Faces Under Water

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully described sci-fi Venice
Review: I like Tanith Lee and I happen to think that she writes beautifully, but all that aside, this story didn't really hold my attention. I continued to read it only for the imagery it evoked and not because I really cared what happened to any of her characters.
The story begins with Furian Furiano (a disillusioned former aristocrate) wandering the canals during Carnaval looking for dead bodies to bring to a friend of his who is an alchemist and also possesses a magpie that he nourishes with scraps of human flesh from his experiments. (I know, what a great guy). Things begin to go awry as Furian discovers a mask in the water and brings it back to the Alchemist, Dr. Schaachen. He later links this to one of his father's friends who belongs to a mask making guild. This friend has a daughter with a rare disorder that prevents her from making any kind of expression. It draws vague parrelels to the Orpheus, Euridyche myth.
I did get bored while I was reading this book. Just because the story is sometimes vague doesn't mean that it is profound. Just because the characters are decadent and without morals doesn't make this story shocking. The book was well-written enough to keep me reading, but only as a travel guide to somewhere that doesn't exist.
I found myself missing some of Tanith Lee's earlier books like the Silver Metal Lover, and Biting the Sun. Her characters are so much more human. I recommend those if you want to see the kind of writing that she is capable of, and she is capable of some wonderful writing.
I probably will read the rest of the books in this series though.

Rating:
Summary: she is all fault who has no fault at all
Review: In Zola's The Masterpiece there's a scene in which an acclaimed, established artist bemoans his success to a bunch of aspirant young will-be failures,lamenting, "All you young chaps yearn so for success. What you can't imagine is what a trial it can be to the one who has achieved it! To know that one must perpetually come up to one's own high mark, if one doesn't wish the critics to sneer! To be always rivalrous of one's own excellent former productions! Ah, woe is me!" And on he goes in the same vein, sounding, it must be admitted, like quite the twit--sounding like quite the twit, that is, to his auditors, all of whom have their work still to do, or not to do, as the case may be. Zola's acadamician's complaint--that he's too good at what he does and that he can't transcend what he's already accomplished--may seem foolish to most people (heck it seems foolish to me)--but still I can't help calling it to mind whenever I read something new By Tanith Lee. She writes very well. She may write TOO well. I give this book four stars, although compared with the bulk of the self-consciously "epic" slowly-moving stodgy sludge out there--sludge which I'm only too happy to read, I confess, when there's nothing else on the shelf, when the alchemical cupboard is bare, and when I've just gotten frankly too sick of The Storm Lord to read it over AGAIN--the Lord knows it deserves five. But taken within context of the Tanith Lee track record it probably deserves about three. Four stars is a compromise, and compromises are ugly.

What's wrong with Faces Under Water? Nothing, in the absolute sense. Yet it seems to me that Lee's female lead, Euridyche, may be taken as an emblemmatic exemplification of Lee's body of work as a whole. Lee's books, like Lee's character Euridyche, are "as terrible...as beautiful": they are glassily lovely, marvellously constructed, and not very expressive. They are most eloquent, but at the same time curiously mute. They seem not to "speak" to us: they are too remote. Part of this may due, not only to Lee's faultily faultless Decadent style of writing, but also to her apparent esotericism, which proclaims--just like Dannion Brinkley and Shirley MacLaine--that ALL God's chilluns got wings, that there is no such thing as ultimate irreparable loss,and that no one is ever irremediably damned. (A proposition to which, I daresay, certain Decadent poets and writers would have taken exception...) Anyway, such a view of the cosmos is bound in the end to give rise to a certain indifferentism. The esotericist, like the ascetic, treads a path that ends in silence.

