Book Review: The Baron in the Trees (1957) by Italo Calvino

How much did I love this novel? If someone gets a Kickstarter going to adapt it into a film, put me down for one million dollars. I'll have to borrow the million first, but you get the idea. The title character is Baron Rondo, the eldest son of a noble family living on a large rural estate near Genoa. On June 15, 1767,  the twelve-year-old Rondo, in a fit of pique over a dish served to him at the family dinner table, climbs up a tree and refuses to come down...ever.

Rondo is true to his word and spends the next fifty-plus years living a completely arboreal life. He learns to move with incredible agility across the forests of the region, but he's no hermit or wild man of the woods. Rondo continues his education, writes pamphlets and runs a newspaper, conducts love affairs, engages in acts of heroism and bravery, maintains a correspondence with some of the leading intellectuals of the time, and generally makes his life in the trees almost as comfortable as life in his ancestral palazzo.

The jaw-dropping brilliance of this novel is that it works as both a charming fantasy and as an acute novel of ideas. As a fantasy, Calvino shows some amazing skill as a world-builder; Rondo's life in the treetops is fully and imaginatively realized, and there's a host of sequences that are begging to be filmed. There are fights with pirates; treetop lovemaking; battles with packs of starving wolves; a troop of French soldiers covered in living vegetation; and a final scene that's as heartbreaking as it is extravagantly visual.

As much as this novel is a fantastical, lavishly imagined folktale, it's also about the birth of the modern world. The society Rondo is born into is one of aristocratic privilege matched with a deferential peasantry. Over the course of his life the Enlightenment produces the French Revolution, which is followed by Napoleon's rubbishing of ancien regimes throughout Europe, and as the novel ends there are hints of reactionary political forces coming to the fore. Rondo is, in his limited way, a liberal and a bit of a revolutionary, but what his odd life choice seems to represent is the ascendancy and triumph of the individual in society. His entire life, as eccentric and as uncomfortable as it is, is an expression of what he wants to be, as opposed to what society, from high to low, expects him to be. Rondo has cast off all the expectations of his family, class and society to literally move onto a different plane of existence.

The Baron in the Trees is also whimsical, funny, sad, and features a charming and poignant love story between Rondo and the beautiful Viola, a noblewoman who's as enthusiastically individualistic as he is, which, of course, means trouble all around. I really can't recommend this book enough. It's a superlative, one-of-a-kind fantasy that's in the same league as Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels or Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. And don't forget what I said about Kickstarter; I'm good for at least $100 this week.

Book Review: A Face Like Glass (2012) by Frances Hardinge

So how do I describe Caverna, the underground city that`s one of the major characters in this young adult fantasy novel, in a way that doesn`t make it sound completely preposterous? Well, here goes: imagine the Most Serene Republic of Venice circa 1750, but ruled by the Borgias at their Machiavellian, poisoning peak,  and with an economy based around the production of magical and hallucinogenic luxury goods, chiefly wines and cheeses. Also, the inhabitants of this world can only use a limited variety of facial expressions. Drudges, who make up the proletariat, are only allowed one bland, dutiful expression. Members of the Court and Craftsmen classes (aristos to you and me) can "buy" a wide variety of facial expressions. And no one, whether weak or powerful, is allowed (or wants) to go up to the "overground". Did I forget to mention the light-emitting man-eating plants, or the Cartographers who only need to chat with a person to drive them mad? They're in here, too.

It's clear that author Hardinge decided to let her imagination off its leash and only got it back after it had assaulted some neighbours, chased things up trees, and made a mess on the carpet. And it's a good thing she did. There are linear miles of shelving filled with YA books that are so high concept they can make your nose bleed just by reading the blurbs on the back covers. Almost all of them are shite because the creativity ends with the basic concept. A Face Like Glass delivers the goods. The writing is far, far above average for this genre, at times reaching a Geraldine McCaughrean level of excellence. The tough part with this kind of imaginative story is the world-building, and Hardinge manages this with ease. She doesn't bludgeon the reader with details or elaborate background info, instead she parcels out descriptions of Caverna as they're discovered by her protagonist, a young girl named Neverfell. The quality of the world-building can be judged by fact that the workings and ecology of Caverna are just as interesting as the machinations of the lead characters. In many ways this novel is the YA equivalent to Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan and Gormenghast in its creation of a self-enclosed world populated by eccentrics and obsessed with form and ceremony.

