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You guys know I love Joan Aiken, in all her fabulously cracked-out glory. Most of what I've read is her YA stuff, but the one of her forays into Gothic novels that I've read happens to be one of my VERY FAVORITE takes on the genre, the amazing A Cluster of Separate Sparks, which features giant retractable organs, kitchen oubliettes, and swarms of angry killer bees. It is AMAZING.
Naturally then when I saw Voices in an Empty House, another adult Joan Aiken, at the one-dollar sale at the charity bookstore where I volunteered, I snatched it up. But - hmm. I was fully prepared for cracktastic developments, but Joan Aiken here attempts to be writing a serious and philosophical novel about love and death and the possibly-negative impact of a Great Person on other people's lives with all the melodramatic plot twists of a Gothic, and while it is possible for that to work in theory, I'm not sure that really works here. Also, it's highly problematic.
I mean, the book starts out interesting, and I do quite like what she does with sort-of protagonist Thomas, who has severe arthritis and also occasional inconvenient attacks of thirty-minute amnesia - all right, so it's not so much that I find the occasional inconvenient attacks of thirty-minute amnesia plausible, but as a plot device it is hilarious and exactly what I would expect of Joan Aiken. But then there is the other protagonist that Thomas has come out to look for, brilliant teenaged Gabriel, who has a serious heath condition and has decided he is so disgusted with the HYPOCRISY Of ALL ADULTS EVER that he is going to run away and house-squat in NYC until his inevitable demise. Everyone in the book loves Gabriel and spends the whole book searching for him. Even the people who are secretly trying to assisted-suicide him for his fortune are also sort of in love with him. I have zero patience for him. That is the first problem.
The second problem is Gabriel's mother and her incestuous twin brother (I am trying to remember the last time I came across a pair of male-female twins in fiction who were NOT incestuous!), both of whom were sexually abused as children and have therefore grown up to be evil bisexuals whose moral decay is expressed via kinkiness both within and without the incestuous relationship. (Well, all right, only the uncle is explicitly bi, the mom just enjoys threesomes. Actually, the uncle may be gay-except-for-the-incest. The important thing regardless is that he is MORALLY DECAYED.) These characters are not treated entirely unsympathetically, but one can I THINK see the problem here.
And then the rest of the plot twists involve MURDERS and SECRET ADOPTIONS and BACKSTORY ANGST and a number of things that Thomas has conveniently forgotten due to his thirty-minute amnesia, which would all make for a perfectly serviceable Gothic if Joan Aiken were not so clearly trying to be seriousfaced about it, and also if so many of the twists were not utterly unsurprising and/or facepalmingly problematic. Also, a sad lack of killer bees and surprise telepathy. I think I need to start skimming the back-cover copy for oubliettes and elephants, because it's clear that the more cracked-out the plot twists, the more enjoyable the Aiken.
Naturally then when I saw Voices in an Empty House, another adult Joan Aiken, at the one-dollar sale at the charity bookstore where I volunteered, I snatched it up. But - hmm. I was fully prepared for cracktastic developments, but Joan Aiken here attempts to be writing a serious and philosophical novel about love and death and the possibly-negative impact of a Great Person on other people's lives with all the melodramatic plot twists of a Gothic, and while it is possible for that to work in theory, I'm not sure that really works here. Also, it's highly problematic.
I mean, the book starts out interesting, and I do quite like what she does with sort-of protagonist Thomas, who has severe arthritis and also occasional inconvenient attacks of thirty-minute amnesia - all right, so it's not so much that I find the occasional inconvenient attacks of thirty-minute amnesia plausible, but as a plot device it is hilarious and exactly what I would expect of Joan Aiken. But then there is the other protagonist that Thomas has come out to look for, brilliant teenaged Gabriel, who has a serious heath condition and has decided he is so disgusted with the HYPOCRISY Of ALL ADULTS EVER that he is going to run away and house-squat in NYC until his inevitable demise. Everyone in the book loves Gabriel and spends the whole book searching for him. Even the people who are secretly trying to assisted-suicide him for his fortune are also sort of in love with him. I have zero patience for him. That is the first problem.
The second problem is Gabriel's mother and her incestuous twin brother (I am trying to remember the last time I came across a pair of male-female twins in fiction who were NOT incestuous!), both of whom were sexually abused as children and have therefore grown up to be evil bisexuals whose moral decay is expressed via kinkiness both within and without the incestuous relationship. (Well, all right, only the uncle is explicitly bi, the mom just enjoys threesomes. Actually, the uncle may be gay-except-for-the-incest. The important thing regardless is that he is MORALLY DECAYED.) These characters are not treated entirely unsympathetically, but one can I THINK see the problem here.
And then the rest of the plot twists involve MURDERS and SECRET ADOPTIONS and BACKSTORY ANGST and a number of things that Thomas has conveniently forgotten due to his thirty-minute amnesia, which would all make for a perfectly serviceable Gothic if Joan Aiken were not so clearly trying to be seriousfaced about it, and also if so many of the twists were not utterly unsurprising and/or facepalmingly problematic. Also, a sad lack of killer bees and surprise telepathy. I think I need to start skimming the back-cover copy for oubliettes and elephants, because it's clear that the more cracked-out the plot twists, the more enjoyable the Aiken.
I have a counterexample!
Anyway, I have a counterexample for the incestuous opposite-gender twin siblings. Lorill and Leonie Hastur, from Darkover, are not incestuous, not because Marion Zimmer Bradley refuses to write about incest*, but because Leonie is a celibate (okay, self-castrated) Keeper.
*So, twin sisters Ellemir and Callista, in The Forbidden Tower? They get married to two husbands who are best friends. Callista has serious, serious issues with sex, having been largely raised and mentally and physically programmed by Leonie Hastur (see above), and she only manages to consummate her marriage in a four-way orgy with her husband, and her sister, and her sister's husband, and some sex pollen.
CANON.
Re: I have a counterexample!
Oh, Marion Zimmer Bradley. In a way I am really sorry I did not hit the Darkover books when I was fourteen, because that would have been the perfect time, and now I fear it is too late to appreciate them as they are meant to be appreciated.
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I will be looking out for more better ones though!