This is a debut novel, and a quick glance at Bacigalupi's previous work reveals a volume of short stories that includes titles like Pump Six, Yellow Card Man and The Calorie Man. He has been crafting this world for a while now, the culmination of which is The Windup Girl. It's a cynical but splendidly imagined projection of the near future: fossil fuels are rare and exorbitantly expensive; global warming has raised sea level and weather patterns are volatile; misadventures in bioengineering have ravaged the world with plagues of viruses, bacteria, fungus and insects; corporate interests gain power as regional governments succumb to revolt.
This apocalyptic Thailand is plausible but miserable. You will not gasp at the majesty of steampunk invention here - you will likely gag. Windup's Bangkok is full of feral cats, religious and political fanatics, refugees and opportunistic businessmen. The resident crime boss is named the Dung Lord, and he vies for power along with Trade Minister Akkarat and General Pracha, the victor of a military junta at the narrative's outset. The cast of characters are all hard-bitten, all nursing personal grievances, all hopelessly driven to do what they end up doing. Anderson Lake (a great name for this anti-hero, but they're all good) is an American agribusinessman sent to Thailand with the objective of gaining access to the Kingdom's jealously-guarded seed stock. While pursuing this goal, he becomes entangled with Emiko, the genetically-engineered courtesan of the novel's title.
Fantastical but believable, larger-than-life but eminently identifiable, this setting is the novel's triumph. Methane-filled dirigibles coexist with genetically-engineered oversized elephants, and it clicks. Buddhist monks and Thai monarchy provide a traditional backdrop over which drapes Bacigalupi's futurism. I quickly became entranced, wanting to discover the world's machinations, the clockwork of the author's imagination. He's excited about the setting, and he should be - his implications are chilling and his questions difficult. Emiko's predicament is particularly profound as she suffers discrimination due to the stigma of being a 'New Human'. From her DNA up, she has been programmed to serve and please her human masters, and the resultant exploration of her free will feels surprisingly authentic given the shoddy treatment I've come to expect of the subject. Throughout the novel she is told that she has no soul, that she is a piece of 'genetic trash', and I feel real sympathy for her hurt and existential confusion. Anderson Lake plays her intriguing counterpoint as he at once frees and frightens her. His struggle parallels hers at times as he seeks to understand a culture that feels alien and resists his every effort to penetrate it. I became easily invested in and intrigued with Windup's characters and their unique narrative perspectives. Great, then, was my disappointment as I approached the book's ending with the realization that the material had not been done justice.
This novel should have been better. It's compelling enough that I lament criticizing it too harshly, but it buckles under the weight of scrutiny. I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading a draft, perhaps a first submission of the novel to a publishing house. Bacigalupi's comfort with short story writing shows, and at its best, the novel is concisely exhilarating. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself tiring of reintroductions of the world's core concepts, as if each chapter starts the story afresh. After suffering 50 or so pages of redundant description, I just wanted the author to get on with it, thank you very much. Bacigalupi's Thailand is powered by kink-springs (that store and then release the energy taken to wind them up, like toy cars), and he doesn't miss one opportunity to remind the reader - kink-spring scooters, kink-spring fans, kink-spring guns - every single time such an augmented object is mentioned. The narrative suffers from a paucity of descriptive variety as the same phrases become recycled, then rote. The windup girl of the novel's title moves with a "stutter-stop" motion, which viscerally captures the character the first time it's used, but feels like cruel omniscient taunting by the end of the novel. Characters routinely "shrug" their way through this or that, or "stifle the urge" to do something emotive or self-preserving. It's like Bacigalupi has invented a narrative algorithm for the novel, through which he feeds relevant plot points before handing them, unproofed, to the reader.
That would certainly make it easier to explain the shockingly poor editing. I have never read a more shoddily edited book, and that includes the uncorrected advanced reading copies I would receive during my bookstore days. If technique is the proof of sincerity, Bacigalupi is in danger of being an outright fraud. Some pages contain three or more typos, and I find myself again wondering if I'm reading a draft, summarily scanned by an intern copy editor as it was whisked off to the presses. I can only conclude that
A). his editor(s) is overworked and underpaid
B). the publisher, Nightshade Books, is a peewee operation
C). this book was cobbled together, or the author did not have sufficient time to finish it properly
D). measures of all of the above (most likely)
I wish this work was exceptional, but I have noticed a steep decline in the quality of editing in published works I've read over the last, say, five years. I can only assume that words are getting cheaper and cheaper with the prevalence of internet culture and the continual downsizing of corporate assets such as competent proofreaders. This is a vague and memetic argument, I know, but I can't find another way to explain it.
Wherever the blame lies, I think Bacigalupi was shortchanged by his publisher. This book needed more work - more fleshing out, more exploration. The setting needed to breathe and develop subtlety. It's a fast 359 pages, and it felt hamstrung by an ending that comes as suddenly and awkwardly as an early guest. The characters start with promise but struggle to gain dimension, with little development to mark their progress through the narrative. Their motives never change. Anderson Lake starts and ends the novel with the same unshifting focus on acquiring genetic material. The eponymous Windup Girl wants freedom. Corrupt politicians stay corrupt, and fanatics stay fanatical. The novel's few surprises are unsurprising, and all of them feel incidental, like a lone firework on the 3rd of July. For a story that purports to explore the existential concept of the human soul, I find surprisingly little of it in the writing. I am left tempted to call this The Windup Novel. Bacigalupi has something here, something very worthwhile, and I only wish he'd had a stronger team at his publishing house to help him realize his vision.
Read this novel for the setting. Read it for its chilling predictions and clever envisioning. If you're less critical than I am, you'll likely enjoy it.
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