Glass Soup

"Whenever you take a mouthful of too-hot soup, the next thing you do will be wrong."
-John Flannery, Chaos's evil agent in Jonathan Carroll's Glass Soup.

Sound advice from a creepy antagonist.

I enjoyed Glass Soup. It's a literate spec fic novel set in Austria. The hints of Europe were a familiar and pleasing flavor for me, and gave Carroll a chance to use his intimate knowledge of his expatriate home to slide interesting facts about Mohr im hemd (chocolate pudding) and flakturm (indestructible antiaircraft towers) into the tale. A colorful and engaging parade of absurdities first delight and distract, then begin to coalesce into an intriguing hierarchy of life after death and dreams. Protagonists Vincent and Isabelle must wade through bizarre events, the death of loved ones, and even their own deaths in order to save their unborn child, Anjo.

One of the most interesting scenarios in the book happens before the narrative begins: Vincent dies, and Isabelle jumps after him into the afterlife, successfully bringing him back from death. Vincent has returned to life to raise his still in-utero son. Anjo is (for no specified reason) fated to stop Chaos from destroying the world to preserve its newfound consciousness. So Chaos really has it in for Anjo. Chaos is intent halting the cycle of the godlike mosaic that forms and reforms, creating the pattern of life. Ironically Chaos would like everything to stay just the way it is- it doesn't want the mosaic that brought it to life to break down. Right here is one of strangest things about the book. Chaos when personified in fiction usually thrives on disorder. In Glass Soup, the protagonists are able to defeat Chaos again and again by capitalizing on the very disorder it creates.

Strengths of the book include humor, absurdity, internal logic, and bits of trivia about autographists and Blue Morpho butterflies. The main weakness is characterization. Womanizer Simon Haden is the best developed character in the book and the first introduced. It is through his afterlife that we discover the rules of the game, and get great insight into his personality. We are never present in Vincent or Isabelle's afterlives, and without that device, Carroll is limited in how engaged the reader becomes with his protagonists.

Characterization issues also plagued the bad guys. John Flannery and his dog Luba were introduced as the bowel-loosening henchman of Chaos, but their creepiness wore off as I got to know them, until they just weren't that scary. This left the end of the novel feeling a mite drab- the sense of urgency faded as the antagonist lost its bite, and it seemed only a matter of time before the more competent protagonists worked their way through the loophole inconveniences of the universal laws of life and death.

Dawn, and the Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth

Dawn was theirs, and sunset, and the colours of the earth
-Rupert Brooke

I just finished reading Michael F. Flynn's novelette titled "Dawn, and the Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth" in the Oct/Nov issue of Asimov's. Lovely title, isn't it? Flynn took it from a poem by Rupert Brooke, and quotes a stanza of the same poem later in the piece. Flynn teases the reader by refusing to identify the poet- a tease made all the worse by his mention of a boat named Odyssey right around the time the stanza is quoted. I fell right into the trap, and browsed through an online version of the Odyssey looking for all the (many) references to Dawn and Sunset. Further research revealed the true source of the quote was the fourth of a series of five sonnets (plus prelude) written by travel writer turned WWI soldier, Rupert Brooke. According to the Rupert Brooke Society, the most famous poem of the series was The Soldier, though Brooke's personal favorite was Death (IV)- and Michael Flynn seems to be taken with it, as well.

Here is the series of sonnets:
The Treasure (written in August 1914)
1. Peace (numbered sonnets written in the autumn of 1914 after the outbreak of WWI)
2. Safety
3. The Dead
4. The Dead
5. The Soldier

In true dramatic fashion, Brooke died in April of 1915, just as his published sonnets were beginning to meet with fame and acclaim.

So what does Rupert Brooke's poem have to do with a science fiction novelette? You'll have to read it for yourself to find out. I can tell you that you'll encounter the stories and perspectives of many people whose lives were touched by the incident on the Bay, read some emails, and even read a little play. Flynn does a great job building a sense of mystery, and tying all these little stories and snippets together into a tale almost- but not quite- as beautiful as Brooke's sonnet.

Happy October!

October is the most magical month of the year. Oak leaves skitter across the pavement, clattering like skeleton bones. In northern Italy thick fog roils above the vineyards. The vines grow bare as palm-sized green leaves motle yellow and drift to the ground. There is a thinness to the air, and the line between life and death is a little less solid than at any other season. We're on a 31-day countdown to my favorite holiday, Halloween, and 32 days from the bone cookies and graveyard treks of All Saint's Day. To celebrate the season and to put you in the mood for reading and writing in the autumnal atmosphere, here's a list of my favorite October music:

Vocal:
Bargainville by Moxy Fruvous. Right from the first track, "River Valley," you're out in the country on an autumn walk. Maybe Canadian groups just get autumn. If you like Bargainville, be sure to try Maroon by the Barenaked Ladies.

Instrumental:
Amélie: Original Soundtrack Recording by Yann Tierson from the French film Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain. Tierson loves to write for accordion and toy piano, and the result is a sepia-toned portrait of childhood suddenly infused with new color and life. The whole album is a September-October delight, but, despite its name, Track 4: "Comtine D'un Autre Ete: L'apres Midi," is the most autumnal of the album. The solo piano notes you hear in this track are actually falling red and gold leaves.

Charlie Brown's Holiday Hits by Vince Guaraldi includes the heart-breakingly cheerful "Great Pumpkin Waltz." George Winston also plays a touching version of this song on his album Linus & Lucy: The Music Of Vince Guaraldi . Winston has an album called Autumn that makes lovely reading, writing, studying music.

Orchestral:
Concerto for Orchestra by Béla Bartók. Bartók wrote this haunting music during the last years of his life in New York.

Night on Bald Mountain by Moussorgsky (you might know this spooky music from Disney's Fantasia).