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starladyWalker, Wendy. The Secret Service. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon Classics, 1992.
This is the kind of book that one hears about vaguely for years. I have the memory that Garth Nix actually mentioned it in a recs page on his website at one point, but I think I'm wrong, though it was definitely that general era, i.e. middle school, when I first saw it mentioned. I have also seen it incoffeeandink's classic post on Notes toward a definition of 'fantasy of manners', which I periodically dip back into. Last spring I happened to have the brilliant idea of seeing whether the Stanford library had it. They do and I got it, because Stanford students don't read. It's so obscure it has an entry on ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
writersnoonereads, but Worldcat reveals that a number of university libraries have copies. I'm glad I didn't manage to track it down before now, as I am quite certain that I would not have been able to appreciate its pleasures in middle school.
The book is nominally about the desperate actions of a set of characters employed by the eponymous British Secret Service of the title, which on one level is a rather droll pun, because the chief espionage tactic of the Secret Service in this alternate Victorian England is transfiguring themselves into tableware. (Also flowers and statuary. If you like the decorative arts, this book is for you.) The novel follows a varied cast of characters: the Corporal and Mrs. Morgan, who recruit, train, and dispatch young Polly and Rutherford to the Continent to follow the positively Baroque plot of a troika of villains against the English royal family. Rutherford is a chauvinist ass overly enamored of his own manly capacity for decisive action. Polly is calm, collected, and secretly joints the Service out of a thwarted ambition to tread the boards.
I say the book is nominally about this rather Baroque plot because, as Ray Davis argued (rightly, I think) in his essay about the book, the book is not a fantasy of manners but actually Mannerist fantasy, the action is not actually the point of the book. The most action comes in a 120-page hallucination by a character who is in a coma. The rest of the time, action is literally depicted off page, delayed, described indirectly. It's no accident the impulsive ass Rutherford, whose allotted role is to transmogrify himself into a blooming rose, is repeatedly "bound, once more, to forfeit the game of action" (205). Perception is the real game; most of the meat of the novel actually lies in describing characters' perceptions of each other and various objects, most interestingly when Polly and Rutherford experience the world as objects, but very thoroughly for other characters, according to their worldviews, as well. Worldview is the key to perceiving and exploiting each villain's weakness, and it's no accident that the last villain standing destroys himself through an excess of perception partially brought on by his desire to be eternally perceptive. (The novel is so Mannerist that the chief villain, the Cardinal, literally looks like a famous El Greco painting of St. Jerome as a Cardinal.)
The other thing about the book's Mannerism is that it allows Walker to gently but thoroughly subvert the gender roles of the characters. Action is delayed, deferred, denigrated, but it's the women of The Secret Service who are the true agents in the stories--Mrs. Morgan, who recruits Polly; Polly, who is a total badass and proves it in her own coma state; the Marchionness, who brings her plans to fruition with utter aplomb; Sylvie, whose self-will upsets decades of plots; Rosamund, who was brought up to be a pawn in the game but nonetheless has the wit and the pluck to evade the traps of the story that was set for her and who eventually passes out of the narrative entirely, having gone utterly beyond its ken. Rutherford, by contrast, cocks everything up when he does take action, and spends a humorously long interval contemplating his fear of having to flower and be subject to the penetration of the Baron's connoisseur's gaze. Crucially, as is proven in the scene when he projects his delusions onto a garden hedge, his perceptions are not well aligned to actuality.
I said when I first started reading the book that it reminded me a bit of Ted Chiang, which mostly comes from the fact that the first chapter is an excruciatingly long discussion on the alternate (Aristotelian) science that allows the Secret Service to take objective form. The pleasures of this book are not in its science but in its intoxicating prose, its dry wit, and its elaborate psychology. It's like what you would get if you crossed Ted Chiang with Susanna Clarke and an admixture of Stendhal, which believe me, is high praise. Though I can name similar authors, this book is nonetheless unique, and uniquely fascinating. If you can track down a copy, I highly recommend it.
