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eletricjb's review
2.0
Woof, I did not like this!!! And I don't even remember why it was on my to-read list. I wanted it to be creepy, and it was creepy, but not in a fun way... Spiritualism is hilarious to me, and I did want to read more fiction about it... Anyway, Affinity by Sarah Waters was more my speed as far as that goes. This is too much of a mess.
mamimitanaka's review
5.0
"All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event--in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. " - Melville, Moby Dick
Gonna very calculatedly tiptoe around making this review a ventpost and I swear I'm feeling like relatively fine-ish (hard to come by nowadays, admittedly) as I'm writing this but some context of why this gripped me so hard may be in order... I've thought a lot, probably more than most people over the past few years in particular, about what it means to, for lack of any better terminology, not want to exist. I don't mean suicide (though that's one of many avenues in which "Riddance" explores its central idea), but simply what it would mean to not be here as a physical being, a self, an Identity Composed of Flesh and Blood and Whatever Other Identifiable Components Society Has Collectively Agreed Upon that make up an individual person. I suffer from a debilitating sensory illness that not only turns my body into my soul's prison warden, but leaves me essentially immobilized and unable to experience 99% of what an able bodied person is capable of. As a result, a desire for nonexistence is almost second nature to me at this point, or at least a deep desire to become incorporeal, to inhabit the realm of wind or light and to just escape the waking nightmare of physical existence. It's not really like I don't want to be here, I do, I just don't want to be here in this body, a feeling which has extended to not wanting to be in any body; if physical form can fail a soul as much as mine has, then it's hard to justify wanting to remain here in the same kind of vessel, no matter how flashy the new coat of paint.
But of course the eternal dilemma for anyone who relates to this in their own way (and ofc the dilemma for every question humanity can ask in general) is that we just don't know any way in which an alternative is possible. For all we know we are born into a body, it either fails like mine or you get lucky, but either way it eventually decays and when we die, we're gone. I can hardly abide by that at this point in my life, because if everything I'm experiencing now is the beginning and the end and there's nothing on the other side in any way shape or form for me and my loved ones, then none of this meant anything - not my suffering, not my family's and my friends' suffering, not the struggles and ecstasies of people in their billions for the past however-fucking-long we've been a species. I know that's a controversial take in the modern day where "positive nihilism" and "make your own meaning" are increasingly alluring to people, where ideas of spirituality and the afterlife are now met with skepticism as much as sympathy, but the situation changes when you're at this level of disabled, when neither atheist humanism nor religion can really account for something like this; a vanishingly rare invisible condition which upturns everything you thought you knew about reality, about what being here means, about the nature of Everything (hacky pop science terminology, but whatever). When that happens, and when the entire establishment reveals just how little it accounts for the existence of people like you, you realize the popular conventions of the day just aren't going to cut it anymore. A sort of spirituality arises in the depths of sickness, though not conventionally. As you cannot be with other humans, transcendence is sought in a lonesome search for meaning, a desire to become ever more abstract. I am already a ghost that just hasn't physically died yet, so how could I seek meaning in anything or anywhere other than the incorporeal, the intangible?
And finally that brings me to "Riddance". I was always primed to enjoy something like this, given my love for theory-adjacent fiction and all kinds of genre literature this is influenced by, but this one really did come at a time in my life which has allowed me to immediately resonate with it, because seldom have I ever seen a work of fiction dive full throttle into this idea like this book. Through linguistics, Sybil Joines wants to break through Melville's "pasteboard mask" and to become defined by something other than her physical existence. The Headmistress' ultimate desire is ostensibly to erase the "I" of herself that is traditionally defined by the body; to explore this idea is to attempt to explore the eternal questions of death and "the beyond", as that is the closest avenue we can explore into there being something Other Than This. But death is of course scary and messy and individual, which she knows, as she begins this quest due to the loss of her own family and lack of closure on a torturous childhood - a desire to shirk oneself of the ego that is the inevitable result of a physical brain, yet motivated to do so because of that same human ego.
