Historical Novels Review - May 2009

RIFLING PARADISE
Jem Poster, The Overlook Press, 2009, $25.95/C$unknown, pb, 336pp, 978-1-59020-048-3

Charles Redbourne, a minor middle-aged English landholder, is forced by a series of unsavory circumstances to flee to Australia in order to make his name as a naturalist.  Living with his uncle’s business protégé Vane on his grand estate just outside Sydney, Redbourne meets Vane’s artistic and headstrong daughter Eleanor, and the boorish Bullen, his guide for his specimen-seeking journeys.

Just as Redbourne and Eleanor begin to understand each other’s strange creative impulses and dark secrets, he is encouraged by her father to depart for his pre-arranged expedition.  Bullen and Redbourne venture into the Blue Mountains to seek more rare and valuable specimens for Redbourne’s collection, and Bullen’s sadistic pleasure.  Their guide, the half-Aboriginal boy Billy, leads them far into the wilderness where both men are faced with the dark and wild places in their own hearts – with disastrous results.

Poster does an excellent job of conveying the codes of Victorian social mores and the ways each of the characters adapted – or not – to the very real restrictions.  His descriptions, both of the strange new landscape and the people in it, are vivid and elegant.

This book is beautifully paced and the characters, for the most part, well realized, particularly Redbourne.  His personal journey as he comes into contact with the beautiful, vast, unknowable wildness of Australia – and Eleanor – is believable, frustrating, and moving.  Poster deftly weaves in themes of environmentalism, love, and the psychological effects of upbringing and family with interesting action and characters.

Thoughtful, vivid, and well-written, this is a very engaging read.  Recommended.

SHAMAN WINTER
Rudolfo Anaya, University of New Mexico Press, 2009, $17.95, pb, 384pp, 978-0-8263-4464-9

In the late 1990s, Albuquerque resident and private investigator Sonny Baca is recovering from his latest run-in with his nemesis, a sadistic nihilist who goes by the name Raven.  When Raven returns and begins kidnapping young girls around New Mexico – while at the same time invading Sonny’s dreams and kidnapping his grandmothers throughout history – the very fabric of Sonny’s past and present is threatened.  

The third in the series of Sonny Baca’s adventures, Anaya’s story is rich with the culture of New Mexico past and present, but the book overall is marred by substandard writing.  From the head-jumping point-of-view shifts, to stilted dialog, to the frankly silly plot points in the late-1990s sections, this is a very promising story with fascinating mystical and spiritual elements undone by its awkward writing.  A stronger editing hand would have been very welcome.  The quality is surprising, given his many awards for his books, including Albuquerque and Bless Me Ultima.

Originally published in 1999, this paperback reissue has some truly fascinating things to say about New Mexico and its peoples throughout history, but only if you can overlook some eyeroll-inducing plotting and surprisingly bad dialog.