found drama

How can you expect
a happy end in a book
where Hitler still reigns?

Though a bit slower to start than I expected, Farthing was (overall) an outstanding allegory on fascism disguised as an alternate history novel disguised as a murder mystery. By the time you’re about one-quarter to one-third of the way through it, you will have trouble putting it down. The attention to the language is excellent ¹ and author Jo Walton pays peculiar attention to certain banalia like apparel, cooking, and eating.

The narrative structure follows a curious A/B pattern with odd chapters written 1st person (as Lucy Kahn) and even chapters written 3rd person (as Carmichael). It falls into a good rhythm that helps to control the pacing and the various reveals.

Walton’s use of the alternate history platform seems to be a device to cast the setting of the murder mystery. The chapters that follow Carmichael have a nod to the classic pulp mysteries ² and honor those tropes such as re-hashing the events of the crime and narrating through theories about that crime.

One thing I feel disinclined to comment upon is the plausibility of this alternate history. Walton gives an oblique nod to Philip Roth’s novel, The Plot Against America ³ that makes me suspect that if Roth’s alternate post-WWII world “works” then the story presented in Farthing could be grafted onto that timeline equally well. My knowledge of the WWII-era politics and military history run a bit thin however and I am hesitant to render an enthusiastic “it could have happened”. That said, there is a bit of fearful symmetry between Farthing and the post-9/11 United States; this seems especially the case as you race through those last fifty pages telling yourself that it will be all right, that there is still a chance for a happy ending, even as you turn into the last chapter.

Review originally published on GoodReads.com.

1. Though I found myself pining for a bit of Irvine Welsh-style slang and cockney.[↩]
2. I’m thinking Raymond Chandler, in particular.[↩]
3. Which I will admit that I have not read; but “the book jacket edition” sure informs the oblique reference to “President Lindbergh”.[↩]

About Rob Friesel