This is all explored through language, through fiction, as the primary thematic driving force, and especially through Sybil's destructive obsession with it. This is a novel of postmodern intertextuality but it approaches these ideas with a chilling and almost dissociative level of restraint, without showing its hand, so to speak, even when the machinations of its intertextuality are a direct focus. Without spoiling, part of Sybil's experiments are an attempt to prove that language not only has tangible effects on material reality (whether the realm of physicality or the realm of "the dead"), but exists in itself as a sort of "living abstraction". Language is intrinsic to human identity, leading us to believe this may strictly be a human invention, though while reading this book I kept getting the idea - played at within the text - that the entire concepts of language, writing and speech may indeed have some inherent spiritual substance that isn't exclusive to the material world; that when we talk, write or sing, or what the hell ever, we are actually tangibly effecting the substance of existence. Occultism and science is a key dichotomy here; I've increasingly begun to think they aren't so different, that ultimately they are more united by their natures as journeys toward truth (or the closest human approximations of it) and are not diametrically opposed, and this is a major theme in the novel.
I've probably lost readers by this point, but if all that sounds kooky then maybe that's because it is. I simply do not fucking know the answers but I know in my heart that ideas like this increasingly make sense to me, even if many will intrinsically reject them. Fiction, and especially via literature, is my primary avenue at this point for exploring spirituality, the numinous that I know exists even if I, like Sybil (though hopefully not to her egomaniacal extent) am forever in search of its true essence, an essence I know I will never locate but keep hubristically trying to do so anyway as that is the drive of humans. Through fiction, to me, it just makes sense. In the Transmission chapters, Joines literally creates the world she sees through words, it is words that guide her on a spiritual journey. How else am I supposed to understand anything when I literally do not have essentially anything in my life except words?
Like I mentioned earlier, believing this is All There Is is not only not an option for me, it wouldn't even make sense to me anymore partially because of fiction. After all, a book like this exists - a novel that connects and communicates two people who don't know each other, me and the author, but can theoretically do that INFINITELY because of the nature of reading and how a deeply subjective personal experience informs the entire ritual of reading - and this is what all books do. Books are worlds created by people, but they are recreated, expanded upon infinitely not only with every reader, but every single time any of their words are read. If the human brain can create words that become worlds, that we can conceive of infinities through fiction, then I have to believe this is partially evidence that infinity exists. That this is not the end, that there are new worlds waiting for me and others beyond the human brain. If a feeble creature like a human can replicate infinity, and more or less accidentally, through words on a page about people who don't even exist on this plane, then believing that there's something more is only natural, as our bodies and minds are far from the center of the universe, yet are capable of creating universes on their own terms. Like, I don't think it's just an idea, I think it's something to really really think about, and something I want to keep thinking about and developing my own personal philosophy on.
I should hate the Headmistress, especially since she's an abusive teacher, a kind of person I've long struggled with trauma from. But vile as she is, it's difficult not to be invested in her journey when so many of the conclusions I've come to since diagnosis are similar to the ones she came to. I do wholeheartedly want to not exist as the being I am now. Of course where we differ is intent, where Sybil views others as tools in her goal to transcend the body, I instead hope a transcendence for me could free those I love from the burden of having to watch me inhabit this shell. If I could become a spirit, somehow stay here and watch over the ones I love without having to suffer anymore, then I would choose that existence in a heartbeat, to just stop waking up to the everlasting horrorshow of having a body. I think that's where a lot of my spiritual thinking comes from, that desire to be gathered back into the Everything, my essence still here, belonging to the universe as an abstraction rather than a defined form, but not Leaving, not really. But I don't know what's on the other side, and I never will until I get there. Life is a nightmare, but the nightmare does contain books like this one, and the infinities that can be experienced within it, and while I do hope there's another side to all of this, knowing that I can at least experience stories, and the spirituality of words and language that represents that realm I so desperately want to inhabit but just have to wait and hope, is enough to keep me here.
Enough of me, I think in general it's just incredibly refreshing to see a post-millennium American author write this sort of book. The modern trend in American publishing would probably be hostile or at least ambivalent toward something as dense, experimental and committed to its digressive postmodern structure as this is, especially when the narrative is as dedicated as it is to its supernatural occult fixations. I read that it took Shelley Jackson over a decade to write this and it really shows as it's the kind of book that's so thorough and complexly conceived that any novelist would be happy to have it under their belt. Cutting through all my amateur philosophizing, this book is an aesthetic masterpiece period, adjacent to "weird fiction" though also moving far beyond the pulp mechanics of weird lit and becoming something entirely itself, a mind boggling chimera between occult theory fiction and postmodernism via the framework of gothic storytelling whose central idea is always at the forefront of the events, but written in a way that allows the book to traverse various divergent themes that are held together by a passionate, indeed religious, dedication to Jackson's conception of "necrophysics". It's an endlessly captivating character study featuring some of the undoubtedly best prose I've read in a post-2010 novel, complex and dense but still crystal clear in what it communicates, even as many of its linguistic mysteries are appropriately left open. It's also very funny and witty in the midst of all its morbidity, like all the best books. This is the kind of novel that needs a wider readership - Jackson seems to be an unsung cousin of the whole school of "weird theory" that's been circulating in underground literature for a little bit now, the Ciscos and Butlers etc, and judging by this book she undeniably deserves to be named among the higher echelons of the style.
