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eleanorfranzen 's review for:
The Separation
by Christopher Priest
As in the only other book I’ve read by him, The Prestige, Priest is fascinated here by twins and doubling, shadow selves, and the road not taken. Set on the eve of, and during, WWII, with a ’90s-set frame story to which we annoyingly never return, The Separation is about twins, Jacob and Joseph Sawyer (both of whose initials are J.L., which causes other characters, and indeed the government, to confuse the two). Competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a cox-less rowing pair, they see Hitler, Hess, and the trappings of Nazism. Jack, with frustrating naivete, is basically unaffected by the visit, but Joe understands that their hosts—and particularly the daughter, Birgit—are in trouble as German Jews, and arranges for Birgit to be smuggled out to England in the van that carries their rowing shells and equipment. From their different responses to Berlin, a more profound separation follows: Joe marries Birgit and becomes a conscientious objector driving ambulances for the Red Cross, while Jack becomes a fighter pilot. The novel starts off slow and very normal-historical. But soon, cracks start to show. Jack witnesses a German plane shot down by other Germans. Moments later, he sees the same thing happen again, but differently. Jack’s plane crashes and he survives along with the navigator, but then we hear from the navigator, who says Jack died. Joe is killed during the Blitz and Jack lives decades without him, but then Joe re-narrates the episode, in which he’s missing for a few days but eventually located, meeting Jack several times afterwards.
Joe experiences what he calls “lucid imaginings”: long intervals during which the circumstances of his life change minutely. He is aware that contact with his twin seems to spark these visions, but what are they? Quantum realities? Hallucinations brought on by fatigue and injury? Doublings and the truth of history are crucial sub-plots: Churchill and Rudolph Hess both appear to have body doubles (Churchill’s does his bomb-site morale tours for him; Hess’s seems to be the one who goes through Nuremberg and imprisonment after the war, so where has the actual Hess gone?) In one of these realities, Joe is deeply involved with the conception and delivery of a peace treaty in 1941, while the USA, Soviets, and Japan never enter the fighting. In the other—the frame story’s, so presumably our reality—the war proceeded as we know it and didn’t end until 1945. There is so much thematically going on in this novel, but regarding pace and writing I had doubts. The writing isn’t bad so much as dull: neither Joe nor Jack are engaging narrators, and while their factual approach may have been designed to make them more reliable in a reader’s mind, it makes the prose unexciting on the sentence level. Pacing is oddly slow, too; this isn’t a timey-wimey statecraft thriller, although it could have been and sometimes looks like it should be, but nor is it a deep, character-driven dive into the emotional fracture occasioned by war. Nothing is ever explained for the reader—not the nature of Joe’s “lucid dreams”, not the specifics of each altered reality—and you don’t have to explain as a writer, but then it would be nice to get more aesthetic pleasure from the prose. It’s brilliant as a thought exercise, but a slightly frustrating experience as a novel.
Joe experiences what he calls “lucid imaginings”: long intervals during which the circumstances of his life change minutely. He is aware that contact with his twin seems to spark these visions, but what are they? Quantum realities? Hallucinations brought on by fatigue and injury? Doublings and the truth of history are crucial sub-plots: Churchill and Rudolph Hess both appear to have body doubles (Churchill’s does his bomb-site morale tours for him; Hess’s seems to be the one who goes through Nuremberg and imprisonment after the war, so where has the actual Hess gone?) In one of these realities, Joe is deeply involved with the conception and delivery of a peace treaty in 1941, while the USA, Soviets, and Japan never enter the fighting. In the other—the frame story’s, so presumably our reality—the war proceeded as we know it and didn’t end until 1945. There is so much thematically going on in this novel, but regarding pace and writing I had doubts. The writing isn’t bad so much as dull: neither Joe nor Jack are engaging narrators, and while their factual approach may have been designed to make them more reliable in a reader’s mind, it makes the prose unexciting on the sentence level. Pacing is oddly slow, too; this isn’t a timey-wimey statecraft thriller, although it could have been and sometimes looks like it should be, but nor is it a deep, character-driven dive into the emotional fracture occasioned by war. Nothing is ever explained for the reader—not the nature of Joe’s “lucid dreams”, not the specifics of each altered reality—and you don’t have to explain as a writer, but then it would be nice to get more aesthetic pleasure from the prose. It’s brilliant as a thought exercise, but a slightly frustrating experience as a novel.