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rysmiel read one of the footnotes to Geoff Ryman's 253 aloud as part of our New Year's Eve, I picked the book up on the first. It takes a while to come together, but there are more connections, and more plausible ones, than the description "253 words each about the 253 people on a given Tube train" suggests.
Those 253 words are enough to give us snippets of people's lives, thoughts, and plans, even when they aren't interacting. A few of the passengers have famous names, and Ryman gives one of them his own name (though not, I think, life or description). The footnotes, some of which have valid information despite the author's stated intentions, wander all over the place, ranging from the simply factual (a sentence or two about Barings) to the truly fantastic (William Blake walks around in the one Rysmiel read us, and another explains Margaret Thatcher in terms of David Bowie's influence on her and their similar cultural roles).
Passenger 253 didn't quite work for me; 2530 words might not have been space to make that one work, but 253 certainly aren't. The passenger called Margaret Thatcher isn't, though her coincidental name is part of what she's thinking about that morning. Passenger 253 is Anne Frank, and not just in name; somehow, an embodied ghost, haunted of course by her past and her fame. The Holocaust is not out of bounds, and Ryman has written well about it and similar horrors, notably in The Unconquered Country, but this jarred for me.
The end-of-the-book car-by-car narratives help pull things together, and Passenger 253 works a little better after that, I think. The "advertisements" tucked in between sections shouldn't help hold the book together, but do.
Also, points for the passenger called only "Who?", including the description of his appearance and his interactions with some of the others in that car.
rysmiel read one of the footnotes to Geoff Ryman's 253 aloud as part of our New Year's Eve, I picked the book up on the first. It takes a while to come together, but there are more connections, and more plausible ones, than the description "253 words each about the 253 people on a given Tube train" suggests.Those 253 words are enough to give us snippets of people's lives, thoughts, and plans, even when they aren't interacting. A few of the passengers have famous names, and Ryman gives one of them his own name (though not, I think, life or description). The footnotes, some of which have valid information despite the author's stated intentions, wander all over the place, ranging from the simply factual (a sentence or two about Barings) to the truly fantastic (William Blake walks around in the one Rysmiel read us, and another explains Margaret Thatcher in terms of David Bowie's influence on her and their similar cultural roles).
Passenger 253 didn't quite work for me; 2530 words might not have been space to make that one work, but 253 certainly aren't. The passenger called Margaret Thatcher isn't, though her coincidental name is part of what she's thinking about that morning. Passenger 253 is Anne Frank, and not just in name; somehow, an embodied ghost, haunted of course by her past and her fame. The Holocaust is not out of bounds, and Ryman has written well about it and similar horrors, notably in The Unconquered Country, but this jarred for me.
The end-of-the-book car-by-car narratives help pull things together, and Passenger 253 works a little better after that, I think. The "advertisements" tucked in between sections shouldn't help hold the book together, but do.
Also, points for the passenger called only "Who?", including the description of his appearance and his interactions with some of the others in that car.