Sorry about this review - I went into this thinking I would speak less about myself, but it sort of ended up being inevitable given how personally resonant this was. I struggle to think of who exactly I'd recommend this to in terms of demographics, it's not hard to see why this is niche, as it's very committed to that esoteric central thesis like I said, doesn't hold the reader's hand in explaining its main ideas and is a slow burn, and I could see it not appealing at all to people who aren't inclined to something as theory-and-philosophy-heavy as this is. It is, however, unlike anything else, even among its metafictional contemporaries, and is probably very worth reading for anyone who finds comfort in the idea of transcending reality and the misery of physicality through fiction, through the abstract. I will no doubt be revisiting this one as well as making Jackson a priority author in 2024; what I would have assumed would be an enjoyable October read ended up being a deeply resonant favorite for me. Challenging but endlessly compelling, absurd and creative, and gives voice to thoughts I've had about life that I never properly articulated; this is everything I want out of a modern novel.
"Maybe this is why I like the long lost better than the living. I would not want them back: I like them just because they're lost. The dead are not quite there, and it is being there that's what is wrong with the living. We are too much with us. The truest part of me was trained on that crystal world outside me, or even was that world. Sticks and berries. . . Why weigh them down with meat and bone? The Long Pig of the self? Too, too solid. A wasting sickness, I thought, was the way to die. To melt, to cease, to suck your own bones dry. To wear at last so thin that you can see the world through your almost unfogged flesh. Then, when you are crystal clear, to die."
Gonna very calculatedly tiptoe around making this review a ventpost and I swear I'm feeling like relatively fine-ish (hard to come by nowadays, admittedly) as I'm writing this but some context of why this gripped me so hard may be in order... I've thought a lot, probably more than most people over the past few years in particular, about what it means to, for lack of any better terminology, not want to exist. I don't mean suicide (though that's one of many avenues in which "Riddance" explores its central idea), but simply what it would mean to not be here as a physical being, a self, an Identity Composed of Flesh and Blood and Whatever Other Identifiable Components Society Has Collectively Agreed Upon that make up an individual person. I suffer from a debilitating sensory illness that not only turns my body into my soul's prison warden, but leaves me essentially immobilized and unable to experience 99% of what an able bodied person is capable of. As a result, a desire for nonexistence is almost second nature to me at this point, or at least a deep desire to become incorporeal, to inhabit the realm of wind or light and to just escape the waking nightmare of physical existence. It's not really like I don't want to be here, I do, I just don't want to be here in this body, a feeling which has extended to not wanting to be in any body; if physical form can fail a soul as much as mine has, then it's hard to justify wanting to remain here in the same kind of vessel, no matter how flashy the new coat of paint.
But of course the eternal dilemma for anyone who relates to this in their own way (and ofc the dilemma for every question humanity can ask in general) is that we just don't know any way in which an alternative is possible. For all we know we are born into a body, it either fails like mine or you get lucky, but either way it eventually decays and when we die, we're gone. I can hardly abide by that at this point in my life, because if everything I'm experiencing now is the beginning and the end and there's nothing on the other side in any way shape or form for me and my loved ones, then none of this meant anything - not my suffering, not my family's and my friends' suffering, not the struggles and ecstasies of people in their billions for the past however-fucking-long we've been a species. I know that's a controversial take in the modern day where "positive nihilism" and "make your own meaning" are increasingly alluring to people, where ideas of spirituality and the afterlife are now met with skepticism as much as sympathy, but the situation changes when you're at this level of disabled, when neither atheist humanism nor religion can really account for something like this; a vanishingly rare invisible condition which upturns everything you thought you knew about reality, about what being here means, about the nature of Everything (hacky pop science terminology, but whatever). When that happens, and when the entire establishment reveals just how little it accounts for the existence of people like you, you realize the popular conventions of the day just aren't going to cut it anymore. A sort of spirituality arises in the depths of sickness, though not conventionally. As you cannot be with other humans, transcendence is sought in a lonesome search for meaning, a desire to become ever more abstract. I am already a ghost that just hasn't physically died yet, so how could I seek meaning in anything or anywhere other than the incorporeal, the intangible?
