Sceptre, 2011, 564 p.

This novel has been described in a quote on the back cover as a tour de force and I must say it is likely to remain in my mind for a long time. It will certainly figure in my best of the year even if this is still only February.

The Jacob de Zoet of the title is a Dutchman who, in order to prove his worthiness to marry his sweetheart Anna, is out to make his fortune in the Dutch trading mission on the island of Dejima off Nagasaki at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (CE) – during the Tokugawa Shogunate, when all other European contacts were banned, as was travel abroad for Japanese. The present tense narration is in the third person, save for a single chapter in first person from the point of view of a slave in the Dutch trading post. Woven into the tale is the history of relations between Japan and the outside world up to that point. While the novel is roughly based on incidents that took place on Dejima around that time I would hazard that the part of the plot involving the Lord Abbot Enomoto is not.

The first part of the novel outlines de Zoet’s endeavours in exposing the various corruptions of previous Chiefs of the post and his interactions with Japanese translators. Reading about the difficulties of translation between Japanese and Dutch in a third language – English – is a bit surreal. The very first chapter, however, introduces us to Aibagawa Orito, the disfigured daughter of a samurai, who is learning to be a midwife under the tutelage of the Dutch doctor at Dejima. Her path and de Zoet’s cross and, despite feelings of guilt at betraying Anna, Jacob becomes attracted to Orito. His hopes in affairs of the heart and commerce are both soon dashed. In the second section, where Aibagawa Orito has been taken away to the religious institution run by the Lord Abbot, the novel takes a sudden left turn as this middle part of the book deals solely with her plight and the efforts of her Japanese admirer, the interpreter, Ogawa Uzaemon, to free her. The third and concluding part of the novel returns us to Dejima as well as on to the British frigate which arrives to attempt to take advantage of the fall of the Netherlands to Napoleon’s armies.

The book is unusual in that it contains a number of illustrations, mostly anatomical but also two townscapes – well, one townscape and a shrinescape – plus some of “de Zoet’s” sketches of Origo.

While reading I was struck by certain parallels with Science Fiction. There is a type of SF story which also has an isolated trading/diplomatic post many months (or years) travel from home, dealing with and trying to understand a different culture. In Origo’s captivity we have different SF parallels but they are even more marked, as the Sheranui Shrine is a closed society with its own rules and a menace at its heart.

The characters, especially the Japanese, impress. Care and detail is lavished both on them and on the background. Even the minor ones have the ring of truth. That short first person chapter includes a meditation on the internal autonomy of slaves. One member of the Dutch mission tells de Zoet, “Tain’t good intentions that pave the road to hell; it’s self-justifyin’s.” There is also towards the end a very rhythmic paragraph listing the lives/occupations of the inhabitants of Nagasaki which is reminiscent of Auden’s The Night Mail in its metre and rhyming. Then there was the almost impenetrable phrase, “A smoke-dried Dane makes Finn’s Cock of a tangled Vang,” which seems to entangle nautical terms with the history of the times.

A tour de force? It was certainly fascinating and absorbing throughout, likely to remain with me for a long time.

Pedant’s corner:- “A well-travelled round of Edam and sour apples are divided,” (a round is singular;) snonky appears to be a coinage by Mitchell; wistaria (apparently a variant of the more usual wisteria) was repeated several times; “the pair enjoys,” (again; a pair is singular) guarding this natural revile (revile here is in the sense of ravine but I can’t find such a definition anywhere.)

Virago, 2012, 342 p

A young girl brought up in a 14^th century foundling hospital in Siena is asked to be the model for the Virgin Mary in a painting of the Annunciation. A mute Dutch serving maid accidentally inspires her master to paint her in the act of reading. The completion of a portrait of her dead lesbian lover reconciles a reclusive countess to her loss. One of a pair of identical twin women, a medium, comes to the other, a photographer’s widow now running the business, for a set of cartes de visite. A fifteen year old girl who fancies she is in love with an unmarried artist ten years her senior tries to impress him by painting a picture of her hostess. An MP’s assistant whose personal life has just become uncertain allows her photograph to be taken in a wine bar. A career woman in 2060 misses her family.

