So, I came upon Catherynne M. Valente through her debut, "Fairyland," series, which starts with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Though, for the life of me, I cannot remember how I came upon those books. But I read the first however many pages (I am pretty sure on Amazon) and had to know more. Not being so much interested in reading something meant for children, and mostly at random, I bought Radiance.
The axle around which Radiance turns is Severin Unck, daughter of the famed film director Percival Unck, herself also a renowned director, though of the documentary bend. While she is the axle, the story is mostly told through and by other people connected to Severin: her father (or, her father's camera), one her seven step-mothers, and persons connected to her in the world of film. the most important being her crew on her last film, that documenting the Venusian town of Adonis, which was mysteriously wiped out in one swoop, its entire population disappearing without cause or trace. It is her last production because during its tragic and chaotic filming — and this is the centerline of that axle — Severin, herself, vanishes.
A town on Venus: because the world of Radiance — and, really, it should be said the worlds — are of a solar system where the planets are much closer together (though still months' journeys apart), all habitable, with their own flora and fauna. Indeed, not only habitable, but all inhabited, "colonized," if you will, by the ruling nation-states on earth: Mars is Chinese, Pluto, American. Though, that mostly in terms of rather fluid citizenships than of racial identity. And all except for the moon, which is divided up by film studios.
What is Radiance? On the blurbs on the back cover the most frequent phrase is "fairy tale," and it is hard not to say I walked away from the book feeling that that is what I just read: a fairy tale, if, as the blurb by Neil Gaiman says, a modernist one. For the book is in no way a linear or mono-vocal telling. Chapters jump in style, voice, and time — and it is important when reading the book to familiarize yourself with the little time-line presented up front. Though, that varied telling is not without organization, as when it comes to it there are really but a handful of different types of chapters: for example, film clips from Severin's youth taken by her ever-camera-armed father, diary entries by one of Severin's step-mothers, an exit-interview with one of the survivors of the ill-fated Adonis production, and, most importantly, and this constitutes — in feel if not in fact — the main body of the book, chapters that are the plot of Percival Unck's onging project, the telling of Severin's fate on Venus, discovered in retrospect, through the journeys and investigations of Anchises St. John, another survivor, a tale that shifts as the film is constantly being re-envisioned, moving from a Chandleresque detective story to a Gothic tale, to a fairy tale, to the wildness of I am not sure what. Who cares. It worked.
It is no small part of the wonder of the book that the tale of Severin's misfortune is told both biographically (as in the debriefing) and, in the greater part (in the long, ever re-written movie), fictionally. Severin's early life is one lived ever in front of a camera, viewed by a father who would turn back and make her replay those moments in his continual quest for the best shot. And, as an adult, even directing her own films, they were yet films where she was the narrative, if not emotional, star. As such, everything in Radiance is brought into question as to what is real and what is fiction. And, in the world of Severin Unck, the distinction between those two modes of reality is greatly blurred.
Radiance is not without its flaws. It might be argued it is an imperfect book. There were moments when I was caught in the sudden fear that the book was about to loose its grip on the presentation, not without cause; though, it always pulled itself away from the edge. And while the long narratives of Percival Unck's cinematic attempts at the telling of his daughter's demise are wonderful to read, I was always caught in the dilemma of that the majority of it occurs inside the narrator's head. So how could it ever be a film? What was it, in the end, that I was being presented with? That, actually, I consider a problem with the book, though it is a problem that is easily pushed to the side. (Well, for me, not entirely successfully. The question of what was the text I was supposed to be reading kept creeping back in— and that not an illegitimate question when all the other chapters are specifically identified and written to that identification.)
But, "wonderful to read" is, in the end, the phrase to take away. (And I've used that word more than once already.) Radiance is, in short, wonderful to read. Valente's language is imaginative and blossoming and ever at play, even though occasionally willing to risk tripping over its own feet. Even jumping back and forth in time, from one type of chapter to the next, it held its body together and wove quite the Persian rug. As said, a little pre-emptive familiarity with that opening time line goes a long way. But soon enough I was wholly at ease with the chain of events. The shifts in scene came along quite naturally. And for all the games, Radiance is yet quite affective: it has its moments of sadness, of strangeness, of excitement, of poignancy. Even of horror. Which might seem like a lot for a book, but that is the nature of Radiance, it is many things brought under one cover, linked by the death — if it was a death — of a single woman.
In short, I highly recommend Radiance. There are rocket ships so perhaps one might call it science fiction, but that is all there is: rocket ships. The worlds of Radiance are not, shall we say, scientifically sound biospheres. Imagination is far more at play than biological verisimilitude. And, having finished the book, I would wholly accept, as said, that Radiance is at its heart a fairy tale, if one about the world of film, and the people and planets both behind and before the camera's lens. In truth, I would call it a fantasy. There is the question — and such questions should be asked — whether Radiance is just a narrative cleverly arranged and told through imaginative language, or if it transcends the mundane. That blurring of fiction and reality goes to that question. Though, the last chapter might be considered a move to the other direction, to an attempt to wrap everything up in a nice, neat, rational bow. And the last chapter would not work if that rationality was not hidden in everything previous. Still, a question worth asking and, I would argue, always needing to be asked. In terms of Gaiman's blurb, is it but modernist in style, or is it truly modernist?
Nonetheless, even after only one book (and the beginning of another), Valente's name will quickly come off my lips in the "what to read in speculative fiction that's actually worth a damn" discussion. And I am quite eager to read another of Valente's books, though I have to work down my to-be-read stack before I buy one. (In truth, Radiance rather got illegitimately bumped to the front of that stack when it arrived in the post.) Comfort Me with Apples seems to be calling my name. I might even one day dip into the children's world just to see what is going on in The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland. Who knows. Whatever the choice, I am sure it will be enjoyable. More importantly, worth the time.
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