Anne Charnock - Sleeping Embers Of An Ordinary Mind (2015)

"Why is it that women are always the ones being dragged off? Why aren't they the ones doing the clubbing and biting?"

Anne Charnock's 'Sleeping Embers Of An Ordinary Mind' is a wonderfully understated and meditative book about family, loss and the creative process. It is a deeply feminist work that looks at the inequalities faced by women in the past, present, and how this may change in the future. As well as that it is an ode to the people who have disappeared between the cracks of history, people who have died in accidents or been killed in war, but most of all the creative talents we have never heard about because of the barriers inherently sexist societies placed in the way of them becoming recognised artists. The author was kind enough to send me an ARC in return for an honest review.
   'Sleeping Embers Of An Ordinary Mind' has a complex structure. The book follows two girls and one woman at different stages of their lives, in different parts of the world and in different eras. A hundred years in the future, Toniah has moved back into her family home with her sister Poppy while she starts her new job at the Academy of Restitution, an institute which works to restore and uncover the reputations of artists, philosophers and thinkers overlooked in their time because of their gender. In the present day, Toni is visiting China with her father, a painter being commissioned by a Chinese business man to paint a copy of a Paolo Uccello painting, while the two of them attempt to bond in the wake of her mother's death. And in Florence in the 1400s, Antonia Uccello, Paolo's daughter and an overlooked artist whose work today has disappeared, begins to paint under the tutelage of her father, whilst her parents and brother arrange her fate.
   'Sleeping Embers' is very different from Charnock's previous book 'A Calculated Life' about enhanced humans, sharing only her enviable clarity of style and her ability to convincingly and engagingly chronicle the minutiae of daily life as it is lived. The focus on the personal allows her to bring alive the interior lives of these young women as they discover about themselves and find a way to square their relationship to the world around them through their art and their work. Though their storylines never overlap, they are linked through their shared themes and concerns, and by art itself. Antonia is drawn to painting through her natural talent and understanding of the medium, and her creative mind is able to not only absorb the lessons her father teaches her about creating a masterpiece but to move towards innovative leaps of technique and form. However because of the social environment of the time, her family have to decide between marrying her off young or sending her to a convent so that her nature as an unattached daughter won't ruin the family name. The book explores the ways left open to her for exploring her personal growth and development in a time and place where women's lives are so thoroughly restricted.
   By moving between three different time periods, Charnock explores how life has changed for women since the 1400s, and her hopes and fears for the future. In the present day, Toni's world is much more open than Antonia's, as she visits China with her painter father and returns to her school in London, She is able to travel the world, and to freely pursue her creative interests. However Toni has just lost her mother in a car accident; her story is about her journey rebuilding her life around her mother's absence. This leads to her developing a school project about people who died young, truncating their branch of the family tree, which in turn causes her to discover her own great-great-uncle, Arthur, who was killed in World War I. However throughout her story, as she navigates the context of her world she naturally runs up against questions about how women have been perceived by society in the past and how they are now; whilst looking at a painting in the National Gallery, she finds herself noticing that the victims of the male centaurs in the painting are all women, and she quizzes her father on why he has never copied a painting by a female artist.
   The sections in the 2100s allow the author to explore how life for women may change in the future. Toniah comes from a family where the women have reproduced via parthenogenesis, allowing all-female households like Toniah's to have their own children. When Toniah's mother was going to school there was still a level of stigmatism attached to this but by the time Toniah's niece is the same age it is fully accepted as a reproductive right and such families as an accepted social unit. The Academy of Restitution represents another progression, an institute designed to redress the balance of women like Antonia Uccello who never received the opportunities in their lifetime that their male counterparts would have, nor the academic respect in the years afterwards. Charnock uses the Academy and its work to explore how history's perception of individuals' contributions can frequently be biased by assumptions, gendered or otherwise. The influence of privilege allows mediocre white men to receive all the credit, whilst the contributions of women can be ignored or forgotten, (though Charnock points out that male artists can wind up on the receiving end of this as well). Toniah's work in the Academy allows us to see Uccello as an innovator with the potential to advance art beyond its then-current boundaries, if she'd had the opportunities closed to her gender, whilst showing Toniah's ambivalence towards the work as the act of rewriting history and the politics of the job make her uncomfortable.
   Toniah's story thematically links to Toni's via the missing person she discovers in her family, her grandmother's son from a sperm donor who died in childhood, cementing her grandmother's decision to have her other children via parthenogenesis. Uncovering this family secret provides Toniah with the impetus to leave her family home again to seek out a new life lecturing in China. The themes of loss linking the three main characters also emphasise the universality of human experience; despite the radically different social contexts these three young women live in, their core humanity remains the same. Antonia, Toni and Toniah's character arcs are all about them coming to terms with the aspects of their surroundings and their lives that they can't change, and learning to exercise the agency that they have. They are also united by their appreciation of art. The book goes into great detail about the ins and outs of creating a masterpiece - the structure, the technique, the underlying message that the creator is trying to convey, and how they help the audience see this. 'Sleeping Embers...' is a celebration of the skill and invention that goes into the creation of a work of art, as well as the cathartic release that it brings to both artists and appreciator.
   'Sleeping Embers...' is a work of slipstream fiction, having elements of speculative fiction, especially in the section set in the future, rather than being a work of genre fiction in and of itself. However it displays a deft touch at worldbuilding. The future UK of the 2100s is imaginatively evoked, with new technologies such as the gestation clinic described in detail, but other technologies that would shape the home and the workplace of the future hinted at and implied. Similarly, there is an unobtrusive but meticulous attention to detail that makes the scenes set in modern day Suzhou or 1400s Florence vivid and convincing. The book's approach to storytelling is character-based rather than plot based, eschewing action and movement for reflection and introspection, drawing the reader in and making them really care about what's going on in these characters' heads. The end result is a book that respects the reader enough not to lead them, but to let them make their own connections through the themes and ideas presented. 'Sleeping Embers...' is both thoughtful and moving, and unlike anything much other than itself.

