Subject: RELUCTANT VOYAGERS by Elisabeth Vonarburg

From: [email-masked] (Evelyn C Leeper)
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 02:09:03 GMT

RELUCTANT VOYAGERS by Elisabeth Vonarburg
                     (translated by Jane Brierley)
            Bantam, ISBN 0-553-56242-8, 1995, 480pp, US$5.99
                   A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		    Copyright 1995 Evelyn C. Leeper

     Publishing an "alternate Canada" novel in the United States is
quite an act of faith by Bantam: they obviously assume that readers
know enough about the real one to know where this one is different.

     This is not only an alternate history, or perhaps more accurately,
not entirely an alternate history.  Catherine wakes up one morning in
Montreal, but a Montreal not quite as she remembered it.  Familiar
streets suddenly look unfamiliar--but when Catherine returns later in
the day, everything is back the way it was.  She has problems
remembering history--someone will mention "the Northerners," and she
won't know what they are talking about.  But when she looks it up at
the library, it all sounds familiar, as if she had always known it, and
indeed she feels as though she *has* always known it, except for that
unexplained lapse.

     To the reader of alternate histories, it is even more confusing.
At first, it seems as if the changes between Catherine's world and our
own happened in the late 18th Century, but then we find there have been
other changes, far earlier and more basic, and the alternate history
aspect seems to be highly inconsistent.  Vonarburg does eventually
resolve all this, but not in a way likely to please those expecting a
standard alternate history story.

     Even as a straightforward science fiction story, RELUCTANT
VOYAGERS is not completely satisfying, having too much of a deus ex
machina ending.  Since Catherine has already been having strange
dreams, it doesn't take brilliant insight to realize that these have
something to do with the mysterious goings-on, but even so, the
explanation was (to me) unsatisfactory.

     It's possible that the problem is in the translation.  Maybe
Vonarburg has written in a style that doesn't translate very well.  But
for whatever reason, I could never really connect this book.

%A   Vonarburg, Elisabeth 
%E   Jane Brierley (translator)
%T   Reluctant Voyagers
%T   Les voyagers malgre eux
%I   Bantam Spectra
%C   New York
%D   March 1995
%G   ISBN 0-553-56242-8
%P   480pp
%O   paperback, US$5.99

-- 
Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | [email-masked]
"No one is ever fanatically devoted to something they have complete
confidence in.  No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to
rise tomorrow.  They *know* it is.  Whenever someone is fanatically
devoted to a set of beliefs or dogmas or goals, it is only because
those beliefs or goals are in doubt."  --Robert M. Pirsig