One of the book's nicer ironies resides in Furian's insatiable need for reassurance: specifically, his need for reassurance that his girlfriend Euridyche (who has a rare genetic defect which prohibits her from speaking or showing her emotions) really does care what happens to him; that she cares, in fine, whether he lives or dies. Since, in this secular era, persons of both sexes tend to displace their doubts about God ("is He there and does He care")onto their siginificant others, Furian's doubts about Euridyche's fidelity--which don't, we are explicitly given to understand, concern Euridyche's PHYSICAL fidelity, about which Furian isn't much concerned--can easily be understood as doubts about the cosmos: is it "real", does the mask contain a face, does the body contain a soul, or is the vessel empty,barren,insufficient--"wrong from the start" as Pound wrote? ("Strike through the mask," Cap'n Ahab keeps yelling all through Moby Dick.) Now, none of this is new stuff, all of it is old as the hills--yet it seems to me to have a peculiar applicability to Lee's bizarrely excellent body of work. All these questions--does a body imply a soul, does a mask imply a face, does Creation imply a Creator, boil down ultimately to one much simpler, inclusive inquiry; namely, Does Form imply Content? I ask you, what more poigniant question could Lee pose? Considering that she is a mistress non pareil of form, but that's just the problem, isn't it, that she constructs clockwork marvels of architecture in which armed hordes are fielded with the delicacy and dispatch of chesspieces and barbarian swordsmen go after one another with the icy regularity of partners in a gavotte.

Lee's Euridyche, daughter of Lepidus, is obviously partly based on Hawthorne's Beatrice, daughter of Rappaccini. (The only difference is that Beatrice's "mortal" defects are deliberately bred into her by her magician father, whereas Euridyche's deformity is the gift of chaos: "just one of those things.")When Beatrice Rappaccini reproaches her father with having ruined her life, he expostulates, "Wouldst thou have preferred the condition of a weak and feeble woman, bearing all harm and capable of none?" For Hawthorne, Beatrice Rappaccini's exorbitantly wrought mutant state operates as a safegaurd, a strong city. For Hawthorne, distance betokens safety (i.e. he can write about sex BUT ONLY if he disguises it suitably as death, for example.) To this Lee gives the lie: she demonstates via Euridyche that deviation from the norm ENDANGERS more than it ever safeguards. Hawthorne can write about sex if he writes about sex in the seventeenth century: his periphrases are intended as camouflage. Lee's periphrases are meant as periphrases: they are flagrant. She does not attempt to justify them with a function.

None of the above is meant as "criticism"--or, at least, none of the above is meant as what "criticism" is now taken to signify: that is, none of the above is meant as disrespect. It is a testament to Lee's peculiar, persistant excellence that she continues to cast her works in the interrogative mode ("Does Form Imply Content?") instead of the brutally didactive mode now popular ("People are Stupid.") (Talk about disrespect!) It is no shame, after all, to have posed a question without an answer. Shame belongs instead to those whose works are devoid of questions.

Two nigglies: 1. In order to render the "feel" of Italian, an inflected language, in English, an uninflected language, Lee sometimes needlessly inverts her syntax, especially when her characters are speaking to each other. This is NOT NECESSARY and gives rise to the dreaded "him-whom" syndrome. (Him whom this sword smites shall surely die!"--both grammatically incorrect and grating.) The rule is, when writing in an uninflected language, write uninflected prose. DO NOT attempt to write inflected prose in an uninflected language. 2. I had a problem with the typos. Books cost enough, already. Don't bookmakers know how to set type? Don't publishing houses hire functionaries who can read proof?

Rating:
Summary: Hauntingly familiar
Review: Inveterate readers of Tanith Lee's works know that Lee frequently cycles through a certain set of characters and situations: the suitor enchanted to his doom, the woman trapped within herself, and the occult father-figure. _Faces Under Water_ draws on all of these, as well as borrowing or transmuting more extensively from her tales of an alternate Roman Empire and her prize-winning novella, "The Gorgon".

While I enjoyed the book, I found it somewhat less original than some of her other series(es), "Tales of the Flat Earth", the Scarabae books, or the "Secret Books of Paradys". (There is one sidelong reference to Paradys in this book, along the lines of the subtle cross-references within the Paradys series itself.) Then again, perhaps I'm just feeling cranky :) In any case and in my opinion, a mediocre book by Tanith Lee far outweighs most other authors at their best.

