The Clockmaker's Daughter

This is a novel with many intertwined stories centering around the Birchwood Manor in 1862 England and continuing for the next 150 years. The novel jumps back and forth between the 1800s, 1900s and the year 2017 with way more than needed characters. I almost stopped reading (I didn’t because of the author’s above average prose) Kate Morton’s latest novel until the novel became plausible and understandable on page 160. Normally, I’m not a big fan of flip-flopping novels. How do you figure? For 160 pages I was convoluted and bored, then the story's light bulb came on and suddenly I couldn’t stop reading the next 322 pages. I have never read a novel that handled reminiscing as well as Kate Morton’s did. There are as many chapter narrators as there are characters, but the main narrator is a ghost. Yes, a ghost. I did notice a few similarities with Kate Morton’s novel to Eudora Welty’s 1972 novel, The Optimist’s Daughter, but no presumptions made.

In the summer of 2017, a archiver named Elodie Winslow finds a leather satchel bag containing an artist sketchbook and a sepia photo of a beautiful woman under the stairwell of her workplace. They appear to be from the 1800s. She takes an interest in finding out who this woman was and who owned the satchel with the initials L.S-W. The sketches were beautiful and also contained a scrap of paper saying, “I love her, I love her, I love her and if I cannot have her I shall surely go mad, for when I am not with her I fear…” And the story is off and running. You will meet many interesting characters throughout the novel, such as Edward Radcliffe, a young artist and owner of the Birchwood Manor; his sister, Lucy; Leonard Gilbert, a WWI soldier and scholar; Juliet, a widow with three kids running from Hitler’s bombs of WWII; Jack Rolands, a treasure hunter; Mrs. Mack, a female Artful Dodger; Fanny Brown, Edward’s fiancé; and the very mysterious Birdie Bell / Lily Millington, a pickpocket or an artist model?.

Your first stop after Elodie finds the articles is going back to 1862. Edward Radcliffe invites his gang of Magenta Brotherhood (a group of artists and photographers) to spend a joyous summer at his new manor. Of course we go back to the past and jump to the present for all the participants (I’ve only mentioned a few in the above paragraph). Not for nothing, when you do this much reminiscing, the years start getting jumbled in your mind. Is it 1858, 1862, 1869, 1899, 1928, 1944 or 2017? (That's only a few of the years that the writer flip-flops.) A lot of the chapters start out with a narrator that’s somewhat unidentifiable until halfway through the chapter. Before I got to page 160, I had no idea what the purpose of this novel was. Was it to find a murderer? If so, who got murdered? Was it a mystery or just a semi-gothic story? Will Elodie’s snooping solve the case, if there is a case? And how do these dozens (and I mean dozens) of characters fit into this 150 year old puzzle? Are you confused? You should be. I would rate the first 160 pages poorly (😣) and the next 322 pages (😀😀😀😀)...supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

Comment: I only mentioned Eudora Welty’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Optimist’s Daughter in the first paragraph, because of some minor similarities other than the book’s title. For instance, The main character in Kate Morton’s novel had a similar name to the writer of The Optimist’s Daughter...Elodie versus Eudora. Second of all, Welty’s novel was saturated with reminiscing as was Kate Morton’s. As a matter of fact, I looked up the reviews of Welty’s 1972 novel and they were eerily close to mine. One reader said of Welty’s novel, “I’ve read other reviews and realize this book was confusing to some people even to the point that they gave up…” I’m just saying.

RED MOON

Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, which was frequently boring and unduly technical, is a murder/mystery whodunit situated on Earth’s moon. The actual murder almost becomes a sidebar to the political troubles of China on the Earth as well as on the moon. Pages are accented with Feng Shui (also known as Chinese geomancy), which is a pseudoscience that uses energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment (according to Wikipedia). One of the three main characters, Ta Shu, seemed to be a master at blending himself into his surroundings, if that makes any sense. I guess the Feng Shui time spent on the book was to give the reader the flavor of old China. Ta shu was a older gentleman that was a ex-poet laureate (for the lack of better words) of some renown but now had his own travel TV show. At times he seemed to be a combination of philosopher Confucius and the benevolent Honolulu detective Charlie Chan.

