ok, she breaks down into an hysterical mess sometimes, but us women, y'know, just can't avoid having normal emotions.

Out comes Cyclops, who starts setting fire to the things that move, so the army does the same. Well, tries to. Mostly they set fire to inanimate things like trees. Unlike us modern viewers, no one is prepared for the force field that protects Cyclops and his siblings so it takes them a while to catch on. Long enough to waste an atomic bomb. In the meantime, Cyclops' extended siblings have touched down all over the world (except the country - I mean continent - of Africa) and are destroying cities en masse.

People flee the city, at the behest of civil authorities, because the alien can't tell you're moving if you're parked among fields of vegetables, preferably corn, right? Because, if I moved into a place with fleas, I would only exterminate the spots I meant to sit in. (The others I would train into a flea circus.) Anyway, as every apocalyptic fiction writer drills home, we are a species of survivors, where surviving means bullying everyone who has something you want. Survival of the fittest, right? The ones who don't bully, pray, because then life and death is out of their hands.

(What would I do, since I'm so glib? Find a way to hide right under their noses, preferably in a group because my chances of dying are less. Sorry, I can't help it. I would think. And more people means more thinking. I think. So I would double-back to the parts of the city they'd destroyed and find shelter underground, preferably with smart people. In this case, the best thing to do would be to wait them out.)

The scientist also does a clever thing: he chops off an eye and analyses it. (I couldn't do that, because I didn't even understand his description of how it worked or why his girlfriend shows up differently on the scan.) Anyway, then they are attacked (by human bullies), they find a church (which unfortunately is attacked - hide underground, I tell you. Or in a tree) and then the alien buggers did. Just drop out of the sky. Not one of them could adapt fast enough to survive our bacteria and so are overcome. (Knowing humans and our survival ranking, at least one of us would have made it, busters.)

Then comes the bit about Mother Nature (an entity that is really a coincidental process). I have goosebumps thinking about it. About how we are blithely stomping around, discovering something whose evolution we played absolutely no part in, not realising how indebted we are to our ecosystem.

Yerp, here are our heroine and hero, with an alien eyeball

What I enjoyed about the movie though (what bumped it up past the recent one and perhaps past the book - shock horror) was the focus on the people and not the action. I find this often with older movies. Part of this is the casting (who could ever match the charisma of Humphrey Bogart or Natalie Wood?) The movie stars Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. Barry plays our scientist as ever so slightly arrogant, witty and ultimately open-hearted. Robinson is enthusiastic but not embarrassingly so, level headed and open-hearted.

They fall for each other quickly (partly because there isn't my time to take it slowly and also because they are, remember, open-hearted) but he is oblivious to her break with stereotype because he's not the sort to be vaguely aware of stereotypes. I am not one for sentimentalism, you may remember. I don't like epigrams unless they are funny because I can't resist finding a logical frame to them. (There usually isn't one.) Then everyone thinks I'm overthinking it, but really, I think everyone is underthinking it.

But the scene where he has tried to leave town but is beaten up as people hijack his car, and then realises the same thing may have happened to her, is touching. He follows the trail she would have taken, probably reenacting what has just happened to him and could have happened to her over and over in his head. He acts within his nature, with bravery that does not require him to beat up people in his way, even when they try to beat him, or with one manly hand destroy alien ship after ship and the other while clutching a catatonic woman to his chest.

When he finds his love in a church, there is a crowd between them and the two of them do the required swimming against the current to get each other thing. Apologising to people as they do. They hug and then just stand there leaning against each other for a while. An alien ship is crashing into a stained glass window and they just stand there, happy to be with each other. Nor is there any smooching. Ok, maybe one, but more a kiss than a smooch.

Ok, so maybe I am sentimental. I just usually keep the emotion safe and warm within a blanket of facetiousness.

So, My Point? My Point is obviously that the 1953 movie is much better than the recent one, that radio is a dangerous weapon, that everyone except the Russians should leave space expeditions to Nasa, that underwhelming is a new word, and that aliens are not as intelligent as we think, because a recon team would have warned its siblings to not bother with Earth because it is governed by a (female) entity that is really just a process who is just otherwise like that.

While those are all good Points, the best is that I am usually surprised when I pick up a classic work, whether DVD or book, and especially when I have seen an updated version. The characters are sympathetic because they don't imagine they can take on monsters singlehandedly but that doesn't mean they are less brave. It isn't even part of their frame of reference. I usually expect to seethe at a woman forced into the dichotomy of mother and whore, but what I get is usually more complicated, something I am actually proud of (a forced connection, so perhaps what I mean is hopeful).