Rating:
Summary: The Secret Books of Venus: Book I
Review: Set in a fantasy version of the 18th-century Venice Carnival (a setting I really liked), "Faces Under Water" follows Furian Furiano (very original name ;) as he comes across a mask floating in a canal. This discovery leads him into the company of dark alchemists, the Guild of Mask Makers--and ultimately into the arms of Eurydiche, a woman whose mask is her actual face--a well-woven twist to the authentic Carnival atmosphere.

Although it's been a long time since I've read this book (I had to browse through it again to remember most of the story in order to write this review), I do recall "Faces" was rather slow-paced, particularly in the beginning half, and not as exciting or intriguing as Lee's Paradys series, which this series appears to imitate. Based on this book alone, I doubt I'll like her new Venus series. There are three additional books to it--"Saint Fire," "A Bed of Earth," and "Venus Preserved"--but I'll probably stick with her Paradys series instead, one I'd recommend over this series.

Rating:
Summary: The Secret Books of Venus: Book I
Review: Set in a fantasy version of the 18th-century Venice Carnival (a setting I really liked), "Faces Under Water" follows Furian Furiano (very original name ;) as he comes across a mask floating in a canal. This discovery leads him into the company of dark alchemists, the Guild of Mask Makers--and ultimately into the arms of Eurydiche, a woman whose mask is her actual face--a well-woven twist to the authentic Carnival atmosphere.

Although it's been a long time since I've read this book (I had to browse through it again to remember most of the story in order to write this review), I do recall "Faces" was rather slow-paced, particularly in the beginning half, and not as exciting or intriguing as Lee's Paradys series, which this series appears to imitate. Based on this book alone, I doubt I'll like her new Venus series. There are three additional books to it--"Saint Fire," "A Bed of Earth," and "Venus Preserved"--but I'll probably stick with her Paradys series instead, one I'd recommend over this series.

Rating:
Summary: Dense
Review: Tanith Lee's writing seems to come in two categories, though not exclusively. Her Flat Earth series, and her fairy tale stories, are written in an arch style which suits them.

And then there are books like this one, and the comparable Paradys series, which speed past arch and enter baroque. I found the writing so distracting that I had difficulty following the plot.

Some readers might enjoy this style, but I don't. The book is short, which is nice, but it's still too long to sustain the style. On a positive note, the period setting and the mix of murder and alchemy are intriguing. If only I know where it was going and what it meant when it got there.

Rating:
Summary: Great Storytelling
Review: This is an enjoyable, unique fantasy that reveals a touching, unconventional love story. I liked the fact that both the heroine and (anti)hero of the story are misfits and both hold deep disappointment and disillusionment at their core; at the end of the story you really want for them to be happy because they've been so emotionally deprived. Their interations are both touching and erotic. I won't write more in order not to give the plot away, but I really would recommend reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Distant but enjoyable...
Review: Two admirable plot summaries have already been provided, as well as a breathtaking literary analysis of this book; my review will be somewhat shorter but hopefully half as decent. I enjoyed "Faces Under Water." To date, there is nothing of Tanith Lee's work that I have not enjoyed; however, during and after my reading of "Faces Under Water," I decided that this book, while certainly much better than most of what's out there, and even good by Tanith Lee standards, should not go terribly high on the list of her masterpieces. Having said that, keep in mind that I liked this book, because I am going to complain.

Part of the problem for me was the distance maintained from the characters, something I have never had trouble with before. Characters in the Paradys Tetralogy are viewed from the outside, often inscrutable at first glance, but after a while you can get inside their heads and understand their thoughts. Furian Furiano, though he becomes more approachable as the novel progresses, starts out as remote and indecipherable as his lover Eurydiche, she whose very face is a mask (a rare genetic disorder known as "faschia pietra" or "stone face"). Even though he is in effect the narrator of the story, albeit from a third-person angle, I often felt as though I were watching him, with no clue as to his emotions, his feelings, nothing that would give me any rapport or sympathy with him. By the end of the book this problem has been amended; I only wish it had been remedied by the first chapter.