The second main character, Fred Fredericks, a Quantum mechanic, is on the moon for the first time to install a quantum communication system for the Chinese Lunar Authority. What’s a quantum? A discrete quantity of energy proportional in magnitude to the frequency of the radiation it represents. Got it? Haha. The dozens of peripheral characters in this novel all had long job titles and similar names, which made it difficult for the reader to remember who was who. Here are a few characters and their job titles: Jiang Jianguo, the lead inspector and head of the Lunar personnel coordination task force; Zhou Bao, officer of the Chinese Lunar Authority in charge of Petrov Crater Station, or the analyst. Why is that title short? Sorry, it’s actually the analyst in the Hefei office of the Artificial Intelligence Strategic advisory Committee who communicates with AI I-330. Yet the story grew on you to the point that you needed to know why a certain Governor Chang Yazu was killed and who did it. What happened when Fred met Chang Yazu to deliver the ordered private phone (a unicaster)? "Chang extended his hand and Fred took it, and they shook hands...Chang looked surprised...then he crumpled to one side." Dead.

Now let’s talk about the technical lingo used by the Hugo Award winning author, who thought we should be so informed. I understand the author is very technical in his novels, but I think he went overboard in this novel. We will use Fred Fredericks thinking to himself about a problem as an example of too much tech: “He wondered if Shor’s algorithm, which took advantage of quantum superposition to factor large numbers, could be used to define the temporal length of a moment of being. It had to be longer - it felt much longer - than the minimum temporal interval, the Planck interval, which was the time it took a photon moving at the speed of light to move across the Pauli exclusion zone within which two particles could coexist: that minimal interval of time was 10 -44 of a second. A moment of being was more like a second, he felt, maybe three seconds.” Now, did that help us find the murderer? No, it’s more likely that Kim Stanley Robinson was showing off his noggin. To be fair, all of the book’s text is not like that.

The third main character is Chan Qi (surprisingly, the author kept the amount of main characters down to a low acceptable level), daughter of Chan Guoliang, the Minister of Finance and member of the Politburo Standing Committee in China (I told you that no one has a simple job title). She was a political activist, who always seemed to be on the run from the powers that be. On page 79, Officer Zhou learns from Inspector Jiang that Qi is being kicked off the moon, “She’s a princeling. And she is pregnant.” Zhou exclaimed, “No getting pregnant, it’s against the rules.” The saga of Fred, Qi and Ta Shu continues throughout the novel. It’s a world where every Chinese person (living on the moon...not sure about Earth) has a chip implanted in their back so the authorities can track them. Military activity is forbidden on the moon by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The South Pole of the moon is controlled by the Chinese and the North Pole by the Americans. The governments of China and the USA are in economic turmoil and in the midst of a civil rebellion. The novel is set thirty years from now. Okay, you got all the tidbits you’re getting from me. Did I like the Novel? I’m kind of neutral on the story, only because of all needless confusion and extra fluff. By the way, the novel doesn't end, which means there is a continuation novel coming. Doesn't anyone write a standalone novel anymore? He has done much better work. I’ll give this novel three sleepy heads out of five. 😔😔😔

RATING: 3 out of 5 stars

Comment: I always try to do a little homework on the book I’m reading, but sometimes I still don’t understand. Take the feng shui for an example. I went to Wikipedia for help, but still don’t understand. Here, in part, is what they said:

“The feng shui practice discusses architecture in terms of ‘invisible forces’ that bind the universe, earth, and humanity together, known as Qi. Historically, feng shui was widely used to orient buildings - often spiritually significant structures such as tombs, but also dwellings and other structures - in an auspicious manner. Depending on the particular style of feng shui being used, an auspicious site could be determined by reference to local features such as bodies of water, stars or the compass.”

Using feng shui (according to huffpost.com) can be a way to rearrange our homes. Let’s use the bedroom for example:
1. Get rid of the TV- TV’s and all electronics, for that manner - emit positive ions, which are said to drain energy from the body.
2. Don’t let a mirror face your bed- You should never be able to see yourself in a mirror while you’re in bed. When you see a human image in the mirror, you’re inviting another person into your relationship.
3. Move your bed away from the windows- Feng Shui is strict on the rule that your head should never be under a window while sleeping...position your bed against a solid wall with no doors on either side...don’t point your feet toward a door. Traditionally, the dead are carried out feet first.

Okay, in my next review, I will have the feng shui rules for your kitchen (Haha).