Daughter of Eden by Chris Beckett
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Science Fiction, Chris Beckett at 10:00 on 28 November 2016
Corvus, 2016, 398 p
The narrator here is Angie Redlantern, childhood friend of Starlight, the protagonist of the previous novel in Beckett’s Dark Eden sequence, Mother of Eden, but long since struck out on her own from Knee Tree Grounds and living among the Davidfolk in Veeklehouse on the near side of Worldpool. Angie is a batface, one of the many such in Eden as a consequence of the inbreeding unavoidable in the scenario. She had for a long time been companion to Mary, a shadowspeaker faithful to the cult of Gela but was rejected by her after failing to hear Gela’s voice in the sacred Circle of Stones. The novel kicks off when Angie’s daughter, Candy, is the first to notice the men in metal masks coming across Worldpool in wave after wave of boats. Soon Angie’s family is heading out over Snowy Dark to Circle Valley to escape this invasion. There, in a strange left turn that falls outside the narrative pattern of the trilogy so far, the event that marks Angie’s life occurs. To reveal it would be a spoiler of sorts.
Beckett is of course examining origin myths and belief systems and here explicitly the question of what happens when evidence arises that directly contradicts the stories you have heard all your life, stories which that life revolves around, especially if they are stories on which your self-esteem and means of living depend. Well, belief is a stubborn beast. If you truly believe, you just rationalise that evidence away.
Beckett’s depiction of the evolution and entrenchment of social hierarchies is not an especially optimistic view of humanity. Perhaps all Edens are dark. Within it, however, while he shows us humans bickering and fighting, we also find loving and caring; so there is hope. Readable as always, Beckett involves us fully in Angie’s world, and presents us with characters who behave in the way we know they would. I’m still not sure about that life-marking event though.
Pedant’s corner:- sprung (sprang,) when when (this is not one of those instances where Eden folk use repetition of an adjective to express the comparative, a habit Beckett expands on later; just one “when” needed here,) me and her had fallen out (the English ought to be I and she or she and I but of course Angie is writing in Edenic,) me and Mary (I and Mary; Mary and I, ditto.) “Their bones, those that were left unpulverized, would be twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux” (twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux? Those cave paintings [being older than the bones] would themselves be three times as old as the ones referred to by the time concerned. “Twice as old as the cave paintings at Lascaux are now” would make more sense.) “Come Tree Road” (this corruption of the song Country Road is elsewhere “Come Tree Row”,) Johnfollk (Johnfolk,) a new kind of, story (kind of story.)
Tags: Chris Beckett, Dark Eden, Mother of Eden, Science Fiction
Morgan
28 January 2020 at 10:54
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with “me and Mary” in colloquial (not Edenic) speech. Also I have never heard “I and she” in any form of spoken (or written) English (She and I seems much more natural). As any linguist would tell you, written language is a fossil, real language is how it’s spoken, and “me and Mary” is commonly used enough that it can be considered proper English. As far as arguments go that “me” is the accusative form and “I” is the nominative – there’s no reason grammatically that the accusative or nominative should always be the same word – the point is what grammatical role they play in the utterance. In the phrase “me and Mary”, “me” is playing the role of subject, which is fine. Think about if you knock on a door and someone says, “who is it?”, do you say, “It is I!” – no of course not, because you’d sound ridiculous. You say “It’s me.” According to your position the only correct way is “It is I”, which is obviously not the case. Pedantry is self-defeating and and makes no linguistic sense
jackdeighton
28 January 2020 at 17:37
Morgan,
Thanks for looking in and taking the trouble to comment.
Of course I agree that, “It’s me,” is colloquial and I do use it in the sense you illustrate. “It is I,” sounds absurdly archaic – or comic as in ‘Allo ‘Allo, (“It is I, Leclerc.” But of course even the French say, “C’est moi” and not, “C’est je.” This is actually reflective of the fact that the word ‘me’ feels much more true to a speaker’s inner essence, the sense of self, than ‘I’ does.)
However I personally would never use, “Me and Mary” as a nominative but always “Mary and I.” (I doubt ever, “I and Mary.” Ditto, “I and she.” I merely noted that, “I and she,” would be formally grammatically correct.)
You say, “there’s no reason grammatically that the accusative or nominative should always be the same word – the point is what grammatical role they play in the utterance.” This would mean that any word at all would function as a nominative, which, is at the least, contentious.
Would, for example, “Me is going on holiday,” as an utterance be perfectly fine, in that case? ‘Me’ there would be used as a nominative and by your argument totally acceptable. ‘I’ is clearly the ‘standard’ (in deference, I hesitate to say ‘correct’) nominative in such a phrase. A child beginning to speak might say, “Me is going on holiday,” but surely you would always point him or her to the usual form?
As for your last sentence, it is for the sake of linguistic sense that pedantry is a necessary bulwark. Otherwise you may end up with ‘anything goes’ word soup.