A second problem lay in the pacing of the novel. The first half, or first portion, moves slowly, with hints and details dropped here and there: the drowned musician, the mask found floating in the canal and the aura of sorcery that reeks from it, Eurydiche's stone face and the inhuman brilliance of her eyes, her father and the Guild of Mask-Makers...they build the world up in small, elegant fragments, but do little to advance the story. Of course, in the reading of Tanith Lee a great deal of pleasure is derived from her unique writing style, which seems to use words as allusions to other words-or perhaps "as illusions" is more apt-and draws singular details together as opposed to broad strokes for the reader's mind to fill in at leisure. Anyway...my, am I off track...the second half of the novel, after Lee has hidden the plot behind an impenetrable mask of words, reveals everything with great rapidity. Perhaps that is intentional-after all the concealment, the sudden removal of the mask-but it jars a little with the prior pacing.

All of that aside, I would like to reaffirm that "Faces Under Water" should be read, that I look forward to the second in what looks like the Venus Tetralogy (I love the Paradys novels and so I doubt that even this new quartet, set in what seems like the same world, will displace them from my heart), and that even so-so Tanith Lee is really quite good. Venus is not Paradys, but it is evoked through a brilliant screen of words and colors (I love Tanith Lee's use of color and words for color...really, who else says "the color of tarnished orichalc" in ordinary conversation?) and seems a fitting home for the mask-faced Eurydiche and the somewhat inscrutable Furian with whom, by the end of the book, I was having no trouble sympathizing. Of course, I don't as a rule go poling around in canals, looking for drowned bodies, but that's a trifling matter...

Besides, I might find a mask.

Rating:
Summary: Dark, colorful, and breathtaking...
Review: When Furian Furiano, a moody and temperamental young man with a painful past, comes across an exquisite mask of Apollo in his daily polings through the canals of Venus, the Venice of a shadowy alternate world, he has no idea what this chance find will bring him: a desperate love, initiation into an ancient and reclusive craft, and a closer encounter with death than he ever wished. In the hidden places of Venus, something is stirring and waking, something kept skillfully hidden until Furian's clumsy searches bring it to light...and not Furian, not his beautiful lover Eurydiche, perhaps not even Venus herself will be safe if its power is not stopped.

Like Lee's novels of Paradys, which seems to belong to the same world as Venus, "Faces Under Water" deals with a wide range of emotions and environments, from the darkness and the decadence to the unexpected joys and pains-all of which Furian's troubled life encompasses. Central to his thoughts and the story is the idea of the mask: what lies behind it? Can one even know what is really there? Furian's lover Eurydiche is perhaps a personification of this question; born with a rare disorder that keeps her mute and her face as still as stone, she cannot affirm her love to Furian in any way that he can concretely accept. In the same way that Furian can never be sure what Eurydiche is thinking behind her beautiful mask, he cannot fathom the plot that is forming around him until it reveals itself to him at last. The Mask Makers' Guild...a mysterious tribe known as the Orichalci that dwell in the southern Amarias (seventeeth-century Venus' name for the Americas)...questions of life and death...unlikely pieces joining together, they form an impenetrable screen around Furian, weaving darkness until he cannot find his way out alone. Yet dark as Venus' world may be, it is not entirely without its lights. Humor and odd bits of truth are provided by Furian's friend/mentor/irritant Dianus Shaachen, an aging doctor who dabbles in alchemy and other mystical arts, dotes on his pet magpie, loves to be cryptic, and may actually know something of use to Furian. Furian's own interactions with his fellow characters show him to be more than a figure moved about a stage-by turns wry, sarcastic, and vulnerable, afraid to admit love, unable to deny it, he is achingly, familiarly human. And Eurydiche and Furian's love, whatever its nature, may the one thing that can heal both these wounded people. Such things are necessary-for how can you know what you have gone through if there is nowhere to pause and look back...and how can darkness have meaning without the light?