Category: Farthing

Farthing by Jo Walton: B-

From the back cover:
Jo Walton crosses genres without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history set in 1949, eight years after Britain agreed to peace with Nazi Germany, leaving Hitler in control of the European continent. A typical gathering at the country estate of Farthing of the power elite who brokered the […]

From the back cover:
Jo Walton crosses genres without missing a beat with this stunningly powerful alternative history set in 1949, eight years after Britain agreed to peace with Nazi Germany, leaving Hitler in control of the European continent. A typical gathering at the country estate of Farthing of the power elite who brokered the deal is thrown into turmoil when the main negotiator, Sir James Thirkie, is murdered, with a yellow star pinned to his chest with a dagger.

The author deftly alternates perspective between Lucy Kahn, the host’s daughter, who has disgraced herself in her family’s eyes by marrying a Jew, and Scotland Yard Inspector Peter Carmichael, who quickly suspects that the killer was not a Bolshevik terrorist. But while the whodunit plot is compelling, it’s the convincing portrait of a country’s incremental slide into fascism that makes this novel a standout.

Review:
I’m a fan of England, mysteries, and gay-themed literature, so I expected that Farthing would be my cup of tea. As it turns out, I was quite disappointed. Though the majority of my complaint can be summed up as, “It was just kind of weirdly put together,” there are some specific areas that bothered me enough to merit their own place on a spiffy numbered list.

1. Punctuation.
I’m starting with the most minor quibble, though it did truly bug me. A couple of times there were lists of buildings or people that were improperly punctuated. Here is an example:

There was a church, larger than most, a pub, the Eversley Arms, a row of cottages, and a high wall containing a pair of wrought-iron gates…

The way that’s written, the pub and the Eversley Arms appear to be two different things. There should be a semicolon after “most” and another after “Arms.” Because of this, a later list of attendees at the gathering had me confused as to whether Lucy’s dad and the Earl of Hampshire were the same person.

2. Woefully undeveloped gay characters.
There are, if I counted correctly, eight nominally gay or bisexual characters in this book, nine if you count Lucy’s deceased brother. For some, that’s practically all that’s known about them. Frankly, it started to get ridiculous. I’m beyond cool with having gay characters, but just having a cardboard cut-out standing there with a nametag reading “Gay” on his chest does not really count.

3. A pretty boring mystery.
The investigation into this mystery was kind of meh, with Inspector Carmichael and his sergeant doing a lot of theorizing in advance of the facts. It also seemed to hinge on locating one particular girl from a photograph who, when found, blurted out the culprit pretty anticlimactically. Granted, it was obvious by that point, anyway. The impact of the increasingly fascist government upon the investigation was kind of interesting, as Carmichael had to keep in mind that whomever he arrested would be hanged (and so he had better be absolutely certain before arresting them), but also frustrating, since the innocent Jewish fellow everyone kept insisting was guilty (even when presented with evidence to the contrary) was one of the few likable characters in the book.

When I try to recall something I particularly liked, I come up empty. The conclusion was decent enough, I suppose, though the final chapter from Lucy’s point of view ended rather ominously. I will probably finish up the rest of the trilogy, because I am a completist and because I hope it gives more closure on the Lucy front. I think the other books might feature different characters, though, so I shan’t hold my breath. Neither shall I expect to enjoy them any more than I did Farthing.

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A brief convo about Farthing

K says, “So, my question for you was, do you think it was a cop-out that even though there were a ton of LGB characters in the book, some of whom were main characters, the only sex scene we saw occuring on camera was straight?”

J says “I don’t know about a copout, but it was disappointing.”

J says “I wonder if it gets any better in HaPenny.”

J says “I don’t see any reason at all why we couldn’t have a scene with.. was it Carmichael? And Jack?”

J says “It was frustrating this guy got talked about, and he was fairly important to one of the pov character’s life and we never saw him at all.”

K mms. “Well, that happens in mysteries where the main action takes place away from the character’s home. I don’t know if the next one takes place in London or not, but it wouldn’t make sense for him to have gone off to the country with Jack in tow.”

J says “No, but he went back to London, and I’m pretty sure there was one night there at least where he was home.”

K says, “Yeah, that is true. And we did see Royston’s house kinda.”

J says “Yup. His daughter twice.”

K says, “It does seem a bit odd. Perhaps it does get better in Ha’Penny, though that’s no excuse for not having this be a more fully stand-alone novel than it actually turned out to be.”

J says “Yea.”

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J’s Take on Farthing by Jo Walton

I may have gotten around to reading this book eventually. I had seen Ha’Penny was on the list of novels being considered for the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards and borrowed it from the library, before realizing it was book two of a series. So I may or may not have been motivated to track down Farthing […]

I may have gotten around to reading this book eventually. I had seen Ha’Penny was on the list of novels being considered for the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards and borrowed it from the library, before realizing it was book two of a series. So I may or may not have been motivated to track down Farthing and read it, except that K had this idea of all of us reading and reviewing the same book, and M suggested this one.

Farthing is a British mystery set in the 1940’s, but it’s also an alternate history. Then there’s a dash of gay interest thrown in. Taken separately, I wouldn’t have been interested in this book, but all together, there’s enough there to make it worth a read.

