Customer Reviews

The Physiognomy

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have mixed feelings about Jeffrey Ford's science fantasy novel The Physiognomy. While I rank it above the average, it's still frustrating to read a book with so much potential so needlessly wasted. Jeffrey Ford had great ideas for it but I didn't like the way he handled many of them. I'll let you know about my biggest gripes in a minute, so keep reading.

For this review, I split the novel into three parts. Act one is, in my humble opinion, the best chunk of the book. Here we witness as Cley, renowned physiognomist of the Well-Built City -- the urban brainchild of overlord genius Drachton Below --, is sent to the rural landscapes at the edge of the known world on a trifling mission he's not very pleased to carry out. Cley is a cruel and conceited individual, intelligent but at the same time blinded by his own knowledge and an addiction to a drug known as Sheer Beauty. With a charming personality such as this, it's no surprise he vents his frustrations on the hapless peasants, whom he rates pathetic creatures after only a quick glance at their physiognomic traits. Jeffrey Ford shows great talent for dark humour in his portrayal of Cley, but it's a pity it only lasts for the first part of the novel. Granted, Cley isn't a character you could easily identify yourself with, but I still liked him a lot at this stage. (...)

Cley is also perhaps the only truly well-developed character in The Physiognomy, while all the others seem flat by comparison. Unfortunately for him, though, things are about to change.

The story goes a bit downhill from here. Luckily not into the Forbidden Zone of Badness, but downhill nevertheless. For starters, things happen too damn fast at times, especially from the second act on. Jeffrey Ford seems in a hurry to finish the book, and its scanty 244 pages add to that impression.

During the second part of the novel, Cley endures a set of conditions that gradually change him into a man of healthier disposition. Possibly because the narrative seems so rushed, his moral metamorphosis felt awkward to me. Not unlikely, but still awkward. Or perhaps the surrealism of the world around Cley made it feel that way, I don't know. What I think is a pity is that the protagonist begins to flatten and lose complexity as a result. Oops. On the other hand, Jeffrey Ford writes up some more cool concepts, fewer than in the first part, but fortunately not as squandered.

The third act gives us Cley's return to Drachton Below's Well-Built City. Without going into particulars for the sake of spoilers, I'll just say I didn't appreciate the novel's kind-of vacuous antiscientific message, nor did I like to see Cley made into a wimp at the end. The rating goes down a notch here as far as I'm concerned, though I understand other people's views on the subject might vary.

Like I mentioned at the start of the review, The Physiognomy boasts quite a few first-class concepts -- I'll tell you of Drachton Below's pet, a clockwork-animated werewolf, just to tease your appetite. Sadly, Ford leaves a trail of undeveloped ideas behind, instead exploring those I wouldn't like to go into -- for instance, he describes an expedition to Paradise in more detail than I'd have cared to have. The bottom-line is he ended up murdering the whole thing's sense of wonder for nothing, and any author who pulls one of those without a pretty damned good reason gives me cause to lop a couple of points off the book's score.

So, when the time comes to fill your shopping cart, is this book worth picking up? I'd say yes. The Physiognomy is an original and interesting read in spite of its flaws, the mass market paperback is cheap, and the whole thing wouldn't take you more than an idle weekend afternoon to finish. Personally, I'd encourage you to give it a try. You might even like it better than I did.

Don't believe anyone who says that "The Physiognomy" is irresistibly entertaining. For the first seventy or so pages (a good portion of this 200-page book) I had to resist the urge to toss this of Jeffrey Ford's creations across the room. The viewpoint character, one Physiognomist Cley, is a tough pill to swallow from page one: he believes himself the very crown of creation, and harbors a deep loathing for everyone else; he literally has to supress the urge to punch his partners in conversation; he is a notorious drug addict, and has protracted hallucinations every few pages; at night, he dreams of kicking people in the seat of the pants. The lugubrious arrogance and aloof cynicism of his narration instantly kills any pretense of fun.

