Customer Reviews

The Margarets: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As ever, Sheri Tepper starts with a very interesting concept. But her execution is becoming formulaic. The "magical aliens who save the human race, but we have to prove ourselves worthy" story, is becoming overused.
Each Margaret, in her individual world, could have been an interesting character, but since there are seven Margarets, no one gets enough time to develop. Tepper builds fascinating worlds, but with seven of them, there isn't enough time to explore.
The Margarets lacks the grandeur of Grass or Beauty, the immediacy of Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the surprise twists of Family Tree, and the humor of The Fresco. Those are the things that I read Sheri Tepper for, and I missed them here.

"The Margarets" is a complicated book and it is necessary (and enjoyable) to pay close attention to all of the storylines while reading it. The close attention is certainly worth the trouble: no less than the future of the human race is dependent on single bored child, Margaret Bain.

"The Margarets" are creations of the mind of Margaret Bain is the only child on the Mars station, Phobos. The six Margarets that she invents have their own complex, and very different, personalities. As Margaret gets older, the invented Margarets split off from her, leaving only the original Margaret behind. This book tells the stories of all 7 Margarets in alternating chapters with that Margaret speaking in that chapter in the first person.

While I was expecting part the ending of the book, the more I read, the more possibilities presented themselves. The entire culmination of "The Margarets" was unexpected -- and completely unsuspected (at least by me)!

I really enjoyed this book and am going to read it again shortly so I can pick up anything I could have missed the first time around. I may even take notes! The story feels so real -- Sheri Tepper's novels are like that -- and rereading them is a joy. I always find something new in them, even when I reread them more than once.

Sheri Tepper has an amazing ability to take you to new places that not only facinate but make you go hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I have been reading SF for over 45 years and she has the ability to surprise me by taking me to new places, new ideas, new thoughts while so many others have become predicable. She enlightens while she entertains. My only complaint is that she can't write faster. Her books are of the kind that you want to rush through because you can't put them down, but you also want to make them last. She is a gourmet chef of literary achievments.

There are many paths to success in Science Fiction. The author must have a vision of the future, definite opinions about the present, a good story to tell, and weave them together skillfully. This book has it all - suspense, cool creatures, and humanity hanging in the balance. I suspect that each reader will have a different 'Margaret' they relate to most. Personally, I enjoyed the spy character, Ongamar.

The Margarets takes place approximately 150-200 years in the future. It mentions the years 2080 as being in the relatively recent past. The authors vision of the future is dystopian, with the humans having despoiled the earth and facing grim choices for its future.

Central to her vision is that humans need a 'racial memory' in order to advance to a higher level as a species. While I don't agree with this, she does develop the theme well in the book. Her other theme is the relationship of a people to their gods and religion - that we create our gods rather than the other way around.

All in all, I was sad when I had to put this book down. It was thought provoking with a suspenseful plot and likeable characters.

In fact, one thing that did strike me was that all of the characters mentioned by name were likeable. All the evildoers were identified only by their race or title. What does this say about the nature of evil? For example early in the novel we meet 'A Thongan spy', or 'The KFamir Chief Planner' All of the 'enemies' were vague and distant. There were a only couple of evil 'individual' in the novel per se, and very much in the background. Evil was generally performed only on a racial level. The K'Famir plot to destroy humanity was central, but only three K'famir in the whole novel have actual names. Basically, the evil that existed was mostly faceless.

Tepper, who generally explores big themes with literary skill, posits humankind in peril from one alien race and on probation with another.

Although the brutal, xenophobic Quaatar cannot count above six, they have acquired advanced technology by selling their rich planetary mineral rights. They nurse a long-standing hatred of humans whom they have already partly lobotomized, early in our prehistory.

Meanwhile the more benevolent Gentharans would like to see earth survive and join the Interstellar Trade Organization, which it can only do if it gets its wastrel ways under control. One way it helps humans do this is by buying the excess children, of which there are still many despite draconian birth restrictions.

Bits of this back-story are revealed piecemeal to Margaret, born on a work colony. As the only child on the colony Margaret staves off boredom by inventing six alternate personas as imaginary playmates. But as the work project ends and her family is returned to earth, Margaret's alter egos disperse to various planets and destinies.

Each one develops her unique talents and all will eventually come together in a grand scheme to save humanity.

Tepper is a good writer with lots of well-put ideas. The trouble with this story is that all the Margarets remain alter egos. They have their special traits and in addition they have Margaret's earnest, independent character. None of them comes across as entirely whole and real. Which makes for more of a polemic than a fully engaging novel.