Anne Charnock - A Calculated Life (2013)

"Our emotions kid us that life is better than the sum of its unremarkable parts... Our delusions are our best defense."

Anne Charnock's 'A Calculated Life' is a coming of age story, in which Jayna, a Simulant - a biologically and technologically enhanced human created to work for corporations, realises that her worldview and perspective are limited by her routine life, and goes in search of new experiences that open up the world to her. Much of the power of 'A Calculated Life' comes from its strong focus on character and setting, allowing the reader to fully inhabit Jayna's everyday life and the fine details of the near-future Manchester she inhabits. The book also uses its central conceit to ask pertinent questions about the interface between humanity and technology, with rare and admirable depth.
   Simulants join a long line of augmented, post-humans and artificial humans in SF literature, film and TV which have been used to explore what it means to be human. However a number of things make 'A Calculated Life' stand out from previous treatments of this idea. The Simulants in Charnock's Manchester aren't used as weapons or for dangerous space mining missions, but their increased intelligence and focus makes them popular as office workers in corporations. Jayna works for a company that analyses data to predict global trends, and much of the book describes her normal routine as she works at her office job, has meals with her friends in the housing accommodation for Simulants, or visits colleagues' houses. Charnock's focus on the everyday allows us to experience first hand the texture and shades of Jayna's life, making it easy to empathise with her. It also shows how the SFnal elements of the story - the Simulants, the genetic enhancements and biological implants - fit into the normal world we recognise and understand. This makes the world of 'A Calculated Life' all the more believable.
   Charnock doesn't just make sure that the Simulants work in the fabric of everyday life; she also demonstrates how they would fit in to the wider political and socio-economic environment. The advent of enhanced humans results in a recodifying of class structures. The best jobs are only available to people with biological enhancements and a clean genetic background, whilst those unable to afford implants or with genetic quirks in their family background are relegated to the underclass, only allowed the most menial jobs and never allowed to rise above a fixed pay grade, and sent out to live in the enclaves. The Simulants themselves, while guaranteed jobs and free from worries of food or accommodation, are essentially slaves, owned by the corporations that bought them. For all their incredible intellect and problem solving powers, they essentially have very little in the way of rights. They can be recalled by the company that makes and sells them for glitches such as taking a passionate interest in anything other than work, or developing personal relationships, in which case they will have their memories erased, be reconditioned and sold to a different company under a different name. For all this, their guaranteed jobs makes them a natural target of resentment.
   It is as a character study of Jayna that 'A Calculated Life' is most emotionally affecting. The effect of randomness on her forecasts cause Jayna to start on a journey of self-discovery. Charnock does an excellent job of describing how Jayna's worldview expands as she interacts with more different people and experiences what life is like for others. Jayna's experience of visiting Dave's house in the enclaves teaches her far more about what life is like for the people living there than her statistics ever could. The book doesn't shy away from exploring the tragic aspects of the Simulants' condition. Jayna visits her boss's house, and her simple fascination with her colleague's family speaks volumes. Jayna has never had a childhood or a family; she has never experienced feeling loved or cared for. Most of the Simulants' glitches manifest in tragically mundane ways - an office affair, visiting a restaurant to find out what curry tastes like, singing passionately at a karaoke contest. It is the simple pleasures that the Simulants are denied; the simple things that give shape and flavour to our lives. Charnock forces us to consider how cruel it would be to deny people theses things. It's also a very nice touch that none of the Simulants' glitches are violent or destructive.
   Despite its dystopian tenor and tragic ending, 'A Calculated Life' is not without hope. The defining relationship in the novel is between Janya and Dave, an unaugmented worker from the enclaves. Despite the differences between them in terms of biology and technology, they are still able to form a meaningful relationship. The book shows optimism that, despite whatever technological or biological enhancements people may have in the future, they will retain a core of humanity that will not be lost, and in a more general sense that there is a sense of common humanity we retain and share across any and all divides. 'A Calculated Life' also shows that it is possible to escape the corporate rat race, and that analytical intelligence can be intensely useful in practical situations if applied sensibly, as, (spoiler alert), Dave and Sunjin, another one of the Simulants from Jayna's accommodation, manage to escape the recallers and make a living for themselves farming. The book also retains hope that humanity can never be completely erased or suppressed, as the end hints that Jayna's mindwipe was not completely effective.