Nalo Hopkinson, The Chaos
May. 7th, 2012 14:08![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyHopkinson, Nalo. The Chaos. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2012.
I bought this book at FOGCon 2, weeks before the official publication date. It's the first Nalo Hopkinson book I've read, and whatever I was expecting, this wasn't quite it. I liked it, but it's…not what I was expecting.
I am just going to c&p the book description, for starters.
So, despite the fact that the cover blurb basically spells it out, I felt like, for starters, I had a lot of trouble grasping what the arc of this book was actually about. Despite the fact that reality goes utterly haywire at about the one-third mark (houses start laying eggs, twenty-foot archaeopteryx phoenikoi, etc), this is a very interior book. Nothing much actually happens, and unlike many YA books centered on a female protagonist where nothing much actually happens, the arc of Scotch's journey isn't about romance, either. I kept expecting her to have some kind of agency or role to play in the larger events going on around her, and…nope. Which is fine, and makes for interesting reading, but is very much not in the YA fantasy mold.
At its heart this story is about Scotch learning to grow up, to accept her own flaws as well as the fact that just because there's some horrible stuff in her past doesn't mean that she's the center of the universe. Ironically enough, maturity requires acknowledging her own dependence on her parents.
I liked Scotch; I liked the fact that the relationship between her and her older brother Richard is basically the heart of the book. I liked that, for all her razor-fine sensitivity to racism, Scotch does not then magically understand and accept everyone else; she says and thinks some rather ableist and homophobic things, though to her credit, eventually, she learns to call herself on it. I liked that the wheelchair-using Sri Lankan poet-guitarist Scotch meets, Punnum, is nobody's fool, and that she is fiercely independent and fiercely guards her own agency. I liked the diversity of the secondary characters, and I liked that Scotch, even while happily in a relationship, wonders about what sex would be like with other partners.
I liked the blend of Caribbean and Russian folklore (Baba Yaga helps Scotch escape from a rolling calf, FTW) that forms the core of the book. I liked that the narrative managed to do the hat trick in which, after sympathizing unreservedly with Scotch for half the way, within the space of a few pages we realize that she's anything but perfect--indeed, she has her own kind of privilege.
But…for all that I liked this book, and I appreciated it, I rarely felt any deep emotional connection to the characters. This is, again, ironic, given that the narrative is first-person, but I was never completely sucked in by the narrative. There's a lot to like here, and it's well worth the read, but it isn't precisely engrossing.
I bought this book at FOGCon 2, weeks before the official publication date. It's the first Nalo Hopkinson book I've read, and whatever I was expecting, this wasn't quite it. I liked it, but it's…not what I was expecting.
I am just going to c&p the book description, for starters.
Sixteen-year-old Scotch struggles to fit in—at home she’s the perfect daughter, at school she’s provocatively sassy, and thanks to her mixed heritage, she doesn’t feel she belongs with the Caribbeans, whites, or blacks. And even more troubling, lately her skin is becoming covered in a sticky black substance that can’t be removed. While trying to cope with this creepiness, she goes out with her brother—and he disappears. A mysterious bubble of light just swallows him up, and Scotch has no idea how to find him. Soon, the Chaos that has claimed her brother affects the city at large, until it seems like everyone is turning into crazy creatures. Scotch needs to get to the bottom of this supernatural situation ASAP before the Chaos consumes everything she’s ever known—and she knows that the black shadowy entity that’s begun trailing her every move is probably not going to help.
A blend of fantasy and Caribbean folklore, at its heart this tale is about identity and self acceptance—because only by acknowledging her imperfections can Scotch hope to save her brother.
So, despite the fact that the cover blurb basically spells it out, I felt like, for starters, I had a lot of trouble grasping what the arc of this book was actually about. Despite the fact that reality goes utterly haywire at about the one-third mark (houses start laying eggs, twenty-foot archaeopteryx phoenikoi, etc), this is a very interior book. Nothing much actually happens, and unlike many YA books centered on a female protagonist where nothing much actually happens, the arc of Scotch's journey isn't about romance, either. I kept expecting her to have some kind of agency or role to play in the larger events going on around her, and…nope. Which is fine, and makes for interesting reading, but is very much not in the YA fantasy mold.
