Gene Wolfe

In need of a new location, an American writer of travel guides journeys to a small and obscure Eastern European country where it soon becomes evident that there are supernatural forces at work, but they are not as threatening as the country's corruption and brute forces of bureaucracy.

The Land Across

Bryan Alexander

The Land Across is an entertaining, lighter Gene Wolfe novel. It's a contemporary adventure with fantasy and horror notes taking place in an unnamed, made-up Balkan nation (close to Greece).

The first half or so presents that classic Gene Wolfe feeling of creepiness just below the surface, a sense that something vast and mysterious is just beneath the words you think you understand. You work through symbols and names, hunting for allusions and cryptic references. The story proceeds, then suddenly lunges sideways. Monsters and shudder-worth objects obtrude. It's a weird tale. Dream contents cross into waking life.

But the second half shakes off the fantasy and sets the narrative squarely in daylight. The plot leaves the weird behind and becomes a suspense thriller. Mysteries slide from ontology to crime, and the stumbling narrator becomes a detective, actually a police agent (or "operator"). This is very strange for a Wolfe novel. I'm not sure I approve, but it was an interesting change of pace. Seeing all plot threads neatly dealt with was kind of refreshing.

Concerning that plot: the narrator travels to a very hard-to-get-to nation in order to write a travel book about it. Instead, things happen, and this book is about his adventures. (view spoiler)[Our lad gets busted by bad policemen, thrown into captivity, mixed up with a straying wife, tossed in prison, captured by a cult, impressed by the secret police, battles an evil cult, solves mysteries, finds a treasure, and finally leaves. Along the way he gets several girls, gets better at fighting, and eats a lot. There's also a Hand of Glory, except it really isn't. (hide spoiler)]

S.T. Joshi observes that it's very hard to maintain a weir vibe successfully through an entire novel. A short story's length allows a good balance between surrealism, fantasy, reality, and suspension of disbelief. But after 150 pages or so the reader really wonders how come the police have never raided the haunted house, or how the monsters manage to stay fed all these years. This novel seems to have deliberately defused that tension.

Miscellaneous observations:

The religious element is pretty clear. The narrator grows increasingly religious, while the villains are Satanists. 

A bunch of horror references, starting with Dracula (the title nearly turns into Transylvania), and including Algernon Blackwood ("The Willows").


Narrator seems unreliable, but that doesn't get the reader very far. He plays a lot of fourth-wall games (my favorite being accusing the reader of not paying attention), and they all resolve by the end. Grafton is a pretty simple guy, compared with the usual Wolfe protagonist. Ultimately, I want to think he's... wrong, somehow.

Problems:
1. The politics become weirdly conservative, even reactionary. A cult espouses an extreme conservative position; later, a far-seeing and sympathetic character expresses agreement with them. The country's political system begins as scary, but becomes ultimately familiar and even decent, with a very sympathetic dictator. As this review points out, Grafton ends up quite happy in a very scary place.
2. The treasure's ultimate location is way too easy. (view spoiler)[In the chimney? Where someone could just climb inside and pull it out? (hide spoiler)]
3. The magical plot becomes too realistic. (view spoiler)[What happened to Satan, the man in black? I wish the third guard (reminding me of O'Brien's Third Policeman) hadn't turned out to be the Maximum Leader. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, an enjoyable, engaging, entertaining Wolfe novel. Not the titanic work of art that was Book of the New Sun, nor the complex novel that is Peace, but a pleasure nonetheless.

The Land Across

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