Discworld

Generally (except for the writings of a good friend, which is why I say 'generally'), I do not enjoy satire. I am easily riled, upset, impassioned. "Silly women drivers" is enough for me to train the beady little eyes on you like the laser beads of a sniper rifle. So you can imagine what happens when someone is turning my pet issue into a seeming joke. Even if they are unpacking an argument using humour as a kind of common ground.

I care not. By the time I see an empty suitcase, I am already peeved, anywhere in a range from sniper rifle to air attack.

See, I am facetious; which is like being satirical except the satire is a prank (a stapler set in jelly being a favourite), intended to give the writer room to explore the cupboard drawers of the position while everyone else is looking in the other direction. Which is not the same thing. A satirer knows what her position is.

Generally... Remember that disclaimer? Yep, I have packed away the rifle and begun being facetious.

Terry Pratchett gets away with it because his novels double as fantasy, which I have always been a fan of. Meaning that like any child I dreamed of a dragon who was more friend than pet - he hangs around because we enjoy each other's company. He is not a fan of other people though, and my instruction to generally not burn people into shadows is the only thing he doesn't like about me. I prefer not to think about how he feeds himself.

The world is divided into People Who Have Read Pratchett and Those Who Haven't. We each feel sorry for the other, but my side has a dragon, so...

Pratchett, for those of you on the side of Haven't (pitying look), has created a world called Discworld. Even the name is satirical. The world is literally a disc, but as per some legend or other, the disc sits on four elephants who stand on the shell of a giant turtle who is swimming through space (according to Book 2, there are may be a few turtlettes swimming alongside the erm adult (gender is indeterminate here)).

The joke is layered: Most obviously, this is a dig at people who used to think the world was flat. Less obviously, it is a dig at the mentality of the people who thought the world was flat. Because human nature isn't many things but (contrary to popular opinion) it is stuck in juvenilia. Those people still exist (not literally, maybe as atoms) but now they voraciously argue against global warming (FYI, a natural occurrence, peeps, else we would be (not) breathing nitrogen right now) and believe in democracy (that is a long story).

And that's just the name!

My favourite characters are the Patrician and Captain Vimes of the Watch. The Patrician is the for-all-intents-and-purposes the Prime Minister of Ankh Morpork (a city, not a state, because maintaining just the city is enough of a job). He never seems exhausted though. Or surprised. He is mildly amused sometimes, but usually that means someone is about to regret being amusing. Vimes is sometimes amusing, and often exhausted, but seems to be protected by rubber tyres, like a go-cart track.

Why am I reminiscing? For your edification. No. It's my blog, so unless I am educating you (another pitying look) on civil rights and recycling, I am not really interested in your edification, you.

No, I am reading my way from Book 1 all the way through to wherever in the 30s we will be when I get there. No, this is not a case of a trilogy with 30 books or 10 trilogies. Discworld had solidified from the giggles of the readers long before this trilogy fad set in. Pratchett writes one book a year (sometimes two) and releases them round about Christmas. Clever bugger.

Why am I rereading these books? Full of questions today (whatever day it is that you are reading this), aren't you?

I hadn't read a Discworld novel in yonks (which is a year or two). Then I picked up Making Money, as sorbet (which will (perhaps) mean something to you if you have read this blog before or understand words). What surprised me was the simple way he picks up an idea and turns it inside out, so it's still the same shape but it looks different. (Mostly all the threads are poking out and there's fluff along some of the hems. I am picturing a fleese-lined onesie.)

In this case, the gold standard. The protagonist points out, in a matter-of-fact way, that gold doesn't really play any large part in our daily lives or in the grander life of society, unless you are a jeweller. It is meaningless when compared with, say, iron. Genius. (He then goes on to apply that concept to bank notes, but let's not quibble.)

I enjoyed the satire (which is not as high-brow as that in the quality daily publication of your choice, perhaps, but definitely funnier), so naturally I thought, let's read all of them. Again. In order. Of course. This was about two months ago. I am on number 4, Mort, which is generally agreed to be a favourite (I'd put the odds at 1:8, so place your bets now folks, before it slips down). The reason being my third favourite character: DEATH. (That's how he speaks, WITH EMPHASIS.)