For a good while it seems that Mr. Ford's only gift is that for surprisingly original juxtapositions, with virtually no substance connecting them. The novel's setting can be loosely termed as "steampunk"; the reader relishes in the well realized originality of the semi-divine Drachton Below and his toy metropolis, his perverse clockwork zombies, the outlying forests filled with all sorts of Bosch demons, and the tiny frontier villages filled with slowly calcifying miners. Unfortunately, there is little or nothing connecting this imagery, and the entire novel has an unrealistic, dream-like quality to it: Ford's sulfur mines hardly seem like such a horrible place (despite the fumes, Cley doesn't seem to develop TB, and at night he relaxes in a pleasant cottage with a monkey butler), and the bulk of his characters seem to be automata. For a while I hoped that the emerging metaphysical elements would connect into a unified whole by the end, lending the book a somewhat lasting impression. I ever built up an entire scheme of cyclicity and time loops which seems to fit the novel quite well, but, no, I was wrong: the novel ends without resolving many of the reader's questions, focusing on the prosaic matters instead.

Mr. Ford's "The Physiognomy" sorely lacks a definite mythos. It fails miserably as a novel about characters, and doesn't have enough to make it a novel about ideals.

Most people who pick up the book will probably be confounded by its uncompromising vision, and most of those who aren't will be offended by its unflinching sensibility. The rest will have to admit that the book is bizarre at the least. But the prose is so good that the experience of it is almost like reading poetry (don't worry, you won't notice if you don't like poetry), and many chapters have a closure that almost makes them stories of their own, even while leading the reader further into the labyrinth of the story. As a whole the book is a stunning vision of an alternative -- really alternative -- reality, and although the ending was not perfectly satisfying to me, the book is nevertheless a brave and brilliant achievement, and very much worth reading.

I have always been on the look for the right book-- the right author. Someone who would come up with a page-turning plot while being able to utilize the beauty of prose in every chapter. FORD did it all. Ford doesn't 'talk' too much, leaving the reader enough space for them to follow the story with intelligence.. his philosphies can also be seen.. scattered on unique characters like arla and cley. If you are in for an intelligent fantasy novel, the physiognomy is the perfect choice.

Physiognomist Cley has been sent by Master Drachton Below, the evil genius who constructed the Well-Built City, to the faraway mining district of Anamasobia to investigate the theft of a fruit that's rumored to have grown in the Earthly Paradise and to have supernatural powers. Upon arriving, the skeptical and arrogant physiognomist finds a whole town of morons whose physical features clearly indicate that they are all backward and generally pathetic. Except for Arla, whose beautiful features suggest that she is intelligent and competent, and who seems to understand the science of physiognomy (even though that's impossible because she's a woman). But Cley likes looking at Arla (women do have their place), so he invites her to be his assistant as each of the dimwits in the town comes one-by-one to disrobe, pose, and present their bodies for physiognomical inspection, measurement, and analysis.

But Cley's investigation starts to go badly when he attempts to read the physiognomy of "The Traveler," the dark man who was holding the supernatural fruit when it was originally found in the mines. Knowing that "dark pigmentation of the flesh is a sure sign of diminished intelligence and moral fiber," Cley is surprised to find that his scientific measurements don't add up. He's also shocked to find other strange impossibilities happening in Anamasobia. Soon, his knowledge and skills begin to fail him and, eventually, things spiral out of his control after he performs an experimental surgery on Arla while under the influence of his favorite hallucinogenic drug. Master Drachton Below is not pleased with Cley's work... and Master Below is not a man to disappoint.

The Physiognomy, with its original ideas, setting, characters, and symbolism, is sometimes brilliant, and always bizarre (which is probably why it won the 1998 World Fantasy Award). The focus on the debunked science of physiognomy is especially appealing and the characters, though they are not likable, are fascinating, too. Physiognomist Cley -- who computes personalities with calipers, wears formaldehyde as cologne, is addicted to drugs, and is afraid of the dark -- is one of the most narcissistic, sarcastic, and generally nasty characters you'll ever meet. Master Drachton Below, who developed the Well-Built City as a perfect representation of his elaborate version of the mnemonic device called The Method of Loci, and who enjoys reviving dead human bodies by fitting them with mechanical devices and neural implants, makes a great villain. I listened to Audible Frontier's version of The Physiognomy which was read by Christian Rummel. All of the characters were expertly and entertainingly rendered by Mr. Rummell, who perfectly captured the arrogance of Cley and the malevolence of The Master.