Apart from being within the covers of the one book what do all these seven different novella length stories whose settings are spread in time over 600 years have in common? This is presented as a novel so we are presumably being invited to make connections in a way that a book set out as a story collection would not invite. Yet, stylistically, thematically and in plot terms, there is no overt connection between them – except that they all feature images of female literacy. The potted précis given above are, by the way, the least of what each novella conveys.

Each is a slice of life, fully imagined. Every character in them is sympathetically portrayed, feels real. Ward’s control is impressive, she rarely puts a word wrong. (I did wonder however if the phrase “the exception that proves the rule” was really in use in 14^th century Italy.)

The last – which was the least convincing in its setting (being a reader of SF I would say that) – tries to force the issue as it features a device known as Sibil (Sensory Immersion Bioscript Interface Locus) which can make its users feel the stories behind the genesis of six images. Those six happen to be the ones we have just read about.

There are, of course, similarities here not only to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas in that within the book there is more than one tale with settings in eras spread from the past to the future but also, in its referencing of paintings, to John Banville’s Athena.

Ward’s seven tales have a stylistic quirk in that all of the dialogue is rendered in plain text, not in quotation marks, and is only distinguishable from its surroundings by context and tone. This could be a disaster in the wrong hands – even when conventionally rendered, back and forth dialogue can be tricky for some authors to set down clearly enough – but is never a problem here. Another commonality is that the meat of a tale is sometimes prefaced by an earlier incident in its subjects’ lives.

There could, of course, have been a practical reason for the book’s unusual structure. The conventional wisdom is that short story collections don’t sell. Well if you dress them up as a single novel that problem evaporates.

Such a cynical view would be less than kind. Girl Reading is excellent stuff. It serves as a warning “hard formats are the only ones that survive in the long run,” and a reminder of the importance of physical objects, especially the book. Well, all bibliophiles will agree to that.

Addendum:- A note on the paintings which inspired Ward is here along with links to the images.

Sceptre, 2004. 529p

Cloud Atlas has an unusual structure consisting of six separate narratives all in different styles – journal, epistolary, thriller, realist (for want of a better term,) interrogation transcript and memoir, wrapped round each other in a way which the author compares at one point to a matrioshka (what in my youth was called a Russian) doll and another as a successive series of interrupted musical phrases which are recapitulated and developed – in order – later. The second is a more accurate comparison as the tales are not truly enveloped one within the other. I would rather say they are ensleeved. (Or even enleaved: as in a book.)

While each section is perfectly fine on its own the connections Mitchell makes between them can be a touch tenuous; even a little forced. The breaks between the sections sometimes, disconcertingly at first, occur in mid-sentence; which admittedly is a brave move.

In order the stories concern a nineteenth century American heading back across the Pacific to the Californian gold rush; a post-Great War English musician acting as an amanuensis to a better known ex-patriate composer; a 1970s female reporter getting herself in too deep in a conspiracy involving a nuclear power company; a small time (contemporary?) English publisher, who is fleeing from gangster-like creditors, being trapped in a care home for the elderly; a fabricant (cloned) slave in a Future Korea who is “transcended” for revolutionary purposes; and an apologia pro vita sua from a man in an even further future post-lapsarian Hawaii.

The latter two segments employ distorted language. The Korean set one has “x” where we have “ex” (for example “xample” and “inxistent”) and stripped down spelling (“brite”) while the Hawaiian section is written in a more extremely evolved language – reminiscent of Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker – which is strange to read at first but soon becomes familiar. The inclusion of these two narratives allows the novel as a whole to be considered Science Fiction, and categorised by me as such, though Mitchell may disclaim the description.

Each of the six sections is totally self-consistent and does not depend on any of the others for its individual resolution and each is as engaging as the next. Mitchell’s ability to portray character and deliver plot is unquestionable.

The over-arching structure could be viewed as an excuse to cobble together six novellas which might have been unremarkable if kept separate; but that would be a little harsh. While it certainly demonstrates Mitchell’s mastery of various writing styles, whether it constitutes a coherent whole is another matter.

Cloud Atlas is an impressive enterprise, though, whichever way you consider it. A true novel if you will, worth anyone’s reading time.