Yawn

[liadnan]

I bought two books in Foyles on my way home. To my immense irritation, I realised on the tube that I had bought, read (and loved) one of them (Robin Hobb's Golden Fool) several months ago (for some reason I thought I'd read a library copy, ok?). To my even more intense irritation I haven't yet reached the end of the first chapter of the second, Margaret Doody's Aristotle and Poetic Justice, a historical crime novel with the interesting conceit of Aristotle as the great detective, and I've already thrown it on the floor in a fit of boredom twice.

The problem with the book can be simply summed up: infodump. The author has done her research, and by god is she going to let us know it: so far we've had exposition on the process of passing laws in Athens at the time, a discussion of social structures and relationships, a digression on the basis of the Athenian economy with the surprising and staggering information that being a slave in the silver mines at Laurion wasn't very pleasant, some information about lawsuits, a quick rundown on the Peloponnesian War, a discussion of marriage law, and more. In ten pages. As for Aristotle, he hasn't appeared.

What we haven't had is anything that looks like the semblance of the smidgeon of a hint of (a) a plot, or (b) character exposition. Except that the first person narrator seems to be the kind of intensely dull person who would at a moment's notice launch into a story a la Ancient Mariner and then divert into explaining the British parliamentary system and the process for passing bills, including an exposition on the committee stage. Since he's a first person narrator, one presumes that the people to whom he is hypothetically addressing himself might actually know as much about this stuff as they wished, no?

Failing to research the setting for a novel properly is, in my view, a Bad Thing. That doesn't mean that you have to spill every detail you've researched instantly. Lindsey Davis is a prime example of how to do it: sending Falco to the mines rather than telling us they existed and weren't very nice for instance, at least up until A Body in the Bathhouse, where she'd obviously been lectured to, and enthused by, someone who knew about recent excavation work there in detail.

Perhaps, with that terrible burden, the benefit of a classical education (and a degree in ancient and modern history -modern history starting with Constantine and, for me, not including any courses from after 1485-) I'm being unfair. It's certainly true that I find it particularly irritating because I still remember enough of all-nighters spent writing essays on the Athenian constitution. But I don't know that I'd find the equivalent information in, say, a novel set in the British Raj, any less irritating and I know sweet FA about that. Sod this, where's the Kipling I was reading gone?