Neverfell is an orphan who mysteriously appears in Caverna at the age of five and is raised in secret by Grandible, a master cheesemaker. The reason for the secrecy is that Neverfell, unlike any other resident of the underworld, has no control over her facial expressions: she shows every emotion that occurs to her as it happens. As usually happens to orphans in stories like this, Neverfell draws the attention of some powerful and dangerous people. From there on she becomes a pawn and a conspirator in a struggle for control of Caverna. The plotting is tight and energetic, with lots of twists, and we even get a Spartacus-like uprising by the Drudges.

If I have any complaint about this novel it's that the concept of people having a set number of facial expressions to go through life with is fascinating, but the execution of it is weak. A lot of time is spent describing this aspect of Caverna society, but I just didn't feel that the idea was worked out enough to make seem believable, even in the context of a fantasy novel. Fortunately, Hardinge fleshes out her other imaginative concepts with originality, humour and a lot of energy.

Related posts:

Book Review: Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake 

Book Review: The House on the Borderland (1908) by William Hope Hodgson

For the most rabid fans of supernatural/horror fiction, utter and complete weirdness counts for a lot; it's a spice that lifts otherwise straightforward genre material into an exalted realm of deliriously entertaining oddness. H.P Lovecraft is the poster boy in the field of determined weirdness. His work isn't brilliantly written or exceptionally scary, but his single-minded focus on describing horrors that are so hideous, so cosmic, that they can't, well, be described adequately except by screaming hysterically, has given him an enduring cult status amongst horror mavens. On a more exalted literary level there's Mervyn Peake, whose sublimely unusual novels Titus Groan and Gormenghast defy categorization, although they're often shelved in the fantasy section of libraries and bookstores.

The House on the Borderland is a book Lovecraft praised often, and it's easy to see the influence it had on him. The story starts off in traditional late-Victorian style with the discovery, in deepest, darkest, rural Ireland, of a manuscript written by an unnamed man who wished to record the events he experienced in his stately home. The site where the home once stood is now an overgrown ruin next to a massive pit into which a river flows and then disappears underground. The story revealed in the manuscript is of a house under siege by demonic creatures that are half-swine, half-human. But that's not all, not by a long shot. The house also appears to be a portal or stargate to another house on another planet (?) in another dimension (?), perhaps even in a separate universe. The alternate house is a duplicate of the Irish one, except for the notable addition of a surrounding mountain range of Himalayan proportions peopled by hideous gods, all of them staring down at the house. And now for the strangest part of the story. In the last third of the novel our hero witnesses the speeding up of time and the aging and destruction of our solar system and the universe. Yes, things get that crazy.

Published in 1908, Borderland is very much supernatural fiction for the 20th century. Up until then the genre had revolved around ghosts, more ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and the occasional ghoul or church grim. In short, supernatural fiction was largely based on familiar creatures and characters from folktales that had been around since forever. Hodgson imagined a new world of terrors. His swine creatures aren't just terrestrial monsters, but, it would appear, emissaries of something vastly more powerful and evil. The final third of the story, with its unprecedented journey to the end of Time, is a triumph of imagination. The only way to adequately describe it is to try and imagine what a Stephen Hawking fever dream might be like. It's more than worth the price of admission, and it's hard to imagine how a sequence such as this could be described better. Borderland might also represent the first time a supernatural story has used the Is This Real Or Is It The Ravings Of A Madman? gambit. If you pay close attention to the actions of the narrator's sister (the only other occupant of the house) you begin to realize that the entire story could be taking place in the narrator's mind.

The House on the Borderland is very entertaining, always surprising, and has more than a few shivery moments. I first read it as a teenager, and the intervening years have been very kind to it. The only knock against it might be that the final section of the story almost feels like an add-on rather than a part of the whole. Hodgson wrote a few other novels and some excellent short stories, all of which are worth reading. The only exception is The Night Land, an even stranger (if that's possible) novel that's fatally flawed by being written in an intentionally archaic style. There's something ironic in the fact that Hodgson wrote his tales of cosmic terror only a few years before the real life horrors of World War I. Hodgson joined the British Army and was blown apart by an artillery shell in April 1918 at Ypres. One can only wonder at what he might have written had he survived the war; even his singular imagination might not have been prepared for what he saw on the Western Front.

