I will be your slave
Thursday, 20 August 2009 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtI have a dreadfully unscientific method of book-acquisition, frequently entailing a random drift around bookshops until something catches my eye. In this case I thought vaguely, "Ooh, remember someone on Teh Internets somewhere saying something vaguely good about that, and it has a catchy title and is cheap, bonus!" This is how I became the proud possessor of The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party. I admit in retrospect that I may also have been seduced by the book itself, which is a beautifully-made hardback with lovely, period-feel fonts and layout, and that wonderful fluffy irregularity to the edge of its pages. I find myself stroking them a lot. The book itself is an appropriately concrete realisation of the story it houses, a tightly-focused exercise in eighteenth-century voice.
Octavian Nothing is absolutely not my kind of book. I bought it because I vaguely associated it with young adult fantasy; it's certainly not a fantasy, and I'd quarrel quite radically with the idea that it's a young adult book. What it is is a stunningly period-voiced disquisition on human brutality, race, misplaced science, slavery and the American War of Independence. I read it in an enormous gulp during one sitting on Tuesday afternoon, when I was reclining on the sofa being Sidded; it was a cruelly mesmerising read, emotionally flaying and horribly inevitable while gripping like a boa constrictor. I hate politics, I know very little about American history, I particularly find slavery and race politics difficult, and I could not put the damned thing down.
The story is quite weird, actually: the titular character is a black boy, son of a slave, raised in truly odd circumstances, in considerable luxury amid a houseful of intellectuals - scientists, philosophers, artists who effectively give him a Classical education. Octavian's own voice is thus unique and compelling in the sections he narrates, and his naive perspective on his surroundings is frequently damning. The book's effect is subtle; the issues and true circumstances emerge gradually, inescapably. You will, I have to say, never look at science in the same way again - the eighteenth-century notion of an acceptable experiment would curl your hair.
Above all, though, this is a superb example of narrative in the Gothic mode, its true focus the monstrous, the abject, the entrapping. I would have been utterly traumatised to read this as a teenager. I'm not sure I wasn't utterly traumatised anyway. On the other hand, you should probably read this book.
Octavian Nothing is absolutely not my kind of book. I bought it because I vaguely associated it with young adult fantasy; it's certainly not a fantasy, and I'd quarrel quite radically with the idea that it's a young adult book. What it is is a stunningly period-voiced disquisition on human brutality, race, misplaced science, slavery and the American War of Independence. I read it in an enormous gulp during one sitting on Tuesday afternoon, when I was reclining on the sofa being Sidded; it was a cruelly mesmerising read, emotionally flaying and horribly inevitable while gripping like a boa constrictor. I hate politics, I know very little about American history, I particularly find slavery and race politics difficult, and I could not put the damned thing down.The story is quite weird, actually: the titular character is a black boy, son of a slave, raised in truly odd circumstances, in considerable luxury amid a houseful of intellectuals - scientists, philosophers, artists who effectively give him a Classical education. Octavian's own voice is thus unique and compelling in the sections he narrates, and his naive perspective on his surroundings is frequently damning. The book's effect is subtle; the issues and true circumstances emerge gradually, inescapably. You will, I have to say, never look at science in the same way again - the eighteenth-century notion of an acceptable experiment would curl your hair.
Above all, though, this is a superb example of narrative in the Gothic mode, its true focus the monstrous, the abject, the entrapping. I would have been utterly traumatised to read this as a teenager. I'm not sure I wasn't utterly traumatised anyway. On the other hand, you should probably read this book.
