The Natural Way of Things - Charlotte Wood (2015)

Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things and Cixin Liu’s The Three Body Problem have only one thing in common: they have both won major awards. Cixin won the 2015 Hugo Award and it has just been announced that Wood has won the relatively new Australian award for female writers, the Stella Prize. From that common point both diverge, with Cixin’s novel standing as a brilliantly fresh take on an old science fiction theme, with quality writing and relatable characters; Wood’s novel is thematically heavy-handed, stylistically flawed and unrelentingly bleak. My dislike of this novel could mean that I’m a lone dissenter, after all the novel has garnered many positive reviews and literally just as I finished reading it the result of Stella Prize was announced; but if so I’m not afraid to be a lone voice in the wilderness because any judgement of a novel’s worth is a mixture of objectivity and subjectivity and I can’t deny the fact that I did not enjoy this novel at all.

The Natural Way of Things explores the particularly important and relevant issue of the misogyny that is an inherent feature of our patriarchal society and its sometimes close relationship with the nastier side of capitalism. The novel opens with two young women, Yolanda and Verla, who are struggling to awake fully from a drugged stupor and make sense of alien surroundings. They soon find that they are being held captive along with a group of other young women in an abandoned outback farm. Their immediate captors are two men, Boncer and Teddy, and a woman, Nancy, who seem to be in the employ of a nefarious corporate entity.The novel’s plot is not presented as a challenging mystery the reader can enjoyably try to solve, rather it is an allegory for the manner in which women can be treated by the patriarchy. Just why the women are being held captive is soon solved once they begin conferring between themselves during the rare times they are not being hounded by a stick wielding Boncer. The novel’s oppressive tone and its serious themes are not unusual in literature and can often be a successful technique to get the reader thinking, however in this case the novel’s effectiveness is hampered by Wood’s gratingly self-conscious writing style. I just could not warm to Wood’s writing and this seriously affected my interest in the plight of the women and what would eventually happen to them.

The Natural Way of Things is a challenge to read, not because it is a brilliant and complex example of contemporary literary fiction, but because it is completely bereft of subtlety and humour. This compromises what would otherwise be the novel’s strong points, such as the friendship between Yolanda and Verla and the psychological challenges the women face as they attempt to stay alive when things don’t go as planned for the captors. Another problem is that the two male characters are basically caricatures. Boncer is like a walking talking definition of misogyny and no one is surprised that despite his confident way with a stick and propensity to bark orders he is essentially insecure. Teddy is a cliched surfer dude who practices yoga when he’s not being Boncer’s sidekick or smoking dope while complaining about the bouts of nagging his ex- girlfriend put him through. The female characters do develop over the course of the novel, however the allegorical necessity for many of them to still be hapless victims by the end the novel proved to be a serious weakness. When the ending finally arrived I threw the book down onto the vacant seat next to me on the train, hoping that I would forget to take it with me when I disembarked.

I feel almost guilty for disliking The Natural Way of Things so thoroughly, after all Charlotte Wood spent a great deal of time and effort writing it, and believe me, it is a difficult thing to actually write a novel, let alone a good one. There is no doubt that the novel explores worthy themes and I am under no illusions regarding the nature of the patriarchal society we live in, however rather than causing me to think about these issues seriously I just couldn’t get past the novel’s flaws. This was a book club read, so I’m wondering how my fellow members will react to the novel during next week’s meetings. I have a feeling that it could go the way of that other infamous prize winner, The Finkler Question, when 33 of the 35 book club attendees thoroughly disliked the novel. For a long time now I wondered whether I’d ever read another novel as completely dreadful as The Finkler Question. Finally I believe that I have and that means that The Natural Way of Things suffers the ignominy of joining The Finkler Question on this blog as being only the second book to be rated as truly and utterly reprehensible.

The Three Body Problem - Cixin Liu (2008): Translated by Ken Liu (2014)

Cixen Lie has been described as China’s Arthur C. Clarke, which is mighty praise indeed. The Three Body Problem won the 2015 Hugo Award in a year beset by controversy caused by a rogue group called ‘The Sad Puppies’ who claimed that the award was unfairly favouring work that represented minority groups, rather than solely on merit. Ursula Le Guin referred to them as “..insecure white guys”, which pretty much sums that issue up. Pay the ‘Sad Puppies’ no mind because The Three Body Problem is quite brilliant and a worthy winner. Cixin takes a well worn science fiction trope and manages to make it all shiny and new, something that is a difficult undertaking in a genre in which pretty much any and every idea has been given a good thrashing.

Science fiction was severely restricted in China for most of the 1980’s, which makes sense considering just how subversive the genre can be in the hands of the right author. The novel’s very existence indicates that things have obviously significantly changed in China, but even more significant is that the novel begins in 1967 during China’s Cultural Revolution, using that era’s shocking events as an unlikely first step in a plot that continues to unfold in unexpected ways. I began the novel knowing nothing of its contents, which meant that I had the rare pleasure of trying to work out what was going on and then finding out that I was wrong. With this in mind I will reveal very little about the novel’s plot. What I will say however is that The Three Body Problem is a beautifully paced novel; keeping the reader intrigued in the slower sections and then enticing with hints and reveals as the novel progresses. Cixen’s style is economically precise, not wasting a word or scene as it flows ever onward. Ken Liu, a science fiction author in his own right, is a skilled translator, even providing footnotes to explain certain important cultural points.

Although plot building and scientific concepts are certainly Cixin’s strong points, the novel’s principle protagonists, Ye Wenjie and Wang Miao, are complex enough to make them both interesting and relatable characters. Ye Wenjie’s extreme experiences during China’s Cultural Revolution the 1960s are shocking and the resultant damage to her teenage psyche is central to the novel. Wang Miao, a nano materials scientist living during our time period, is drawn into an investigation of strange and unexplained happenings within the science community. Reluctantly Wang becomes involved in the bizarre world of a virtual online game that challenges participants to solve the difficult ‘three body problem’. Wang’s experiences in the three body game, his dealings with a secret society of scientists called 'The Frontiers of Science' and the mysteries surrounding both result in a sinister undertone that only becomes more prevalent as the plot develops. The science concepts presented during the course of the novel are realistic, but Cixin plays with them in a way that inspires both awe and fascination, particularly during the novel’s endgame. The result is a seriously addictive novel that I found difficult to put down, which is a rarity for me these days.

A film adaptation of The Three Body Problem will soon be released in China and if they get it right it will be an exceptional film. Hopefully it will become available in the West. Half way through reading the novel I discovered that it is only the first part of a trilogy called Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The second book, which has just been published in English, is called The Dark Forest (2015). The third, Death’s End (2016), is fortunately due out later this year. Initially I was disappointed that the story would be spread out over three novels simply because narrative greed was getting the better of me, however after reading the novel’s send half I was pleased that there would be more to follow. I feel sorry for those ‘Sad Puppies’ (actually, I don’t really) because if science fiction of this quality is emerging from China then Western dominance of the genre and its most coveted awards may well be on the wane.