DEATH in Discworld is a pragmatic man - he isn't fussed about whether you are a good or a bad person, because he has seen the (very dull) infinity through which the turtle swims and lost that sense of morality like a coat. On the other hand, he named his horse 'Binky' (lower caps intentional). So he's not entirely lost to the dark side.

In this particular installment, DEATH has an apprentice (who seems, like the deceased, unsurprised to be visited by a skeleton in a black coat who SPEAKS WITH EMPHASIS). Like most of Pratchett's protagonists, poor Mort is insecure and trying to come off as a James Dean, but his tongue keeps giving him away. Also his shaking hands.

As with all Pratchett novels, the author sets up a moral or social quandary, and then shows you there is another, more natural way to approach it. (It usually helps if you are a bit dense but a good person, or have a suitcase made of sapient pearwood (perhaps the most terrifying... thing in Discworld).) Rather than let the apple of his eye be killed, Mort does away with the assassin trying to kill her and upsetting Fate. No, actually, Fate carries on as if nothing has changed, which is a whole other problem.

What now? Does he kill his apple and let her disappear into the afterlife? (This is one of those relationships where he was struck dumb by her presence and has now spent five minutes talking to her. Obviously they are meant to be together...) Does he carry on while Fate carries on and she is stuck in limbo? Well, I'm not going to spoil it for you!

And this is what I enjoy about Pratchett's satire: Him. He is an eternal optimist, in a world where it is healthier to be a cynic. He believes in good and bad, evolution, and people. He is genuinely indignant about people who exercise power over others, about decision making and about ignorance. Not in order of indignance - ignorance probably comes first.

So expect regular updates as I plow through 30-odd books and guffaw a lung (I find myself lightly snorting at the jokes before actually laughing). If you haven't read them yet, hopefully I can bully you into trying one, and if you have, hopefully I can bully you into reading another one. We could prove Pratchett right by guffawing the world until it rocks on the backs of four elephants standing on top of a turtle swimming through space with turtlettes swimming alongside.

The Elephant Keepers' Children

Peter Høeg gives away the plot of The Elephant Keepers' Children fairly quickly. In the first chapter. Which is ten pages long. Our protagonist (who is all of fourteen) and his sister (sixteen) have discovered the secret to zen, which is a mishmash of aphorisms such as living in the moment and pursuing your dreams, all mostly alluded to through the character's strained silences after epiphanic moments, which are, to be honest, about two pages apart.

Now would you be surprised if I said I enjoyed the book? No, because you are used to me being facetious and recognise the greater potential for humour (you say sarcasm; I say wit) in a negative review. And because my really negative reviews are often less humourous than just plain negative, maybe even mean (if you can't do, criticise!).

The first novel of Høeg's that I read was Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. Chances are you have watched the similarly laboured and Nordically dark movie, although that is pretty much all they have in common, if I remember the movie correctly, which it is entirely possible I do not. 'Laboured' here is a compliment. The book is intense, as is living in the confines of the darkness and then the sunlight of a northern country. So intense and brooding that my restless soul felt soothed.

Miss Smilla begins with the death of a young boy who lived in the same housing complex as the main character, which is ruled accidental but she reveals was not. The mystery story that follows is also (perhaps more so) an untangling of Miss Smilla's own fractured past and her acceptance of another loner into her life. The last few pages are a confrontation of intense meaning and brooding life (did you catch that?) that soothed this restless soul.

This is a good thing, unless you perhaps are happy-go-lucky, and believe good people deserve good things and bad people deserve bad things, or if you are on good terms with the universe. In which case I should like to meet you, hand you a glass of wine and interrogate you. For example, what should one do to pursue a meaningful career in books and make dollops of cash and give back to the community while maintaining a life?

Anyway, Miss Smilla goes down in my notes (I don't really keep notes, except this blog) as one of the most intense (intense in the sense of a plaster being ripped off) books I have ever read. Alice in Wonderland perhaps being the first because of the chapter where she has been welcomed into someone's house and then grows and grows until she rips the entire thing up, nevermind when she is being chased by cards because the queen says they must chop off her head. 

The second book of his I read was Borderliners, which is about an experiment in the 60s in a boarding school. Children with social and behavioural issues are being integrated with 'normal' children in a 'normal' school. The protagonist is one of the former, but he frames the story as a conspiracy of his own making (as opposed to the one really unveiling). Again the last few pages are so intense, partly because we finally realise the full scope of the real story, but also partly because of the boy's own realisations.