How well does it work as a mystery? I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but it seemed to me to be rather dull and also rather obvious. We have two point of view characters, only one of which is the detective, so the other character has rather more access to information than the detectives usually get. Which means the reader knows more, and this reader is not an idiot.

In particular, there are a couple of chapters where the detective is just driving here and driving there and tracking down this bit of information that’s needed and the writing there is quite uninspired.

How does it work as an alternate history? Again, I don’t read a lot of alternate history — or real history for that matter — so I found it a little confusing. How much of the situation was true and accurate and how much was a what-if? The basic premise though, I believe, is that the UK signed a truce with Hitler to let him go on doing whatever he wanted elsewhere as long as he stayed out of Great Britain. Which, you may imagine, is not good news for the Jewish people in Europe. But on the face of it, it seems a good thing for the Brits. No more bombings, no more evacuations. The political climate is changing though. I don’t think you’ll be seeing socialized medicine in this UK.

How does it work as gay interest? Not interesting enough. One of the primary bi characters in the story is dead years before the story begins. The main character’s lover never makes it on screen. He barely even spares a thought for him. So the gay interest is all political. Which is fine and all, but it would’ve been nice to see some affection, no matter how non-public and discreet it would need to have been.

So all in all, rather disappointing on all fronts. The two positives I will say about it are, one, that it was very readable, even in the more uninteresting of the chapters. It didn’t feel like a slog. And, two, I found the two point of view characters interesting and likeable. I would read more with either of those characters, though I would be fervently hoping for some more interesting plots and scenes to come along.

If I were to give it stars out of five, I’d give it a very middle-of-the-road 3.

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Farthing (Jo Walton)

The Plot
In 1941, before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII, Britain made a treaty with Nazi Germany and abandoned Europe to the Third Reich. Eight years later, Hitler is still in power, most of Europe is under his control, and the Jewish people are being systematically exterminated. The British Empire remains […]

The Plot
In 1941, before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII, Britain made a treaty with Nazi Germany and abandoned Europe to the Third Reich. Eight years later, Hitler is still in power, most of Europe is under his control, and the Jewish people are being systematically exterminated. The British Empire remains free, but hanging out with the wrong crowd for so long is beginning to tell. When Sir James Thirkie, the architect of the peace treaty, is found murdered in his bed during a country house weekend, Scotland Yard is dispatched to find out who did it.

My Thoughts
I’m not sure how realistic I find the scenario proposed in this book. The turning point in this alternate history is the peace treaty Britain signs with Germany in 1941, around the time the Blitz is ending. Why would Germany propose peace at that time? Why would Britain agree? I’m not sure. Germany clearly gets something out of the deal — they no longer have to fight a war on two fronts. But they started the war in the first place, so they surely thought they could win. There are hints also that Japan was not defeated either, and certainly things are going oddly in the United States, as Charles Lindbergh is president instead of becoming a pariah. I don’t feel like enough information was given to make a conclusion as to how logical this was or not. The history is just presented as is, without any real information given other than the existence of this peace accord.

In addition to these broad issues with the whole timeline, there are a few problems in the specifics of the characters. Bisexuality and homosexuality appear to be rampant among the cast of characters assembled. I’m all for presenting these things as common, but it starts to feel like a BL manga when the whole cast is sleeping with or has slept with someone of the same sex. There were about 10-12 characters who had more than a walk on appearance in the story, and of those, half were either currently or previously involved in a same-sex relationship.

The solution to the mystery was also presented in a confusing fashion. In the grand tradition of the golden age crime novel, the solution was presented at the end by the detective. He gives a grand monologue to his superior, going over all the things he’s managed to learn and how they relate to the crime. But the Inspector presented the case in a pretty wishy washy fashion, with very little actual evidence and lots of conjecture. He never managed to actually acquire several important facts which would have strengthened his conclusions. I don’t doubt that his lack of information, contrasted with the similar but different lack of information of Lucy Kahn, the book’s other protagonist, was part of the point, but it just made it seem like he wasn’t particularly competent.

I also have to say that I found it jarring to keep skipping back and forth between first person chapters from Lucy’s point of view to third person chapters from Carmichael’s point of view. It’s a very odd style choice.

The writing itself, I can find little to gripe about. It was plain and to the point, without a lot of frills and pointless description cluttering it up. If not for the depressing subject matter making it difficult to read for an extended period of time, the book would have been a reasonably quick read.

In Short
Overall, I think this book was trying to be too many things at once. It was a country house mystery, it was an alternate history, it was a political intrigue, it was a social commentary. Unfortunately, the author was not quite up to the task. What suffered the most was the central mystery plot, which was full of holes and unresolved threads. Many of the rules of the Detection Club were broken. There were a number of other far-fetched bits which also detracted from the whole, though given the idiotic behavior of politicians in the real world, that was more a case of fiction needing to be less insane than reality. It’s difficult to evaulate the book on its own, though, as in spite of the mystery seemingly wrapping up by the end, it’s really not a stand alone novel. If you like alternate histories, you may like this one; I wouldn’t recommend it for straight up mystery fans.

I also take exception to the classification of this book as science fiction. It is not science fiction; there is no science whatsoever involved in the plot. The correct classification would be speculative fiction, of which science fiction is a subgenre along with fantasy, alternative histories and a few other hybrids.

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