I was surprised to come across this book review in the New York Times. I try to keep up with at least their teen reviews, although the paper often finds some surprising reviewers for adult genres that are worthwhile for their writing style if nothing else. This review in particular made me wonder about the purpose of a review. Considering the format as that of a short essay, several paragraphs deviate from a particular review of a particular the book. (I'll admit that at the end of the second paragraph, I checked the author's biography to find out if she was a professor.) To me, this reads like an overview of the genre, properly name-checking books that have been well-received in past years and showing that the author is familiar with the general formal of teen books. It's not that I disagree with her assessment, it's that I feel this is background to deciding A) whether Obsidian Mirror is a good book and B) whether Obsidian Mirror is a book that I would enjoy. Ultimately, it's more helpful for me to know that the author has clumsy uneven writing at points rather than whether her book reflects the needs of the core demographic. But that's just my take. Any thoughts?
But if the formula for Y.A. novels is straightforward, writing a good
one is anything but. Truly excellent ones — Philip Pullman’s “Golden
Compass,” Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games,” John Green’s “Fault in Our
Stars” — are saturated in a strangeness and emotional intensity
unmatched by most contemporary adult novels. Their binding commitment to
self-seriousness and minimal irony, handled well, can accomplish moving
stories grounded in psychological frankness, vulnerability and
compassion.
The Welsh writer Catherine Fisher is already an established figure on
the Y.A. scene. Both “Incarceron” and its sequel, “Sapphique,” were New
York Times best sellers. In Britain, her many other books have also
attracted praise, and she’s been a finalist for the prestigious
Whitbread Children’s Book Prize. With “Incarceron,” she hit on a conceit
that passes the narcissistic grandiosity test with flying colors: a
hero caught in a living prison that’s been sealed for centuries, and a
heroine trapped in an oppressive social order itself frozen in time.
Neither an easy situation.
The premise of Fisher’s latest novel, “Obsidian Mirror,” the first in a
trilogy, involves an ancient mirror with enormous and rather sinister
powers. The Chronoptika, as the mirror is known, is a time machine that
can send people into the past. The problem is, though no one really
knows how to use this remarkable device, everyone wants to control it.
The large cast of characters includes the roguish hero, Jake, a
present-day teenager who gets himself expelled from school so he can
(yes) save his lost father; and a morally ambiguous Arctic explorer
named Oberon Venn, who is desperate to bring his wife back from the
dead. (“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do,” he declares, “no one I wouldn’t
sacrifice!”) There’s also Sarah, a visitor from the future who wants to
use the mirror to save her broken world. And within a fairy-realm, a sad
and lovely changeling boy named Gideon longs to escape the capricious
Shee-queen, Summer.
Fisher gets the series up and running deftly. The first few chapters of
“Obsidian Mirror” are especially good, as we watch Jake stage a
daredevil prank during a dress rehearsal for a school production of
“Hamlet” (note: motif of the lost father) and we see Sarah wounded and
disoriented in a present she cannot comprehend. There are baggy bits in
the middle while everyone runs about incoherently and the emotional and
psychological stakes disappear in a plotty scramble of who wants the
mirror and why. But by the end we’re back online, hoping things pan out
well for the assorted dramatis personae. Not shockingly, the book ends
on a cliffhanger.
Fisher’s writing here is uneven, sometimes clumsy, but there are good
bits too, like the scenes in Victorian London where Jake teams up with
an appealing street waif named Moll, who speaks a knockoff Dickensian
dialect peppered with rozzers, cullies, peelers, doss pads, filchers and
drabs. The fairyland passages are convincingly magical, attesting to
Fisher’s deep interest in myth and folklore.
“Obsidian Mirror” is an engrossing, enthralling fiction, adroitly
positioned to reflect the needs of her core demographic. Starting with
Narcissus’ obsession with his own watery image, the search for and
delight in one’s reflection is fundamental to every account of
psychological narcissism, whether healthy or pathological. Fisher’s
adolescent readers, consumed by their own daily struggles as
superpowered beings whom nobody understands, will find their compelling
likenesses in Fisher’s magical mirror.
Sophie Gee, an associate professor of English at Princeton, is the
author of “Making Waste,” a book about 18th-century literature, and a
novel, “The Scandal of the Season.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/books/review/obsidian-mirror-by-catherine-fisher.html?smid=pl-share