Related posts:

Book Review: Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950)

Top Ten Films Begging For A Remake

Normally I'm opposed to remakes and reboots. It's not that the concept offends me, it's just that so many remakes were either pointless, like Gus Van Sant's Psycho, or turkeys on steroids like The Haunting. The odds of a successful remake seem to be very low. Despite that fact, I'd love to see someone take a crack at these films, some of which I've included simply because it's shocking they haven't already gone through the Hollywood recycling machine.

10. The 10th Victim (1965)

In the near future bored sophisticates enter a game in which they hunt each other and then in turn become hunted. The whole thing's legal and televised, and the government uses it as a form of population control. This Italian film sounds dystopian, but it's really a black comedy and it comes with a double dose of 1960s style. Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress provide beauty and cool, and the soundtrack has one of those maddeningly catchy tunes Italian films of the time specialized in. Running Man was a bit like this, but it's a wonder Victim hasn't been given the full Hollywood makeover.

9. The Magnificent Seven (1960)

There's supposedly a remake of this classic western in the Hollywood pipeline. The bad news is that Tom Cruise is attached to the project. I'm guessing that means the other six actors will be riding ponies just to balance out the height differential.  A straight remake is a bit pointless; what astonishes me is that no one has updated the concept to seven American mercenaries defending a Mexican town against drug cartel baddies. Wait a minute...that sounds good...hands off, Tarantino, it's my idea and I'm copyrighting it first thing tomorrow!

8. The Dirty Dozen (1967)

I know, I know, Inglourious Basterds was a de facto remake of The Dirty Dozen, but it didn't have the purity of the original concept. Not to mention that it was a self-indulgent load of shite. Given the success of Saving Private Ryan you'd think someone would be game for another stab at this action classic.

7. Mister Johnson (1990)

Virtually no one has seen this film, and that's a good thing. It's about a British colonial officer in West Africa in the 1920s who's trying to build a road through the bush. He's both helped and hindered by Mr. Johnson, a native who is a product and victim of colonialism. The novel this film is based is by Joyce Cary, and it's brilliant; one of the first and best novels about the corrosive effects of colonial occupation. The film is barely mediocre, despite Pierce Brosnan in front of the camera and Bruce Beresford behind it. If any youngish black actor wants to earn himself an Oscar, get this remake done in a hurry.

6. Gormenghast (2000)

This is actually a four-part BBC mini-series based on Titus Groan and  Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake. The Beeb threw all kinds of money and talent at this project and they got it completely wrong. They gave it a Felliniesque feel which was totally off-base. The novels are hard to define, but I'll try by saying that they're kind of a collision between Dickens and Lewis Carroll. What's really missing from this mini-series is the humour of the original books, which are often LOL funny. And to do the books justice you'd need a series that's at least twice as long. Here's my review of the original novels.

5.  Troy (2004)

This plodding toga epic is based on Homer's The Iliad but manages to prune out all the best bits. More specifically, the film does away with the supernatural influence of the gods on the battle for Troy. That's a bit like making a western without horses. In Homer's story the gods are constantly interfering in the battle, and given the state of CGI these days I don't see why a remake shouldn't give them lots of screen time.

4. Excalibur (1981)

I don't actually mean this particular film needs to be remade, I'd just to like to see one film about King Arthur that doesn't suck like a Dyson vacuum cleaner, Monty Python's version excepted. Think about it: every attempt to dramatize this legend has gone down in flames. King Arthur, First Knight, and, going back to 1953, Knights of the Round Table have all put a blot on the record of everyone who participated in making them. The worst of the bunch is Excalibur, but only because John Boorman was an otherwise talented director. To be fair, Excalibur did have the late, great Nicol Williamson giving an intriguing performance as Widow Twankey Merlin.

3. Sands of the Kalahari (1965)

This is an odd one. A small plane crashes in the Kalahari desert and the survivors are menaced by a large band of baboons. The survivors also fight amongst themselves for who will be, in simian terms, the silverback male. It's a great idea for a film, but the execution was very B-movie. The worst decision was to have Stuart Whitman, a beta actor, play the alpha male. A decent male lead and some CGI would work wonders for a remake of Kalahari.

2.  Red Sun (1971)

If you're like me you're continually wondering why there aren't more westerns featuring samurais. It's a puzzlement. In fact, there's only one: Red Sun starring Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune and Alain Delon (my review here). Jackie Chan did martial arts in the old west in Shanghai Noon, so I don't see why we can't have a samurai kicking cowboy ass on the prairies. It's a better idea than Cowboys & Aliens.

