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metaphorosis's review against another edition
2.0
reviews.metaphorosis.com
2 stars
Alternate past and alternate future mingle with a proto-memoir by Paul Park.
I first encountered Paul Park via The Starbridge Chronicles, a brilliant SF trilogy that was somewhat opaque, even difficult. I followed that to Celestis (disappointing), and The Gospel of Corax (very good, if surprising in nature). When his subsequent series A Princess of Roumania came out, I bought it right away - excited to at last see another Park novel, and about Romania, which I know a bit about. I wound up as disappointed as I had been excited. I read the entire series, but it never got better, and in fact got worse. I found it to be a mess of complex relationships, vague mysticism, and implausible alternate history. Still, the Starbridge trilogy sticks with me, so I looked forward to reading this new book.
Paul Park is, like Richard Grant and A. A. Attanasio, one of those authors whose work has both intensity and intelligence - an overtly intellectual tone that nonetheless reads well. You find yourself giving them the benefit of the doubt on opaque passages - willing to belief that maybe there's a layer of subtlety you've missed. Grant does best at bring the intellectual down to earth. Attanasio sometimes gets so carried away with layers of meaning that he forgets to offer a comprehensible story.
As for Park, I'm not sure what he's doing. In this novel, he's deliberately created layer upon layer upon layer, braided, interwoven, and any other metaphor you can think of. They're intensely self-referential - every character is a creator, affecting other realities, pasts, and futures through a sheer effort of will, often expressed via writing.
The book comes in several sections. In the first, two alternate historical narratives are tumbled together, deliberately confusing which character is the creator and which the creation - if either is at all. While an interesting concept, I found it difficult to immerse myself in it. This not because of the complexity - it's possible to get lost, but not too hard to keep track of what's happening if you try. But I found that more often than not, after setting the book down, I wasn't particularly interested to pick it up again. I just didn't much care about the characters.
Sadly, that was just as true of the second section, which is again complex meta-fiction mixed with what purport to be autobiographical sketches of Park and his family as expressed in a novel written by one of his writing students. There's only a mild effort to connect this with the earlier section, and I found it all of only mild interest.
The final section is told as further memoir by a future Paul Park, and draws together the overlapping elements of a literary family. There are many persons and many generations in play, and I simply didn't have the interest to try to keep them straight.
Park has taken a couple of concepts and images, and repeated them in multiple variations, as one might with a musical piece. Unfortunately the result is less harmony than cacophony. He also gives the appearance of trying to construct a novel from 'found' narratives - snippets from his family's old letters and books. If they're real, they're not well suited to the purpose. If they're invented, why make them quite so dull?
Park seems to have overthought and overplanned the book. It's hard to tell whether it's a complex conceit that he simply hasn't pulled off, or a clever idea that he's struggled too hard to turn into an excercise in self-conscious sophistication. In either case, it didn't work for me. It came across instead as a batch of unrelated parts held together with a thin layer of speculative fiction. As with Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet, there's clearly a lot here that would bring out new perspectives on re-reading, but I can't see ever wanting to go back.
I'm disappointed, especially because I was expecting more novel and less memoir (even if invented memoir). I'm also starting to consider the possibility that in fact,Park is just not as good as I first thought. I'm still likely to be interested in his next book, but if that one's not good, I may give up.
Finally, and because this is a novel so determined to be meta-fiction, it seems only fair to quote some of Park's own language in this review. (All from an advance reader e-copy).
- "Traci believed decisively in cause and effect. You can always recognize that in an author, especially from a sketch. Every scene is arranged in careful order. Each one has a purpose." - an approach that Park clearly disdains.
- "[T]he mere act of writing something down, of organizing something in a line of words, involves a clear betrayal of the truth. Without alternatives we resort to telling stories, coherent narratives involving chains of circumstance, causes and effects, climactic moments, introductions and denouements. We can’t help it." - This is clearly meant to be a key theme of the book, but the fact is that Park does not provide coherent narratives with clear causes and effects. That's intended, but it just doesn't work here.