Still, Tepper is a talented storyteller. Her ideas are thoughtfully developed and the various worlds are highly visual, vivid, and intriguingly mysterious.

I have read almost all of Tepper's novels. I particularly loved 'Gibbon's Rise and Fall', 'Grass', 'Gate to Women's Country', 'The Family Tree', and 'The Companions'. Since I share most of her views, I found her use of rhetoric acceptable, sometimes even inspiring. She does sometimes tend to the ridiculous or preposterous, but I found that acceptable because she always engaged me in the story or the characters and I came to count on her surprising me with unexpected story twists. I even enjoyed my least favourite book of hers, 'Singer From the Sea', to a certain extent.

But I cannot recommend 'The Margarets' to Tepper fans. I considered giving this book up at 20, then 50, then 100 pages. She engaged me with aspects of the different stories that comprise this novel, but there was no surprise or reward in finishing it. There were too many worlds and too many characters/Margarets. Each Margaret has possibilities for character development, but because there were so many, all were sketchy. And because of the sketchiness, the reader doesn't grow to know or care about any of the characters or any of the worlds they live on.

The standard Tepper theme of omniscient creative force coming to rescue the human race completely loses its potency in this book. I never was a big fan of that theme, but in her other books, the story that gets you there makes it worthwhile.

I like Sheri Tepper a lot, and I'm sort of used to being baffled by parts of her books on my first read-through. This one has a LOT of characters and I had trouble keeping them all straight, although I disagree with the earlier reviewers that said they didn't think they were well fleshed out. I thought she did an excellent job making the characters both distinct from each other and still recognizably aspects of the same original person, which has to be a really difficult line for an author to walk. I would have loved to see more exploration of them and their separate worlds, but I think she portrayed them really well in the space she had.

That said, I didn't like the whole "all species are either entirely good or entirely evil, except for humans of course!" theme at all. And I would have liked to see more of an explanation for the splitting-off of the Margarets; that felt really hastily kludged-together at the end. Although it may be that when I reread it (which I will) it will seem more coherent the second time through. This is often something I find with Tepper's books, that there's a lot of foreshadowing that makes you go "Aha!" a lot the second time (I'm thinking of Beauty in particular). So, in general, I thought this one was good but not great, but I'm expecting I may revise my opinion upwards when I read it again in a few months.

I never know quite what to think of Tepper. Her books are very interesting, thought-provoking. I'm not always sure I agree with the theme on which she writes, but I keep coming back to her books, and I've read most of the again and again. "The Margarets" was the first Tepper in years that hasn't been a re-read, and I was reminded of all that I like about her; the expansive plots, the many characters (and the confusion that sometimes accompanies that), such inventive worlds. I do find her depiction of certain Evil too black-and-white, but this is a recurring Tepper trait. In the end I really enjoyed this book, and felt the need to keep reading. I really liked the idea of multiple people within on person, especially the ones who came about as a result of choices Margaret made (about Brian, whether to answer the call for linguists, etc). Other parts, though, could have been slightly more flushed out; the Gentherans especially. In all, this was a Tepper book, something that I consider to be a bit of an acquired taste. I enjoyed it, and would recommend it.

"The Margarets" is set in a distant future after humans have gained interstellar transit, met other races, and mostly destroyed their home planet. The birthrate is continually monitored, with parents prevented from having too many children. Since Earth has no natural resources left, it turns to its final resource to try to fund the long expensive process of attempting to rehabilitate the planet. Its people are sold as bondspeople on 15-year contracts, to other races. Some of these other races use the bondspeople as labour, others as pets.

As an only child with adults around her, Margaret retreats into her head and creates imaginary friends for herself. Each of these imaginary friends has traits that she admires: a queen, a spy, a translator. Every time Margaret reaches a crossroads (saying something when her family is inspected by the government to ensure that they don't have too many children, for example), Margaret splits into two, each one unaware and each taking a different path. By such a process, Margaret slowly becomes each of the imaginary friends that had lived in her head. Each Margaret is unaware that there are multiples, and each one lives a very different life. Finally, the Margarets are reunited, and together they are able to save humanity from its self-destruction.

