C2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021
book worldpersonal transformation. It’s a coming-
of-age tale rooted in African culture,
which is continued in two other
novellas.
For people looking for full-blown
novels, there is Arkady Martine’s “A
Memory Called Empire” (2019). A new
ambassador arrives at the city of
Teixcalaan, intent on investigating the
sudden death of their predecessor. It’s
heavy on intrigue, politics and court
machinations and utilizes the tried-and-
true science fiction trope of
transplanted memories. An older title
that falls into the brick-of-a-book
category is “Hyperion” (1989) by Dan
Simmons. It borrows the structure of
“The Canterbury Tales” and blasts it into
space in one massive undertaking.
Lavie: I recently came back from
France, where I was really taken withthe vibrancy of French space opera.
There’s Pierre Bordage, whose “Warriors
of Silence” trilogy dates back to the
1990s, and Jean-Claude Dunyach, whose
“Dead Stars” (1991) is an important
early title. Both are still popular. Joining
them are a host of new writers, such as
Floriane Soulas, whose “The Forgotten
of the Amas” (2021) is a grandly
ambitious novel set around a Jupiter
that is presented in the true scale of a
full space opera. I was also taken with
Carina Rozenfeld’s “Terres” (2021),
which is not a neat fit but fascinating for
its exploration of an entire multiverse.
English-language publishers, take note!
The big blockbuster of translated
science fiction has to be Liu Cixin’s “The
Three-Body Problem” (2008). The
trilogy is hugely ambitious and cosmic
in scope. And while I’m talking aboutspace opera in translation, brothers
Boris and Arkady Strugatsky in Russia
created one of the great settings of 20th
century science fiction with their Noon
universe, in a series of novels now
gaining new appreciation and new
translated editions. “Hard to Be a God”
(1964) and “The Inhabited Island”
(1969) were rereleased by Chicago
Review Press a few years ago. I adore
“Noon: 22nd Century” (1961), a mosaic
novel which is first in the sequence,
charting the expansion into space of a
Soviet utopia. This is one sadly long out
of print, though.
I have a strong suspicion that the
Noon universe partly inspired Iain M.
Banks’s “Culture” series. These
sprawling novels of galactic milieus,
giant orbitals and even larger A.I. ships
and their various machinations offerLiterary Calendar
WEDNESDAY | 10 A.M. It’s story time with
Miss Malaprop streamed through
Malaprop’s Bookstore. malaprops.com. Free.Ah, the space opera! That “hacky,
grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship
yarn,” as science fiction author Wilson
Tucker memorably put it when he
coined the term in 1941. Science fiction
writers (and readers) seem to never get
enough of big spaceships, big galactic
empires or giant worms. Frank
Herbert’s “Dune” may seem like the
most epic of these epics, but before him
writers such as E.E. “Doc” Smith and
Edmond “The World Wrecker”
Hamilton were dreaming up sweeping
space adventures. Let’s talk about some
of our favorites in this action-packed
genre.
Silvia: Because of the success of
Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” adaptation,
many people have been asking me for
books that resemble the movie.
Although the obvious recommendation
is to plow through the many volumes of
the Dune series itself, newbies are
sometimes fearful of being thrown into
the deep end of the pool (the six Dune
books penned by Frank Herbert span
some 900,000 words). Therefore, I’m
not going big, but small, and
recommending “Binti” (2015), a novella
by Nnedi Okorafor. Like “Dune,” “Binti”
has a young protagonist traveling from
one distant corner of the galaxy to
another, while undergoing a great
one of the most compelling and
sustained visions of a far-flung future.
Silvia: It’s worth noting the
Strugatsky translations by Chicago
Review Press seem to be the most
accurate ones, as the previous editions
were censored back in the day. I’ll end
this column with the ever-popular X
meets Y: In this case, “Dune” meets
Hans Christian Andersen in “The Snow
Queen” (1981) by Joan Vinge. It contains
the prerequisite galactic empire replete
with political machinations. There’s also
a hero’s journey, an ageless monarch, a
low-tech society versus a high-tech one,
and of course a lot of talk of Winter with
a capital W. So, what galactic empire
floats your boat, dear readers?