- "I turned toward the screen again, searching for a way to calm myself and to arrange in my mind these disparate narratives." - I wish that Park had realized just how disarranged the result remains.
- "I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told." - advice that Park certainly steered clear of in this case.
- "It's all meta-fiction, all the time." - the best possible summation of the novel.
- "I would choose at random various sentences and paragraphs, hoping to combine them into a kind of narrative, or else whittle them into an arrow of language that might point into the future." - exactly what Park appears to have done in turning his own family documents into a book.
NB: Received free copy via Net Galley.
theartolater's review against another edition
3.0
I never know where books that are ambiguously experimental sit on the spectrum. All Those Vanished Engines is one of those strange books that pulls from real life and from alt-history/science fiction to provide a strange tale overall that doesn't always work for a lot of reasons.
On one story we have a post-Civil War situation with the North and South split. The second a more modern post-World War II tale with a lot of references to Second Life, the third act a futuristic alien tale, all tied together with a writing of sorts that transcends all of them.
Why doesn't this work? I didn't find a ton to care about, and the settings felt abstract enough to not engage me the way I expected to. I love alternate history and futurism and this just didn't have enough of either. It subverted a lot of stuff, but just not incredibly well.
I get why people like this book, and I'm actually interested in reading more of Park's work. This one, though? Not quite my thing, and I can't recommend. Closer to a 2.5.
On one story we have a post-Civil War situation with the North and South split. The second a more modern post-World War II tale with a lot of references to Second Life, the third act a futuristic alien tale, all tied together with a writing of sorts that transcends all of them.
Why doesn't this work? I didn't find a ton to care about, and the settings felt abstract enough to not engage me the way I expected to. I love alternate history and futurism and this just didn't have enough of either. It subverted a lot of stuff, but just not incredibly well.
I get why people like this book, and I'm actually interested in reading more of Park's work. This one, though? Not quite my thing, and I can't recommend. Closer to a 2.5.
commander_zander's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
She is writing a story about a boy in another world. He is also a writer. He is writing her story.
elden's review against another edition
1.0
I won this book on goodreads as a first reads giveaway. I unfortunately did not finish this book. I simply could not get into it as the plot was all over the place. There was too many threads and I just could not get into it. The idea behind the story was great, and if the author would have stuck with the story that was happening at the beginning I would have enjoyed it way better. Maybe I stopped too soon but I did get too about the 200th page and was just not enjoying it.
abookishtype's review against another edition
1.0
I am left with one question after reading Paul Park's tripartite novella, All Those Vanished Engines. That question is "What the fuck?" All my other questions about this strange book can be summed up in that one useful phrase...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.
kmccubbin's review against another edition
5.0
I heard an interview with John Crowley recently (through which I discovered this book) where he discussed what was essentially a catch 22 in science fiction and fantasy writing which was that expectations tended to be quite rigid in the forms so that someone like himself or Paul Park, who are writing in a way that could expand the genres, tend to be dismissed. It can't grow because it hasn't grown.
Charles Stross wrote something similar recently about how the idea of real world building has stagnated and how he doesn't read much science fiction anymore.
So I'm begging you, here. Step outside of your comfort zone. Do some heavy lifting. Read your Crowley and your Stross and your Paul Park. Grow the genre!
This is not an easy book. In fact I would recommend keeping a small list of names of characters and how they relate to each other because you will find names recurring over and over again, but pasted onto different characters. Some of the great revelations of the thing are when you find an antecedent to parts of the fiction within the "memoir". (Park is the definition of an unreliable narrator here, which he's not afraid to tell you.)
The book has been described as an elaborate puzzle, which is fair, but in some ways the artistry reminds me more of that of a talented boxer, bobbing, weaving and stick! And then gone again. It dares you to pin it down (Is she a woman on a horned beast, or a horned woman on a shaggy beast or a horned woman on a horned beast?) and then, and I've never seen this in a book before, expresses regret for tricking you.
