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The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H.G. Parry
This was a really enjoyable, compulsively readable book that I had a couple of annoyingly intrusive metatextual problems with, which are elaborated on under the cut because of spoilers. It's a very metatextual book that deals extensively with Story and Character and Protagonist, and to some extent I think how well this book works (or doesn't) depends on how well its development of those specific aspects works for you. I can't help mentally comparing it to the Magicians books because that series was also very metatextual, and I loved what it had to say about story in the end. I didn't love what this book had to say about story. But I loved the actual story on a character level, and I really enjoyed reading it.
For his entire life, Rob has been cleaning up his younger brother Charley's messes, most of which have to do with Charley's ability to read characters out of books into real life. This is a close-kept family secret; all Rob's girlfriend knows is that he keeps getting calls in the middle of the night to go deal with family emergencies that he won't talk to her about. But there are hints that there's more going on than Rob knows about either. Something is coming, something that might rewrite the world as they know it.
I think part of what makes this book so much fun is that it's just, well, fun - it's fast-paced and twisty with a really delightful sense of play and humor, and a co-protagonist with a very unusual magical skill set going up against increasingly dangerous enemies. There is also a really enjoyable female co-lead who comes into it a bit later on, the grown-up protagonist of a series of fluffy children's adventure stories, and the relationship between the sibling leads has all the ambiguity and push-pull love-hate of two people who had very different experiences of their shared childhood. It's the kind of plot you'd normally find in a kid's book, but the more grownup, literary treatment makes it fresh and fun.
I really enjoyed reading it. But I was left with a certain uncomfortable feeling at the end that leads me to feel that I didn't love the book, I just loved parts of the book. And I'll elaborate on why under the cut (with spoilers, but keeping it as vague as possible).
I should explain that part of the book's worldbuilding is that Charley isn't the only person who can imagine literary characters to life. As the protagonists find out later, almost anyone can do it once, in a moment of particular empathy with a character. The character comes into the world not as their exact literary self, but as the reader's interpretation of them. And there are a bunch of them out there running around, many of which have congregated in the Street, a sort of magical otherworld that resembles a street out of Dickens's Victorian England.
What got me thinking critically about all of this was noticing how the absurd and satirical treatment of literary characters who are famous for being objects of female desire (Darcy and Heathcliff - I was entertained by the house full of Darcys, all of them annoying in different ways) wasn't offset by a similarly satirical treatment of literary objects of male desire -- because there weren't any in the book. Yes, Darcy and Heathcliff would be less than ideal boyfriends in real life, but (to say the least) it's not as if literature is lacking in unrealistic female characters who are mainly there for the titillation of their male readers (which I also think is an extremely shallow reading of Darcy and Heathcliff anyway). Basically, those parts of the book felt critical of female readers in a way I found unfair, especially when it wasn't contrasted against a similar criticism of shallow male readers.
And this got me noticing the lack of female literary symbols of power or anger in the book in general -- no Jane Eyres or Berthas, no Anne of Green Gables. There's Millie, but we know she's Charley's creation, not a character imagined to life by a little girl who identified with her. And there are a handful of female characters around (Matilda, Jadis, Scheherezade) but we don't have any sense of the way they were shaped by the readers behind them. On the whole, the population of the Street is very, very white and male -- and more than that, it's sanitized. Safe. It's the Illustrated Classics version of 19th century literary canon. I mean, even if you accept the book's premise that it's mainly Victorian characters who are drawn to the Street (which feels more like an authorial handwave than a plausible piece of worldbuilding; there's no reason why Austen and Brontë characters would be more drawn to Dickensenian London than, say, Harry Potter) -- and given that the author was stuck with public domain characters if she didn't want to make up her own -- the actual literary options to choose from are so much broader and more diverse than Frankenstein, Holmes, and Jekyll and Hyde.
