James Morrow (1) (1947–)

SPOILERS. A down-the-rabbit-hole farce on the end of the world and after, it consists largely of people responsible for the conflagration being put on trial for it by people who were supposed to have been born, but never got the chance to. Didn't think I'd be able to get into it, but the writing is superb and much of it is hilarious. And I got totally sucker punched by the ending, which after all the laughter, manages to be heart-breaking. This is a writer in complete control of his craft, show more pulling out all the stops. show less

As World War I ramps up, a group of mentally ill asylum inmates and one art therapist try to sabotage the terrible art of Dr Caligari which is being used to fire up the troops of all nations. Caligari is wily and ruthless and also he has a cat. More great and terrible satire from Morrow - art versus war, art as an engine of war, art as madness, madness as art, madness love and art jumbled together, are either art or love eternal? Funny, fast, clever and sharp as a needle.

Framed as an extended suicide note, the fictionalized memoir stylings of this James Morrow satire reminded me more than a little of the delightful novels of Lee Siegel. Topically, however, it was a fit with my recent read of Kim Stanley Robinson's Lucky Strike, as science fictional reflections on human agency in the atrocity of the deployment of the atomic bomb.

The narrator of Shambling Towards Hiroshima is Syms Thorley, an emeritus monster actor of B-movie fame. While sometimes adverting show more to his 1980s circumstance in the wake of a fan convention at a Baltimore hotel, the book is mostly trained on his past involvement in a secret WWII military project intended to provoke Japanese military capitulation in the face of actual fire-breathing leviathans bred from iguanas.

The book is a quick read, with vivid, often hilarious episodes and an ultimately sobering message. show less

Morrow has tangled often with religion and its sins, so you'd expect he has a lot to say about the history of witch hunting. He spares no punches when describing both the scale of witching hunting in England and the US, and just how horrible it was. But there is much going on in this novel to carry the reader along through the darknss. The novel is written by the soul of Newton's Principia Mathematica. It turns out some books are so real they take on a life of their own, and often turn to show more possessing authors to write more books. The hero of the story is the daughter of an English witch-finder. Her lifelong quest is to end the practice by creating a grand proof that witches can't exist, based on Newtonian scientific principles. The novel includes a series of classic historical story forms, from a child's life in England, to capture by Indians in America, to castaways on a remote island, to a brief time with pirates, and finally an extended witch trial. Newton, Robert Hooke, Benjamin Franklin, and various other characters play important roles. The story is fantastic though not fantasy. I loved it.

Highly recommended. show less