Alternate History Done Very Well Indeed
Farthing
Jo Walton
Tor Books, August 2006
ISBN 0-76531-421-5
Review by Lynn Calvin
Farthing, by Jo Walton, creeped me out so thoroughly that even though I thought it was excellent, I hesitated a couple of weeks at the thought of rereading it for the review. I believe authors should be supported when choosing to do different things even if it does sometimes make book buyers eye their newest things nervously.
Straight alternate history is a departure for Walton. Walton's previous work has been some fantasies based in a world reminiscent of the Arthurian fantasy (The King's Name, The King's Peace and the The Prize In the Game), and a fantasy that was a comedy of manners with dragons as protagonists in a Victorian society where the Victorian worldview morality is biologically based. (Tooth & Claw, which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004.)
Farthing is a much more straightforward alternate history: an English country house murder mystery that takes place in 1949, but not in our 1949. In this world, England's war with the Third Reich ended in 1941 after the Hess Mission. The Reich is fighting the Soviets and is in control of the Continent to the Channel.
International events are not the focus of this book so we only get glimpses of what has happened and is happening, and exactly how bad that is, in the early parts of the book. Domestic English politics of this alternate 1949 are not initially evident but become a driving force in the conclusion.
The book alternates between a first person narration of Lucy Kahn, nee Eversley, daughter of Lord Eversley of Castle Farthing, and a third person narration from the viewpoint of the detective Peter Anthony Carmichael. Political leader James Thirke has been murdered at Farthing in his guest room, a yellow six pointed star pinned to his body. Carmichael is investigating. Lucy and her husband of eight months, David, are also guests at Farthing, with Lucy returning to her childhood home for a visit. David, an Englishman and a war hero but Jewish and 'educated on the Continent,' is a suspect in the murder.
Alternate history can do lots of things. First it can illuminate "real" history, particularly parts of history that slip from view. In Farthing we get chilling reminders of the support for Fascism and anti-Semitism that existed in pre-World War 2 Britain, with Lucy's mother, Farthing, and the 'Farthing set' standing in for Nancy Astor, Cliveden, and the Cliveden set.
The world in which Farthing takes place is a classic use of alternate history. At first blush this is merely a world in which the thirties never ended for Britain, and the cozy Britain of between the wars has continued. Not quite 'If Hitler won' but 'If Hitler was not defeated.' Winston Churchill is a weak opposition voice deriding the peace as 'not worth a farthing,' but 'Peace with Honour' has superseded Chamberlain's 'Peace in Our Time.' The gradual compromises and overtly evil actions that Britain has made and continues to make are slowly and chillingly revealed, moving this from the small stage of the initial murder to the policies, beliefs, and ideals of a country being rapidly subverted by a conscienceless ideology.
Walton seems to get her history right, and her fictional standins for real characters are chilling in their virtues and belief in their own rightness.
The specifics of the murder mystery as mystery are well done, with the unfolding investigation and the mechanics and motives for the murder carrying us through most of the story with the expectation that right will triumph. Walton does get in some indictments of class in passing, especially in the scenes from Carmichael's point of view, but even that feels true to the underlying spirit.
Lucy in particular is a sympathetic character, with her stream of consciousness storytelling, and flashes of insight and wisdom that even she may not completely understand. Her narrative format, common over the history of cozy mysteries, is the ancestress to the modern chick lit, and sister to the 'wise fool' character found in British fiction, whom fictional characters like Peter Whimsey impersonated.
What is shocking, sobering and utterly well done is the conclusion of the book, and this is what raises it from merely a cozy mystery in a scary world to a cautionary tale about both history and the world today. The conventions of the genre leave us expecting a resolution of fairness and success, villains caught and punished, heroes and heroines rewarded.
Carmichael, the detective, says early in the book "Murders aren't political, or anarchist, not one time in a thousand. Murders are sordid affairs done between people who know each other, nine times out of ten for personal gain, and the tenth time because someone lost their temper at the wrong moment, the crime passionel as the French call it. I doubt we'll find that this one will be any different to all the others, except for the elevated surroundings."
But this murder is one of the one in a thousand. Part of the reason I so highly recommend this book is that I was carried along with no thought of any application to current events until I closed the book. The more complex and realistic ending of this book, while not bitter or hopeless, reminds me as a reader that it is easy to look aside from small steps toward tyranny and injustice, and that it might be very possible to go along with evil until suddenly we have no other choices.
