Review of “Chrysanthe" by Yves Meynard
Apr. 4th, 2015 06:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blatherskiteJust finished Yves Meynard’s Chrysanthe, and find myself unsure of how to respond to it: it’s a complex work of fiction and critique that I’m still unpicking as I write this, and in the end, I’m not 100% sure I fully understood what Meynard was trying to achieve here. Probably the best bet will be to break this review into two parts: the story, and what’s going on behind the story.
First, the story: Christine is a young girl living in a world similar to our own, but with a few differences that slowly emerge and that make it clear how unusual her situation is. Like many youths, she believes she’s been stolen from a fairy tale kingdom and left to live with an unloving guardian (a standard trope in fiction), and in her case, it’s true. (Because the story is told from multiple points of view, it’s clear that her belief is real, not a delusion created in response to childhood abuse. More on that abuse later...) Her father, a hero who emerged fully incarnated out of legend and with no past life, was fated to take the throne away from the former king. As a standard-issue good guy straight from central casting, he indulges himself in an act of mercy and banishes the sons of the slain king instead of killing them outright -- an error so egregious it’s hard to imagine any feudal society would have failed to learn this lesson of history. Needless to say, they’re not happy about this, and they took measures to spirit away Christine, the sole heir to the throne of Chrysanthe. This is intended to both to leave the throne vulnerable to usurpation and to cause great emotional distress for the King.
Chrysanthe is the one true world, but there are many “made” (imaginary) worlds that surround it, and there’s a gradient of unreality as you move progressively farther from that center of the universe. Christine’s captors take her so far from Chrysanthe, down into the depths of this universe of the imagination, that nobody has been able to find her by means magical or mundane for more than a decade. This despite efforts by the court mage, a Merlin-esque character out of legend, to send many magically endowed knights questing to find her. Eventually, one (Quentin) does find her and brings her home. Mayhem then ensues as years of suppressed consequences from her abduction play out, throwing the realm into civil war between the sons of the deposed king and the current ruler.
The writing is powerful and occasionally beautiful, there are a few clever plot twists, and there are some snarky pokes at things that need a good-humored but hard poke (endless fantasy series that just seem to drag on forever, including a certain one I won’t name that has been stalled for 3 years between books; male-dominated religions). There are also viciously damning critiques of things that need to be damned, such as the horrors of recovered-memory psychology to support an agenda rather than reveal the truth -- something so odious that, in hindsight, it makes astrology seem respectable and innocuous. There’s an interesting portrayal of “heroes” as archetypal characters who spring into existence from some kind of metafictional author rather than being born in the conventional way and evolving subsequently through hard-earned experience. There’s a godless but no less real “Law” that lurks behind everything, and that protects heroes and kings (if you harm a king or his kin, you suffer horribly and usually fatally).
Last and best, there are many characters who rise well above the standard fantasy roles from central casting: Melogian, the sorceress who has been thrust unprepared into the role of court wizard, is probably the most interesting among them and the most fully realized character. Quentin, though superficially the perfect knight, “sans peur et sans reproche”, also has surprisingly interesting depths and imperfections. Mathellin, partly from Chrysanthe and partly from a made world, is also a fascinatingly complex villain. The main villain, Casimir, is deliciously evil, though almost cartoonishly so. Good people suffer, bad people suffer, and Good does eventually triumph in the end, though at a high cost and with a high body count that is not limited to the spear-carriers.
Unfortunately, many problems undermined this interestingly different story context for me. Let’s start with the less-important ones: The central conceit of the story, that Chrysanthe is the one true world and that all the made worlds surrounding it are nothing but shadows was done long ago and better by Zelazny in his Amber series, but in Amber, the surrounding multiverse is real, and that makes what happens in it seem more weighty somehow*. The city of Tiellorn that is the capitol of this eternal realm (it’s no coincidence its name evokes “Tanelorn”) was done long ago and better by Moorcock in his “eternal champion” series; in Moorcock’s world, Tanelorn always struck me as much less real and interesting than the multiverse surrounding it, and so it is in Chrysanthe. These two choices make the context for Chrysanthe seem more derivative than something interestingly new or a commentary on the old.
