Tag: modern classic

#BookReview The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick #1962Club

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About the Book

‘Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.’

America, fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The winning Axis powers have divided their spoils: the Nazis control New York, while California is ruled by the Japanese.

But between these two states – locked in a cold war – lies a neutral buffer zone in which legendary author Hawthorne Abendsen is rumoured to live. Abendsen lives in fear of his life for he has written a book in which World War Two was won by the Allies . . .

Format: ebook (274 pages) Publisher: Penguin
Publication date: 2nd August 2012 [1962] Genre: Science Fiction

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My Review

I was delighted when 1962 was chosen by Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Simon at Stuck in a Book as the year for this twice-yearly reading club because I’ve had The Man in the High Castle on my Kindle since October 2017 and this has given me the push I needed to read it.

In his excellent introduction to this Penguin Moderns Classics edition, Eric Brown describes Philip K. Dick as having been ‘obsessed with the idea that the universe was only apparently real, an illusion behind which the truth might dwell’. The author presents an alternate history – that the United States lost the Second World War – and has been divided into three states: the eastern seaboard ruled by Nazi Germany, the western seaboard by the Japanese and the third, the autonomous Rocky Mountain State which is in effect a demilitarized zone between the other two. Many high-ranking Nazis live on, including Heydrich, Goebbels and Bormann, although Hitler has gone mad and is confined to an asylum. As one character observes, ‘A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power’.

The book explores the consequences of the war’s outcome through the lives of a number of different characters including Juliana who works as a Judo instructor in the Rocky Mountain State, Juliana’s estranged husband Frank Frink, Robert Childan a trader in pre-war American artefacts and Nobusuke Tagomi, head of the Japanese trade mission in San Francisco.

Into this Dick inserts an ‘alternate’ alternate history, as many of the characters are reading a book entitled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, the premise of which is that Germany and Japan were defeated. Its author is the ‘Man in the High Castle’ of the title but is he a visionary or a kind of amanuensis? In fact, at one point a character experiences a brief glimpse of the US of that ‘alternate’ alternate history, suggesting perhaps the existence of a parallel universe.

Another theme of the book is what constitutes the real as opposed to the fake, something that was central to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but here is more concerned with objects than with humans. For example, Robert Childan sells historical artefacts to Japanese collectors some of which may in fact be reproductions. And when Frank Frink, disillusioned with producing such reproductions, starts a business creating original, handmade jewellery he is advised to have the pieces mass-produced and promoted as good luck charms.

Identity and status is another theme, especially in the area of the United States now under occupation by Japan. In one scene, Mr Tagomi attends a meeting taking with him an empty briefcase because he feels to go without it would give the appearance of being ‘a mere spectator’. In another Robert Childan worries how it will appear to others if he carries his own packages rather than using a slave. Cleverly, the author has Robert’s speech and internal dialogue mimic the rhythms of the Japanese occupiers to whom he is considered inferior.

I found the book fascinating and became immersed in the lives of the characters. My favourite was Mr Tagomi because of the extent to which we witness his moral conflicts. I’m afraid I did struggle with the frequent references to the Chinese divination text, the I Ching, on which many of the characters rely to determine what course they should take.

The Man in the High Castle is a chilling dystopia in which whole continents have been destroyed, their populations killed or consigned to servitude, in which slavery is once again legal and the few Jewish people who survived the Holocaust must hide their identities or face death. It’s a nightmare vision but one that sometimes feels uncomfortably close to present day events.

In three words: Thought-provoking, insightful, imaginative

Try something similar: Fatherland by Robert Harris

About the Author

Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928, but lived most of his life in California, briefly attending the University of California at Berkeley in 1947. Among the most prolific and eccentric of SF writers, Dick’s many novels and stories all blend a sharp and quirky imagination with a strong sense of the surreal.

By the time of his death in 1982 he had written over thirty science-fiction novels and 112 short stories. Notable titles amongst the novels include The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968, later used as the basis for the film Blade Runner), Ubik (1969) and A Scanner Darkly (1977). The Man in the High Castle (1962), perhaps his most painstakingly constructed and chilling novel, won a Hugo Award in 1963.

#BookReview #Ad The Voluble Topsy, 1928 – 1947 by A P Herbert @KateHandheld

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About the Book

It is the late 1920s. Topsy is a girl about town, a society deb, a dashing flapper. She writes breathless, exuberant letters to her best friend Trix about her life, her parties, her intrigues, and the men in her life. She deploys her native acumen and remarkable talent for kindness as well as being a doughty fighter for what she thinks is right (she hides a fox from the Hunt in her car). Then Topsy is unexpectedly drawn into politics, and to her amazement, she is elected as a member of Parliament.

Topsy’s extensive social life, her adventures in and out of the House of Commons (and her audacious attempts to legislate for the Enjoyment of the People), and her wartime activity as the mother of twins were recorded faithfully by the great comic writer A P Herbert as a series of satires in Punch.

