Maul

This is another re-read of a longtime bookshelf inhabitant, a sci-fi novel I hadn’t read for so many years that I couldn’t remember what happened at the end. It stood up pretty well to re-reading, but definitely had more of an impact on me when I was younger. The reasons for this include, a) back then I’d rarely come across a sci-fi novel with a majority-female cast of characters, b) it is partially set within a shopping mall and explores the Ballardian notion of oppressive buildings promoting madness, c) I related to the main character Sun, as she finds violence far more interesting than boys and is obsessed with the collapse of civilisation. The last was probably the most important; Sun’s point of view remains the best thing show more about the novel in my opinion.

As to what ‘Maul’ is actually about, it has an Alice In Wonderland-esque ‘Which dreamed it?’ structure. Two parallel plot threads occur, one of which might be a hallucinatory allegory for part of the other, or two parts of reality bleeding into one another. This is left ambiguous. One thread consists of Sun and her friends heavily armed adventures in a shopping mall, the other is set in a future where most humans with a Y chromosome have been wiped out by plagues. In the latter, a group of female scientists have a man called Meniscus imprisoned in order to study the weird bugs he is infected with. A particularly effective aspect of both threads in the satire on consumer culture and advertising. The world-building of a ‘Y-plague’ decimated world is made vivid by snippets of advertising, suggesting that consumer culture has adapted easily to the conditions. (Now that I think about it, perhaps there is a subtextual framing of consumerism as an especially resilient virus?) I was less impressed with the treatment of gender, which seemed not dissimilar to that in [b:Life|387250|Life|Gwyneth Jones|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1213847759s/387250.jpg|376887]’s; both books focus on the Y chromosome as central to gender.

I enjoyed the reread for nostalgia and my continued appreciation of Sun, however I can see why I forgot the ending. It isn’t especially notable. In fact, probably the most memorable thing about the novel is the beginning. It’s the only book I’ve ever read that opens with a woman’s thought-processes while masturbating. show less

Maul is told with two parallel stories. Teenage fashionistas in a mall getting their fashion & gunplay on & a male test subject plugged into a game in a habitat at a research facility in a female dominant society. They're fascinating threads on their own that converge in a very interesting way.

Sun Katz is the main teen we follow at the maul & she's a great character. From the first page, it's pretty clear that she's got other things going on than just what shoes & lip gloss she's going to wear for the day. Sun & her girlfriends wear holstered guns as fashion accessories & the inherent problem in this becomes apparent when a typical squabble at the Estee Lauder counter between two groups of girls goes all hail of bullets & smashed up show more perfume displays. It's all a bit video game & pulpy but it's fun & engaging to read what happens as Sun flees the scene & has other "adventures" in the maul. I know that this is just half of the story but I found it all so engaging that I quite feel it could have stood on its own.

Meniscus is the test subject in the other story & he's been infected with Az97. He's often in pain & he's blue. He has an experience that almost kills him & he's basically taken out of NoSystems (the Mall game). His handlers are women who work at the research facility & I can honestly say, they're all odious. But in a deliciously terrible way that you can't stop reading about. We learn about the society in which they live & a bit about how women's ascendancy & men being relegated to something called a Pigwalk came to be. It's a twisted society but not so different in some ways from the one in which we exist so it's relatable. There's a murder-by-passive-infection plot that is put into motion by one of the women at the research facility & Arnie Henshaw (a prime Pigwalk contender) & we meet Starry Eyes/Carerra. He is a lot of the worst of people in general but he's also one of the most unvarnished & honest players here, so you don't really want him to die. I admit that I did tire of him abusing Meniscus rather quickly & no one giving a damn. In fairness, SE was treated mercilessly as well by the handlers & society in general. This side of the story is a little slow going at first but by the middle of the book you can see how both sides are running in tandem & where they converge. Then it's a ripping time where everything in both stories is amped up to the finish where both wind up on a highway with a lone wolf. Game over.

I would say there's a "big reveal" where you realize what is real & what isn't but I didn't really have that (maybe others do). The hallmarks are there throughout & it just winds tighter & tighter between the stories as you go along. I found it satisfying but have to admit that I was a little sad that some of the characters I adored were only virtual. Funny thing to say about characters in a book. It was a nice bit of mind twisting to try & determine what was influencing who & when from each side of the story.

