Tuesday, February 21, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson

 




Midnight Robber is a 2000 novel by Jamaican-Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson.  The novel earned a Hugo Nomination for Best Novel back in 2000, only to lose to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which is a choice that in retrospect (and really at the time) looks pretty bad, but well that's what you get with an award by popular vote.  The novel is written pretty much entirely in Jamaican Patois, with its science fiction setting takes place on two worlds: a world called Toussaint settled by people of largely Afro-Caribbean descent and a prison/exile planet in another dimension called New Half Way Tree, where the humans there struggle to survive in various ways among alien megafauna and indigenous/alien peoples.  The result may be difficult for many western - especially White - audiences to read, even before we get to the book's very difficult material.  

But even English readers unfamiliar with Patois or Pidgin languages should be able to read this book comfortably after a bit, and if they make the effort, they will find a book that is incredibly deep, as it weaves Afro-Caribbean folklore and ideas to tell a story about abuse, about moving past it and guilt, about the various often awful ways humanity responds to challenge and adversity, about colonialism, prejudice and ignorance towards indigenous cultures, and more.  The book is really well done, featuring both a main narrative, told by a mysterious narrator in asides, and occasional aside stories that interrupt the narrative to convey the feelings and changes that have gone on.  It's a story that is a coming of age story, and could arguably be considered YA, but should definitely appeal to readers of adult ages as well (although it's certainly not fit for most kids under high school age).  

TRIGGER WARNING:  Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, and Incest.  These issues are dealt with well, as the plotline deals in large part with our protagonist struggling with these things, and with the guilt of having suffered them and having taken action to stop them - nothing here is gratuitous, and little to nothing of it happening is shown on page at least in regards to sexual abuse.  But it is still a rough plot to deal with as a result.  

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
This is the story of Tan-Tan, the Robber Queen.  

Once, Tan-Tan lived on the planet Toussaint, a technologically advanced planet - seemingly peaceful - as the child of the Mayor, Antonio, and her beautiful mother Ione.  She was raised by her parents with the help of amazing technology, and idolized the stories of the midnight Robber, which she played at in costume as much as she could.  But when her father Antonio caught her mother cheating on him, it set into motion events that would result in Antonio fleeing to the exile planet of New Half-Way Tree...with child Tan-Tan dragged along with him.  

New Half-Way Tree is not a technologically advanced planet, or a peaceful one, with human settlements populated by exiled criminals and the planet covered in dangerous alien creatures and the strange indigenous species, the Douen.  It's a rough place for a child to grow up, even if one can find one of the more equitable human settlements.  But for Tan-Tan, the biggest threat to her may be her own father, a man who sees Tan-Tan not as his beloved child, but as a woman to do with as he wants.....

These circumstances would birth Tan-Tan's flight from society, her discovery amongst guilt of a whole new world that the humans could not have imagined, and her transformation into the legendary Robber Queen, who visits the human settlements to try to put things right.....
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The above description doesn't do this book justice, but it's hard to really explain this book - plus I didn't want to spoil any of the events, and thus stuck with the summary that sort of gets to what the book itself foreshadows early through the narrative.  For example, a large part of this novel is how the language is not straight English, but Patois, with the book even opening on a poem from David Findlay about stealing the "torturer's tongue" for ones own use.  And then the story is told from an unnamed narrator (sort of named in the end) explaining that this is an "Anasi story" (as in Anansi, the African storyteller and trickery god/spider) about Tan-Tan and her origins, with the narrative occasionally breaking into commentary by the narrator and occasionally being interrupted by stories that feature Tan-Tan but may not quite literally fit into the main narrative's timeline....but do fit metaphorically in the place Tan-Tan's character has developed at that point of the story.  This is a very non-Western method of telling a story - which works really really well unsurprisingly coming from someone with Hopkinson's skill.  

The main narrative deals with the story of Tan-Tan and her struggle to become her own person as she endures incredible hardships that are not her own fault, despite what she may herself believe.  So she has to deal with parents bickering over affairs and neglecting her, then getting roped unfairly into exile, and then dealing with an abusive father - one who rapes her and gets her pregnant with child repeatedly, forcing her to kill him in self defense.  But there are no shrinks here, nor is there any support here to provide her with defense and help in these situations - with the town they've settled in being run by the justice of a single man, who finds murder is murder no matter the justification, forcing her to go on the run all alone.  And so the story has her struggling with guilt over what she has done, with the belief that she has done wrong, even when she was only doing what she needed to survive, and the rest of the book, through travels in the bush, running from her father's grieving angry widow, and occasionally having moments where she escapes her own grief and guilt to becomes something, the legendary Robber Queens, up through the book's climax where the costume of the Robber Queen and the comfort of it in a certain circumstance allows her to overcome that grief and to move past it.  The book's story does an incredible job both literally and metaphorically showing her struggle with that grief and guilt, and if the book only dealt with this idea, it would be an effective and worthy one. 

But there's a lot more here in the setting and concepts of Midnight Robber that elevate the story (even besides the language choice).  You have the various ways that the human settlements on New Half-Way Tree organize for example - one settlement by the rules of one man with power with solitary confinement for any breaking of the rules, one by slavery/indenture, and another one with a more socialized and equitable governing structure.  You have the prejudice and lack of understanding of the humans towards the Douen indigenous people, who they all think of as stupid or disgusting, but really are just alien, with different but fully intelligent ways and cultures, even if those ways aren't fully compatible with human living (as poor Tan-Tan finds out).  And all of this works really well together to hit on the serious ides and themes involved here.  

I'm writing this review poorly again, as I often do with deep books.  But this is a winner, and a definite worthy read that I think people should make time for.  




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