* On the other hand, the notion of these fictional worlds surrounding the real world is undoubtedly a reminder that when all is said and done, fiction may be more interesting than reality, but in the end, “it’s just fiction, folks”.
I found the seemingly random choice of names from a range of linguistic backgrounds increasingly uncomfortable as the story progressed; it never seemed to fit, and it was like a stone in the sole of my shoe after a while. (I suspect that having been critiqued for precisely this sin by Meynard in a story workshop, perhaps I’m more sensitive to this point than most would be. In any event, I found this ironic.) I also found that the story dragged in many places. Though (my “derivative” grumble notwithstanding) the story world is innovative in many ways and interesting in the abstract, it became boring and flat in its eventual impact. On this level, it reminded me strongly of The Worm Ourobouros by E.R. Eddison. The story did eventually gather momentum, and when it finally got moving, it rolled smartly along to a satisfying if predictable climax, but it simply took too long to get there. A related problem is that too much of the book relies on what has been called an “idiot plot”: the good guys do a series of things so stupid that I had a hard time imagining their choices to be possible. (Meynard also showed a surprisingly poor understanding of hand-to-hand combat and of medieval-ish warfare in several places that threw me out of the story.)
Most problematic is the issue of Christine’s recovered memories: When her foster father cum jailkeeper in the made world where she’s been stranded discovers that she has an imaginary friend, past the age when such friends tend to disappear, she is sent to a particularly unpleasant child psychologist, who forces her to recover memories of childhood abuse; he struggles hard, despite the absence of anything remotely resembling credible evidence, to convince her that her real-world father back in Chrysanthe pimped her out to a series of pedarest rapists. To be clear, these memories are fictional and eventually Christine comes to realize this, but it creates something she must struggle against throughout the book. Male writers are often criticized for using rape in an effort to give their female characters a past trauma they must overcome; it’s convenient and horrifying, but it’s problematic for several reasons. I think Meynard does a better job than most, but in the end, this nastiness proves to be entirely unnecessary. Although Christine dominates the first three-quarters of the book, she proves ultimately inconsequential to the story, and the stain her traumatic past casts over the story both persists as a taint on the reading experience and ultimately has little to do with the story or its resolution.
And here we must dip into the problem of metafiction, in which the real story is about far more than the surface story. In a fascinating inversion of the usual approach, the “real” world at the center of the story, Chrysanthe, is far less interesting and racially and culturally diverse than the “made” (fictional) worlds that surround it. In many ways, it’s frankly boring, and part of that is likely to be Meynard consciously deromanticizing the notion of the joys of being royalty. But it’s also a clue to what Meynard is doing here: reminding us that fiction can be more than just words on paper or a recap of the often-mundane nature of our real lives; fantasy should be transformative and transcendant, not just a recasting of our metaphorical legs in fictional concrete. The name Chrysanthe, French for “chrysanthemum”, is another clue to what’s going on: this is a flower with multiple concentric rings of petals grouped tightly around a core, and thus an apt metaphor for a central real world surrounded by rings of invented worlds. But this is also a metaphor for a densely layered structure, and the kind of thing you see dissected in lit-crit deconstructions. The lack of reality of the “made worlds” is an interestingly metafictional commentary on how often authors treat their characters as disposable pieces of paper, ready to be crumpled up and thrown in the trash (as Meynard hints in one explicit metaphor towards the end of the story); he does not make that mistake, and his characters feel as if they have weight and consequence.
As I worked through this analysis, I gradually came to believe that Meynard’s goal in this book was to show how limiting it can be when fiction presupposes hard and fast, arbitrary rules; this is most obvious in his system of magic, which appears to be entirely arbitrary and to follow no rhyme or reason. Although it’s interesting to critique genre in this way, I found that this ultimately defeated its purpose by undermining my interest in the story world; in effect, the deconstruction detracted from the story rather than enhancing it. That’s not a problem in a literary essay, but it’s fatal to fiction, where the story must come first. (I have a similar problem with Gene Wolfe’s writing; it’s highly competent, but it increasingly bores me to tears. On the other hand, if you love Wolfe, you’ll probably like Chrysanthe.)