This was the first book I've read by Tricia Sullivan but it won't be my last. I bought my copy in paperback as it wasn't available on Kindle (but is being reissued on Kindle for the AmazonUK store). I hope Ms. Sullivan will be offering her titles on the US Amazon Kindle shop soon. show less

I think Maul is a brilliant book. It was on the shortlist for the 2003 Arthur C. Clark Award. Unfortunately, for me it is so brilliant it cannot be fully understood, hence the 4-star rating instead of five.

There are two plot lines. One is about a young man, possibly autistic, who has been infected with a deadly plague virus and through unclear abilities is able to interact with it inside his own body. The other is about a teenaged girl who participates in a shootout in a mall.

The mall storyline is the more engaging story. The point of view explores all areas of the young teenager's thought, all the passing thoughts about shopping, sex, fear, concern for friends, etc. The virus storyline takes a long time to begin to move forward.

I was show more around page 200 of 260 before I was finally able to discern a connection between the two storylines. After that point it rapidly became more clear what the connection was, but at no point until the last couple of pages were any characters in common between the two storylines, and even there it is not clear how the common character made a transition from one to the other. This is a weakness of the book. However, a re-read of the book would probably reveal suble connections that are only observed after one has the general idea. I'm very tempted...

The most wonderful quality of the book is the author's remarkable commentary on society and brash writing style that brings one very close to the mind of a bright and philosophical girl. Two quotes will suffice to illustrate.

"Then I saw a live picture of myself in one of the TVs. I stuck out my tongue just to be sure. It's a well-known fact that TV is more real than real life so when people say get a life what they really mean is, get on TV. Because either you're watching TV or you're on it, and if you're doing neither it's a little like Schrodinger's cat, neither alive nor dead till observed. So when I saw myself on the video screen I was pretty happy because it meant I was alive."

"The world. It's supposed to be big, but it's very small. It was never "out there," it was always in here. The dark purple carpet of Vinnie's with its scuff marks from thousands of sneakers of kids standing at the game consoles pouring themselves into the action. The fish-tank luminosity of the pinball machines. It doesn't matter how many movies you've seen where reality gets twisted because of some psychokinetic kid, or where somebody's dreams walk around on the street, or where a character violates a time paradox and everything goes bonkers. In those movies, there's always a neat solution. There's always some wise person to come along and explain things, give advice, help the hero fix whatever's wrong. Well let me just tell you, it's a whole nother story when you've got the reality in your face. Talk about trying to assemble a barbecue with no instruction manual! Try and assemble this!"

Despite the youthfulness of the protagonists, this is not a book for kids - it's definitely a book for adults, and in particular for thinking adults. I have no doubt that a second reading would help clarify a somewhat confusing book. The lack of clarity stands in the way of the book reaching a satisfying conclusion, though when one comes to the end one does understand that one has come to a critical point in the history of the world and the balance has been tipped in favor of mankind - though womankind may yet remain in charge.

If you enjoy brilliant writing and unusual viewpoints with sharp commentary on society, I highly recommend this book. Just be prepared to feel sure you have not wrung the book dry at the end of your first reading. show less

Two worlds, mysteriously connected. There's the world of Sun and her girl gang, shopping for cosmetics, until—well, read it yourself. And there's the world of Meniscus, a male human clone used for medical research, in a feminist society where the most of the male population was killed by a plague.

The mystery got me hooked, and I've even read some chapters twice to find more clues. (Because of EFL, I tend to overlook some subtleties anyway, even more so when a chapter is written in Femalese. KrayZglu is the soe-eyed one, right?) It's Bonus Gift Day at Estée Lauder.

Procreation is a recurring theme in this book, e.g. the evolutionary benefits of sex. Non-FYOS.

hmm. kinda silly, on the whole, what with the broad caricatures. but given the subject matter, interesting all the same.

Strangely the VR world has much better characters and is more realised than the 'real' world. A great ride.

http://nhw.livejournal.com/59559.html

I couldn't see the connection between the two storylines, one of a savage gun battle between girl-gangs in a contemporary shopping mall, and the other a future setting of women experimenting on one of the few remaining men in the world. There was a sort of hint that the contemporary setting was in some way an artifact of the nanobots in the body of the hero of the future setting, but it didn't really hang together for me. Having said that, the two storylines taken separately are convincingly and breathlessly written.