The story is rich and lush, teeming with details of the lives of each of the Margarets and the worlds that they inhabit. This lushness both makes the novel highly engaging, as well as difficult to follow. With seven main characters and the ancillary characters that dance amongst them, keeping track of which Margaret you're with (even though all of them end up with different names, some stemming from the names used for the imaginary friends, others forced upon them by circumstances) turned out to be surprisingly difficult at times. One Margaret, the queen, is rarely heard from in the story. The story has many twists and turns, and they're all packed into a single novel. I found myself thinking that Tepper could have comfortably turned this into two novels, possibly three, without lacking for material. The ending, where all of the Margarets come together and learn about each other and that they are humanity's only hope, feels especially rushed.

For all that the future presented in "The Margarets" is dystopic, it somehow manages to be hopeful. While there are powerful forces working against humanity, there are just as powerful ones that are working for humanity. While humanity has made grave and grievous errors, there is still something important that should be nurtured and saved.

The Margarets (2007) is a standalone SF novel. It is set decades or centuries in the future at a time when the Earth environment has collapsed. An alien culture has intervened to correct the human errors that have resulted in the loss of flora, fauna and even much of the water. Naturally, the greatest problem is the immense quantities of humans on the planet.

The Gentherans have provided spaceships to build human colonies on other planets in the Solar System and on worlds in other systems. Yet the number of people removed from Earth is much less than the birth rate. These colonies are really only hedges against the complete destruction of the human species.

The galaxy has many alien species. Once the Pthas ruled the galaxy, but left to go elsewhere in the universe. Legends say that the Pthas were frustrated by their billion years of trying to build up the benevolent species and to hold down the evil ones. Everytime they knocked down one evil species, another one would arise.

The Dominion Central Authority is an organization established by the Gentherans to represent all of the human race. The Dominion includes representatives from the Gentherans, Earthgov and each colony (no matter how small). The Dominion administers the human colonies and tracks the humans indentured to other species.

In this novel, Margaret is the only child on Phobos, a moon of Mars. She is living among adults who interact at a superficial level with almost meaningless conversation. The birth rate on Phobos and Mars itself is nonexistent. Apparently, none wishes to bring a child into their trivial lives.

Strange things are happening to Margaret at critical points in her life. Once she is confronted with a dragonfly starship in a dream that was actually real life. A copy of Margaret went away in the ship to another life while Margaret herself remained behind. These splits occur five more times, leaving seven Margarets living on seven planets.

One version of Margaret becomes a queen, another a shaman, another a spy and so forth. One is even a male warrior. The original Margaret is dimly aware of these other Margarets, but only as figments of dreams and her imagination.

In this story, the seven Margarets all live on different interstellar colonies. These planets are also inhabited by a variety of aliens. The Omniont Combine consists of fairly benign species, but the Mercan Combine includes various evil species. Each of the Margarets interacts with some of these aliens.

The original Margaret ends up on Tercis, a mostly human colony. By a vagarity of wormhole transportation, she has been transferred into the past and is now the eldest Margaret. She is married to a physician with great skill, but little technology. She has three living children and multiple grandchildren.

Other Margarets are carried to Fajnard, Thairy, B'yurngrad, Cantardene, Chottem and Hell (a very unpleasant planet). Fajnard is a former Gentherans planet taken over by the Frossians and Cantardene is occupied by the K'Famir. Both the Frossians and Kfamir are Mercan Combine cultures.

Thairy and Chottem are also inhabited by the Gibbekot, a benevolent culture. Hell is mostly occupied by a few entities who -- despite their appearance -- have descended from humans or prehumans. The other worlds are Terran colonies without alien settlements.

The galaxy is also inhabited by gods, beings created by the worship of mortals. Many of these gods have combined with other gods with similar attributes. Some gods of evil intent have decided to rid the galaxy of humans -- particularly the Margarets -- and are plotting together toward this end.

This tale concerns the Keeper, who knows everything. According to the legends, one can approach the Keeper by simultaneously traveling seven roads. Gradually the story reveals that the Margarets have something to do with this legendary being.

Certain beings with godlike powers also appear within this story. The Gardener, Mr. Weathereye and Lady Badness seem to crop up in all the threads. So do the Siblinghood of Silence and the Third Order, organizations with only mortal powers, but large goals.

This author takes well-worn plot elements and combines them into something new and enjoyable. She has been doing so since The True Game series and probably will continue to do so for many years to come. Her previous novel is The Companions, another book of intergalactic intrigue.

Unfortunately, this story apparently has no sequel. Nonetheless, the tale is engrossing -- although confusing -- and you probably will have difficulties in putting down the book after you start. Enjoy!

Recommended for Tepper fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of mysterious beings and powers, engrossing characters, and confused love.

-Arthur W. Jordin