The plot of The Physiognomy starts confidently and with purpose, but when Cley's troubles begin to accumulate, the story dissolves into a series of bizarre, vaguely-related occurrences which feel more like one of Cley's time-distorted hallucinations than a plot. Like the hallucinations, the imagery is excellent (e.g., the hellish symbolism of the sulfur mine), and the prose never falters, but the things that happen to Cley, and his subsequent changes in personality, feel vague, arbitrary, and unbelievable.

It's disappointing when a book which starts so well fails to completely satisfy, but I'm not giving up on Jeffrey Ford or his Well-Built City trilogy. I loved the idea of the city based on The Method of Loci and I am hoping to learn more about it in the next book which is propitiously titled Memoranda.

The Physiognomy is Ford's second novel and the first installment of a loosely connected trilogy that narrates the trajectory of Cley, Physiognomist master class, and the fall of the Well-Built-City, the brainchild of it's ruler Drachton Below.Although Ford's creation is as inventive and multilayered as his subsequent books, I must say that TP has serious problems of plot and character development.
The plot development is uneven and the characters, with the exception of Cley, are a bit shallow. Another major flaw is the awkward and unconvincing manner with wich Ford handles the spiritual metamorphosis of Cley.Despite these major flaws TP is a book worth reading and Cley is a fascinating character.Don't missed it.

The world that Ford creates in The Physiognomy is compelling, detail-rich, and difficult to forget. I think even the most suspicious readers will be charmed by his depiction of the Well-Built City and the details like the miners who have inhaled so much dust that they turn to stone.

Unfortunately, his grip on characters is not quite as good. While Cley is engaging on a certain level, as a reader I was ultimately unable to care about either his goodness or his badness. If Ford could have made him matter just a little bit more, then it would not have felt so empty at the end.

Despite the flaws, one of the most original fantasy reads I have had in a long time. Worth reading for that reason alone.

I found this tale about the transformation of Physiognomist First Class Cley to be dark and somewhat slow going despite the remarkable characters and ideas that abound. Cley, as we meet him, is a most unsympathetic and brutal personage.

Sent on a mission from the "Well-Built City", fashioned by Master of the Realm Drachton Below as a massive mnemonic device to contain and stimulate his memories, to the backwater mining town of Anamasobia in the Northern Territory, Cley finds he is overcome by the circumstances and the curious inhabitants of the town.

His accelerating descent forces him to the island of Doralice where he is left to suffer in the hands of the strange Corporal Matters brothers and the true ruler of Doralice, Silencio the ape.

He is eventually released and continues on his path to redemption.

I definitely read through all of this adventure with sustained interest in the fate of Cley, the almost perfect Arla, the partially roboticized Calloo and the many other bizarre and extraordinarily imaginative characters, and the amazing circumstances in which they find themselves. The book is dense with wondrous ideas and events that continue to amaze right to the end. Given that, it is strange to me that the dark forboding feeling never completely leaves one.

There is much that is curious here. As the Well-Built City is the embodiment of the mind of Master Below, so this book gives substance to the strange and wild and fascinating imagination of its author. I wonder how far his excellent prose and style can take us.

I am definitely looking forward to reading Fords continuing adventures of Cley as he gradually recovers his humanity in a world far from our human experiences.

Dark, but highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this book, the tale of a destructive man, Physiognomist Cley, who goes through a tranformation and realizes the error of his ways, and then tries to help those whom he has hurt in the past. The book is richly textured and has many fascinating characters, including Cley, Silencio, and the Master. The segment of the book dealing with the sulfur mines of Doralice is truly great in evoking an atmosphere of desolation. However, the last few chapters "wrap things up" in a generally predictable way, leaving room for a sequel. This book would have been a classic if it had been a one-shot with a less formulaic ending.

The morals of this book are that Beauty Is Only Skin Deep and People Should Forgive Each Others' Failings--simplistic enough to be potentially sickening. The imagery of the Fruit of Eternal Life/Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Earthly Paradise likewise could be overly familiar. Nonetheless this book is a masterpiece, largely due to a hallucinatory atmosphere, strange settings, and a sardonic sense of humor. Frankly, I preferred Cley while he was still wicked and the Well-Built City to the Earthly Paradise.