cattytrona 's review for:

The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach

4.0

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Right, so good things first:

• That structure. The spiralling out of context, the slow reveal of a world so much bigger than any of its pieces realised. I had to check, a couple of chapters in, whether the book was actually scifi. I was sure it was, and yet what I was reading was more like, anthropological fantasy? or something? Starting the book there, and staying in that mode, but revealing more of the world bit by bit, life by life, meant the story felt expansive, journeying, was constantly revealing more, whilst never really having to do pioneer stuff. Every character knew their role, knew their place in the universe — even as that universe grew for both them and me.
• The story. The novel is a series of vignettes, but there is a story which they are all in service of.
  The Emperor and the King and their weird feud is ultimately what it’s all about.
  I’ve put that as a spoiler, because the ultimate point is so far from where the book starts, and I don’t want to interfere with the process of working your way there, which I think makes the book unique. Having said that, the rest of this is kind of a spoiler for vibes so maybe pause if you haven’t read yet. The ending’s both pretty silly and deeply nihilistic, yes, and it completely wouldn’t work if you didn’t spend so much time with the carpet makers at the beginning, so you understand the stakes and the cruelty of this (star, production, cultural) system
  dedicated entirely to the gratification of the rulers
  . There’s a horror that doesn’t just overcome the pulpiness of the conclusion, but relies on it.
• The subject. This is a book about colonialism, and I think it‘s broadly successful in its critique. There’s a moment in the last chapter where it’s acknowledged that this (honestly incomprehensibly) vast story about the carpet makers is just one of many, one cabinet in one corner of a 400 floor archive. And I think that’s key. I’m not sure how to articulate that further, lol sorry, but knowing this is just one example, and yet so overwhelming for so many people— it works for me, even if isn’t the most gracefully articulated.

Which brings me onto the bad, I suppose. Which is that the vignettes that make up the story frequently don’t work. I found myself getting a bit worn down by the early ones, and really quite unimpressed by the attempts to depict romance. Eschbach doesn’t know how to write women, and generally relies on very broad strokes to characterise people in the short amount of time he gives himself to spend with them. Which is fine: there’s a sense of the parable to them, and he’s good enough at painting relationships between men that there’s a depth too. But it means that his points can be inelegant or unsubtle.

Since finishing this, I’ve been debating with myself about whether this book is more than the sum of its parts, or the whole is pulled down by them. Ultimately, I think the structure is worth pushing through the bits which drag for, but perhaps only if you’re a fast reader. Having said that, I probably wouldn’t be quite so critical if the book didn’t end on the note it does — I found the final chapter particularly infuriating. Literally even thinking about it makes me mad lol.

It’s also worth acknowledging that this is a book about colonialism that uses its scifi setting to sidestep discussing things like race and complicity (everyone is under the thumb of the emperor, who alone dominates, ignoring the way that whole classes and countries benefit from and uphold colonialism irl). This is ultimately very much a parable. It’s an interesting contrast to something like A Memory Called Empire, another sci fi novel entirely concerned with imperialism, which I think deals with those things much better, and feels more realist in tone as a result. And yet I found the storytelling in AMCE lacking, and its world rather stage set, and actually less convincing than that in The Carpet Makers — I think as a result of its focus on one person, who didn’t feel grounded, imbedded. Between these two novels, there’s something really good. For the moment, there’s definitely interesting.