Memoranda - Softcover

Ford, Jeffrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380802627 ISBN 13: 9780380802623

Publisher: Eos, 1999

Synopsis

Once Cley held a position of respect and fear in Master Drachton Below's cruel autocracy. As physiognomist, Cley practiced a sanctioned, twisted science that condemned men and women to death for the size of their foreheads or thrust of their chins. Yet Cley emerged from the ruins of the Well-Built City a better man, dedicated to healing the physical ills of the simpler agrarian society he has chosen to join. Below's great evil, however, has never abated-and he was not destroyed when his dark social experiment exploded. For his own senseless reasons, he has unleashed a plague of sleep upon Cley's friends and neighbors-a disease that, ironically, has felled the Master as well. And the only antidote lies in a terrible place the former physiognomist fears to enter but knows he must: in the illusory house of a madman's dreams, imagination, and remembrances; in the intricate palace of memories Drachton Below has scrupulously constructed in the Stygian depths of his mind.<p>

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Ford's novel, The Physiognomy, was the winner of the 1997 World Fantasy Award and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. He has since written two sequels featuring Physiognomist Cley, Memoranda and The Beyond. He is the protege of the late John Gardner, author of the modern classic GRENDEL. Ford is a Professor of Writing and Early American Literature at a college in New Jersey.

Reviews

Last year, Ford's The Physiognomy won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. Here's a worthy sequel. In the first book, Physiognomist Cley helped bring about the destruction of the Well-Built City, a technological marvel where foreheads, cheekbones, chins were measured in order to determine the moral character of the populace, and where mismanaged science controlled every aspect of life. Now Cley has moved to the primitive village of Wenau, where he works as a healer. His idyllic existence is ruined when the evil Master Below, the ruler of the destroyed Well-Built City, sends a sleeping sickness that quickly spreads throughout Wenau. In order to save his friends, Cley returns to the ruined City to find BelowAand an antidote. Once there, however, he learns that Below himself has been stricken by his own poison. Below's misbegotten demon son Misrix offers to help Cley enter the sleeping Below's mind to seek out the cure. "To decipher the symbols, you need only read the Physiognomy of Father's memory," Misrix explains. Yet traveling through the subconscious of a madman may well be more dangerous than the sleeping sickness itself, for there Cley must interpret a surreal landscape of events, objects and characters, even as they distort his own thoughts. Reading Ford's vivid descriptions of Below's bizarre subconscious is like stepping into a Dal! painting. Ford's symbolic view of memory and desire is as intriguing as it is hauntingAthough the book ends with more questions than it began. Admirers of The Physiognomy will prize this book, while trusting that the next (and conclusion to the trilogy), The Beyond, will clarify Ford's views on the nature of mind and reality.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Sequel (and second entry of a projected trilogy) to Ford's memorable fantasy debut, The Physiognomy (1997). Cley, having rejected the sham science of physiognomy, is now herbalist and midwife to the village Wenau. But, despite the destruction of his Well-Built City, the megalomaniac Drachton Below isn't finished with the citizens who escaped the wreck: he sends a mechanical bird to explode in the village, releasing a plague of unending sleep. So Cley sets off to investigate. Reaching the city, he's attacked by werewolves and mechanical birds, then rescued by a demon, Misrix, who was captured by Below and humanized. Having fallen victim to his own plague, Below now lies fast asleep. But Misrix can send Cley into Below's sleeping mind: it contains a memory palace where an object symbolizing a cure for the plague will be found. In Below's mind, upon an island floating above a sea of mercury, Cley encounters the seductive Anotine. But as the island disintegrates, and Cley learns of Below's callous murder of his mentor, the sorcerer Scarfinati, he can find no hint of the plague-cure symbol. Anotine, it emerges, symbolizes Cley's personal nemesis, a corrosive, addictive, hallucinogenic drugevery time he makes love to her, he gets another fix. Below plans to addict everybody to the drug so they'll accept Misrix as his successor. Startling and beautifully rendered, but not the tour de force the original volume was. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Eos
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380802627
• ISBN 13: 9780380802623
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240