• It’s one of my ongoing endeavors to read everything Maud does about two months after she finishes.* To that end, I just completed Rupert Thomson’s Divided Kingdom (loved and lost by Maud here; notes on the writing of here). Plot gist: In a future Britain, the country is cordoned off into four distinct republics, a move meant to remedy societal disintegration. The republics are based on the ancient Humours, and citizens are assigned to a republic based on whether their temper manifests as Choleric, Sanguine, Melancholic, or Phlegmatic. This system sometimes means separating a family, as happens with the narrator Thomas Perry, who is taken from his parents as a young boy and moved to the Sanguine territory, where we follow him into adulthood.
I have a few reservations about the book, but not about the writer. This was my first Thomson novel (he’s written several others), and it was like hearing a phenomenal musician play — one so gifted and original that even though there’s a wrong note here and there, you still stand up and applaud at the end. (And to carry the analogy too far, it’s not that Thomson hits wrong notes here so much as he hits the right ones too hard. There are a few patches that feel too labored over, and I am suspicious over the ending.)
Even with those reservations, Divided Kingdom is worthy of the same critical attention bestowed on novels like Orhan Pamuk’s Snow and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. I hope it receives it. And I’d like to see it bet on for the Booker too.
RELATED:
— Why aren’t more people talking about Rupert Thomson? Andrew O’ Herir also wants to know.
— Perceptive review of Divided Kingdom in Newsday. (The review is written by my phonic doppelganger, Kerry Fried.)
— Knopf has devised this personality quiz based on the book. I came out Sanguine, which is CAAF as viewed through gauze-covered glasses. Phlegmatic is more like it, with outbreaks of Choler and drizzles of Melancholy every 28 days or so.
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• If you had asked me a few days ago, I would have told you that I’ve read everything by Kafka except a few short stories. I once had the nicest conversation about Kafka. It was with an acquaintance who was then in the process of leaving a prestigious Asheville architectural firm to start his own business building houses from environmentally friendly materials like hay bales. We were sitting at the upstairs bar at Barley’s, along with my photographer friend Tim. The acquaintance had a copy of The Trial with him, sitting on the bar, Tim asked him about it, and we started talking The Trial. I was brilliant. And I’m not just saying that: I was. It was one of those rare evenings where one has at one’s disposal both dazzling ideas and the eloquence to carry those ideas off into the world. It was — you will have to take my word here — very, very impressive; Zadie Smith could have gotten at least three operas out of my insights from that night. Sadly, the last time I saw this acquaintance he appeared to have had a nervous breakdown and was walking down the street in the company of two Asheville street characters wearing long green Army jackets, one carrying a lute, another a didgeridoo. I experienced a similar shift in fortune when last night, having finished The Divided Kingdom, and wanting to clarify some thoughts about how different authors handle interiority when expressing dystopic alienation, I picked up The Trial to reread it. I had the strangest feeling by the third page, confirmed by the fifth, and reconfirmed on pages 6,7, 8 and 9: I’ve never read The Trial.
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• While I’m rereading The Trial, I’m also reading Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion by Alan Burdick. As the title suggests, the book deals with how species move around the world, and why certain species wreak havoc when introduced into a new environment (think feral cats in Australia, brown snakes in Guam). I’d veered away from the book for a while as lately books about the environment make me have to lie down in a darkened room for a week or two — the modern nature book is saddled with an unfortunate narrative arc: Isn’t this a marvelous complicated interwoven beautiful world we live in?!? Aren’t these animals beautiful? Mmmm. You know, THEY’RE ALL GOING TO DIE — but this one is fascinating enough to make me lift my embargo. Burnick has a nice prose style, fast-paced but with lovely descriptions and good portrayals of the herpetologists and other researchers who are working to stem the invasions, leading to the inevitable question: Why are herpetologists always so cool? Highly recommended, especially for Quammen fans (I’m looking at you).
