Useful Idiots - Hardcover

Mark, Jan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385750234 ISBN 13: 9780385750233

Publisher: David Fickling Books, 2004

Synopsis

Set in the not-so-distant future, where the lowlands of Britain are flooded, this beautifully written novel explores a world where archaeology is banned for fear of the social unrest it might cause. One bleak morning, a storm across the North Sea stirs up a human skull, which starts a chain of events that forever changes the lives of those involved. It is the Inglish, a remnant tribe on the edge of Europe, that will be affected the most.

This is a compelling vision of England as it might be in the hand of award-winning author Jan Mark.

About this title

About the Author

Jan Mark attended Canterbury College of Art in England. She taught in a secondary school in Gravesend for six years before becoming a full-time writer. She has won the Carnegie Medal twice, for Thunder and Lightnings and Handles. The author lives in Oxford, England.

Reviews

Grade 10 Up–A homogenized, smoothly running world has replaced racial strife and nationalism that have caused countless wars and bouts of civil unrest in the past. The Rhine Delta Islands are all that is left of the former United Kingdom–the rest being underwater as a result of global warming. Here readers meet Merrick Korda, a graduate student in the field of archaeology, now known to the world as "the lost science." When a human skull is unearthed on a beach reserve after a hurricane, Merrick and his supervising professor want nothing more than to excavate. They do not expect the riots that follow the exhumation of the skeleton, or the hostile feelings of the Oysters, a small band of "Inglish" who live on the reserve and still practice the ways of hundreds of years ago. Merrick finds himself caught in a tug of war between the Oysters, who want the body returned for a proper burial, and the powers that control his department at the university, who want to shut down his department altogether. This lengthy novel limps slowly through a plot that's unlikely to be of interest to most teens. The language is sophisticated, and in some places an archaeology or anatomy course might be needed to decipher the text. The character development is weak as only Merrick Korda shows signs of becoming three-dimensional. The adventure promised on the jacket cover never materializes, and the conclusion is confusing at best.–Anna M. Nelson, Seabrook Library, NH
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What does Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003), about a boy with Asperger syndrome, have in common with Jan Mark's new novel, Useful Idiots, an intense, intelligent sf projection of Europe in the twenty-third century? Both were published in the UK by David Fickling Books, a children's imprint of Random with a presence on either side of the Atlantic. This may surprise fans of The Curious Incident in the U.S., where Random elected not to market the book as YA (although Fickling himself said that he thought such an edition "would have been a good thing to do"). Useful Idiots, on the other hand, came out under the Random's David Fickling U.S. imprint last month.

Readers of both books may find the implications of these publishing decisions--that is, Useful Idiots is a YA novel, The Curious Incident is not--a bit baffling. After all, Haddon's themes are typical of YA fiction: developing independence, negotiating tough family relationships, confronting parents' failings. Mark's main character, on the other hand, is not a teenager but archaeology graduate student Merrick Korda; his concerns involve shrugging off the yoke of an egomaniacal advisor and preventing a shadowy political conspiracy from gaining the upper hand. In other words, there's not much here to flag Useful Idiots as a YA novel except, perhaps, the author's longtime association with the children's and YA genres (Mark is especially well known in England, where she has twice received the Carnegie Medal, the UK equivalent of the Newbery).

That's not to say that Useful Idiots isn't solid, intriguing sf and well worth sharing with YAs (at least those who won't immediately dismiss a novel of more than 400 pages). Mark skillfully prognosticates sweeping political and cultural changes wrought by technological advances and global warming. Korda's chosen profession, for instance, is widely regarded as an "affront to civilized society"--any interest in death smacks of deviant "prurience" in a world where human life spans stretch to 100 years or more. The exhumation of human remains is thought to go hand in hand with rabble-rousing ideas about race, origin, and national identity, dead-letter notions in a society in which genetic engineering has minimized differences among ethnic groups.

When Korda participates in the excavation of a burial ground, a furor erupts, and residents of a nearby Aboriginal Reserve lay claim to the site. Korda gradually becomes sympathetic to the Aboriginals, a community that eschews genetic tinkering and does its best to preserve old-fashioned (read twenty-first-century) ways of life. His involvement with the Aboriginals deepens when he learns that their derisive nickname, "Oysters," comes from a hushed-up scheme to infect them with horsefly venom and then harvest the resulting "human pearls"--excruciatingly painful abscesses that grow in human joints and carry a steep price tag on the black market.

Given this summary, it's easy to imagine YAs diving in with enthusiasm, enticed by the forensic science elements, the disorienting thrill of seeing one's own way of life cordoned off like a living history museum, and the fascinating specifics of a world that has changed in dramatic yet plausible ways. Sex, for instance, has become more akin to a courteous handshake than an intimate act; Europe, drastically reduced in size because of rising sea levels, has merged into a single country.

Less easily discerned from plot highlights, though, is how much Mark requires of her readers. It's often necessary to patiently triangulate crucial plot elements from scattered reference points, and these are often buried, like Korda's prized skeleton, in meandering dialogues smattered with bureaucratic vocabulary ("anti-federalist subversion," "sequestrated" evidence, "civic stability"). YAs and adults alike--even those accustomed to finding their bearings in unfamiliar worlds--may periodically feel adrift.

It's no secret that the boundary between YA and adult fiction has gotten fuzzier over time and that YA editors seem to be pushing through manuscripts that formerly would have instantly been referred to an adult imprint. But are some of these landing in one genre or another more by happenstance than reason? Useful Idiots will certainly intrigue and, at times, delight the YA readers who tackle it. One does, however, suspect that the novel's professional milieu and complicated sociopolitical underpinnings would have found a broader audience among adult sf fans. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: David Fickling Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385750234
• ISBN 13: 9780385750233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416