[email protected]Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books include
“Mexican Gothic,” “Velvet Was the Night” and
“The Return of the Sorceress.” Lavie
Tidhar’s most recent novels are “The
Escapement” and “The Hood.”SCIENCE FICTION
by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie TidharBY BETHANNE PATRICK
If you’re looking for a novel about
addiction in which rehab or a savior
figure makes all the difference, you might
want to skip Irish author Lisa Harding’s
“Bright Burning Things.” But if you’re
interested in a novel that gives authentic
voice to a modern woman’s alcoholism,
pick up this smart, sensitive book about
Sonya and her 4-year-old son, Tommy, as
they weather a very difficult year.
Sonya’s first-person narration begins
urgently: We see her alternately smother-
ing and neglecting Tommy, staggering
through life and subsisting on little, save
as much white wine as she can carry home
from the supermarket. Her habits, includ-
ing drunken driving, have left her es-
tranged from her disapproving sister,
Lara, their widowed father and most of
her neighbors.
Mrs. O’Malley next door tries to keep
an eye on Sonya and Tommy, offering
meals for the “little mite,” drawing So-
nya’s attention to Tommy’s unkempt state
and reporting back to Sonya’s dad. Sonya
(whom Tommy calls “Yaya,” as if he under-
stands that “Mummy” or “Mother”
doesn’t really apply) eludes Mrs. O’Mal-
ley’s gaze as often as possible.
But others see Sonya’s erratic behavior.
When she makes a scene in a local pizza
shop, slapping Tommy, a stranger ob-
serves the incident. Meanwhile, Mrs.
O’Malley reports Sonya to the local police.
Afterward, Sonya’s father shows up with
an ultimatum: Either Sonya signs herself
into a three-month rehabilitation pro-
gram, or the authorities will take Tommy
away.
It’s difficult to watch this dance be-
tween an addict par-
ent and a helpless
child. We can see that
Sonya and Tommy
share a great deal of
love, but we can also
see that Sonya has al-
lowed Tommy to de-
velop a strangely de-
pendent relationship
with their enormous
stray dog, Herbie, us-
ing the kind, hairy
beast as a sort of
babysitter. Tommy
has been neglected as
Sonya, nostalgic for
her glory days as a per-
former, pretends to be
a freewheeling, devil-may-care mom.
Sonya’s experiences in rehab, which
feature some of the most interesting char-
acter sketches in “Bright Burning Things”
(including a nun named Sister Anne
whose patience is nothing short of saint-
ly), will eventually help her regain cus-
tody of her cherished son. Of course, there
are new challenges for her to negotiate.
And Harding allows Sonya’s anger to
burn, anger that has to do with all the
wrongs (correctly perceived, or not) that
the world has visited on her.
What Sonya has to learn can’t be taught
in rehab. In the final scene of this hectic
and affecting story, we see that she’s come
a long way. She understands that it isn’t
enough simply to adore her son. She has
to care for him, too. Harding’s December
novel is, at its foundation, just the right
story for this season: a woman who saves
herself to give her son the ultimate gift of
a healthy parent.
[email protected]Bethanne Patrick is the editor, most
recently, of “The Books That Changed My Life:
Reflections by 100 Authors, Actors, Musicians
and Other Remarkable People.”BRIGHT
BURNING
THINGS
By Lisa Harding
HarperVia.
336 pp. $26.99A mother’schoice: A lotof booze ora little boyAh, the best laid plans! It never seems to occur
to Mr. Udnam that Jessie’s father may have had
his own reason for selling his daughter into this
peculiar arrangement — and it had nothing to do
with money. But Mr. Udnam, a fine representa-
tive of Edinburgh’s “vampiric soul,” is not used to
paying attention to others’ desires or motives.
He’s an oily Dickensian fiend, who “has the
serenity of a man entirely without conscience.”
Fagan draws him in striking snippets of menace.