Format: Paperback (360 pages) Publisher: Handheld Press
Publication date: 11th July 2023 Genre: Modern Clssics, Humour

Find The Voluble Topsy: A Young Lady’s Chatter About Love, Politics and War, 1928-1947 on Goodreads

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My Review

The Voluble Topsy, which will be published on 11th July 2023 by Handheld Press and is available to pre-order now, brings together three collections by A P Herbert – The Trials of Topsy (1928), Topsy MP (1929) and Topsy Turvy (1947) – in one volume. Subtitled ‘A Young Lady’s Chatter About Love, Politics and War, 1928-1947’, Topsy is described by the publishers as ‘the Bridget Jones of the 1920s’.

Topsy’s letters to her friend Trix with their eccentric spelling, malapropisms and mischevious pen pictures of acquaintances and public figures are an absolute hoot. The italicisation of certain words to suggest emphasis means you can hear Topsy’s voice in your head. (I think they might make a great audiobook – perhaps even a Topsy podcast?) One of the most amusing features of the letters is the eccentric terms of endearment with which she addresses Trix. Some of my favourites were ‘night-light of the North’, ‘my crystallised cherry’, ‘my aromatic angel’ and ‘my distant wood pigeon’.

As Kate MacDonald points out in her excellent introduction (Handheld Classics all have excellent introductions), Topsy ‘could never be accused of being pretentious or too learned’. Topsy is happy to offer her opinion on all sorts of things, regardless of whether she knows much about them or not. During a short stint as drama critic for a newspaper, she describes Shakespeare’s Othello as ‘written in the most amateur style… never using one word if it was possible to use three’, summarises the play as being about ‘one absolute cad and one absolute halt wit and one absolute cow‘ and offers the opinion that if they put the play on in the West End not a soul would go to it.

By far my favourite section of the book was the first, the letters that make up the collection The Trials of Topsy. Preaching the virtues of ‘the simple life’, Topsy deprecates the current fixation with exciting deeds, announcing her intention to shun anyone who’s flown the Atlantic or ‘needlessly swum something’. As she says, ‘all this rapidity is too volatile and bilious’. Instead she gives the example of her friend Albert Haddock who has ‘the most seductive mussel in a glass tank which only moves once in four days, my dear it’s too refreshing’.

In a foretaste of her future political career, Topsy has to step in when Haddock, who is standing as a candidate in a by-election, is unexpectedly detained and unable to give a speech. (I couldn’t help thinking of a similar scene in John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps.) As Topsy herself admits, ‘some of the things I said caused microscopic riots in one or two corners’.

Elected as an MP in unusual circumstances, Topsy divides her time between trying the patience of the Party whips and attempting to progress Private Member’s Bills, including one to reform the Gaming Laws. It contains a clause that would make it unlawful to gamble on the Stock Exchange. Nice try, Topsy. Unfortunately, it’s not long before Topsy becomes rather disillusioned with her constituents, confiding to Trix that she has come to the conclusion ‘my constituency is ‘THE cradle of the nation’s half-wits’. I confess I found this section of the book quite hard going as much of it seemed to be a satirical take on events or talking points of the day that won’t have the same relevance for modern readers.

In the final section of the book, Topsy, now a housewife and mother, unburdens herself to Trix about the continuing privations in post-War Britain, everything from the sluggish postal service to problems getting reliable tradesmen. No change there then… By the end I had some sympathy for poor old Haddock, increasingly chastised by Topsy for what she considers his slovenly ways. As she reports to Trix, ‘my dear his note-case is one protuberant mass of everything except notes, so about once a week I have a birds-nesting day and ruthlessly evacuate the loose tobacco and pipe-cleaners and patent medicines and pieces of string, my dear too miscellaneous…’ Of course, she remains completely devoted to him.

There is a rather lovely note to her Christmas letter to Trix in December 1945 in which she reports ‘it’s not quite snowing, but the house is thick with fog, the gas is anaemic, my tiny hands are frozen, I rather think all the pipes will explode to-night, gangsters I’m quite confident surround the home… but after all there will not be no sireens to-night, and peering through the fog I seem to see Britannia in the arms of Father Christmas, utterly illumined by rays of hope…’

Topsy’s letters to her friend Trix were first published in the weekly magazine Punch, each letter being three or four pages long. I think replicating that experience by dipping in and out, reading a few at a time, would be the ideal way to consume them; Topsy in small doses, if you like. I read the entire book over a couple of days for the purpose of this review and it did start to feel a little like binge-watching a comedy series that has 76 episodes and not getting all the jokes.

Having said that, Topsy is a brilliantly imagined character and, my fallen lily, she deserves to be rediscovered.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Handheld Press.

In three words: Witty, spirited, quirky

About the Author

A P Herbert (1890-1971) was one of Britain’s great comic writers and librettists and had a long career as a Member of Parliament, during which he was a dogged campaigner for the reform of outdated or unjust British laws.