Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart

(Note: running on no sleep and noticeable fever; please ignore any grammatical inconsistencies I may commit in this entry. Bookblogging to, hopefully, help cure insomnia, as well as to express delight with book.)

I read this on the plane going to Houston last week, which seems appropriate, as Sean Stewart strikes me as a writer who on some existential level occasionally tries to escape from Texas, and who, on the same existential level, will be ultimately totally unsuccessful at it.

I first looked up Sean Stewart because of something said in coffee_and_ink's journal; Perfect Circle had just come out at that point, and I read it in a bookstore in something of a rush on a day when I was not tracking very well, so that all that I now retain of the novel is a vague impression that I am not sufficiently acquainted with the back catalogue of R.E.M. to really comprehend what was going on. However, there was something there that I liked, so I've been trying various novels by Stewart ever since, to see if any of his books would produce more than a sort of pleasant confusion. Mockingbird wasn't it, although I still think it has one of the best opening paragraphs in memory (and geez, does that book make a lot more sense now that I've been to Houston); I hit Galveston in what must have been precisely the wrong mood and bounced very, very hard.

Resurrection Man was perfect. Every so often a book comes along about which I don't have anything at all bad to say, and this was one of them, and it was a pleasant surprise. I think that part of my positive reaction may be due to the fact that it uses some symbols and images that are personally important to me in ways that are both closer to how I use them than most fiction ever gets and combined with things which horribly disturb me, a fascinating combination. But I also think that it's a genuinely solid dark fantasy, with an engaging plot predictable only where it needed to be, and a sense of bleak irony that somehow engaged me instead of pushing me off into annoyed cynicism.

The book is set in some of Stewart's standard territory, a Texas in which magic exists, and in this one the presence of magic is in an uneasy balance with the recognizable culture and history of our universe. The protagonist has magic, or is god-touched-- there doesn't seem to be any difference-- and thinks of his power as an angel asleep inside him, merciless, powerful, and far too lightly confined. (There is a lot of use of spider imagery here, which a) works brilliantly and b) causes me to wonder how one of my phobias can dovetail so neatly with a conception of angels that is very close to the way I define the term.) At the beginning of the novel, he is faced with the extremely peculiar situation of having to deal with his own corpse (recognizably his, even though he's staring at it and very much alive), which has unexpectedly appeared in his bedroom ('Must be one of those angel things', says one of his siblings). This is the trigger for him to try to come to terms with himself and his convoluted and barking mad family, in a process which somehow never quite veers into Southern Gothic, despite the fact that said veering really seemed inevitable.

It's a rich, detailed, and surprisingly funny book, bleak but never despairing, and replete with interesting side characters and historical tidbits that could make novels in themselves (I want to read a novel about the feng shui city planning-types, thank you). But it's never too rich, and it's never over-lush, and it deals with its baroque and twisted images in a surprisingly pragmatic and practical style. I have much greater hopes for the rest of Sean Stewart, after having found this one.

Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart

(Note: running on no sleep and noticeable fever; please ignore any grammatical inconsistencies I may commit in this entry. Bookblogging to, hopefully, help cure insomnia, as well as to express delight with book.)

I read this on the plane going to Houston last week, which seems appropriate, as Sean Stewart strikes me as a writer who on some existential level occasionally tries to escape from Texas, and who, on the same existential level, will be ultimately totally unsuccessful at it.

I first looked up Sean Stewart because of something said in coffee_and_ink's journal; Perfect Circle had just come out at that point, and I read it in a bookstore in something of a rush on a day when I was not tracking very well, so that all that I now retain of the novel is a vague impression that I am not sufficiently acquainted with the back catalogue of R.E.M. to really comprehend what was going on. However, there was something there that I liked, so I've been trying various novels by Stewart ever since, to see if any of his books would produce more than a sort of pleasant confusion. Mockingbird wasn't it, although I still think it has one of the best opening paragraphs in memory (and geez, does that book make a lot more sense now that I've been to Houston); I hit Galveston in what must have been precisely the wrong mood and bounced very, very hard.

Resurrection Man was perfect. Every so often a book comes along about which I don't have anything at all bad to say, and this was one of them, and it was a pleasant surprise. I think that part of my positive reaction may be due to the fact that it uses some symbols and images that are personally important to me in ways that are both closer to how I use them than most fiction ever gets and combined with things which horribly disturb me, a fascinating combination. But I also think that it's a genuinely solid dark fantasy, with an engaging plot predictable only where it needed to be, and a sense of bleak irony that somehow engaged me instead of pushing me off into annoyed cynicism.

The book is set in some of Stewart's standard territory, a Texas in which magic exists, and in this one the presence of magic is in an uneasy balance with the recognizable culture and history of our universe. The protagonist has magic, or is god-touched-- there doesn't seem to be any difference-- and thinks of his power as an angel asleep inside him, merciless, powerful, and far too lightly confined. (There is a lot of use of spider imagery here, which a) works brilliantly and b) causes me to wonder how one of my phobias can dovetail so neatly with a conception of angels that is very close to the way I define the term.) At the beginning of the novel, he is faced with the extremely peculiar situation of having to deal with his own corpse (recognizably his, even though he's staring at it and very much alive), which has unexpectedly appeared in his bedroom ('Must be one of those angel things', says one of his siblings). This is the trigger for him to try to come to terms with himself and his convoluted and barking mad family, in a process which somehow never quite veers into Southern Gothic, despite the fact that said veering really seemed inevitable.

It's a rich, detailed, and surprisingly funny book, bleak but never despairing, and replete with interesting side characters and historical tidbits that could make novels in themselves (I want to read a novel about the feng shui city planning-types, thank you). But it's never too rich, and it's never over-lush, and it deals with its baroque and twisted images in a surprisingly pragmatic and practical style. I have much greater hopes for the rest of Sean Stewart, after having found this one.