Farthing

Farthing (2006) Jo Walton

I had forgotten how dark and depressing this this story is.

Mind you, it’s good, but it has the feel of a dystopia without actually being a dystopia.

It’s 1949, but not 1949 as we knew it. For England, World War II ended when England made peace with Hitler. Charles Lindburg is president of the US, and Hitler’s continental conquests remain at war with the USSR.

That’s where all the dark comes from. Hitler rules Europe, there is not Israel, and the concentration camps remain open, being populated by the Jews and Gypsies and other undesirables in each new country Hitler conquers.

The whole idea makes me feel uneasy and slightly nauseous, and that feeling remained even after I closed the book.

The light parts are, oddly enough, the murder mystery and the half of the story told by Lucy, whose parents are the Farthing set, and whose mother controls much of English political policy through the various men in her life.

Lady Eversley’s political career had not been a thing of statistics, of positions held and relinquished, elections lost and won, but of influence, through her husband, her brother , her friends, her money. All officialdom recorded of Lady Eversley is that she was born, married, and had two children.

But Lucy isn’t a good Farthing child–she has gone and married a Jew, something for which her mother has refused to forgive her.

So yeah. Maybe that part isn’t so light and cheerful after all.

But there are so many marvelous lines, such as:

“But that doesn’t make it acceptable,” I said at once. “The standard is not to be better than the worst thing available.

So, it’s a very good story, that ends very depressingly, but still remains a very good book.
Rating: 7/10

Published by Tor Books

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