Ultimately, I see Chrysanthe as the kind of book that will be discussed in graduate literature seminars more than it will be fondly remembered by casual readers who are merely looking for an engaging story that they may return to periodically in future years to reread and enjoy once more. Chrysanthe is recommended as a thought exercise, but despite several fascinating characters and a potentially intriguing context, I have a hard time recommending it solely for pleasure reading.
First, the story: Christine is a young girl living in a world similar to our own, but with a few differences that slowly emerge and that make it clear how unusual her situation is. Like many youths, she believes she’s been stolen from a fairy tale kingdom and left to live with an unloving guardian (a standard trope in fiction), and in her case, it’s true. (Because the story is told from multiple points of view, it’s clear that her belief is real, not a delusion created in response to childhood abuse. More on that abuse later...) Her father, a hero who emerged fully incarnated out of legend and with no past life, was fated to take the throne away from the former king. As a standard-issue good guy straight from central casting, he indulges himself in an act of mercy and banishes the sons of the slain king instead of killing them outright -- an error so egregious it’s hard to imagine any feudal society would have failed to learn this lesson of history. Needless to say, they’re not happy about this, and they took measures to spirit away Christine, the sole heir to the throne of Chrysanthe. This is intended to both to leave the throne vulnerable to usurpation and to cause great emotional distress for the King.
Chrysanthe is the one true world, but there are many “made” (imaginary) worlds that surround it, and there’s a gradient of unreality as you move progressively farther from that center of the universe. Christine’s captors take her so far from Chrysanthe, down into the depths of this universe of the imagination, that nobody has been able to find her by means magical or mundane for more than a decade. This despite efforts by the court mage, a Merlin-esque character out of legend, to send many magically endowed knights questing to find her. Eventually, one (Quentin) does find her and brings her home. Mayhem then ensues as years of suppressed consequences from her abduction play out, throwing the realm into civil war between the sons of the deposed king and the current ruler.
The writing is powerful and occasionally beautiful, there are a few clever plot twists, and there are some snarky pokes at things that need a good-humored but hard poke (endless fantasy series that just seem to drag on forever, including a certain one I won’t name that has been stalled for 3 years between books; male-dominated religions). There are also viciously damning critiques of things that need to be damned, such as the horrors of recovered-memory psychology to support an agenda rather than reveal the truth -- something so odious that, in hindsight, it makes astrology seem respectable and innocuous. There’s an interesting portrayal of “heroes” as archetypal characters who spring into existence from some kind of metafictional author rather than being born in the conventional way and evolving subsequently through hard-earned experience. There’s a godless but no less real “Law” that lurks behind everything, and that protects heroes and kings (if you harm a king or his kin, you suffer horribly and usually fatally).
Last and best, there are many characters who rise well above the standard fantasy roles from central casting: Melogian, the sorceress who has been thrust unprepared into the role of court wizard, is probably the most interesting among them and the most fully realized character. Quentin, though superficially the perfect knight, “sans peur et sans reproche”, also has surprisingly interesting depths and imperfections. Mathellin, partly from Chrysanthe and partly from a made world, is also a fascinatingly complex villain. The main villain, Casimir, is deliciously evil, though almost cartoonishly so. Good people suffer, bad people suffer, and Good does eventually triumph in the end, though at a high cost and with a high body count that is not limited to the spear-carriers.
Unfortunately, many problems undermined this interestingly different story context for me. Let’s start with the less-important ones: The central conceit of the story, that Chrysanthe is the one true world and that all the made worlds surrounding it are nothing but shadows was done long ago and better by Zelazny in his Amber series, but in Amber, the surrounding multiverse is real, and that makes what happens in it seem more weighty somehow*. The city of Tiellorn that is the capitol of this eternal realm (it’s no coincidence its name evokes “Tanelorn”) was done long ago and better by Moorcock in his “eternal champion” series; in Moorcock’s world, Tanelorn always struck me as much less real and interesting than the multiverse surrounding it, and so it is in Chrysanthe. These two choices make the context for Chrysanthe seem more derivative than something interestingly new or a commentary on the old.
* On the other hand, the notion of these fictional worlds surrounding the real world is undoubtedly a reminder that when all is said and done, fiction may be more interesting than reality, but in the end, “it’s just fiction, folks”.
