136 pages
Published 1965
Read from July 23 to July 24
Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Knowing nothing else about this book, I picked it up from a used bookstore a few months back on the basis of its cover. Beneath towering pulp letters, a flivver (perhaps a Model T) putters through a wasteland of broken, flaming ruins. For more than a decade—ever since I read this book, in fact—I’ve wanted speculative fiction featuring old-timey cars. That was enough for me to fork out $3 on a dusty Ace Double.
Unfortunately, nothing about this novella lives up to its pulpy cover. That’s common enough in this era, but it’s worse here than usual.
Wealthy scion Roland Crane dabbles in archaeology and collects maps. He is haunted by childhood recollections of a family roadtrip steered awry by a strange map. Young reporter Polly Gould approaches Crane about her cousin, who similarly disappeared “off the map” five years prior. The two go hunting for the mysterious map, only to find that another man (who might be more than what he seems) is determined to get his hands on it at any price.
Land Beyond the Map is almost remarkable in how inessential it is. It relies on broad stereotypes (all of Ireland is “fey”) and employs the sort of midcentury dialogue-writing shortcuts where people say “Check” and “Search me,” which will always remind me of lazy movie novelizations from the 1970s. (Did people ever really talk like that?) Because the book is a product of its time, the forceful competence of Polly makes Crane fantasize about “tanning her stern.” It’s gross and utterly clichéd.
The narrative doesn’t even arrive at the “Map Country” until page 70. We spend most of the book faffing about the Irish countryside, drawing out a banal hunt for the map instead of doing anything interesting. The Map Country itself holds a smidgeon of interest; tooling along the one road across a shapeshifting landscape filled with clanking robot tanks feels like something from the Pertwee era of Doctor Who. Much like that era, though, Land Beyond pads out maybe a short story’s worth of narrative into an unnecessary novel.
