You sort of expect Gene Wolfe ’s new novelThe Land Acrossto be a pomo magicalrealist - y novel , with tinges of Kafka . After all , it ’s about a man who travelsto a fictional land only to be ensnared in bureaucracy and weird magic . But The Land Across is something far moredifficult to explain .
Spoilers ahead …
It ’s really voiceless to summarize The Land Across , but I ’ll essay . A writer named Grafton want towrite the first travel book about a small Eastern European rural area that nobodyever visits , but when he gets there , his passport is steal and he ’s caught inbureaucratic nightmare . After that , Grafton is thrust to become a propagandistfor a strange secret society , incarcerate with a maker of lifesize voodoo dolls , and then depute as a member of the secret police force , inquire a Satanistcult . There are ghosts , severed hands , phantom police officer and buried treasure , in no special lodge .
The book has a minute of a Kafka feeling towards the beginning , but promptly leavesthat behind to delve into deeper and deep layers of pulpy adventure , althoughyou sense that there ’s something else go on beneath the airfoil .
In fact , the plot of TheLand Across feels somewhat random , although it becomes fabulously elaboratein the second half of the Scripture . Grafton stumbles on confederacy afterconspiracy , and uncovers tons of buried secrets , in the fashion of a RaymondChandler detective . At the same time , Grafton juggles jealous lady friend andmeets with secret wise serviceman . Your head will likely be spin by the end ofthe book , keeping track of just who is scheming against whom .
What makes the whole thing catch , not to mentionthrilling , is the rough first - person narrative voice — Grafton is an impatientnarrator , who often tells the reader that he ’s bound off over the boring partsof the fib . He ’ll take off to describe a conversation , then say something like,“And he told me a bunch of other stuff that turned out not tomatter . ” Sometimes Grafton refuses to give some piece of information , evidence the reader to figure it out for yourself . His stylus is very muchreminiscent of a dime - novel hero , too , with touches of Spillane at his mostexpressive — only the mode is , if anything , unsubdivided .
And yet , through the medium of this brash , impatientnarrator , Wolfe manages some real poetry and some expectant moment of describingpeople . ( Which , again , prompt me of Chandler.)Here ’s Wolfe describing the run - up to a major opposition in a measure :
A 12 new people were come into the Browning automatic rifle while we dancedand act like they did not bonk each other . Only I figured they did . For onething none of them count like they belonged , and for another there was thesame look on all their faces . When a cruel soul is about to have some realfun , sticking it to somebody who can not fight back back and laughing about it , anddoing it all over again only tough , he gets a certain feel . It is not the sameway a hungry somebody look at intellectual nourishment , but that is as close as I can total . You haveprobably meet it a few times . intend about it .
There are Lot of passages like that in the novel — andwhen Wolfe says “ Think about it , ” you actually do kind of stop andthink about it .
Like I said , the basic plot abstract makes it sound like The Land Across is going to be
the storyof a victim — a military man who ’s ensnare in a strange country where nothing makessense and the bureaucracy is out to crush him , alongside bizarre magics . But actually , once Grafton starts come up into his own halfway through the Holy Scripture , it ’s very much about his rise tomastery over his circumstances . As I said , he plough into a kind of masterdetective who figures out everybody ’s concealed motives and untangles the mosttwisted plots with an almost godlike acumen . By the end of the book , you might startto enquire if Grafton is really that clever , or if he ’s such an unreliablenarrator that you ’re pretermit out on what really come about to him .
In any typesetter’s case , The LandAcross will simultaneously feed you old - school escapade - novel thrills , beat you with its complexness and refusal to stick , and make you marvel justwhat kind of land this is . If you ’re still happy contain the novel at facevalue , Wolfe throws in one last confuse note — a PS that will makeyou rethink the whole matter all over again . You might have to read this noveltwice to work out it out .
Bible reviewFantasy
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