1. The Naked Prey (1966) 

Actor Cornel Wilde turned to directing as his B-movie career started to wind down and he produced this classic about the hunter becoming the hunted. Set in Africa in the late 1800s, Wilde is a hunting guide, who, along with the hunters he's guiding, is captured by angry natives. The guide's clients meet sticky ends (really grisly stuff for 1966), but because the chief respects the guide he's given a slim, but fighting chance to escape. He's stripped naked and given a brief head start before being pursued by spear-wielding warriors. And the hunt is on. The story is beautifully simple and it's told with brutal efficiency. It's not without it's faults (Wilde was in the same acting class as Stuart Whitman), but it begs for a remake with a bigger budget and some dialogue that's a bit sharper. I'm not only one who loves this film: it got the official film geek seal of approval by being released as part of the Criterion Collection.

Book Review: Titus Groan (1946) and Gormenghast (1950) by Mervyn Peake

You could hold an annual contest to decide which genre Titus Groan and its sequel, Gormenghast, fall into and you would never get a satisfactory answer. To call them fantasy is to suggest they have magical elements, which they don't. They have too much humour for a gothic novel, and alternate reality novels makes them sound like sci-fi or steampunk. And yet the novels do have overtones of all those genres. The best description I can come up with is to say that they have Shakespearian plots peopled by Dickensian characters. Or is it the other way round? The setting is Gormenghast Castle, an insanely large complex marooned in a barren wilderness, seemingly cut-off from any other civilization. The characters, all with names so delicious you could spread them on toast (Deadyawn, Flay, Rottcodd, Opus Fluke, Flannelcat), consist of the Groan family, who rule Gormenghast, and a host of lesser notables, functionaries and servants. The time period? Hard to say, but it feels like the mid-1800s.

The plot revolves around two characters: Steerpike, a kitchen boy who schemes and kills his way to (almost) ultimate power,  and Titus Groan, the heir to the throne of Gormenghast who must eventually confront Steerpike. That describes the major story arc in the novels, but there are a score of minor plots that support or spin-off from the main storyline. Not one of them is dull or distracting. It's in this way that the novels feel like something Dickens might have produced if he'd been a recreational opium user. Peake fills his novels with striking characters but makes sure to give all of them something to do or be a part of. Dickens had an effortless ability to manufacture  unique characters, and Peake is his equal in these two novels. Even his most outlandish characters, the ones for whom eccentricity is something that's only visible in the rearview mirror, have a depth and level of detail that makes them more than just "colourful" characters.

One of the most fascinating characters is Gormenghast Castle. This is a big castle. Peake never gives us any dimensions, but you get the idea that it's probably several square miles in size. And don't think of it as a medieval fortress; it's more of a combination Tibetan lamasery and Italian palazzo. Peake takes us into every nook and cranny of it, and we end up knowing its strange delights as intimately as its inhabitants.

The novels would be remarkable enough based only on their wealth of drama, incident, characterization, and the richness of the prose, but Peake is also an exceptional comic writer. His comic style ranges from slapstick to Wodehousian wit to Lewis Carroll-like absurdity. Gormenghast, in particular, is filled with humour, and you could almost make an argument that it's as much a comic novel as it is anything else.

I suppose the main appeal of the novels is that you never have any inkling of what's coming next in them, never mind what literary genre they will morph into. There are literally dozens of memorable scenes and sequences. A very partial list would include: Lord Groan's mad belief that he's an owl; the hilarious and accidental death of the headmaster at Titus' school; Steerpike's "seduction" of Cora and Clarice Groan; a stunningly awkward party featuring one spinster and dozens of male teachers; and the climactic hunt for Steerpike, which all takes place during a devastating flood.

Are these novels about anything other than entertainment? That's as hard to figure out as the whole question of genre. Everything about the novels is so freewheeling and varied it would be easy to put just about any kind of meaning on them. I think there are two possibilities. First, Gormenghast Castle is a human consciousness, and the wildly various characters that live within it are all the different personality traits, quirks and problems a single human mind can embrace or fall prey to. Second, all of Gormenghast's personalities are templates young Titus can choose and learn from in forming his own character as he grows from boy to man. Or I could be wildly wrong on both counts.

The only disappointing thing about the world of Gormenghast is the third volume, Titus Alone. Do not bother reading it. Peake was dying as he wrote Titus Alone and, not surprisingly, the quality of the writing is pretty poor. There's also a BBC mini-series version of the first two novels that was done in 2000. It has an all-star cast, but it feels flat and stagey, and it completely misses out on Peake's humour.