Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson (reviewed by Mica Corson)

What is the job of the translator once technology advances? What circumstances eliminate the need for translations? These questions inspired TV comedy and science fiction writer, Eddie Robson, to write his third full-length novel, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words. 

Robson was originally a television writer, and it shows in this novel. This unconventional, surprisingly lively exploration of a near-future culture is not bogged down with heavy prose or overly intricate concepts. The setup is focused, and the characters’ journeys move quickly, leaving the reader little time to overanalyze the writing choices. That isn’t to say Robson’s writing isn’t clever or well thought out. Robson enhances this literary piece with narrative principles more common in screenwriting, such as Chekhov’s Gun, a principle that asserts that every element highlighted in a story must be necessary. For example, if the writer takes the time to describe a gun hanging on the wall with expert detail, that same gun needs to go off before the end of the story. This minimalism is the hallmark of Robson’s style. Every element he incudes enhances the plot. His writing is streamlined, and his characterizations developed through action over anything else. Every action leads to a new plot point that propels the story without dallying in unnecessary tangents.  

The brisk-paced story begins with Lydia, a woman in her early thirties who works as a translator for a diplomatic cultural attaché. An alien one. In this novel, reminiscent of classic science fiction, Earth has been approached by an alien species, the Logi, who are interested in sharing and understanding cultural knowledge. However, Lydia finds it difficult to translate for cultural attaché Fitzwilliam (or Fitz as Lydia takes to calling him), since he, like all Logi, can only speak telepathically. In translating this telepathic speech, human translators find themselves wobbly and disoriented, as translating the Logi’s language makes the human speaker essentially drunk: “As Lydia translates Fitz’s conversations with these people, the language takes its toll on her sobriety, and she feels increasingly loose-tongued.” (Robson, 14) The human body wasn’t meant to communicate this way, and the act of translation leaves the translator with altered faculties that often lead to embarrassing consequences for Lydia. 

After some standard worldbuilding and character setup, the plot kicks in, blending science fiction with a murder mystery. Lydia is at a loss after a tragic event shakes her life and job. Her boss is dead, she’s the prime suspect, and she has no memory of their last moments together due to her massive hangover from working as a translator that very night. With the risk of an intergalactic incident, she has to hunt for answers, wading through the sea of digital information. In this near-future world, the digital sphere is an all-encompassing pool of flashy headlines, clickbait, fake news, and conspiracy theories. Her search is guided by the remnants of Fitz, whose voice resonates in her head. While Lydia fears that Fitz’s voice will drive her to the brink of insanity, she can’t help but hold on to the last echo of the mind she was closest with, “That’ll be a shame, when his voice has gone. Maybe after a while she’ll forget what it even sounded like. There are no recordings of it, after all.” (Robson, 60)

While initially inspired by questions of translators and language barriers, the novel focuses more extensively on the potential future role of social media, especially the rise of conspiracy theories, truth, and lies in media. A commentary on modern culture, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words is primarily a science fiction novel. As such, it establishes a culture and technology that is foreign to the reader. While the novel’s technology is based on more modern counterparts, Robson changes and adds enough details and functions that the novel’s beginning can be a bit jarring. However, with Robson’s consistency and underflowing humor, it is easy to adapt to the futuristic world he establishes. Since Lydia’s translation is based on telepathy, the novel focuses less on linguistics and language barriers and more on modern human culture. How would our culture represent itself, what parts are shared willingly, and what is omitted? “Because if you can control the stories a culture tells about itself, you can control who they are.” (Robson, 129)

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson is a science fiction adventure that melds genres and, like many classic works of science fiction, makes a clear commentary on modern cultural concerns. With a light tone, Robson’s wit and theatrical plot carry the novel’s themes of culture and digital conspiracy to a wild conclusion, leaving the audience with stimulating questions on the nature of truth in the digital age. 

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson, published in 2020 by Tom Doherty Associates.

Mica Corson is an avid reader and aspiring writer residing in the Pacific Northwest. She recently graduated from Central Washington University with a Professional and Creative Writing degree.









