Customer Reviews

Wish: A Biologically Engineered Love Story

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Wish is a novel in four books, each a layer that takes you somewhere quite different to where you've been. But there's no sacrifice of coherency: unlike just about anyone writing Fantasy series, Goldsworthy had carefully plotted the entire story before finalising the first chapters. As John Regehr said in reviewing Iain Banks' excellent 'Use Of Weapons',
'Like all good surprise endings, it enhances the story and makes us rethink it, unlike the Hollywood-style surprise where one walks away feeling puzzled and cheated.'
By the time you're confronted it's too late. (By the way, this should warn you not to read on if you don't want to know about the surprise.)

Goldsworthy doesn't go for slightly dissonant subtle implications - nor is he at all hesitant to cause offence (indeed, perhaps he relishes it). In 'Honk If You Are Jesus', for example, he didn't merely play with the notion of DNA research cloning Pharlap, or even Shakespeare - he leapt right in with cloning Christ himself. In Wish he leaps right in with bestiality. His 'what if' we finally realise, aghast, is what if we painted the human teacher and ape student as Romeo and Juliet? With a true love, separated by hypocrisy, society and, what?, species-ism.

It's too much for me, I'm afraid - this is not just a clever speculation I can toy with. Now I'd have to say that technically, as ever, Goldsworthy has written a fine book. However cleverly, even brilliantly, he did it, he's never going to sell me bestiality as potentially acceptable, either in reality, or even as a purely fantastical idea merely for a potent literary work.

If it's the former, that he's really trying to punch home the strongest possible message about animal rights, I can see the logic of his speculation. If the essential difference between animals and people is merely intelligence - and not some other moral feature - then:
(a) to kill and eat them, or experiment on them, is no more justifiable than doing so to low IQ humans;
(b) if science can produce a more intelligent ape, there really is no difference.

I suspect that Goldsworthy is a believer in science definitely as opposed to religion, and evolution as opposed to creation: he believes there's no difference. Again, if he's stating this theme as anything more than a novel idea, he differs from this popular stance in his preparedness to take such a conviction to one of its more disturbing moral conclusions, i.e.,
(c) if there really is no difference, there is nothing morally wrong with a person having consensual sex with an animal.

I don't think he's so much interested in being the champion of bestiality as using it as the real weapon to confront double standards. In (with typical artistic finesse) presenting us with such a hypothetical example he's saying to those who claim to believe the evolutionary theory that puts humans on a continuum with animals, "Why do you react so violently to the concept of bestiality?" Very much the device of 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner': the acid test - would you let one marry your daughter?

I suspect the major effect Goldsworthy would hope for, if any apart from writing a good book, would be a greater awareness and willingness to release animals from abuse.

Why did he put so much work into painting such a powerful case in an entire novel, rather than penning a discomforting but intriguing speculative short story? Is it that he couldn't bring himself to write throwaway characters? Or that he's an excellent novelist, and couldn't resist an excellent structural idea to hang his characters and ideas on? Or does he really want to see animal rights raised to the level of human ones?

By the way, as someone who's in the camp that believes there is a qualitative, spiritual and moral difference between humans and animals (much as I'll, for example, write to MPs to oppose battery hens), I would think Goldsworthy would have a difficulty going with another logical extension of this continuum idea. He's gone, 'if animals and humans are morally indistinguishable, we should treat animals with the same respect and veneration we treat humans'. However, it's just as logical to go:
d) if there really is no difference, there is nothing morally wrong with treating humans the same way we treat animals - or the same way animals treat animals.

There's plenty of rape and murder, even cannibalism in the animal world: if we're not to judge lizards and spiders and monkeys for such actions, how can we consistently judge humans for the same actions?

Throw out God, make humans merely a clothed ape, deny the soul - and you've got some real difficulties telling anyone about what's 'right' and 'wrong' - even if you're condemning religious fundamentalism - or vivisection. In the times I doubt my own faith it's some sort of cold comfort that the other guys have got at least as many anomalies to offer.

As a postscript, it must be mighty frustrating for the deaf community to not be able to recommend such an otherwise palatable and sympathetic introduction to their language - because what follows is more objectionable than anything I've read since a Gor novel trying to legitimise rape (perhaps more objectionable, because Goldsworthy has much greater persuasive talent at his disposal and can't be simply dismissed as a fool). The opening chapters show his considerable skills in presenting the central character J.J., the hearing son of deaf parents: sign is his first and preferred language. Most other authors would have glossed over this as incidental exposition, or, conversely, have laboured his saintly status to better their later theme - but Goldsworthy patiently paints a 'real' person, and takes (almost to the point of becoming a sign primer) much time showing that the deaf are not to be patronised and pitied because they can't hear spoken English. Rather the hearing miss out on an often superior language.

I love Peter Goldsworthy books. He originally started off writing poetry, and he brings that lyricism to his prose in a way that makes you savour each word.

His characters are rounded and real, his settings vivid, and in addition to being a great writer, he is also a great storyteller.

All these qualities mean that Wish is a beautiful, powerful, compelling kick in the solar plexus. He uses all his tools to focus one's mind on moral dilemmas, in this case beastiality. I don't think he offers an opinion on the matter, but rather speculates on a course of events that leads us to challenge the basis of our morality for ourselves.

I was certainly challenged and very uncomfortable, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - it really jolted me out of my comfortable spot and got me thinking again.

So read it when you want to think, but not when you just want a little light entertainment. Less of a beach read, more of an 'I'm in a rut and want to challenge myself' kind of book.