* Has this interbloggy chattiness with Maud gone on too long? Good. Then I’ll just add that Bookdwarf loved Divided Kingdom too.
So glad you admire Thomson’s writing! I agree with your criticisms of the book – and I’d be
more likely to steer first-time Thomson readers to “The Book of Revelation” or “The Insult” (also very messy and imperfect, but fucking brilliant anyway!) than to “Divided Kingdom” right off the bat – but he is an extraordinary stylist, isn’t he? And his gift for setting up fucked-up situations, and capturing the unique melancholy of them, is just about unparalleled.
(Also, all that sanguine, melancholy, etc., stuff, bizarrely taps into the crazy evangelical, Tim LaHaye-infused view of the world I grew up with. I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted to the book if I hadn’t been brainwashed at a young age into dividing people into four “temperaments.” Here’s a brief description of the way, thanks to LaHaye — also of Left Behind fame — some evangelicals have gravitated toward the humors as a classification system: http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/lahaye74.html.)
Comment by Maud — 7/13/2005 @ 8:57 am
i read The Trial in a bathtub, i think
i usually read Kafka while lying on the floor, holding the book above me…wishing someone would invent something where you could lie on your back and read a book without using your hands
Comment by readerofdepressingbooks — 7/13/2005 @ 1:14 pm
I just posted about The Insult yesterday! I’ve got The Book of Revelation in my TBR pile as well. What a great book! You’ve got to read it next. Sorry for all the exclamation points. Just excited that more people are reading these books. Maud is a trendsetter.
Comment by bookdwarf — 7/13/2005 @ 5:37 pm
What a timely post. I’m on page 143 of Divided Kingdom and have been wondering whether to continue even as I keep turning pages. The writing is lovely, the atmospherics and mood terrific, the premise…so hard to take. It’s not even the humour business that gets me so much as my utter disbelief that any sitting government would willingly carve itself up into four lesser entities. I know this sounds like I’m being excessively literal-minded but it’s a flaw not in its description but in its logic and/or understanding of the corrupting influence of power, especially considering the fact that Thomson spends the rest of the time alluding to the venal ways of the four governments that spring up in its place. Like the door to my kitchen cabinet that won’t stay shut, no matter how much I try to ignore the premise it keeps whacking me in the head.
It grates on me that such a compelling stylist–the first page, for crying out loud, is brilliant, as are any number of tiny moments, as when he describes the brass of a french horn as looking “like honey poured over the back of a spoon”–can’t come up with a less awkward set-up. Nearly any crazy premise would have worked–civil war, environmental collapse, seven-headed hydras playing four-square with England–but this one doesn’t for me.
i guess i’m of the mind that i either like my far-fetched premises alluded to and left largely unexplained or i like them to be so ingeniously put together so that you do not notice the seams until after you’ve finished reading.
rant over. did i mention how much i like the writing?
Comment by e — 7/13/2005 @ 7:55 pm
e,
I am so glad you wrote in as it is excellent to have a dissenting opinion to offset my own (perhaps overly) rosy (sanguine?) opinion.
If you’ve made it to 143, I would keep going. I am of two-minds about the structure, which was almost too languid for me in the beginning. But something seems to happen to T. as he slips out of the life that’s been prescribed for him by the government, and the story seems to pick up as he picks up. Placid pace = an expression of alienation/repression.
It never even occured to me to question that the government would carve itself up, as I assumed that behind the scenes there was a coalition cabal pulling the strings for all four republics. And what better way to gain power and control than by separating and dividing the populace “for their own good.”
I liked how the border areas were so enforced. Like the Berlin Wall. Whenever there as a border crossing I kept imagining the guy bicycling at the beginning of the “Spy Who Came In From The Cold”, which was a giggle. But I see your point insofar as the erection of the Berlin Wall was a sign of a government’s defeat, not a triumph.
Megan and Maudie, I have The Insult idling in the till to read next. This will allow me to continue the plan to read what you do two months later.