About town, he proclaims himself a humble
standard-bearer of morality and generosity. But
within the confines of No. 10 Luckenbooth, he’s a
monster, and early in the story, he commits an
act so heinous that it haunts his cherished
building for the next 90 years.How that haunting is experienced over the
decades becomes the subject of subsequent
chapters involving a rotating collection of trou-
bled characters. We encounter costume parties,
seances, orgies and murders. Fagan tests each
floor of No. 10 Luckenbooth as though she’s
playing a literary version of Jenga, drawing out
one block after another from this unstable
structure.
We encounter a transgender woman strug-
gling to find a lover who’s not ashamed of her. On
another floor, a medium tries to make an honest
living in a career crowded with frauds. During
World War II, a young woman hopes to avenge
her brother’s death by becoming a Nazi-killing
spy. And for a period, the writer William Bur-
roughs takes refuge at Luckenbooth.
Among the most fascinating characters is a
young Black man from New Orleans studying
bones at the nearby veterinary college. He knows
the city’s history of medical research is clouded
with rumors of murder and body snatching, and
all that ominous energy seems to be focused on
his apartment building. “Something in this place
is getting to me,” he writes to his brother back
home. “Some kind of siren is calling to me. I can
feel her in No. 10 Luckenbooth Close. Each night
as I go to sleep it feels like I am being lured out to
the rocks by her singing. I have begun to do
things without thinking.”
As strangely insular as these goings-on are,
“Luckenbooth” never loses its connection to the
evolving world outside the building. We see the
scars from wars in Europe, we hear the cries
against Margaret Thatcher’s wrenching trans-
formation of the United Kingdom, and through
every era we witness how women are exploited.
“No. 10 Luckenbooth,” Fagan writes, “has
some kind of purple memory vibrating through
it like an endless hum.” But it’s not so much a
hum as a muffled scream — with a feral melody
and a thundering bass line. Her prose has never
been more cinematic. This story’s inexorable
acceleration and its crafty use of suggestion and
elision demonstrate the special effects that the
best writers can brew up without a single line of
Hollywood software — just paper, ink and
ghosts.
[email protected]Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington
Post and hosts TotallyHipVideoBookReview.comJULIA TERBROCK/THE WASHINGTON POST; ISTOCK
Among her various complaints, Jessie claims her
father is the devil, but all teenagers gripe about
their folks, right? Right?
For Jessie, being misunderstood is a common
experience. “I’m like the girl in the story who lets
toads fall from her mouth but others think they
are pearls,” she says. Indeed, in “Luckenbooth,”
the membrane between reality and nightmare is
so porous that one is constantly tempted to
second-guess the implications and discount the
horror. But that can’t cloak Fagan’s mischief for
long.
Arriving in Edinburgh — the fantastical Scot-
tish capital that has long shimmered with
ectoplasm — Jessie hides her seafaring coffin
and ventures cautiously into town. “They could
find so many reasons to hang me,” she worries.
“The thing is to try and look like a woman.”
Ducking behind some barrels, she changes into a
nice dress, applies a little Vaseline to her lips and
combs her hair. “I must perfectly hide the sharp
tip of my horns.” Apparently, these are no
ordinary split ends.
Jessie is on her way to No. 10 Luckenbooth, a
nine-story building near Edinburgh Castle. Folks
on the street tell her that nobody can ever find it,
but Jessie will soon have the opposite problem:
She can never leave it.
We quickly learn that Jessie has been “sold” by
her father to the building’s wealthy owner, a
minister of culture named Mr. Udnam. He and
his fiancee, Elise, intend to use Jessie as a partner
in a ménage à trois and then as a surrogate
mother. For some reason, Elise cannot bear a
child herself, perhaps because she’s a suffragette
— or a witch. “We will raise the infant with no
knowledge of who you are,” Mr. Udnam tells
Jessie. “You will not approach the child if you see
it in the street. You won’t speak to us again
afterwards.”BOOK WORLD FROM C1
In ‘Luckenbooth,’ No. 10is a very unlucky numberCOURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
“ Luckenbooth” author Jenni Fagan.