Review: Vox

One of the following two quotes is by the author of an apparent current Best Seller. The other is by Raymond Chandler. I read both books in the same week. This is a review of the former as I don’t feel I have the skills to review the latter.

“A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly to the carpet.”

“Whether Patrick cried or not, I can’t tell. He’s all business now, making notes and looking up forgotten stoichiometric symbols in a chemistry text he’s opened on the desk.”

The fact that Amazon, or perhaps the publisher, amended the formal title of this book to “Vox: The bestselling gripping dystopian debut of 2018 that everyone’s talking about!” was a red flag.

The next was that this is a Debut Novel — billed as the beginning of a new period of time, one in which we live with Christina Dalcher’s cultural presence and lament its late arrival. While Christina may think she’s written a clever satire on Earth’s drift towards a dark future, she has in fact produced a book so badly written you cannot pay attention to whatever story she is trying to tell.

I am no literary expert. Far from it. I’ve not really read any proper story books. But the quality of writing that gets one into the bestseller cannon is so regrettable that I cannot let it pass without comment.

Here’s a brief recap of the story, or at least the bits I can remember. I’d call this a plot spoiler but that’s too kind to the concept:

• It’s not that far in the future but America has gone and fucked it all up because women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day. How can you police that, you think? Easily, because they have this bracelet see and it electrocutes them if they jabber on past their alloted verbal century.

This is the plot flaw I cannot get past. What energy source does Dalcher imagine can deliver a lethal bolt of electricity, repeatedly, from a device smaller than a watch which is never recharged, a few years ahead from a world that can’t keep a phone charged all day? I Just Couldn’t Get Passed This, let alone how this device is able to accurately count words. It is never mentioned. Never. And if we had this unbelievable source of energy then why is there Not A Single Other Technological Advancement Anywhere?

Back to the story:

• Women are all quiet and cook and stuff and can’t work. It’s the Handmaid’s Tale but with Apple Watches. Our female protagnoist is some kind of brain expert, like its author (that’s how she knows all the brain words!) so You Know That This Could be Based on Science, except it’s really not because it’s too insane. The president or some other man in charge — not sure — needs a brain person as this man is dying except he’s not they are just trying to make women permanently quiet which is very bad and makes brain experts Really Angry.
• But our heroine is flawed! She is having an affair for no reason at all other than so she can secretly fuck some Italian scientist and the only reason he is Italian is so she has a country to run away to that’s not Canada (and it’s really useful she can speak Italian as you shall see).
• The government needs her brain whizzery so much they let her take off her anti-speaking bracelet. Then a monkey is shot in a lab and I have no idea why that even happened. Then it sort of ends and someone dies — her husband I think. Did I mention her husband works for the president? A happenstance of such improbability that just happens to make the story just about make some sense.

Now some cruel analysis. Instead of a long and tortured review instead I present for you a long and tortured list of quotes from this book for you to wonder how it ended up on shelves and e-book readers in such blockbuster volumes. I have honestly not made any of them up.

Science-y sounding stuff

“Then take a single surgical glove — the kind with no powder — from the dispenser on the counter.”

Such relief that the single glove (surgical), that was dispensed, was not the kind with powder. No, it had absolutely no relevance whatsoever.

“Behind this page, there are the usual Gantt charts — the project manager’s tool of choice.”

A completely unnecessary insight into the distracting noise in the author’s brain? Bit unfair on project managers.

This is How People Talk, Right?

“We both laugh at his attempt at Southern fry-cook slang.”

I didn’t.

“Well, unless you’re preggers.”

Preggers!

“We never wasted time cooking in this place. Not food, anyway.”

Crystal meth?

“Destroying them is a different pile of wax.” “Ball of wax.” The correction comes naturally to me, so naturally I don’t hear it over the single word screaming inside my brain: Trepanation.

Are there two voices in this head?

“Italy,” he repeats. “Yes. You know, land of pizza and ass-kicking coffee.” Unlike the crap Andy brought in, I think.

Yeah, Andy, you dick.

Weird Endings That Suggest The Author Is Unsure About Her Own Characters

“I do know one more thing, Jean. When your husband took that bullet, I swear he was smiling.” “Thanks,” I said. “That’s good enough for me.” And it still is.

Because people love to die.

Maybe next year, I wrote back. And I meant it.

!

“At this time of year, I always fool myself into thinking winter won’t come. But it will. It always does.”

Fucking winter. Every fucking time.

Poetic and profound

“My coffee has grown cold, but I drink it anyway.”

Coffee features a lot. I first thought it was some kind of Clever Narrative Trick, a thematic reference to, I don’t know, a lost shared pleasure? But it’s more likely, I think, that the author drank a lot of coffee and when you are no good at having ideas you just grab what’s nearest. Oh and there is that Italian man and they drink coffee dontcha know.

“I place my hand on the surface. It’s cold, but not as cold as Jack.”

MEOW! Poor Jack — he’s SO COLD like THAT SURFACE although to be fair we don’t really know how cold that surface actually is because IT’S NOT MENTIONED.

“Rage boils inside me, through every vein and artery, until the pressure builds to a trapped scream.”

I am no engineer, but when pressure builds I don’t think it ends up trapped.

“The non sequitur slows him, as if someone has just offered him ice cream, then given him a choice between anchovy and tuna.”

Perfect Irony. I think she means anchovy or tuna ice cream — which I don’t think exists, making this AN ANALOGY. But WHY CHOOSE THIS VERY COMPLICATED COMPARISON FOR NO REASON AT ALL?