It's just that the more you think about the worldbuilding the more it falls apart, or I should say, the more narrow and sanitized it feels. I wish the author had made up a few more modern canons, like the Magician books did; it's extremely hard to believe that any equivalent of the Street wouldn't have at least one Harry Potter (or knockoff) running around. I wish she'd incorporated more literary variety, especially since the entire plot of the book hinges around the darkness underlying Dickens's work, the social commentary and Dickens's anger at the injustice and poverty of the Victorian era; the darkness in Dickens's work is literally made physical in the book. Which makes it all the more jarring that there's so little darkness, diversity, or anger in the narrow selection of 19th-century characters who belong to this book, aside from a few who specifically have grudges against the protagonists of their books and the like.
And this isn't even touching on my issues with the ending, which felt uncomfortably glib to me. The early issues with Rob lying to Lydia and her anger about that, for example, that seems to be going somewhere, turns out to be mainly just a setup for her being kidnapped and vanishing off-page for a third of the book, followed by their problems being swiftly papered over at the end. I wished the literary characters had turned out to have more depth and capacity to change, especially since I think the book heavily suggested that they can; it's just that most of the ones we see don't. I also didn't quite buy into some of the worldbuilding aspects of the Street's eventual fate and its relationship to the real city.
I really did love parts of the book a lot. On the level of readability and fun, it's excellent; it was a great reading experience. The worldbuilding is clever and cool and fun, and the central sibling relationship is fantastic; as an older sibling myself, I related more than I wanted to, and a lot of it was a direct stab to the emotions.
I just wish it held together on a meta level better than it does.
For his entire life, Rob has been cleaning up his younger brother Charley's messes, most of which have to do with Charley's ability to read characters out of books into real life. This is a close-kept family secret; all Rob's girlfriend knows is that he keeps getting calls in the middle of the night to go deal with family emergencies that he won't talk to her about. But there are hints that there's more going on than Rob knows about either. Something is coming, something that might rewrite the world as they know it.
I think part of what makes this book so much fun is that it's just, well, fun - it's fast-paced and twisty with a really delightful sense of play and humor, and a co-protagonist with a very unusual magical skill set going up against increasingly dangerous enemies. There is also a really enjoyable female co-lead who comes into it a bit later on, the grown-up protagonist of a series of fluffy children's adventure stories, and the relationship between the sibling leads has all the ambiguity and push-pull love-hate of two people who had very different experiences of their shared childhood. It's the kind of plot you'd normally find in a kid's book, but the more grownup, literary treatment makes it fresh and fun.
I really enjoyed reading it. But I was left with a certain uncomfortable feeling at the end that leads me to feel that I didn't love the book, I just loved parts of the book. And I'll elaborate on why under the cut (with spoilers, but keeping it as vague as possible).
I should explain that part of the book's worldbuilding is that Charley isn't the only person who can imagine literary characters to life. As the protagonists find out later, almost anyone can do it once, in a moment of particular empathy with a character. The character comes into the world not as their exact literary self, but as the reader's interpretation of them. And there are a bunch of them out there running around, many of which have congregated in the Street, a sort of magical otherworld that resembles a street out of Dickens's Victorian England.
What got me thinking critically about all of this was noticing how the absurd and satirical treatment of literary characters who are famous for being objects of female desire (Darcy and Heathcliff - I was entertained by the house full of Darcys, all of them annoying in different ways) wasn't offset by a similarly satirical treatment of literary objects of male desire -- because there weren't any in the book. Yes, Darcy and Heathcliff would be less than ideal boyfriends in real life, but (to say the least) it's not as if literature is lacking in unrealistic female characters who are mainly there for the titillation of their male readers (which I also think is an extremely shallow reading of Darcy and Heathcliff anyway). Basically, those parts of the book felt critical of female readers in a way I found unfair, especially when it wasn't contrasted against a similar criticism of shallow male readers.
And this got me noticing the lack of female literary symbols of power or anger in the book in general -- no Jane Eyres or Berthas, no Anne of Green Gables. There's Millie, but we know she's Charley's creation, not a character imagined to life by a little girl who identified with her. And there are a handful of female characters around (Matilda, Jadis, Scheherezade) but we don't have any sense of the way they were shaped by the readers behind them. On the whole, the population of the Street is very, very white and male -- and more than that, it's sanitized. Safe. It's the Illustrated Classics version of 19th century literary canon. I mean, even if you accept the book's premise that it's mainly Victorian characters who are drawn to the Street (which feels more like an authorial handwave than a plausible piece of worldbuilding; there's no reason why Austen and Brontë characters would be more drawn to Dickensenian London than, say, Harry Potter) -- and given that the author was stuck with public domain characters if she didn't want to make up her own -- the actual literary options to choose from are so much broader and more diverse than Frankenstein, Holmes, and Jekyll and Hyde.