Joan

Joan by Katherine J. Chen (reviewed my Mica Corson)

The name Joan of Arc is widely known, yet most could not tell you the years she lived, the battles she fought, or almost anything about the historical context of her existence. She is admired and referenced but only through a foggy lens. In Katherine J. Chen’s novel Joan, this shining figure emerges from our vague collective memory as a flesh and blood woman.

Chen fully admits that her fictionalized version of Joan is incredibly personal. She is a vibrant character with a complicated relationship with God, while a soldier first and foremost. Many retellings of Joan of Arc depict her with visions and hallucinations of the archangel Michael. In them, she becomes another example of extreme Christian devotion, often compared to the girls who starved themselves, citing the Holy Spirit as their only sustenance, or like the monk who walked on their hands to praise Mary. However, Chen writes Joan with a distinctly modern view. This Joan is practical. Her motivations go beyond her faith. She is not just a servant of God waving a banner for France but an imposing figure of a woman - tall, strong, and empathetic to the people’s struggles.

Essayist Hilary Mantel writes that Chen made Joan of Arc a “woman for our time.” (Mantel, Cover Copy) While Joan is a work of fiction, Chen researched dozens of biographies of Joan in order to write from what inspired her, thereby creating a relatable and likable character. It explores a young woman’s fascination with war, with heart-pounding battles, shining weapons, and the overwhelming desire to survive.

Written in four parts with brief historical interludes of the events that encompass the novel, this realistic retelling begins in the small French village of Domrémy. In 1422 Joan was a ten-year-old girl known by the villagers as the one who would always lend a helping hand and would never be found in her father’s house. Jacques d’Arc, Joan’s father, is a great speaker and a great swindler who is constantly at odds with his youngest daughter. His abuse toward her was emotional and physical. This tense relationship spurs Joan’s first sincere motivation, which was the goal of leaving her stifling village and of making her own way in life.

Joan’s story begins in earnest during an incident between adolescent boys that results in a young boy’s death. This image of death, of innocence being brutally lost, resonates in her mind throughout her entire life. That childhood trauma solidified not a fear of death, but an all-encompassing resolve to survive, “She makes a promise, whispers it into the dark, imprinting it in the night sky as the boy’s face is imprinted in her memory. The promise is this: If she, Joan, has a choice, then she will choose to be a thrower of rocks. She will live.” (Chen, 25)

After the people of her village are dragged into the war between France and Britain, Joan makes her way to the city of Vaucouleurs with a specific goal. In her mind, she determined that all the pain and suffering that her loved ones have faced is caused by those keeping the countries in perpetual states of war. There were the Kings and Dukes of England and the Dauphin, who was the future king of France. Joan, at sixteen years old, is an impressive figure standing over most men. After several feats of strength, the local powers allow her to train to fight, then arrange for her to be shown to the Dauphin as a potential aid in the current war.

In the Dauphin’s court, Joan’s skills as a warrior and military leader improve rapidly. Rumors about her being a gift from God begin to swirl. They say that she was sent to help the French remove the invading English from their cities. Joan herself is skeptical of God’s role. She is a woman of some faith, but over the course of her life she questions God’s intervention. Her allies full-heartedly support the claims, and they go so far as to cite biblical prophecies, including references from legends of Merlin about a young virgin girl who will free them from war. In fact, her allies use these claims to their advantage, “A poor, unlearned woman who has run away from home with no family to protect her. What is she? Nothing? But everyone will listen to an interment of God.” (Chen, 179) Her gains in battle solidified those claims in the eyes of nobility and common people. However, Joan does not let these ideas of her define or distract her. She fights because she is good at it and sees the good in what she does. For the first time, she truly finds herself when she is a soldier, “My sword was no longer just a sword. I did not sense either the weight or the heft of it, for it was as though I were holding my own soul.” (Chen, 206)

