I warmed to this, and felt that it all came together in a satisfying conclusion, in the final pages ... even the final paragraph.
Up until that point, it wasn't exactly a penance to read, but felt like a bit of a challenge. I read on, wondering whether anything was going to actually happen, and whether wanderings of the odd, unmoored characters were actually going to go anywhere. Mild Spoiler Alert: it's all very low key and subtle, but it does.
It's very talky, and Beckett has clearly decided on a Tell, Don't Show strategy for his narrative about Four Characters in Search of Themselves, in a strange, possibly alien landscape.
"She felt tired of her life as she's lived it, so far and, for the first time she could remember, she found herself thinking about what it would mean to grow old"
This didn't put me off, because it felt like a stylistic choice, not flat-footedness on the part of the author -- in that regard, it reminded me a bit of Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go": the characters' self-obsessive navel-gazing is part of the point. (It's up to you, Dear Reader, if you can roll with it ...)
Beckett also wears his textual inspirations on his sleeve, in colours as neon bright as the alien flora and fauna of the strange, alien setting, the Submundo Delta. The Guardian review noticed that "... the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard," but your dyed in the wool nerd (such as Yours Truly) will quickly recognize other inspirations. References to the Strugatsky Brothers "Roadside Picnic," and Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" aren't exactly subtle. (But I realize that not everyone is a dyed in the wool nerd, and, perhaps, might need the road signs ...) There are probably references that I missed, and there are even what I took to be a couple of jokes (for example, two minor characters are Mr and Mrs de Groot, in a jungle where the trees may be sentient ...)
But I did enjoy the fantastic world building, which harks back to the unashamed science fantasy of the New Weird.
Up until that point, it wasn't exactly a penance to read, but felt like a bit of a challenge. I read on, wondering whether anything was going to actually happen, and whether wanderings of the odd, unmoored characters were actually going to go anywhere. Mild Spoiler Alert: it's all very low key and subtle, but it does.
It's very talky, and Beckett has clearly decided on a Tell, Don't Show strategy for his narrative about Four Characters in Search of Themselves, in a strange, possibly alien landscape.
"She felt tired of her life as she's lived it, so far and, for the first time she could remember, she found herself thinking about what it would mean to grow old"
This didn't put me off, because it felt like a stylistic choice, not flat-footedness on the part of the author -- in that regard, it reminded me a bit of Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go": the characters' self-obsessive navel-gazing is part of the point. (It's up to you, Dear Reader, if you can roll with it ...)
Beckett also wears his textual inspirations on his sleeve, in colours as neon bright as the alien flora and fauna of the strange, alien setting, the Submundo Delta. The Guardian review noticed that "... the book reads like Conrad's Heart of Darkness reimagined by JG Ballard," but your dyed in the wool nerd (such as Yours Truly) will quickly recognize other inspirations. References to the Strugatsky Brothers "Roadside Picnic," and Stanislaw Lem's "Solaris" aren't exactly subtle. (But I realize that not everyone is a dyed in the wool nerd, and, perhaps, might need the road signs ...) There are probably references that I missed, and there are even what I took to be a couple of jokes (for example, two minor characters are Mr and Mrs de Groot, in a jungle where the trees may be sentient ...)
But I did enjoy the fantastic world building, which harks back to the unashamed science fantasy of the New Weird.