It's just that the more you think about the worldbuilding the more it falls apart, or I should say, the more narrow and sanitized it feels. I wish the author had made up a few more modern canons, like the Magician books did; it's extremely hard to believe that any equivalent of the Street wouldn't have at least one Harry Potter (or knockoff) running around. I wish she'd incorporated more literary variety, especially since the entire plot of the book hinges around the darkness underlying Dickens's work, the social commentary and Dickens's anger at the injustice and poverty of the Victorian era; the darkness in Dickens's work is literally made physical in the book. Which makes it all the more jarring that there's so little darkness, diversity, or anger in the narrow selection of 19th-century characters who belong to this book, aside from a few who specifically have grudges against the protagonists of their books and the like.
And this isn't even touching on my issues with the ending, which felt uncomfortably glib to me. The early issues with Rob lying to Lydia and her anger about that, for example, that seems to be going somewhere, turns out to be mainly just a setup for her being kidnapped and vanishing off-page for a third of the book, followed by their problems being swiftly papered over at the end. I wished the literary characters had turned out to have more depth and capacity to change, especially since I think the book heavily suggested that they can; it's just that most of the ones we see don't. I also didn't quite buy into some of the worldbuilding aspects of the Street's eventual fate and its relationship to the real city.
I really did love parts of the book a lot. On the level of readability and fun, it's excellent; it was a great reading experience. The worldbuilding is clever and cool and fun, and the central sibling relationship is fantastic; as an older sibling myself, I related more than I wanted to, and a lot of it was a direct stab to the emotions.
I just wish it held together on a meta level better than it does.
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This is very unfortunate, as the idea behind the book seems like a fun one.
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Yeah, I know way too many mostly women for whom Jadis was a formative power fantasy for me not to expect to see like fifty versions of her, which is frankly a terrifying thought. (Also, Dahl's Matilda? Is in the public domain?)
and more than that, it's sanitized. Safe. It's the Illustrated Classics version of 19th century literary canon.
Basically, I could just be reading actual nineteenth-century literature instead.
Your point about Harry Potter is also valid.
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OT but
(you just KNOW Jack sings "Danny Boy" at him every chance he gets)
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They wouldn't. They can't. They dare not.
He looks so dashing! Enver Gjokaj is such a cutie, and a great actor too.
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Nppbeqvat gb fcbvyref V unir crrxrq ng sbe guvf jrrx'f rcvfbqr, va gur bevtvany gvzryvar ur vf fhccbfrq gb qvr, naq gurl'er tbvat gb gel gb fnir uvz va arkg jrrx'f rcvfbqr. V nz nyernql YN YN YN V PNA'G URNE LBH orpnhfr URYY AB, Qnavry qvqa'g qvr va gur bevtvany gvzryvar, ohg ba gur bgure unaq V ybbxrq hc ba vzqo.pbz naq ur'f va frireny rcvfbqrf, fb gurl zvtug npghnyyl nqq uvz gb gur grnz sbe n juvyr guvf frnfba??? Sssss, fgbc znxvat zr jnag gb jngpu lbh, fubj.
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Also if they have him in an AU timeline to Peggy I'm going to be pissed!
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https://twitter.com/fluffyfitz/status/1271079433911373828
Altho, actually if they snxr uvf qrngu naq gura gnxr uvz gb gur shgher, gura ur qvfnccrnef sebz gung gvzryvar ohg qbrfa'g qvr. Vg qbrf zrna ur yrnirf Crttl gub, nygub gurl qba'g frrz gb or gbtrgure naljnl?? Znlor jr'er fhccbfrq gb guvax fur'f phqqyvat hc gb Rivy Wbr Ovqra Fgrir.
