In
the beginning of William Sanders’s novel J, he is writing the
stories of three women. Jay,
a once-successful science fiction author whose work has begun to get
rejected. Mad Jack, a survivor in a post-apocalyptic United States, and
Ann, a scientist who has found herself in and out of insane asylums.
It isn’t clear how these women relate to each other, although
there is a vague implication that Mad Jack and Ann may be characters in
one of Jay’s books. Eventually,
Sanders reveals that supposition to be wrong in every way.
The story lines begin
to blur when Jack suddenly appears in the asylum just in time to stop an
orderly from attacking Ann and the two women find themselves on the run
across dimensions. As Jay
later comments, it is “one of the standard gimmicks in science
fiction…a cliché.” Nevertheless,
Sanders handles his material well, showing knowledge of the cliché and
how it has been used in order to use it in different ways.
In the process, he builds several believable and interesting worlds
for his characters to inhabit.
At the same time, the
cliché aspect works against him. Revelations
to the characters are seen by readers who are familiar with the genre,
even if the exact way things fit together are not obvious. Sanders is content to let the reader draw his own
conclusions, some of which will be right and some wrong, and only slowly
introduce his evidence about what may be happening.
All three of the main
characters are likable in their own way, as well as sympathetic.
They have a variety of problems, ranging from mental illness to
alcoholism, but all three show the potential to be much more than their
current situations allow them. By
showing them through each others eyes, Sanders is able to increase the
empathy the reader feels for the three women even while demonstrating
their faults and their rationales for those faults.
Sanders hints at the
question of what makes an individual the person they are, and J could
have explored the question in more depth.
His characters are pulled from their natural habitats and thrust
into the worlds of the other characters, trying to make sense of a
radically different world with the sensibilities and abilities which they
acquired in their native worlds.
As with Sanders’s
earlier novels, such as Journey to Fusang or The
Ballad of Billy Badass and the Rose of Turkmenistan, J
portrays realistic people in
an unreal, by realistic set of circumstances.
While J may not highlight Sanders’s sense of humor as
clearly as some of his other writing, it still manages to show through.
In the end, Sanders
provides the reader with an explanation of what happened, but not why it
happened, along with tantalizing hints of yet more dimensions.
Sanders’s ultimate revelation has a feeling of deus ex machina,
yet he pulls it off with such grace that the reader feels it is the
natural outcome of the story. Nevertheless,
J has an unfinished feel to it, as if Sanders’s is planning on
writing a sequel to it. Fortunately,
in this case a sequel would be as welcome as something new from
Sanders’s pen.