And finally that brings me to "Riddance". I was always primed to enjoy something like this, given my love for theory-adjacent fiction and all kinds of genre literature this is influenced by, but this one really did come at a time in my life which has allowed me to immediately resonate with it, because seldom have I ever seen a work of fiction dive full throttle into this idea like this book. Through linguistics, Sybil Joines wants to break through Melville's "pasteboard mask" and to become defined by something other than her physical existence. The Headmistress' ultimate desire is ostensibly to erase the "I" of herself that is traditionally defined by the body; to explore this idea is to attempt to explore the eternal questions of death and "the beyond", as that is the closest avenue we can explore into there being something Other Than This. But death is of course scary and messy and individual, which she knows, as she begins this quest due to the loss of her own family and lack of closure on a torturous childhood - a desire to shirk oneself of the ego that is the inevitable result of a physical brain, yet motivated to do so because of that same human ego.
This is all explored through language, through fiction, as the primary thematic driving force, and especially through Sybil's destructive obsession with it. This is a novel of postmodern intertextuality but it approaches these ideas with a chilling and almost dissociative level of restraint, without showing its hand, so to speak, even when the machinations of its intertextuality are a direct focus. Without spoiling, part of Sybil's experiments are an attempt to prove that language not only has tangible effects on material reality (whether the realm of physicality or the realm of "the dead"), but exists in itself as a sort of "living abstraction". Language is intrinsic to human identity, leading us to believe this may strictly be a human invention, though while reading this book I kept getting the idea - played at within the text - that the entire concepts of language, writing and speech may indeed have some inherent spiritual substance that isn't exclusive to the material world; that when we talk, write or sing, or what the hell ever, we are actually tangibly effecting the substance of existence. Occultism and science is a key dichotomy here; I've increasingly begun to think they aren't so different, that ultimately they are more united by their natures as journeys toward truth (or the closest human approximations of it) and are not diametrically opposed, and this is a major theme in the novel.
I've probably lost readers by this point, but if all that sounds kooky then maybe that's because it is. I simply do not fucking know the answers but I know in my heart that ideas like this increasingly make sense to me, even if many will intrinsically reject them. Fiction, and especially via literature, is my primary avenue at this point for exploring spirituality, the numinous that I know exists even if I, like Sybil (though hopefully not to her egomaniacal extent) am forever in search of its true essence, an essence I know I will never locate but keep hubristically trying to do so anyway as that is the drive of humans. Through fiction, to me, it just makes sense. In the Transmission chapters, Joines literally creates the world she sees through words, it is words that guide her on a spiritual journey. How else am I supposed to understand anything when I literally do not have essentially anything in my life except words?
Like I mentioned earlier, believing this is All There Is is not only not an option for me, it wouldn't even make sense to me anymore partially because of fiction. After all, a book like this exists - a novel that connects and communicates two people who don't know each other, me and the author, but can theoretically do that INFINITELY because of the nature of reading and how a deeply subjective personal experience informs the entire ritual of reading - and this is what all books do. Books are worlds created by people, but they are recreated, expanded upon infinitely not only with every reader, but every single time any of their words are read. If the human brain can create words that become worlds, that we can conceive of infinities through fiction, then I have to believe this is partially evidence that infinity exists. That this is not the end, that there are new worlds waiting for me and others beyond the human brain. If a feeble creature like a human can replicate infinity, and more or less accidentally, through words on a page about people who don't even exist on this plane, then believing that there's something more is only natural, as our bodies and minds are far from the center of the universe, yet are capable of creating universes on their own terms. Like, I don't think it's just an idea, I think it's something to really really think about, and something I want to keep thinking about and developing my own personal philosophy on.
I should hate the Headmistress, especially since she's an abusive teacher, a kind of person I've long struggled with trauma from. But vile as she is, it's difficult not to be invested in her journey when so many of the conclusions I've come to since diagnosis are similar to the ones she came to. I do wholeheartedly want to not exist as the being I am now. Of course where we differ is intent, where Sybil views others as tools in her goal to transcend the body, I instead hope a transcendence for me could free those I love from the burden of having to watch me inhabit this shell. If I could become a spirit, somehow stay here and watch over the ones I love without having to suffer anymore, then I would choose that existence in a heartbeat, to just stop waking up to the everlasting horrorshow of having a body. I think that's where a lot of my spiritual thinking comes from, that desire to be gathered back into the Everything, my essence still here, belonging to the universe as an abstraction rather than a defined form, but not Leaving, not really. But I don't know what's on the other side, and I never will until I get there. Life is a nightmare, but the nightmare does contain books like this one, and the infinities that can be experienced within it, and while I do hope there's another side to all of this, knowing that I can at least experience stories, and the spirituality of words and language that represents that realm I so desperately want to inhabit but just have to wait and hope, is enough to keep me here.
