Post apocalyptic novel written in a made up language (think Clockwork Orange).
Poetic and deeply moving account of a boy's journey through a world where scientific knowledge has devolved to primitive ritual and incantation; and his dawning realisation that we lost everything.
I've never read anything else like it.
Woak up. Got dresd. Had brekfast. Spoke wif Ergates
thi ant who sed itz juss been wurk wurk wurk 4 u
lately master Bascule, Y dont u ½ a holiday?
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Feersum-Endjinn-Novel-Iain-Banks/dp/0...
Phonetically styled narrative from characters pops up in several Banks novels. I’d argue the The Barbarian’s Scottish dialect in The Bridge was a precursor to Bascule.
There are also smattering’s of fun phonetic speech in the first few Culture novels. Most memorably from Fwi-song the prophet of the Eaters cult.
I had the feeling with Feersum Endjinn Banks decided to go ‘all in’ on the fun phonetics.
In the early 90s I went to a Banks reading (possibly Crow Road or The State of The Art) in Sheffield and during the Q&A he talked with great animation and detail about his new as yet untitled novel, which a few years later turned out to be Feersum Endjinn.
Sorely miss him.
I'd certainly agree with you there. He's variously introduced his readers to Scots, the Doric and the vernacular in his books over many years. Feersum Endjinn was a fun read, especially for me as a Scot who has an interest in the Scots language.
> Sorely miss him.
I do too. I'd met him at various times over the length of his career. Always a bloody nice guy and always self deprecating in a way you knew was very genuine. I always relished him taking the mickey out of his famous neighbour in North Queensferry, Gordon Brown, every now and again.
But I wonder if this type of "puzzle box" interface to a plot line actually produces a false catharsis that makes what is otherwise a crappy plot seem a lot better than it actually is...
I'd rather have a story be narrated in utter clarity and be enamored with it rather then be given a puzzle and have to piece together the plot only to have my bias for the story be affected by the catharsis of solving the puzzles. Maybe the puzzles themselves are what make the story worthwhile.
Either way, I'm interested in the given opinions and opinions on this story despite the "puzzles." If Riddley or Gene Wolfe laid out their stories with crystal clarity, how good would it be?
Common to all story-driven narratives is that the writer purposefully hides information. The author knows everything, and knows how the story will end; the characters don't. This creates suspense. That doesn't make the book a "puzzle".
Further, the choice of "dialect" has nothing to do with puzzles. Rather, it imbues the narrative with character. There's nothing in Bascule's particular language that obscures the plot. His first-person perspective certainly does, but that's because the character's understanding is more limited than the reader's. Bascule's odd and uneducated (and possibly dyslexic) choice of spelling reflects his young and carefree personality, but it also causes the reader to underestimate him at first; Bascule comes across as a simpleton, which he isn't. Feersum Endjinn is otherwise a pretty straightforward sci-fi novel.
Ultimately, good novels aren't about plot, they're about stories and how they're told. Take away that, and you're left with just plot.
As an aside, Wolfe is on another level entirely. He absolutely wrapped his stories in puzzles, and in his case the puzzle and the story are two sides of the same coin and completely inseparable. To decipher the puzzle is to understand the story. In The Fifth Head of Cerberus, for example, it's at times unclear exactly who is narrating the story.
Basically any book that has to have the reader do extra work to solve a puzzle is using the catharsis of solving the puzzle as an illusory element that affects your bias towards the book.
If the author chooses to hide information then reveals it explicitly at a later time for the effect of suspense this to me is still a story presented with utmost clarity.
From your statements it seems as if Riddley is not exactly that type of "puzzle" book.
On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen.
He dint make the groun shake nor nothing like that when he come on to my spear he wernt all that big plus he lookit poorly.
He done the reqwyrt he ternt and stood and clattert his teef and made his rush and there we wer then.
Him on 1 end of the spear kicking his life out and me on the other end watching him dy. I said, "Your tern now my tern later."
Edit: Oh my word! He wrote the text of the children's book "Bread and Jam for Frances" (and, I now learn, a whole series of others with the same character). That's a lovely bit of writing. I had no idea.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/feb/05/featuresreview...
I've read it twice and I'd read it again. Many years ago there was a dramatisation of it at the Edinburgh Festival, very powerful.
One bit that sticks in my memory is when Riddley stumbles on the overgrown ruins of what must be the M25 motorway that encircled London. And he cries: "O what we ben wonce! And what we come to now!"