Pavane by Keith Roberts
278 pages
Published 1968
Read from March 16 to March 19
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5
The first two stories in this interconnected series of tales I read last year, included in the two Modern Classics volumes edited by Gardner Dozois. Those two samples beguiled me with Roberts' alternative England, a line of history where Elizabeth I had been assassinated, Rome imposed a strict theocracy across the known world, and technology was held back by papal mandate. Perhaps I should have overcome my reluctance to reread those opening chapters, because it took me a long time to get into Pavane without them. I liked it well enough, but the interlocked short story structure doesn't agree with me (for some reason lately I just haven't been feeling short fiction whatsoever). It wasn't until the final chapter, when (spoiler) people begin to rise against the theocratic despotism, that Pavane at last seemed as brilliant and masterful as all those modern-day genre critics and writers say it is.
Pavane seems a couple decades ahead of its time. Though all the chapters told from female points of view are suffused with male gaze (must every woman note how her breasts began to "press against her dress" during adolescent flashbacks?), the women characters are surprisingly vivid and interesting, given when this was written, driven by their own agency. Only the "Coda" dates Pavane, tacking on a formulaic "humanity was held back until it was wise enough to use technology, not like in that other timeline" stinger. That stinger is also the only justification for the inclusion of Fairy elements in what would otherwise be a "realistic" alternate history novel, an inclusion that was otherwise extraneous.
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