I suppose it is a bit like Alice realising the queen is her mother as she is being pursued by her brothers.

The Elephant Keepers' Children is Høeg's latest book. I was waiting for the paperback to come out (see above re the dollops of cash I do not earn as I suffer for my art blah blah schmak) but stumbled across a trade paperback in a local bargain book store. Yay!

The cover is simply drawn, probably digitally: a series of walls receding into the distance, ladders leaned against them, and on the foremost wall, a boy sitting on top of the wall and a girl climbing. If I were the publisher I may have asked for the perspective of the children and ladders to be reviewed, because the angles are not realistic: the ladders should poke through the walls at those angles and that boy should slide straight off. But maybe that is the point and I am looking past it.

It is about a family, set in the same darkly intense country as the other novels. It too is a mystery, but the story is (seemingly) lighter, almost dreamlike and the mystery is being explored more than discovered.

The family includes three long-suffering children; long-suffering because their parents seem to be uninhibited, autistic delinquents, despite being the curators of a local parish. The children, specially the younger children (Peter and Tilda), are tasked with keeping their parents in line and routinely project this on to other people, including a local entrepreneur who runs a fetish sex hotline and the local camp drug dealer, who is also a count. Their parents disappear and the authorities swoop in to lock them up in a rehab clinic - err, what?

Ok, not almost dreamlike; mostly, perhaps entirely dreamlike. I avoided this because I was afraid you would get the wrong idea. You have the wrong idea. The fantasy is made of symbols set on a real landscape. The boy describes his school, the local tourist trade, the mainland and a sponsored cruise, which are all realistic, except that he and his sister are resilient super-heroes, talking their way through adult conversations and donning disguises, with a pet dog in tow.

He also seems to understand his parents' behaviour (and all human behaviour, in fact) in a way that I all (all 30-odd years of me) could not. I will not disclose the rest of the mystery but this one is proffered up front: the elephant is your ego and super-ego, the parts of you that are grandiose, instinctive, uninhibited by social mores - in the parents' case, conniving. An elephant can be a couple of tons of destruction, plowing through thorn trees and rolling over cars. The keeper is the id, or the conscious part of you. The part that inhibits - that drowns the part of you eyeing dollops of cash being handed over at the teller next to you.

And that is nowadays generally reviled by the part of society that does not rely on the animals for an income, as cruel. Which includes me. But I am conflicted. About everything.

The boy perceives the parents to be uninhibited, autistic delinquents (that's not just a projection) but also reasons that his parents have their own elephants that he doesn't understand and that they are the keepers. He and his sister need to protect them from themselves. In this case the keeper is holding on for dear life, or playing along because he sees something here to his own benefit (no one ever said the keeper isn't conniving too).

Perhaps the parents represent his own elephant and his portrayal of himself his own keeper. After all, who doesn't harbour some kind of fantasy at the expense of their parents? Apparently this is what drives Disney movies: the cute and furry orphaned animal, which matches a dream of ourselves as brave orphaned children, free of the shackles of society. If you don't dream it now, deny you did when you were shorter than the counter in the kitchen. Even Alice is abandoned by her family in her own dream.

I confess (don't worry, not that kind of confession, although a blog is a good place for such things) I did not enjoy this book as much as I did Høeg's others. I confess (again!) that is an understatement. See, I enjoy tortured, intense, brooding, navel-gazing literature. See above. That is what I have come to expect from the author, in the same way that romance watchers expect to a happily ever after - or at least a smooch - imagine Eat, Pray, Love, without any romance (which was what I expected, actually).

I enjoyed the approach until mid-way, when the fantasy began to swing upwards and I lost track of the plot between all the slashes and diacritics (awful but true). It reminded me of Borderliners, suspended on the free living and loving of the same time period. But without the nihilism. Or romance. Were romance expected. Which it wasn't.

This isn't a negative review (truly) but it isn't a positive one. It is a halfhearted and a little confused one. I want to recommend this book to the stars (hyperbole), like I would any other f Høeg's (to the Northern Lights) (not hyperbole), but if you're reading this, you expect existential crisis as other people would expect romance. Well, not as, but you know what I mean. So read Miss Smilla and Borderliners, and if you enjoy them, don't read The Elephant Keepers' Children.