And that's what this book is about... regret. (I can't help but imagine professor Rosenheim wincing at my figurative quote marks and extensive parenthetical asides... and these ellipses.) It tells you over and over. Regret over the loss of a Civil War battle or not being strong enough in your religion or succumbing to another man or not being able to care for your father or your autistic child... Literal armies of regret.
This is a work of brilliance. Take your time, it's a short book. When something sounds familiar, skim back through the book to find it. Luxuriate in the negative space where the engines once thrummed.
https://youtu.be/Y8IOkEFfq0g
Charles Stross wrote something similar recently about how the idea of real world building has stagnated and how he doesn't read much science fiction anymore.
So I'm begging you, here. Step outside of your comfort zone. Do some heavy lifting. Read your Crowley and your Stross and your Paul Park. Grow the genre!
This is not an easy book. In fact I would recommend keeping a small list of names of characters and how they relate to each other because you will find names recurring over and over again, but pasted onto different characters. Some of the great revelations of the thing are when you find an antecedent to parts of the fiction within the "memoir". (Park is the definition of an unreliable narrator here, which he's not afraid to tell you.)
The book has been described as an elaborate puzzle, which is fair, but in some ways the artistry reminds me more of that of a talented boxer, bobbing, weaving and stick! And then gone again. It dares you to pin it down (Is she a woman on a horned beast, or a horned woman on a shaggy beast or a horned woman on a horned beast?) and then, and I've never seen this in a book before, expresses regret for tricking you.
And that's what this book is about... regret. (I can't help but imagine professor Rosenheim wincing at my figurative quote marks and extensive parenthetical asides... and these ellipses.) It tells you over and over. Regret over the loss of a Civil War battle or not being strong enough in your religion or succumbing to another man or not being able to care for your father or your autistic child... Literal armies of regret.
This is a work of brilliance. Take your time, it's a short book. When something sounds familiar, skim back through the book to find it. Luxuriate in the negative space where the engines once thrummed.
https://youtu.be/Y8IOkEFfq0g
librarycore's review against another edition
4.0
As a work of postmodern fiction, "All Those Vanished Engines" has a plot twisted in on itself and layered on top of itself, full of self-referential winks and dream-like asides. Is it science fiction? If pressed, I would call it classic magical realism. The reader is never quite sure how much of the weird stuff has actually happened and how much has been created, dreamed, or hallucinated by the narrator(s). The story is told in three parts. Names, places, and events weave in and out of these parts, each of which comment on the family history of the narrator of the second and third parts. The first section almost stands alone as a piece of alternate history fiction, until it's subverted two-thirds of the way through by the intrusion of sci-fi tropes. The second section tells the heartbreaking story of a writer trying to decide what to do with his ailing father and autistic sister after his mother has died. His fragile emotional state is further aggravated by both his painful family history and his relationship with a student of his who is writing a work of fiction that, unbeknownst to her, mirrors his own childhood. The final part of the book takes place in the near-future. The narrator from the middle portion is now an old man, but has returned to the abandoned library of a ravaged city to find out why his life seems to be cursed. The connecting threads of these tales contain ghosts, aliens, lost manuscripts, hidden jewels, and a Civil War event called "The Battle of the Crater," which may or may not have had supernatural significance. Behind all of the narrative gymnastics, Paul Park has written a haunting work about how the decisions of the past, made by family members long dead, inevitably effect our own life and future in ways we will never be able to understand. The researcher and genealogist may uncover pieces of the map, but most of the connecting roads will remain shrouded in the shadow of story.
abetterjulie's review against another edition
1.0
I only read half the book, and that was mostly with confusion and dislike. I finally just couldn't do it anymore. There were glimpses of interesting and well-written work, but not enough to hold me. I think he tried to do something very different, and it just didn't work for me. I wish he had written it straighter because I think he has a lovely voice when he is using it in a language I understand.
gerhard's review
1.0
“It’s all meta-fiction, all the time.”
