Pros: A tour de force -- story and history blend perfectly and achieve suspension of disbelief.
Cons: Not "light reading." You're gonna have to earn the payoff.
The Bottom Line: A tour de force -- literally. A lot of effort went into writing it, serious effort is required to read it, and the latter effort is richly rewarded.
tlknapp's Full Review: Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver
"Tour de force" is French for "feat of strength." Far from using this term in the standard laudatory way, I'm using it, in reviewing Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver as an accurate description of both the author's writing of it and any aficionado's work in reading it (with aficionado, in turn, defined per the character of Kurt Dussander in Stephen King's "Apt Pupil:" "an aficionado is one who grooves").
Prepare to groove ... if you're willing to put some effort into it. Quicksilver is long, involved and not lightly embarked upon. This is characteristic of Stephenson's work (many readers carped about the density of Cryptonomicon), but more so. Squared, even. This is 900 pages of intense detail.
Are you up for it?
Come with Stephenson, then, to the late 17th and early 18th centuries, in Massachusetts, London and points east, and to the lives of:
* Daniel Waterhouse -- Raised as a Puritan revolutionist, but a convert to Natural Philosophy and a confidant of Natural Philosophers including but not limited to Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, Huygens et al.
* Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe -- Vagabond extraordinaire, world traveler, sometimes-soldier.
* Eliza de Zeur -- Taken in slavery by the Turks as a child and recently returned to Europe to seek her fortune ... and her revenge.
Supported, naturally, by a cast of thousands.
Quicksilver begins in 1713 with the arrival of Enoch Root (a shadowy figure who appears in Cryptonomicon as well, more than two centuries later -- and yes, Stephenson says in an interview that it's the same guy) in Massachusetts. He has come to convince Daniel Waterhouse to return to England and help settle the epic feud between Newton and Leibniz over who invented the calculus.
From this point, the novel proceeds as a flashback through the last half of the 17th century from Waterhouse's point of view, interspersed with changes of venue to the adventures of Half-Cocked Jack and Eliza at and after the siege of Vienna in 1683.
The period is historically rich, of course, and Stephenson doesn't just use it as a backdrop or prop. His characters -- some fictional, some real -- live it and affect it, in areas that one might find quite dull if it were presented as non-fiction narrative ("The Ramifications of Currency Valuation during the Restoration Period" -- yawn). Stephenson makes them fascinating instead.
Now, bear with me: I know that Quicksilver isn't history per se. I know that the main characters are fictional and that the actions of the real characters may not always be wholly in line with what actually occurred. Even some places are wholly imaginary. But it feels real. The suspension of disbelief is total. I'm in the 17th century and ... I UNDERSTAND it! I ENJOY it!
I've read that fiction can be a higher form of truth than non-fiction, and Quicksilver is a pudding full of proof for that theory. Let's face it. It's not like our teachers went out of their way to make this period of history fascinating. Stephenson does, whether he's describing pre-industrial age silver mining, the display of Cromwell's head on a stick, or the development of financial speculation in Amsterdam.
Some readers may find the novel, well, busy. Stephenson weaves his characters lives and angsts into the full backdrop of the period -- from Waterhouse's kidney stone problems ... to the Plague of 1665, the Great fire of 1666 and the death of Charles II; from the Siege of Vienna to William's conquest of England to Eliza's coffeehouse adventures in the Amsterdam financial markets.
I've tried to avoid real "plot spoilers" so far, and I think I can finish this review without any ... except that if you know your 17th century European history, you'll have some idea what's coming down the pike (sometimes literally).
My own reaction to the book was this: As I approached the end, I began to desperately seek a copy of the next book in the "Baroque Cycle" which Quicksilver begins. I didn't want to stop reading, for any reason. I'm halfway through The Confusion now, and a bit peeved that I'll have to wait a few months for The System of the World.
Bottom line: Some people find Stephenson's work tedious and too fixated on technical and historical detail. I don't. It's not dry. It's good story. However, Quicksilver isn't for the "light reader." If you try to put it down and pick it back up again, you'll probably be lost and need to start over. Better to grab the tiger by the tail and hold on for the entire ride.
I cannot imagine the effort that went into writing this book ... but I do know that the effort put into reading it -- not Herculean, but demanding -- is paid back in full. You'll find yourself mentally living in the milieu Stephenson has created, or recreated, for that purpose, and loving it. Like I said, a tour de force.
In this wonderfully inventive follow-up to his bestseller Cryptonomicon, Stephenson brings to life a cast of unforgettable characters in a time of bre...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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