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Re: the rest of it, I don't even know what we're supposed to think. From what I've seen so far, which admittedly is just spoilers, it sounds like they're trying so hard to avoid committing to whether or not he's her husband that they're not actually explaining anything.
I will forgive a lot for one teeny tiny mention AT ANY POINT of Jack not being dead, though.
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it sounds like they're trying so hard to avoid committing to whether or not he's her husband that they're not actually explaining anything
FROWNY FACE >:-(
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(I am having a minor health crisis right now and wound up just kind of emptily staring at both a popular thriller about lost sisters and a historical book about the 1918 pandemc, so I'm looking for other reading material)
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But. I LOATHED David Copperfield (Great Ex is one of my favourite books, I think it's unduly overshadowed by...David fucking Copperfield) and I really, really hated Uriah Heep. I don't think the author is trying to redeem him or anything, and she's trying to point out how he was, well, made to be loathed, and is also a shadow self to Dickens and David ugh Copperfield, but I HATE READING ABOUT HIM. Whoops, this is a problem.
I also felt the LOL-ing at characters that are cliches of female desire (Heathcliff, the Darcys, oh hey there Unconvincingly Kinda Straight Dorian Gray) and lack of women like Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Hester Prynn, Nancy Drew. Hell, how about a team-up between Miss Mapplethorpe and Sherlock Holmes? Estella and Miss Havisham are such vivid characters in GE, and MIA in this book.
This is more a personal thing, but I really kept feeling how much more I would have liked the book if it had been about two sisters, and there are so many Victorian heroines also writing "this is my life story" novels the plot twist would have worked fine. The sibling dynamics were all too realistic, but both brothers just seemed kind of flat and unlikeable. (And I loathed how Lydia was treated.)
But, it was still really good! I liked it a lot! The descriptions of reading, and how Jr Bro gets his power, are excellent. I just think I would have loved it if I'd read it maybe 10 years ago....
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On the whole it really was a lot of fun, though. Also, I don't know if you're getting this from the writing style, but the overall style felt very fanficcy to me. Not in the sense of the actual content, or even a specific style like, say, slash circa 2006 or whatever. It's a word-choice and sentence construction thing, that doesn't really feel like either typical litfic or any specific genre fiction style to me; it just feels a lot like the way I write, I guess.
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I was REALLY thinking of that, yeah -- like it was a great impersonation of a bad litfic novel by a male English prof! Although the narrator being a lawyer and constantly going on about how he didn't know anything about these books was a little bit of an interest killer, for me. LEAN into the Mary Sue self insert character who can read things into reality and faints afterward! We don't need some kind of non-reader Guide to the Story!
And yeah, all the white male critics pronounced what the Real Viclit Canon was in, like, the 1950s (spoiler, most of them were books written by....white men), when in reality novels were often denigrated and women were a huge market force, and it was one of the few careers where women could really make some money (altho even then they were vastly underpaid compared to male authors).
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WHAT A TYPO TO MAKE, SELF
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(ETA: I noticed there was something off about that sentence but didn't actually pick up on what, lol.)
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I just read this one the other month and enjoyed it, though I see your point about the gender thing -- and yeah, Lydia got over things way too easily. Especially since I know Parry can do meaningful fallings-out that take real effort to get past: it happens with Rob and Charley, and also with with two main leads of the Shadow Histories duology.
I actually sort of wonder at the extent to which the author's literary background is hobbling her a bit on the female character front, because the Shadow Histories are also not spectacular there. Much as with Millie, there's an invented character (when the others are historical figures), and she's not quite as persuasively characterized as the others; it feels, and is probably true, like she's there for plot reasons and to give a direct view on the Haitian end of the story. Which isn't as powerful as the feeling of "I LOVE THESE GUYS SO MUCH OR AT LEAST FIND THEM SUPER INTERESTING" that radiates off Pitt, Wilberforce, and Robespierre. But it looks like Parry's next book will have a female lead, so I'm curious to see how that plays out.
I also want to brag to somebody who's read the novel that I guessed what was up with Charley 224 pages early -- the moment Millie said "nobody can get through the wall except for fictional characters, and apparently also summoners." Didn't remotely ruin the book for me, but oh did I feel smug when I turned out to be right. :-)