Enough of me, I think in general it's just incredibly refreshing to see a post-millennium American author write this sort of book. The modern trend in American publishing would probably be hostile or at least ambivalent toward something as dense, experimental and committed to its digressive postmodern structure as this is, especially when the narrative is as dedicated as it is to its supernatural occult fixations. I read that it took Shelley Jackson over a decade to write this and it really shows as it's the kind of book that's so thorough and complexly conceived that any novelist would be happy to have it under their belt. Cutting through all my amateur philosophizing, this book is an aesthetic masterpiece period, adjacent to "weird fiction" though also moving far beyond the pulp mechanics of weird lit and becoming something entirely itself, a mind boggling chimera between occult theory fiction and postmodernism via the framework of gothic storytelling whose central idea is always at the forefront of the events, but written in a way that allows the book to traverse various divergent themes that are held together by a passionate, indeed religious, dedication to Jackson's conception of "necrophysics". It's an endlessly captivating character study featuring some of the undoubtedly best prose I've read in a post-2010 novel, complex and dense but still crystal clear in what it communicates, even as many of its linguistic mysteries are appropriately left open. It's also very funny and witty in the midst of all its morbidity, like all the best books. This is the kind of novel that needs a wider readership - Jackson seems to be an unsung cousin of the whole school of "weird theory" that's been circulating in underground literature for a little bit now, the Ciscos and Butlers etc, and judging by this book she undeniably deserves to be named among the higher echelons of the style.
Sorry about this review - I went into this thinking I would speak less about myself, but it sort of ended up being inevitable given how personally resonant this was. I struggle to think of who exactly I'd recommend this to in terms of demographics, it's not hard to see why this is niche, as it's very committed to that esoteric central thesis like I said, doesn't hold the reader's hand in explaining its main ideas and is a slow burn, and I could see it not appealing at all to people who aren't inclined to something as theory-and-philosophy-heavy as this is. It is, however, unlike anything else, even among its metafictional contemporaries, and is probably very worth reading for anyone who finds comfort in the idea of transcending reality and the misery of physicality through fiction, through the abstract. I will no doubt be revisiting this one as well as making Jackson a priority author in 2024; what I would have assumed would be an enjoyable October read ended up being a deeply resonant favorite for me. Challenging but endlessly compelling, absurd and creative, and gives voice to thoughts I've had about life that I never properly articulated; this is everything I want out of a modern novel.
"Maybe this is why I like the long lost better than the living. I would not want them back: I like them just because they're lost. The dead are not quite there, and it is being there that's what is wrong with the living. We are too much with us. The truest part of me was trained on that crystal world outside me, or even was that world. Sticks and berries. . . Why weigh them down with meat and bone? The Long Pig of the self? Too, too solid. A wasting sickness, I thought, was the way to die. To melt, to cease, to suck your own bones dry. To wear at last so thin that you can see the world through your almost unfogged flesh. Then, when you are crystal clear, to die."
charm_city_sinner's review against another edition
Boring, disjointed, impossible to follow. Took a great concept and made it seem like required reading for an awful college class.
andreatufekcic's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
From first blush, absolute brain candy. Precisely my shit, constructed and gothic and self referential. It sags under its own weight by the final fifth (not helped the wide break I had between chapters) but it was still this fascinating and detached and nonlinear story that would almost send you hunting back over the sections if it wasn’t so damn long.
04grayw's review
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
lucymcclellan's review
3.0
Unusual in both content and form. I didn’t really enjoy this (except for the letters to dead authors, some of which were kind of funny), but I’m giving it 3.4 stars anyway because I don’t think enjoyment is the point here. Also it’s just obviously very well-written and intelligent (slash over my head).
spiderwitch's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Riddance revolves around a strange school in which children with stutters are trained to become spirit mediums. (Stutterers are particularly suited for the task, as their difficulty speaking in their own voices provides space for the dead to speak through them.) In particular, it recounts the life stories of Sybil Joines, a white woman who founded the school in the late 1800s and serves as its headmistress, and Jane Grandison, a mixed-race student who becomes the Headmistress's amanuensis and aspires to one day succeed her in running the school. Along the way, it provides lengthy disquisitions on the nature and purpose of language.