Chen’s writing is beautiful, descriptive, and moving. Although the story describes battles, the narrative is not packed with action; rather, it is often meditative. It encapsulates the events’ intensity and richly imagines the characters. There are times when it becomes frustratingly clear how deeply rooted the misogyny of the era is, but Chen balances these moments with Joan’s practical and modern personality, establishing her odds with the sexist cultures and her perceptions on gender, “For a man cannot see anything in the world without wishing to wear it like a trophy on his back, to call himself master over it. To her, this is what it means to be a man.” (Chen, 221)

Most know the end of Joan’s story from history or perhaps the vague mention in popular culture, and there is no twist at the end of this one. But Chen embeds this character with so much life and perseverance that we can look at her short life with admiration. She is a figure remembered longer than any of the nobility that supported or abandoned her, and she was even sainted nearly five hundred years after her death. Katherine Chen’s Joan is an excellent example of history reimagined, showing us a very human portrayal of Joan of Arc with determination and an uncompromising sense of self.

Joan by Katherine J. Chen, published in 2022 by Random House. 350 pages.

Mica Corson is an avid reader and aspiring writer residing in the Pacific Northwest. She recently graduated from Central Washington University with a Professional and Creative Writing degree.

Sisters

Sisters by Daisy Johnson (review by Mica Corson)

September and July are ten months apart but share the same birthday. They are inseparable siblings dealing with the severity of adolescence and are bound together by promises that one will never let the other forget. In Sisters, author Daisy Johnson explores the dynamic web tying two girls together and the bonds of envy and impulse that develop over their young lives.   

This tense and unsettling novel begins with sisters September and July returning in their teens to the house where they were born - the Settle House. Johnson’s prose has strong poetic elements, relying heavily on rhythm and repetition. It is overflowing with visceral images that mark the dread and unease surrounding their new home. Much like the image of a fractured face that makes up the cover of this contemporary fiction novel, the prose is a mix of short and fractured sentences that create an almost fervent pace, heightening the tension of the ominous unknown event that led the sisters and their mother to the Settle House.

July, the younger sister, acts as our narrator, providing the audience with vulnerable and candid confessions in a first-person perspective as she explores the Settle House, a decaying seaside cottage in Yorkshire. Through the novel’s three parts, we are also given third-person perspectives from September and the girls’ mother, Sheela.  

September is the leader, the caretaker, and the manipulator. Her mother finds her stubborn and obstinate and far too capable of cruelty. However, to her younger sister, she is an idol. September is a confident and all-encompassing presence. “Yes. I think then, as I have so many times, she is the person I have always wanted to be. I am a shape cut out of the universe, tinged with ever-dying stars-and she is the creature to fill the gap I leave in the world.” (Johnson, 91) July views herself as an extension of September, following her words only. Where September goes, so does she, following in her shadow. July is the peacemaker, the introvert, and the only one to soften September’s harsh edge, creating a pair so connected they would not even let their mother have an intimate role in their lives. 

Their mother, Sheela, had long struggled before returning to the house. As a writer, mother, and woman, she has dealt with depression, borderline abusive relationships, and a growing fear for her isolated daughters. “They always seemed to be telling some great secret, some truth only they could know. The look in their eyes when she came across them, the sudden silence that she could not quite break into.” (Johnson, 106) Moving to the Settle house after an ominously vague “what had happened,” Sheela’s mental health is low, leaving July to rely even more on September.

From its first page to the last, this novel contains no dialogue. The format of dialogue remains, propelling short conversations primarily between the sisters. Nevertheless, its absence is striking, keeping the narrative internal and philosophical. An eerie, unsettling nature comes to the Settle House with the sisters as their behavior becomes more erratic in their isolation. The external plot is slow-moving, intersected with details from the sisters’ early life and the incident that brought them to the Settle House. Instead, the riveting and twisting relationship between September and July creates a profoundly moving story. 

Sisters by Daisy Johnson, published in 2020 by Riverhead Books. 210 pages

Mica Corson is an avid reader and aspiring writer residing in the Pacific Northwest. She recently graduated from Central Washington University with a Professional and Creative Writing degree.