I found the seemingly random choice of names from a range of linguistic backgrounds increasingly uncomfortable as the story progressed; it never seemed to fit, and it was like a stone in the sole of my shoe after a while. (I suspect that having been critiqued for precisely this sin by Meynard in a story workshop, perhaps I’m more sensitive to this point than most would be. In any event, I found this ironic.) I also found that the story dragged in many places. Though (my “derivative” grumble notwithstanding) the story world is innovative in many ways and interesting in the abstract, it became boring and flat in its eventual impact. On this level, it reminded me strongly of The Worm Ourobouros by E.R. Eddison. The story did eventually gather momentum, and when it finally got moving, it rolled smartly along to a satisfying if predictable climax, but it simply took too long to get there. A related problem is that too much of the book relies on what has been called an “idiot plot”: the good guys do a series of things so stupid that I had a hard time imagining their choices to be possible. (Meynard also showed a surprisingly poor understanding of hand-to-hand combat and of medieval-ish warfare in several places that threw me out of the story.)
Most problematic is the issue of Christine’s recovered memories: When her foster father cum jailkeeper in the made world where she’s been stranded discovers that she has an imaginary friend, past the age when such friends tend to disappear, she is sent to a particularly unpleasant child psychologist, who forces her to recover memories of childhood abuse; he struggles hard, despite the absence of anything remotely resembling credible evidence, to convince her that her real-world father back in Chrysanthe pimped her out to a series of pedarest rapists. To be clear, these memories are fictional and eventually Christine comes to realize this, but it creates something she must struggle against throughout the book. Male writers are often criticized for using rape in an effort to give their female characters a past trauma they must overcome; it’s convenient and horrifying, but it’s problematic for several reasons. I think Meynard does a better job than most, but in the end, this nastiness proves to be entirely unnecessary. Although Christine dominates the first three-quarters of the book, she proves ultimately inconsequential to the story, and the stain her traumatic past casts over the story both persists as a taint on the reading experience and ultimately has little to do with the story or its resolution.
And here we must dip into the problem of metafiction, in which the real story is about far more than the surface story. In a fascinating inversion of the usual approach, the “real” world at the center of the story, Chrysanthe, is far less interesting and racially and culturally diverse than the “made” (fictional) worlds that surround it. In many ways, it’s frankly boring, and part of that is likely to be Meynard consciously deromanticizing the notion of the joys of being royalty. But it’s also a clue to what Meynard is doing here: reminding us that fiction can be more than just words on paper or a recap of the often-mundane nature of our real lives; fantasy should be transformative and transcendant, not just a recasting of our metaphorical legs in fictional concrete. The name Chrysanthe, French for “chrysanthemum”, is another clue to what’s going on: this is a flower with multiple concentric rings of petals grouped tightly around a core, and thus an apt metaphor for a central real world surrounded by rings of invented worlds. But this is also a metaphor for a densely layered structure, and the kind of thing you see dissected in lit-crit deconstructions. The lack of reality of the “made worlds” is an interestingly metafictional commentary on how often authors treat their characters as disposable pieces of paper, ready to be crumpled up and thrown in the trash (as Meynard hints in one explicit metaphor towards the end of the story); he does not make that mistake, and his characters feel as if they have weight and consequence.
As I worked through this analysis, I gradually came to believe that Meynard’s goal in this book was to show how limiting it can be when fiction presupposes hard and fast, arbitrary rules; this is most obvious in his system of magic, which appears to be entirely arbitrary and to follow no rhyme or reason. Although it’s interesting to critique genre in this way, I found that this ultimately defeated its purpose by undermining my interest in the story world; in effect, the deconstruction detracted from the story rather than enhancing it. That’s not a problem in a literary essay, but it’s fatal to fiction, where the story must come first. (I have a similar problem with Gene Wolfe’s writing; it’s highly competent, but it increasingly bores me to tears. On the other hand, if you love Wolfe, you’ll probably like Chrysanthe.)
Ultimately, I see Chrysanthe as the kind of book that will be discussed in graduate literature seminars more than it will be fondly remembered by casual readers who are merely looking for an engaging story that they may return to periodically in future years to reread and enjoy once more. Chrysanthe is recommended as a thought exercise, but despite several fascinating characters and a potentially intriguing context, I have a hard time recommending it solely for pleasure reading.