In theory, it seems that the Headmistress and Grandison are supposed to share the role of protagonist. In practice, it is much more Sybil's story than Grandison's -- even if their life stories are given equal page time (I didn't count), the inclusion of Sybil's correspondence and transcripts of her journeys through the Land of the Dead give her more focus. She also seems a more central figure, narratively, than Grandison. In particular, it is established through a frame narrative by a modern scholar researching the school that every successive headmistress is Sybil; that is, their job is to channel Sybil so that she may continue running the school after her death. Thus, Grandison's ambition (which she does, ultimately, achieve) is to abnegate her own identity to become a vessel for Sybil.
In Grandison's narrative, she explicitly raises several questions about race in the context of spirit-channeling that the novel then immediately drops and never returns to. Why, she asks, are all the spirits channeled by Sybil and her students white people who are fluent English-speakers? The reader will never know, as the issue is not explored -- simply mentioned and then forgotten. What, she wonders briefly, does it mean for her as a mixed-race person to become the headmistress and allow a white woman to speak through her? Is the opportunity for a position of authority worth that cost? This issue, too, is never mentioned again, and the reader is not privy to the thought processes that lead her to go through with it in the end.
In addition, for a novel that purports to be about language, it seems to have very little understanding of linguistics. Of course, it is possible to talk about language in a literary sense without delving into linguistics, but the problem is that the novel does attempt to get into topics such as grammars and writing systems, and when it does, the lack of research is evident. For example, the Headmistress at one point creates a writing system for English based on drawings of the mouth and tongue positions required to make a given sound. This is described as resulting in twenty-six characters, one for each letter of the alphabet. The problem is that sounds (or, in linguistics terms, phonemes) in English don't correspond neatly to the alphabet at all -- standard American English has thirty-eight to forty different phonemes. And I'm sorry, but if you don't know the difference between a phoneme and a grapheme, I am not interested in anything you have to say about writing systems. This is basic stuff.
Ultimately, despite an intriguing concept, Riddance fell flat on several counts, and I felt its halfhearted attempts to address racial issues were almost worse than not mentioning them at all.
In theory, it seems that the Headmistress and Grandison are supposed to share the role of protagonist. In practice, it is much more Sybil's story than Grandison's -- even if their life stories are given equal page time (I didn't count), the inclusion of Sybil's correspondence and transcripts of her journeys through the Land of the Dead give her more focus. She also seems a more central figure, narratively, than Grandison. In particular, it is established through a frame narrative by a modern scholar researching the school that every successive headmistress is Sybil; that is, their job is to channel Sybil so that she may continue running the school after her death. Thus, Grandison's ambition (which she does, ultimately, achieve) is to abnegate her own identity to become a vessel for Sybil.
In Grandison's narrative, she explicitly raises several questions about race in the context of spirit-channeling that the novel then immediately drops and never returns to. Why, she asks, are all the spirits channeled by Sybil and her students white people who are fluent English-speakers? The reader will never know, as the issue is not explored -- simply mentioned and then forgotten. What, she wonders briefly, does it mean for her as a mixed-race person to become the headmistress and allow a white woman to speak through her? Is the opportunity for a position of authority worth that cost? This issue, too, is never mentioned again, and the reader is not privy to the thought processes that lead her to go through with it in the end.
In addition, for a novel that purports to be about language, it seems to have very little understanding of linguistics. Of course, it is possible to talk about language in a literary sense without delving into linguistics, but the problem is that the novel does attempt to get into topics such as grammars and writing systems, and when it does, the lack of research is evident. For example, the Headmistress at one point creates a writing system for English based on drawings of the mouth and tongue positions required to make a given sound. This is described as resulting in twenty-six characters, one for each letter of the alphabet. The problem is that sounds (or, in linguistics terms, phonemes) in English don't correspond neatly to the alphabet at all -- standard American English has thirty-eight to forty different phonemes. And I'm sorry, but if you don't know the difference between a phoneme and a grapheme, I am not interested in anything you have to say about writing systems. This is basic stuff.
Ultimately, despite an intriguing concept, Riddance fell flat on several counts, and I felt its halfhearted attempts to address racial issues were almost worse than not mentioning them at all.
kat_smith24's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Well that was...weird.
I'm not sure yet if I liked it.
I'm not sure yet if I liked it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Moderate: Death of parent and Child abuse
agudenburr's review
2.0
Finally finished! The concept was interesting but the writing was very academic.