At its heart this story is about Scotch learning to grow up, to accept her own flaws as well as the fact that just because there's some horrible stuff in her past doesn't mean that she's the center of the universe. Ironically enough, maturity requires acknowledging her own dependence on her parents.
I liked Scotch; I liked the fact that the relationship between her and her older brother Richard is basically the heart of the book. I liked that, for all her razor-fine sensitivity to racism, Scotch does not then magically understand and accept everyone else; she says and thinks some rather ableist and homophobic things, though to her credit, eventually, she learns to call herself on it. I liked that the wheelchair-using Sri Lankan poet-guitarist Scotch meets, Punnum, is nobody's fool, and that she is fiercely independent and fiercely guards her own agency. I liked the diversity of the secondary characters, and I liked that Scotch, even while happily in a relationship, wonders about what sex would be like with other partners.
I liked the blend of Caribbean and Russian folklore (Baba Yaga helps Scotch escape from a rolling calf, FTW) that forms the core of the book. I liked that the narrative managed to do the hat trick in which, after sympathizing unreservedly with Scotch for half the way, within the space of a few pages we realize that she's anything but perfect--indeed, she has her own kind of privilege.
But…for all that I liked this book, and I appreciated it, I rarely felt any deep emotional connection to the characters. This is, again, ironic, given that the narrative is first-person, but I was never completely sucked in by the narrative. There's a lot to like here, and it's well worth the read, but it isn't precisely engrossing.
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-07 21:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-07 21:35 (UTC)I'd definitely tell people to read this book (it's a pretty quick read, too), it's just not one of those books that I'm going to recall with any strong emotions.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-08 00:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-08 04:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-08 04:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-08 05:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-09 17:12 (UTC)Hopkinson usually created flawed protagonists, and imo it can be a challenge for them to maintain the reader's sympathies and/or interest; sometimes she does it better than others. But I am intrigued, because it sounds like she was trying to deliberately subvert a number of YA fantasy conventions at once, but perhaps let that get in the way of the narrative.
FWIW, I think Hopkinson's best work is in Skin Folk, her short story collection (which is currently being made into a indie movie in NYC--though I'm not sure which stories they're combining and adapting), and in The New Moon's Arms, which to me seemed a more mature take on her signature themes; the latter tilts the balance more heavily from fantasy & sf elements toward what they mean for character development than many sff fans might like, but it really worked for me.
Brown Girl in the Ring is a fun little romp, not that deep, and meant I think as a celebration of Vodun & other Yoruba-based Caribbean religions, though a friend who actually practices felt it made light of her faith. Midnight Robber has some stunning writing and brilliant world-building, but the plot is a little too dense, the ending lacks ballast, and I don't think she handles the incest-rape plot (which already has some tough baggage in black communities) that well. Both these books made me feel like she was a writer to watch but hadn't yet lived up to her potential.
The Salt Roads and The New Moon's Arms are in some ways more "mainstream," in that while they both include scientific elements (fractals & evolutionary theory, respectively), they can be much more comfortably subsumed within "magical realism"--and, I think, read by black women who don't normally read sff.
I think The Salt Roads is excellent, actually, but the last of its 3 braided narratives is much weaker than the other two, which lessens its impact at the end. It's also the book in which Hopkinson's sex-radical politics are most foregrounded; there's a lot of explicit sex, all of it non-normative by certain standards, and a clear attempt to create connections and equivalences among the experiences of lesbians, bisexual women, kinksters of various kinds, and prostitutes. Your mileage may vary on whether this is a great expression of sex-positivity or problematic elision of the real differences between these groups; FWIW I don't think she handles the consent issues of prostitution in Roman Egypt all that well, & it muddies the argument.
Thanks for the review!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-05-11 05:39 (UTC)You're welcome!