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Andrew Drummond's first novel (2004) is not as wonderfully funny as his second, A Hand-Book of Volapük, but it's still good fun and well worth reading. The long title well describes the initial intentions of its fictional author, Kininmonth; he starts out to chronicle the construction of a railway for which he has just been hired as engineer. But financial troubles on the part of the railway company force a halt to the construction after a few months, and the bulk of the book deals with "other pertinent matters", as the title discreetly puts it: Kininmonth's adventures in the years after the Garve-to-Ullapool railway falters, including but far from limited to work on two other railways. This novel is more solidly mainstream-historical than A Hand-Book of Volapük, the few fantastic elements being such that they might be interpreted as dream-sequences rather than actual occurrences. It shares with that novel the spiffy faux-nineteenth-century layout and design, including advertisements at the back of the book for books, patent medicines, and other contemporary products. It's a fun game to spot the connections between the books and patent medicines listed for sale, and the characters and events of An Abridged History and A Hand-Book of Volapük, and, for all I know, perhaps Drummond's third novel Elephantina as well (I haven't read that one yet, but I look forward to it).
The Man on the Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem is a curious piece of work, raw and emotionally intense, with many intense, sometimes heartbreaking scenes, but (perhaps) no overall plot. It's more or less autobiographical -- exactly how one can't be sure, as it's an autobiography not only of their life experiences but of their dreams and imaginings -- with alternate passages in the first-person from Steve and Melanie, and occasional third-person passages. A few passages deal with the authors' childhoods, and one curious passage imagines an incident in the life of their granddaughter decades hence when she is herself a grandmother; but most of the book is about their life as parents of five adopted children, most of whom suffered terrible neglect or worse before the Tems adopted them; and its major theme, it seems to me, is their fears on behalf of their children and their never completely fulfillable desire to protect them from harm. I find myself at a loss to say much more about it; but I strongly recommend it to anyone with any degree of tolerance (much less partiality) for nonlinear stories.
Everything we're about to tell you is true.
Don't ask me if I mean that "literally". I know about the literal. The literal has failed miserably to explain the things I've really needed explanations for. The things in your dreams, the things in your head, don't know from literal. And yet that's where most of us live: in our dreams, in our heads. The stories there, those fables and fairytales, are our lives.
Indeed.
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Permanent review log URL: http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/review/log.htm