“I take the quickest shower of my life, comb out unwashed hair, and dress in loose jeans and a linen shirt that I don’t have to tuck in. Screw the dress code; I’m hot, rushed, and pregnant.”

I have no idea how long her second longest shower was, but I guess if you are HOT, RUSHED and PREGGERS then men, you better fucking GET OUT OF THE WAY.

“The mice squeak at the intrusion into their space.”

Squeak!

She’s outgrown them, but juice in a plastic cup has always been a happy alternative to juice all over the Honda’s windshield.

Honda!

She works with the same steadiness on Jackie’s counter [the bracelet with out of this world energy resources] as Lin did when trepanning the chimpanzee.

There is so much going on here it’s overwhelming. Lin, is the woman who happened to drill a hole in a chimp’s head, but why this makes any sense as a comparator is beyond me. It sounds unhinged. But then drilling holes in heads is pretty out there, I guess.

Odd References to Ikea

“And the Ikea furniture whose veneer fell off a year after we’d assembled it.”

Is this a clever metaphor for her marriage? No idea. Or did they build it wrong? But unfair to Ikea if so.

“And cursed at the Ikea table instructions that defied minds with multiple degrees.”

In case you didn’t get this, the writer, and the protagonist both have multiple degrees and I guess can’t make Ikea furniture for shit. So she’s APPEALING TO ALL THOSE PEOPLE LIKE HER who have all these degrees and STILL CAN’T UNDERSTAND THOSE DAMNABLE INSTRUCTIONS, right? Yeah?! You’re with me girlfriends! It’s not me at fault — it’s Ikea’s! Idiots!

Romance

“I bite and moan and scratch like a feral cat on amphetamines.”

I don’t know all of mankind, but I don’t think this is the kind of experience we are looking for. And who finds a feral cat only to dose it up on illegal street drugs? Sick people.

“He’s the picture of cool, and I wish he didn’t make it so easy to be in love with him.”

Italians. Always making things easy and coffee.

“After one round of love, we go at it again, this time slowly and unrushed.”

I don’t know all of mankind, but I don’t think this is realistic.

“I feel his hand on the small of my back as he leads me toward the farmhouse. The gesture is so simple, and complex at the same time.”

The complexity of this either flew way over my head, or, most likely, doesn’t exist.

“When he finally softens — in every sense of the word…”

Oh come on. Really?

Statistics Chat [sic]

The stats looked good. Fine p values showed significance; solid chi-squares and experimental design told me he knew his statistics shit.

There is an above average use of statistical verbiage to make sure you get that the author is Some Kind of Science Person even if it will mean NOTHING to 99 per cent of the intended readership.

“That’s a sample of one, Jean. One. You know more about statistics than to hang your hat on a single subject.”

Jean, you are either good at this stats stuff or you’re not.

I’ve Just Realised the Plot Makes No Sense and I Need to Bridge a Narrative Chasm

“Lorenzo tells me. ‘I’ll translate.’ ‘You both know American Sign Language?’ I say. ‘Why?’ He shrugs. ‘You speak some Vietnamese, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Okay. Point taken.’

The ridiculous narrative aside, I kid you not, we suddenly learn on page 200 odd that there is a hidden, shared, fluency in sign language which just happens to mean two people can communicate with others not knowing. And Vietnamese? Why? What?

“His Italian is on a par with his Swahili, so I know he won’t understand a thing.”

Imagine! It’s happened again! If you got away with a device the size of Jupiter — keep going! That woman who fancies that perfect weird Italian man speaks Italian. AND NO ONE ELSE DOES. How useful. I have no idea how good his Kiswahili is — but presumably half of eastern Africa are fine with the implied insult.

My Reader is Both a Moron and Incredibly Clever

“Whether Patrick cried or not, I can’t tell. He’s all business now, making notes and looking up forgotten stoichiometric symbols in a chemistry text he’s opened on the desk.”

Stoichiometric symbols!

“Macchinetta.”

Nor me.

“I don’t have an eidetic memory — not even close.”

I bet you don’t.

Enough.

You get the point. There is no way this can have got past human beings unless they were happy to cynically chuck out any attempt to fill a niche or ride on the coattails of better writers trying to merge chick lit, science fiction, pop-neuroscience, semi-satirical dystopia and statistics text books. I do not recommend you read.

Annex: Raymond shows us how to do it

I mentioned Raymond Chandler. I thought I’d end with a few examples of engaging, witty and well-crafted writing. These are barnstormers, and I am only a third way through.

• “He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck.”
• “A hand I could have sat in came out of the dimness and took hold of my shoulder and squashed it to a pulp.”
• “He looked poor enough to be honest, but he didn’t look like a man who could deal with Moose Malloy.”
• “His large loose chin was folded down gently on the tie.”
• “She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blond, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger, and isn’t clean enough to be gray.”
• “The voice grew icicles. “I should not have called you, if it were not.” A Harvard boy. Nice use of the subjunctive mood.”
• “I’m afraid I don’t like your manner,” he said, using the edge of his voice. “I’ve had complaints about it,” I said.
• “It was money all right, a huge wad of currency. I didn’t count it. I snapped the rubber around again and stuffed the packet down inside my overcoat. It almost caved in a rib.”
• “It was a nice face, a face you get to like. Pretty, but not so pretty that you would have to wear brass knuckles every time you took it out.”
• “I didn’t say anything. I lit my pipe again. It makes you look thoughtful when you are not thinking.”
• “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
• “The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on.”
• “That put me about a foot from him. He had a nice breath. Haig and Haig at least.”
• “He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.”