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A review by deimosremus
Peace by Gene Wolfe
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Wolfe is an author whose works I made a deep dive into a year and a half ago, and he instantly became an all-time favorite. Of course I started with his most well known work, The Book of the New Sun, and in between his other works that take place within that sprawling universe, I’ve gotten around to his other major works such as The Fifth Head of Cerberus and now Peace.
Peace is a novel that I purposefully went into not knowing much about, other than the flavor text on the back of my paperback edition. Largely narrated by Alden Dennis Weer, an old man in a time not known to the reader, it reads like the detailed memories of his childhood and adolescence. However, something is amiss, as the story segues into strange detours and stories within stories that give the reader clues of Weer’s true identity and current state.
What begins as Wolfe’s most ‘literary’ novel, densely worded and displaying elements of a bitter, but nostalgic set of seemingly mundane (and contemporary) memoirs… slowly unravels into something far more interpretive, dreamlike and sinister. As one gets further into Peace, the reality that holds the narrative together shows continual signs of disintegration, lapsing into moments of abstract, surreal and/or folkloric fantasy and horror. This comes through not only in the content, but in the style of writing— Alden’s narration gets continually more fragmented, more rambled, and less grounded as more details boil to the surface about his life in the past and present. As with all of Wolfe’s work, the revelations within the story are almost nonchalant and very easy to miss—even the title chapters are clues to the influences behind the structure and concepts contained within, drawing from alchemy and the idea of purgatory, among other things.
Next to the four individual installments that make up The Book of the New Sun, Peace is my favorite work of Wolfe’s— a masterfully crafted ghost story that defies being lumped into a singular genre.
Peace is a novel that I purposefully went into not knowing much about, other than the flavor text on the back of my paperback edition. Largely narrated by Alden Dennis Weer, an old man in a time not known to the reader, it reads like the detailed memories of his childhood and adolescence. However, something is amiss, as the story segues into strange detours and stories within stories that give the reader clues of Weer’s true identity and current state.
What begins as Wolfe’s most ‘literary’ novel, densely worded and displaying elements of a bitter, but nostalgic set of seemingly mundane (and contemporary) memoirs… slowly unravels into something far more interpretive, dreamlike and sinister. As one gets further into Peace, the reality that holds the narrative together shows continual signs of disintegration, lapsing into moments of abstract, surreal and/or folkloric fantasy and horror. This comes through not only in the content, but in the style of writing— Alden’s narration gets continually more fragmented, more rambled, and less grounded as more details boil to the surface about his life in the past and present. As with all of Wolfe’s work, the revelations within the story are almost nonchalant and very easy to miss—even the title chapters are clues to the influences behind the structure and concepts contained within, drawing from alchemy and the idea of purgatory, among other things.
Next to the four individual installments that make up The Book of the New Sun, Peace is my favorite work of Wolfe’s— a masterfully crafted ghost story that defies being lumped into a singular genre.