This is the kind of book that one hears about vaguely for years. I have the memory that Garth Nix actually mentioned it in a recs page on his website at one point, but I think I'm wrong, though it was definitely that general era, i.e. middle school, when I first saw it mentioned. I have also seen it in
coffeeandink's classic post on Notes toward a definition of 'fantasy of manners', which I periodically dip back into. Last spring I happened to have the brilliant idea of seeing whether the Stanford library had it. They do and I got it, because Stanford students don't read. It's so obscure it has an entry on The book is nominally about the desperate actions of a set of characters employed by the eponymous British Secret Service of the title, which on one level is a rather droll pun, because the chief espionage tactic of the Secret Service in this alternate Victorian England is transfiguring themselves into tableware. (Also flowers and statuary. If you like the decorative arts, this book is for you.) The novel follows a varied cast of characters: the Corporal and Mrs. Morgan, who recruit, train, and dispatch young Polly and Rutherford to the Continent to follow the positively Baroque plot of a troika of villains against the English royal family. Rutherford is a chauvinist ass overly enamored of his own manly capacity for decisive action. Polly is calm, collected, and secretly joints the Service out of a thwarted ambition to tread the boards.
I say the book is nominally about this rather Baroque plot because, as Ray Davis argued (rightly, I think) in his essay about the book, the book is not a fantasy of manners but actually Mannerist fantasy, the action is not actually the point of the book. The most action comes in a 120-page hallucination by a character who is in a coma. The rest of the time, action is literally depicted off page, delayed, described indirectly. It's no accident the impulsive ass Rutherford, whose allotted role is to transmogrify himself into a blooming rose, is repeatedly "bound, once more, to forfeit the game of action" (205). Perception is the real game; most of the meat of the novel actually lies in describing characters' perceptions of each other and various objects, most interestingly when Polly and Rutherford experience the world as objects, but very thoroughly for other characters, according to their worldviews, as well. Worldview is the key to perceiving and exploiting each villain's weakness, and it's no accident that the last villain standing destroys himself through an excess of perception partially brought on by his desire to be eternally perceptive. (The novel is so Mannerist that the chief villain, the Cardinal, literally looks like a famous El Greco painting of St. Jerome as a Cardinal.)
The other thing about the book's Mannerism is that it allows Walker to gently but thoroughly subvert the gender roles of the characters. Action is delayed, deferred, denigrated, but it's the women of The Secret Service who are the true agents in the stories--Mrs. Morgan, who recruits Polly; Polly, who is a total badass and proves it in her own coma state; the Marchionness, who brings her plans to fruition with utter aplomb; Sylvie, whose self-will upsets decades of plots; Rosamund, who was brought up to be a pawn in the game but nonetheless has the wit and the pluck to evade the traps of the story that was set for her and who eventually passes out of the narrative entirely, having gone utterly beyond its ken. Rutherford, by contrast, cocks everything up when he does take action, and spends a humorously long interval contemplating his fear of having to flower and be subject to the penetration of the Baron's connoisseur's gaze. Crucially, as is proven in the scene when he projects his delusions onto a garden hedge, his perceptions are not well aligned to actuality.
I said when I first started reading the book that it reminded me a bit of Ted Chiang, which mostly comes from the fact that the first chapter is an excruciatingly long discussion on the alternate (Aristotelian) science that allows the Secret Service to take objective form. The pleasures of this book are not in its science but in its intoxicating prose, its dry wit, and its elaborate psychology. It's like what you would get if you crossed Ted Chiang with Susanna Clarke and an admixture of Stendhal, which believe me, is high praise. Though I can name similar authors, this book is nonetheless unique, and uniquely fascinating. If you can track down a copy, I highly recommend it.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-15 20:20 (UTC)!!!!
Excuse me a moment.
. . . damn, Chad's college doesn't have it.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-16 03:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-16 00:43 (UTC)I really need to find this book because it sounds exactly like my sort of thing!
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-16 03:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-17 01:35 (UTC)