RofDepBooks,
I know what you mean, a levitating book stand would be perfect. Someone should get Levenger on it. I like reading on the floor too and the arms do get tired.
p.s. You left a comment a few weeks ago to the effect that whatever fuss was then going on didn’t matter much as everyone was going to die eventually and so should just read what they want. Which I agree with. I meant to respond, do you know the song “You’ll Have Time” on the William Shatner-Ben Folds album? My husband really likes it, because it has a rant to the effect of everyone’s going to die and then William Shatner names names, as if calling from the pulpit.
Comment by CAAF — 7/14/2005 @ 10:09 am
Re: Divided Kingdom. I agree, keep going. There is a definite shift that happens in that general area of the book — both in pacing and plot — and it’s enough of a jolt that there’s plenty of temptation to put it down. I kept going because I’d read that Thomson’s own favorite scenes were further in. Thinking back now, I’m glad I did. I would have missed out on a lot otherwise.
Comment by erin — 7/14/2005 @ 12:11 pm
Erin, do you remember where you read that?
Comment by CAAF — 7/14/2005 @ 12:48 pm
I am sort of amazed at the Divided Kingdom stuff. I thought that book was THE WORST. Like a bad fantasy manuscript handed to me by a sweaty student. Worse than Piercy’s “He, She, and It.” Worst worst worst.
Did I mention I thought it was the worst?
Comment by Old hag — 7/14/2005 @ 3:30 pm
Thanks, CAAF and Erin. I appreciate the encouragement, and I believe you’re both right. I think I was about a half-page away from where things start kicking in so that would have been dumb to stop.
Digression: I rarely ever gamble, but I was in Las Vegas once and down a little money at the roulette table, so I thought, if I make the money back using only the chips I have left I will stop playing. And I did it, thankfully, but then I got to watch as the numbers I had been playing come up three out of the next five spins. I’m not sorry I stuck to my resolve, but there is always the chance you might miss something good if you do.
Last DK Thing: The dormant English major in me was roused by T.’s plucking a piece of fruit off a tree during this transitional section. Then I realized I don’t have to write a paper on it and went back to reading.
Comment by e — 7/14/2005 @ 3:30 pm
How funny, Lizzie! You know you recently liked a book that I thought was horrid, Changed Man by Francine Prose. Or not so much horrid as a HUGE disappointment. I’ve so wanted to ask you about it.
I thought it, Changed Man, started out promisingly, but that Prose totally loaded the deck by having the Nazi have a heart of gold, thus letting herself off of writing anything truly uncomfortable. And that stupid ending was so, so TV movie sappy.
It was v. similar to my experience with Blue Angel, a great set-up that goes all flaccid. I keep wishing she’d let herself indulge more fully in her Evil Glee.
Comment by CAAF — 7/14/2005 @ 3:43 pm
CAAF: Thomson mentions it in his “exclusive interview” on the Divided Kingdom site. I’m a little reluctant to just say what section(s) since people are still reading, but given what I know about his other work? It makes a lot of sense.
I also thought more than once: “This could make a great movie….but if it’s ever made into a movie, it will probably be an awful movie.”
Comment by erin — 7/14/2005 @ 4:07 pm
Many thanks for the nice mention of my book! I’m glad to hear you enjoyed reading it, and for much the reason that I enjoyed writing it; I likewise find the usual arc of nature books slightly depressing. All too true, but depressing nontheless. You might also check out Nature Noir, by Jordan Fisher Smith; came out earlier this year, written by a former park ranger in the Sierras, really lovely writing on our conflicting expectations from nature …
Comment by alan — 7/14/2005 @ 4:40 pm
I’m with you Carrie on the Prose. I almost tossed Blue Angel across the room. I thought the setup great, but then it went this sort of predictable way. I know she’s supposed to be a good writer, but it soured me on A Changed Man. Should I bother reading it?
Comment by bookdwarf — 7/14/2005 @ 5:20 pm