Orlando is a novel praised in breathless whispers as "groundbreaking," and it's true, the notion of fluid gender roles would've been something new and shocking for its day, and the fact that the protagonist changes sex in the novel might be taken as prima facie evidence of challenging social gender-role orthodoxy, but Orlando the titular character, as first a boy and then a man and then a woman, largely conforms to the social expectations of each of these identities, and so I think Orlando the novel gets more credit than it earns in this regard. 
   Maybe, like with the Tiki Room, I'd read so much praise of it before actually reading the novel, that it became more in my imagination than it could possibly be, and disappointment was inevitable, but my overarching impression was this is a novel that marries the worst instincts of chick-lit (albeit at a far superior level of writing) with the effetest of the effeteness of upper class idleness.
    "Oh I'd love to be a writer!" Orlando cries for 400 freaking years, like a teenager writing in her diary, and, despite his/her four centuries of experiences, learns nothing, grows not a wit as a character, remains the same overly-sensitive, narcissistic juvenile throughout. Perhaps it was Woolf's intention to show that no amount of life experience can overcome the debilitating effects of too much wealth combined with too little purpose, though I doubt it, but that is certainly my take-away theme.
    Now as a very long love letter to Vita Sackville-West, which Orlando is widely considered to be, it is astonishing; there is much humor to be enjoyed, and Woolf is undoubtedly a master of her craft- her prim, precious, introverted prose is perfectly matched to the subject matter, but I find the character of Orlando to be too useless a waste of space to be able to like the novel. 

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   Riding the Centipede presents itself as transgressive fiction, "a genre of literature which focuses on characters who feel confined by the norms and expectations of society and who break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways," but what it ultimately delivers is something quite different.
    "Riding the Centipede," we are told by Marlon, longtime junkie and denizen of the underworld, is the ultimate drug-fueled experience. Created by a mythologized William S. Burroughs and offered just once a year exclusively to one recipient, Marlon has been chosen. Now all he has to do is survive. Centipede is the story of his journey, and his sister's parallel quest to find and rescue him, assisted by a world-weary P.I. 
   There is of course also an evil "Ubermensch" antagonist, and an assortment of unsavory characters whose debased wishes Marlon must fulfill in order to receive the drug to take him to the next level of his ride. 
    The thing about transgressive fiction that makes it interesting and valuable, is that, at its best, it leads us to other avenues of contemplating reality, to different ways of thinking or experiencing that transgress society's paradigm in order to gain a bigger, freer point of view.
    Not so with Riding the Centipede. We get all the trappings of TF, but none of the payoff. 
   There is, ultimately, no ultimate experience; we never get to take that ride and the characters who seek it... well it ends badly for them. The characters for whom it does not end badly find happiness in a conventional life that conforms to society's expectations.     
    Smith has undoubted talent, but this novel reminds me of the pulp lesbian and gay fiction of the 1950's and 60's: it was OK for characters to indulge their "deviance" so long as by novel's end they converted, died or were punished. The characters in Centipede likewise indulge their deviance but in the end, convention's imperatives are upheld. I felt that in the back matter of this ebook, there could've appropriately been an animated GIF of Nancy Reagan holding a sign proclaiming, "Just Say No."  Which is what I say about Riding the Centipede.

-Mary Whealen
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This month's titles come courtesy of ​transgressivefiction.info,
​a great place to discover new and interesting authors. 

       Plot synopsis: Man comes back home because his father is dying, takes over Dad's party supply business, helps terminally ill family friend commit suicide. Grateful family friend gives man some money, and a career is born.
       Man meets suicidal woman on a bridge, talks her down, helps her cover up the murder of her rapist ex-fiance, and a romance is born.
      Man takes woman into the new "exit" business. Woman has her own ideas on expansion. What could possibly go wrong? 
   "I can put up with a lot in a relationship. I'm a broad-minded man, one who realizes that sometimes a girl has to do things like shoot her ex or jump off a bridge or carry out a vendetta on low, lawless men."
        Exit Man is funny, of course, and pleasingly (or disturbingly- depending on your viewpoint) irreverent, but author's dry wit and sardonic asides also point out the hypocrisy of a society where suffering people must turn to an outlaw for compassion and help. 
        Luckily our protagonist and his partner/girlfriend and their terminally ill clients are the ultimate DIYers; doing it for themselves, for each other and for the community at large, and we lucky readers get to tag along! 
​           The ending is a little abrupt, but to be fair, I'm not sure how one would wrap up the various threads neatly and satisfactorily, and this is a minor quibble about a very fine novel. Highly recommended.

