A mind expander and a mind blower. After reading and reviewing Inverted World, The Affirmation, The Prestige, The Islanders, The Space Machine, The Glamour, I was wondering if Christopher Priest would continue to amaze and confound. He did! Matter of fact, The Gradual might count as one of the most memorable, magical and beautiful novels I’ve encountered. Here are a number of highlights:
Island World: We are on a planet very much like Earth with our familiar modern technology, things like automobiles, computers, email and cell phones but with one colossal difference in geography: rather than continents, there are thousands and thousands of islands, some as large as Madagascar but most small, even tiny, spread across the oceans.
Alesandro Sussken, music man: Our first person narrator begins his story when a boy on a northern island, the Republic of Glaund. The most important part of Sandro’s life is music – he is a gifted classical composer and highly accomplished musician, playing both piano and violin. Sandro’s reflections and inspirations on everything musical adds great charm and lyricism. “The Archipelago was in my dreams, and every morning I would rise from my bed and go straight to the piano, trying to capture, define, describe, use the fleeting impressions, the unreliable memories of the music of my dreams."
Alesandro Sussken, adventurer: We follow Sandro over the course of years, exploring the islands south of Glaund, first as part of a tour group of musicians and then on his own. And his story covers the long arch of his life: we join Sandro at various points up until he is a man in his mid-fifties. One vital reason propelling his journey: discovering the fate of his long lost brother Jacj who was drafted into the army to fight in the endless, nonstop war with Faiandland, an island to the south.
Music of the Islands: Both on his home island of Glaund and on the islands to the south, music of every variety is played - classical, jazz, rock - which leads to a number of Sandro’s musing on the ways in which a creative artist's memory and inspiration are affected and shaped by a specific location. One musician Sandro attempts to seek out: a leader of a rock group, And Ante, who stole Sandro’s musical melodies and ideas for his own rock music.
Nightmares: Island paradises complete with balmy winds, pristine beaches, gentle valleys and unspoiled mountains form most but not all of this world. At one point Sandro is brought before a woman his despises, the Generalissima who has headed up a brutal, murderous junta on his home island. At another time, on his afternoon stroll on an island, he enters an empty town and witnesses a young man, probably a deserter from his unit (there are many military deserters on the islands), nearly beaten to death by soldiers and then dragged off. Like our own world, life on the islands is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Shock of the Weird – Similar to the other Christopher Priest novels I’ve read, The Gradual contains an abrupt, uncanny break from the “normal” laws of nature - at first eerie and then alarming shifts, all revolving around the clock. Sandro finds himself out of sync, either lagging behind or mysteriously moved into the future. Our first real foreshadowing of time playing games happens at one of the symphony’s rehearsals when there’s a problem with uneven tempi - the percussionists claim the orchestra was constantly slipping behind them.
Clarity: The British author’s virtuosity as a storyteller shines through in the way he presents bizarre time shifts without confusing his readers. We might think scrambling past, present and future would be baffling but it is not. Even someone like myself new to science fiction and novels of time travel, Sandro’s story is as clear as one of the island's fresh mountain streams.
Waking Dream, Nighttime Dream: Is some or all of what Sandro reports happening in everyday waking time or in dreamtime? If you are familiar with the film Body Double you have a sense as to what I’m referring. Then again, since when reading a novel we always create a moving picture in our mind of characters and setting, events and conversations, in the end, does it truly matter?
"You have to embrace the gradual, Sandro." . . . "It comes to you, but you have to surrender to it. It is not an option for you. Or for me.. It is not a creative force as we think, but a reflection of our own imaginings."
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