This is a book that, for me, ended up being more than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n
There was quite a lot here that I found disappointing, at first, but as McDonald interleaves the three different plot threads across three different worlds\/times I found myself being drawn by the story and worrying less about the niggles.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Let me start by setting out the causes of my disappointment.<\/p>\n
Once, not too long ago, I had an idea for an epic story set in Brazil that would spiral out from a favela through wealthy Rio and into the jungle. As a result I did quite a bit of research on Brazil, from the football through capoeira to religion, music, dancing and then the mythologies of the jungle. Of course being (i) a lazy bastard and (ii) a mentally constipated idiot, I never got beyond the planning stage of my epic. But I did have the background research, notes, a plot outline all in place. I knew my subject pretty well.<\/p>\n
So, where McDonald\u2019s last novel River of Gods<\/em> took me to a nation I really knew very little about and amazed me with the wildness of it all, there was a sense when reading Brasyl<\/em> that I could feel McDonald going over the same areas that I\u2019d covered and not, necessarily, showing me anything I hadn\u2019t have uncovered myself – I literally groaned when the \u201cfateful final\u201d entered the story as a plot point.<\/p>\n And I groaned slightly, too, when I realised that the \u201cmany worlds\u201d interpretation of quantum physics was going to provide the \u201csf\u201d element to the story. I might be jaded but \u2013 on the whole \u2013 I feel like I\u2019ve read too many multiverse stories. The core problem is that in a setting where not only can anything happen but everything must eventually happen the author has too much room for a simple get-out-of-jail-free skip to the next reality. And McDonald\u2019s treatment of his quantum universe full of assassins (some with Matrix-style kung fu moves others, briefly but memorably, with a quantum-arrowed bow in the mould of a Brazilian Hawkeye or Green Arrow) is a bit familiar.<\/p>\n But, as I said at the start, Brasyl<\/em> is more than the sum of its parts and quite how McDonald suckered me into his story and won me over has been bugging me.<\/p>\n The first is the quality and enthusiasm of McDonald\u2019s writing. I\u2019ve heard some complaints that he occasionally stops everything for the sake of description, and I\u2019ll concede that\u2019s true. But I didn\u2019t mind, perhaps because when he does indulge himself, he does it with such energy that I found myself caught up in his wonder. There is, sometimes, the sense of him setting out his research simply because he found it interesting, but so did I, so I forgave him for the most part. Perhaps my one exception would be the extraordinary perspicacity of his eighteenth century characters, who when presented with improbable technological marvels show a too remarkable an acuity in their ability to predict potential applications.<\/p>\n Another part of the appeal of Brasyl<\/em> is the quality of his characters. I was particularly taken with the Jesuits, and Father Luis Quinn\u2019s story (a cross between Apocalypse Now<\/em> and The Mission<\/em>) was the thread that most engaged me.<\/p>\n Quinn\u2019s plot thread is the one with the most resonance and depth. The mixture of religious and political colonialism, of the struggle between Quinn\u2019s violent nature and his desire to be a better man, and the conflict between Quinn and Father Diego Goncalves \u2013 the renegade priest he has been sent to bring to justice \u2013 contain all the novel\u2019s core philosophical conceits. The struggle between predetermination and free will, the point of individual action in a universe where everything must happen, the struggle between a characters\u2019s inclination and their \u201cbetter\u201d self are all most eloquently and effectively laid out in Quinn\u2019s struggle through Amazonia, the discoveries he makes and the fight he puts up in defence of his city of miracles. In truth, I could happily have read the whole novel set in this time line and cast aside the others.<\/p>\n That said, however, the other stories are by no means make weights. The struggles of the cross-dressing, multi-faceted Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas in his futuristic Brasil constantly watched by the Angels of Perpetual Surveillance are well handled, and feature two of the novels best setpieces – the description of the vast dumping ground and a neatly concocted heist. If I found Marcelina Hoffman\u2019s present-day Brasil the least gripping of the three segments, her story is ultimately the one that reveals most about the world McDonald has created and so can hardly be dismissed.<\/p>\n Finally, though, as an unashamed plot-junky, the reason I forgive Brasyl<\/em> some of its relative shortcomings was because I enjoyed the pacing, the way it picks up a head of steam as it steamrollers toward its conclusion and the way the ends tie themselves up satisfactorily in the final pages. True only one of the story threads actually reaches what one might call a definitive conclusion \u2013 but the final page feels like the right place to stop.<\/p>\n Ian McDonald is an accomplished writer and to say that Brasyl is not quite as good as River of Gods<\/em> (not as mind-blowingly alien, not as packed with future-shock moments and not as revealing about its characters or their world) is not to criticise it \u2013 Brasyl<\/em> has faults (some in the book, some perhaps in the reader) but is still a very, very good and a proper page-turner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is a book that, for me, ended up being more than the sum of its parts. There was quite a lot here that I found disappointing, at first, but as McDonald interleaves the three different plot threads across three different worlds\/times I found myself being drawn by the story and worrying less about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22],"tags":[69,43,46],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s27AP7-brasyl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1778,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions\/1778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}