{"id":2929,"date":"2016-10-22T15:19:01","date_gmt":"2016-10-22T14:19:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2929"},"modified":"2020-04-22T02:38:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T01:38:58","slug":"book-review-occupy-me-by-tricia-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/?p=2929","title":{"rendered":"BOOK REVIEW: OCCUPY ME BY TRICIA SULLIVAN"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"occupy-me-by-tricia-sullivan\"<\/a>The overwhelming sensation left at the end of Tricia Sullivan\u2019s strange, awkward, new novel is of things straining and stretching and struggling to be free. This is true of the characters, all of whom seem to be constantly pushing against something literal and\/or metaphorical, but also true of the book itself \u2013 it feels as though the story, the very fabric of the book is stretching and struggling to contain itself. There\u2019s so much packed in here, and at such conflicting, awkward angles, that it\u2019s as though the paperback covers might, at any moment, tear themselves asunder and the whole lot will\u00a0flop, exhausted and spoilt, on to the floor. That Sullivan juggles it all so deftly, so that disaster is not just avoided but that\u00a0a sort of triumph is delivered, is to her great credit. But, for the reader, I have to confess, the journey was not always comfortable.<\/p>\n

At one level this is a straightforward book \u2013 a nowish\/near-futurish thriller in which money and oil and intrigue lead characters around the world from exotic locales to, well, Edinburgh. Pace Industries, a rapacious oil company, is trying to recover stolen money and a mysterious briefcase.\u00a0 The briefcase is in the possession Dr Sorle, the physician who cared for the former oil executive, financier and embezzler \u2013 Austen Stevens. But Sorle is also \u2013 it quickly emerges \u2013 something much stranger than that. And, behind all the thriller elements, driving itself to the surface through the book’s thin skin, is a story about time travel, a giant flying dinosaur, alien birds whose habits include collecting the \u201cwaveforms\u201d of the lost, entropy, the end of the universe and Pearl, the lost angel.<\/p>\n

Normally, at this point in a review, it is customary to provide a brief summary of the plot of the novel under consideration. That is very difficult with Occupy Me<\/em>. At its heart is Pearl, an \u201cangel\u201d with wings that fold into higher dimensions and an urge to mend people. Pearl works for the \u201cResistance\u201d \u2013 a group of time-travellers pushing against mankind\u2019s destiny, straining through small acts of kindness, we believe, to nudge humanity into a better future. But neither they nor Pearl know exactly who or what she is and there is distrust and confusion and, as noted, a lot of pushing and shoving and straining to understand.<\/p>\n

Structurally, I found Occupy Me <\/em>hard going for the first third and, I admit, I put the book down several times and resisted picking it up again. The opening sections are choppy, quite hard to follow and the story takes some time to begin to cohere \u2013 the struggle is clear but the purpose of all that grunting and shoving isn\u2019t and I became frustrated with the book.<\/p>\n

It is possible that, if I had not been sent this book to review, I might never have finished it. But, if I had walked away, I would have denied myself what becomes an intriguing, mind-expanding, often very funny and very effective science fiction thriller. The threads, at least most of them, pulled loose in the book\u2019s opening do eventually weave themselves back together into a tapestry that isn\u2019t just a recognisable representation of the world but a map that encompasses a complex and unstable multi-dimensional universe. This landscape tips and wobbles and pitches the reader across many plains of existence and yet still manages to dumps us, in the end, with a sense that we have been through something complete and understandable. It\u2019s a very clever trick.<\/p>\n

The fact that the novel does not shatter and scatter into incoherence is largely down to Sullivan\u2019s success in creating engaging characters. Her protagonist, Pearl, is both a perplexing and frustrating puzzle and a rounded and convincing person \u2013 someone who the reader wants to succeed and whose story we want watch develop. Pearl, whose physical characteristics play with the iconography of angels, has parts missing and those parts have left a hole in her memory. Amnesia is an overused trope and I groaned slightly as it became clear that here was another hero with crucial blanks that can\u2019t be filled until the plot demands it. But, actually, Sullivan does a rather good job in mixing things up so that the plot device doesn\u2019t feel too familiar and the \u201creveal\u201d \u2013 when we discover what Pearl is, where she came from and how she fits into the broader scheme of things \u2013 is so far out of leftfield that any accusation that this was just another retread of a Bourne-style thriller plot is\u00a0left flopping helplessly like a hapless dinosaur in puddle of oil (possible spoiler there).<\/p>\n

As the novel progresses it also gathers a memorable and intriguing a cast of supporting characters. Sorle was, and was not, scooped up half dead in Africa by Pace Industries and used as a poster boy for their \u201cphilanthropic\u201d works. His detachment from his own culture \u2013 he was given a Western education and became a respected doctor \u2013 and his anger at the men and system that have pillaged his homeland, bringing war and disease, gives Occupy Me<\/em> another layer of struggle and another layer of depth.<\/p>\n

And then there is Alison, who I might have fallen slightly in love with. She\u2019s a vet who \u2013 just when she believes her life\u2019s ability to surprise had passed \u2013 grows into someone more confident and more capable and altogether more bad-ass then she ever expected. She\u2019s a really nicely handled character and if her blossoming feels a touch unlikely, it\u2019s one of the more pleasant stretches required by this book.<\/p>\n

Occupy Me<\/em> is not a book that grabbed me from the off. Reading it took work, it required me to give it the benefit of the doubt. In the end, though, it was a book that repaid my efforts handsomely. Once things started to click into place it accelerates quickly \u2013 the jumbled components of the opening coming together into a well-oiled and fast moving whole that offers both humour and excitement. It\u2019s a memorable thriller, a mind-expanding lump of science fiction and, throughout, the writing is flecked with gemlike turns of phrase.<\/p>\n

A book worth the struggle.<\/p>\n

Occupy Me<\/em> by Tricia Sullivan (Gollancz, 2016)
\nReview originally published in BSFA’s Vector<\/em> 284<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The overwhelming sensation left at the end of Tricia Sullivan\u2019s strange, awkward, new novel is of things straining and stretching and struggling to be free. This is true of the characters, all of whom seem to be constantly pushing against something literal and\/or metaphorical, but also true of the book itself \u2013 it feels as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[15],"tags":[69,73,47,43,156,46,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27AP7-Lf","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929"}],"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=2929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2933,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2929\/revisions\/2933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.mmcgrath.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}