           In pre-WWI France two young girls meet and fall in love. They grow up and move to Paris and become part of the artistic renaissance of the between-wars period; they are present at the birth of Dadaism and Surrealism. As approaching war becomes evident they move to Jersey. During the Nazi occupation they wage their own war of resistance, papering the  island with subversive leaflets.
        Eventually they get caught and sentenced to death, but are saved by the withdrawal of German troops ahead of the allied liberation. 
         One dies not long after, her health ruined. The other lives on for many years until old age prompts her to end her life on her terms.
        "Once dead, I will no longer be aware of being without her. That's why the past eighteen years have been so difficult. It's not true what they say. Time heals nothing."
         A fictional biography of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore,   Never Anyone But You is the story of a great love and enduring partnership that spans the two 20th century world wars and the chaotic, socially liberating, artistically fertile period between them.  It is an unsentimental portrait told with restrained, spare, evocative prose, and sheer pleasure to read. Recommended!

           It is an interesting choice to include Never Anyone But You in the "transgressive  fiction" tent. It contains little of the usual canon; this is not a story of rebellion via drugs, criminality, nihilism or self-destructive decadence. Claude and Marcel defy oppressive norms by creating a happy and long life together, by not internalizing the normative paradigm but designing and defining their own.
          "I refuse to allow myself to be defined by a few biological characteristics. When I stand in a room by myself, I'm not standing there as a woman. I'm a consciousness. An intelligence. Everything else is secondary."
       Society does not grind them under its heel as they rebel to an inevitable, bitter end, they triumph over it.  And that illustrates a broadening definition of transgressive fiction that can only enrich the genre. 
           If the bloated center of a bell curve represents society ("everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members," as Emerson tells us), then transgression extends in many directions; sometimes the most subversive act is to flourish and prosper. 

Mary Whealen
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    They say the past is a foreign country where folks do things differently. The world constantly moves on, places change, affiliations fade, relationships end... and at some point in one's life social paradigms have shifted sufficiently that this becomes not so much an expression of bemused noncomprehension as a desire to go home. There is something of this pathos in Song of Time, Ian Macleod's Arthur C. Clarke Award winning novel.
    Roushana Maitland, world-renowned violinist is nearing the end of her long life. Song of Time, set in the near future, is her story.  As she contemplates technology's now-available option to go on living a sort of virtual life-after-death (details about this are vague, but then technology isn't the point, just the pretext prompting her to look back), an amnesiac man washes up on her Cornwall beach who may have a mysterious connection to her past.
    Maitland lived in some very interesting times- to paraphrase  the old Chinese curse.  She grows up in Birmingham, England with a musical-prodigy brother who develops a mysterious new illness and eventually takes his own life. This illness proves to be the first salvo in a world about to be dramatically transformed by apocalyptic events, and Roushana guides us through the geopolitical, ecological and personal upheavals as she now looks back over her life. 
    Song of Time is an excellent portrait of an age, in this case an age yet to happen, and perhaps a glimpse of a future we may experience.  It is a quintessentially English novel.  In American dystopian novels, the future is often brutishly totalitarian, a suspension of normal life leaving little choice but abject servitude or active resistance-  usually involving explosions and acts of heroic daring.  In Song, with the Brit's richer literary tradition, one finds a more nuanced and subtle exploration of the mundanities of living in a cautionary future- after all, ordinary life does go on; careers must be forged and groceries shopped for- and it is infinitely more interesting and enjoyable to read for that. 
    If you are looking for a genre-centric dystopian adventure story, this isn't the novel for you. But if your taste skews toward the literary side of speculative fiction, I highly recommend Song of Time. I give it a rare 5-out-of-5-stars rating.
​-Mary Whealen
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There are many fine, hardworking craftsmen of the written word, and the sum of the parts of their novels are very enjoyable to read, but then there are writers who also possess the skill of an artist. In their novels every word is perfectly chosen and placed in combination with every other word in an inevitability that makes structure disappear, and the whole is much greater than just the sum of its parts. The Gone–Away World by Nick Harkaway is such a work.   

In it we follow an unnamed protagonist through childhood and college into a proxy “Un-War” in the Elective Theatre, formerly known as the prosperous and peaceful country of Addeh Katir. There he is reunited with his childhood best friend Gonzo. When the enemy launches a chemical attack, our side answers with “the most advanced weapon in the history of warfare,” The Go Away Bomb that disappears the enemy: “We are… feeling a bit superior and waiting for the order to do some more demonstrative world-editing, when our very own Green Sector vanishes from the map… like a sandcastle being washed away by the tide… The same thing is happening everywhere. Not just in the Elective Theatre.”

Predictably, the effects are unpredictable and uncontrollable; the tide that ebbs also flows, carrying back a recombinant and deadly genesis of the thoughts, forms, feelings, memories, dreams and nightmares of everything it supposedly erased. Most of humanity has been made “Gone-Away” and the survivors battle desperately: “this is not an attack. It’s an atmosphere.”

Protagonist, Gonzo and a ragtag group are rescued by Piper 90 (“love child of a bulldozer and a shopping mall”) which is laying “The Pipe” that contains the anti-stuff, called FOX, which makes the Gone-Away stuff go away, “making a strip of land which is safe to live in.” This is where the remnants of humanity begin to rebuild.
​
Fast forward a few years and this outfit of roughnecks is hired for a dangerous job of putting out a fire on The Pipe that looks like sabotage. Here the story takes a shocking turn that throws into question the protagonist’s entire history and future, and a horrible secret is found to underlie the system that keeps this strip of the old world, this “Livable Zone,”  intact.

