Has there been any discussion of this on the list? (I did quickly check the
archives and there doesn't seem to have been). I found this a peculiar and
rather spooky work. I was not so much bothered by the much-cited
institutionalised torture in the imagined world (though this did seem a bit
too deliberately set up to over-determine the protagonist's predicament) and
the detailed torture scenes. I don't argue that women shouldn't write about
male central figures. But it would be nice to have a bit of perspective on
issues around masculinity, gender, power, authority, etc, if they do.
What I found most creepy about this work is that the protagonist is an
aristocratic superman. Through some folly of youth (a sexual escapade about
which little is recounted) he is drafted into training to work as an
interrogator in a highly formalised inquisitorial system of justice. He is a
brilliant and caring doctor, a superb scientist, wonderful to his servants and
making himself beloved by them. It's also implied that he's a rather competent
man with the ladies... It turns out, much to his own horror/surprise, that
he's sexually aroused by torturing people. No rationale for this is given
(e.g.childhood experiences, kind of society he grew up in, etc). It's Just One
of Those Things.
(As a character in a situation he lacks entirely the subtletly and ambiguity
of the sadist/doctor in Elizabeth Lynn's 'The Sardonyx Net')
His antagonist is a fellow-trainee interrogator, a woman who is positioned
as, roughly speaking, upwardly socially mobile, from a very different society
and social stratum, who is only even accepted as a trainee through some kind
of rather dubious political patronage--neither her status nor her merits would
normally entitle her to training for this skilled and responsible task. She
has absolutely no redeeming features--she's not even a competent torturer...
(Again, compare with a rather similar character from a rather similar
background of being brought up in an oppressive police state in Emma Bull's
'Falcon')
This work has been much praised and even described as 'Dostoyevskian'. Am I
missing something? (I should add that I have left out a lot of what goes on in
the book, and there are signs that there will be sequel(s)). Has anyone else
read it, and if so, what do they think about it? (To give it its due, it was
quite a page-turner, and I don't find so very many of these.)
Lesley
Lesley_Hall@msn.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:26 PDT