Little Toy Robot

I missed Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw when it was first published last November.

I think there are a few reasons for this. I generally don’t pay much attention to new hardcovers unless there is a lot of hype or it is an author I know. The cover looks like it belongs to a YA book. The blurbs only referenced the author and earlier books, not the book in question, which is sometimes a bad sign.

So I ended up missing an excellent, very tight story that is a novel of manners wrapped in a conceit about biological determinism. Walton says it best in her introduction:

It has to be admitted that a number of the core axioms of the Victorian novel are just wrong. People aren’t like that. Women, especially aren’t like that. This novel is a result of wondering what a world would be like if they were, if the axioms of the sentimental Victorian novel were inescapable laws of biology.

And on her amusing Web page:

I was reading two books at once, one fantasy novel and Trollope’s The Small House at Allington. I complained that the fantasy novel didn’t really understand dragons, and [my husband] misheard and thought that I meant that Trollope didn’t. Naturally, this led me to the revelation that Trollope did understand dragons extremely well, and that in fact the rather peculiar nature of the women in Trollope can be explained by the facts of dragon biology.

The book was singled out by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant as one of the top 20 of 2003, and one of Kelly’s favorites, in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. They call it “odd.” I agree. It is also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. And I heartily recommend it to anyone who is interested in a unique perspective on the novel of manners, a well written book in which very little actually happens but there is much going on.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 25th, 2004 at 10:13 am and is filed under books.