A rousing dystopian story with a terrific story arc that can be enjoyed on just those terms, The Gone-Away World  is also a cautionary tale that confronts the endemic, species-defining stupidity and hidden moral equivocations of human life on Earth. Notwithstanding, Nick Harkaway is fundamentally an optimist, and quite funny; I will definitely be reading more of him. Highly recommended!
Mary Whealen
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  To the list of dystopian cautionary tales suddenly relevant again (as if they ever weren't!) in the trumpian, post-truth, authoritarian-leaning era I recommend adding Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which answers the question, What if Germany and Japan had won WWII? 
    If you've seen the Amazon adaptation, there is little resemblance. Character names are the same but the plot is very different; the subversive video of the series is, in the novel, a novel. Germany controls Europe, the eastern U.S., is expanding into the solar system and has attempted a"final solution" on the entire continent of Africa. From The Home Islands Japan controls South America, Asia and the west coast. A nominal U.S. neutral zone separates Nazi and Nippon territories. 
   The setting is San Francisco and the neutral zone, the reader learns of life in Nazi territory only from secondhand reporting.  
   The IChing or "oracle", the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, features importantly for all the main characters, and is in a way, another character through which Dick explores the themes of fatalism and enduring in a world in which there is no shining light on the hill, no safe refuges left to flee to- or take hope from. All is authoritarianism- of the brutish Nazi stripe or the more civilized Japanese variety.    
    Into this reality of despair is dropped the surprisingly bestselling novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, an alternate fiction in which the allies won the war, defeating Germany and Japan. A fiction unimaginable for some, a revelation of Truth for others.
   As one would expect, the novel is contemplative, internal, philosophical, and the ending ambiguous (perhaps a disappointment to readers weaned on flattering sales pitches and attention-eroding tech gadgetry who find their way to the novel from the Amazon series), but Dick's The Man in the High Castle sheds insightful, unsettling light onto life under totalitarianism. A light very much needed these days.  Highly recommended! 
Mary Whealen 
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    "Society everywhere is in a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members"  wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in Self Reliance.
   The protagonist of Southbound has assuredly never read Emerson but he knows whereof Emerson speaks. Cruising the literary highway of counterculture anti-heroes, Basement Man, transplant from Alabama, pulls up to a bar in New Jersey and we hitch a ride for this episodic portrait of his lifelong, booze-fueled rebellion.   
    From the tragicomic death of his friend on the docks of Hoboken to beaches a little less respectable for his presence ("Avast ye scurvy lubbers!") to a retirement home, Basement Man is aware but not resigned (to paraphrase Edna Millay). I've heard it said that 'your integrity to yourself is more important than your immediate life,'  and that's a sentiment Basement Man would drink to: "Better a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy, spider!"
   Southbound by Joseph Ferguson makes us look around and perceive the poetry in life. And that is a very good thing.
​Mary Whealen
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        "Celebrity," writes Richard Stern, "is the vengeance of the unfamous. They turn the famous into stage settings. It's a way of paralyzing them."

    Maybe this is what happened to Stern himself. He has been supported by Guggenheims and Rockefellers, has been gorged with plums and approval. His dustjacket fluoresces with praise from Bellow, Burgess, Richler, Roth, the roster of men who, because there are no Fitzgeralds or Steinbecks around today, are at the top of the American heap.

     Did any of them really read this book? Roth tells us that Stern exhibits "a  sweet purity of felling." I'd say he has about as much feeling as a piece of Portnoy liver. the only time the hero Wursup feels anything much, is when he discovers that his dying girlfriend's hair has all fallen out after her hospital treatment. What he "feels" then is a semi-prurient  survivory thrill.

    And Stern is no Camus delineating "lack of feeling" with a powerful grace; he's just another drudge mastering a few dull routines and repeating them for audiences who don't demand any better. His skill in developing a character runs to, "Dolly was a woman of rough intelligence, but the intelligence produced nothing but malice, like a machine which undoes at one end what it assembled at another."

    Here is Stern describing a character he really loves, a rancidly "brainy" lecturer at Columbia: "There was Benny, in his party outfit, his great persimmon head coming from a steak-colored turtleneck... Benny had been chewing a salami; there were meat flecks on his large lips, and he exhaled spicy aromas."

    Stern's male characters are blubbery fatcats, his women are wind-up dolls. ("Perfect little teeth spread in her wonderful cheeks, gleaming amidst the small lights hopping off her desk.")  A good novel should enhance life (even if by satirizing it mercilessly as a Burroughs does) but for me, Stern and his admirers have the whole thing reversed: they strip the life from life and leave a slimy coldness that reeks of emptiness.

    I contend that this honors-encrusted tribe of mendicants has been over-pampered for years. They are accepting the gravy without doing the honest work. Natural Shocks is a thoroughly rotten novel. It is a Book of the Month Club Alternate selection. This may say something about the state of "letters" in our country today.

Jody Scott  ​