“I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told.”
These two quotes sum up what I found both fascinating and frustrating about this short novel of three inter-linked meta-narratives by Paul Park. On the one hand, Park rather dazzlingly conveys not only the potential of the written word, but the plasticity of the novel format itself.
We are so habituated to traditional narrative formats that any form of meta-fiction (simply understood as a recursive story, where the beginning and ending are enfolded into a Möbius Strip of multiple beginnings and endings) often takes us out of our comfort zone as readers.
As soon as we have to ‘work’ at a text in order to extract its meaning, the compact between author and reader changes, I think, where the reader becomes a far more active (and culpable?) creator of that particular text and its embedded meaning.
It is not that simple though, for on the other hand, meta-fiction often engages multiple levels of irony and various sleight-of-hand tricks to frustrate the reader in his or her quest for meaning. I think the main aim of this is to force the reader into thinking differently about how the text itself functions as a discrete unit, and the (sometimes contradictory) roles that the author and reader play in this process.
I say ‘contradictory’, because the main bugbear with meta-fiction is this: any reader not habituated to this particular form is unlikely to find any kind of conventional narrative satisfaction or resolution here; and hence is unlikely to read such a book, which defeats the stated purpose of educating readers into reading differently and thinking about texts differently.
The other problem I have with meta-fiction is that it is so self-interested in the mechanics of fiction that it is often hard to connect to the story and its characters emotionally. As I get older, I am finding that I really value an emotional connection to my reading. Yes, I am fascinated by books such as this, but they remain hard work and are often very difficult to connect with.
If this is your first exposure to meta-fiction of any kind, give this one a wide berth. Rather begin with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as a form of meta-fiction ‘lite’. Then again, if you are already a habitué of Mitchell, you will probably be fascinated to find out how far the form can be expanded and twisted in the hands of a dedicated writer like Park.
“I always warned students against complexity for its own sake, and to consider the virtues of the simple story, simply told.”
These two quotes sum up what I found both fascinating and frustrating about this short novel of three inter-linked meta-narratives by Paul Park. On the one hand, Park rather dazzlingly conveys not only the potential of the written word, but the plasticity of the novel format itself.
We are so habituated to traditional narrative formats that any form of meta-fiction (simply understood as a recursive story, where the beginning and ending are enfolded into a Möbius Strip of multiple beginnings and endings) often takes us out of our comfort zone as readers.
As soon as we have to ‘work’ at a text in order to extract its meaning, the compact between author and reader changes, I think, where the reader becomes a far more active (and culpable?) creator of that particular text and its embedded meaning.
It is not that simple though, for on the other hand, meta-fiction often engages multiple levels of irony and various sleight-of-hand tricks to frustrate the reader in his or her quest for meaning. I think the main aim of this is to force the reader into thinking differently about how the text itself functions as a discrete unit, and the (sometimes contradictory) roles that the author and reader play in this process.
I say ‘contradictory’, because the main bugbear with meta-fiction is this: any reader not habituated to this particular form is unlikely to find any kind of conventional narrative satisfaction or resolution here; and hence is unlikely to read such a book, which defeats the stated purpose of educating readers into reading differently and thinking about texts differently.
The other problem I have with meta-fiction is that it is so self-interested in the mechanics of fiction that it is often hard to connect to the story and its characters emotionally. As I get older, I am finding that I really value an emotional connection to my reading. Yes, I am fascinated by books such as this, but they remain hard work and are often very difficult to connect with.
If this is your first exposure to meta-fiction of any kind, give this one a wide berth. Rather begin with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas as a form of meta-fiction ‘lite’. Then again, if you are already a habitué of Mitchell, you will probably be fascinated to find out how far the form can be expanded and twisted in the hands of a dedicated writer like Park.