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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of Science Fiction, 16 Jul 2006
The Separation is the eleventh and most recent novel by British SF author Christopher Priest, published in 2002 when it promptly won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the BSFA Best Novel Award and the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. For reasons that remain unknown, the British publishers tried to kill the book at birth, releasing it with a minimum of fanfare and remaindering it as soon as humanly possible. Luckily, Gollancz saved the book and released it in a handsome paperback edition in 2004, where as part of their Priest reprint range it has remained in-print and with increasing critical acclaim ever since.
Priest's novel, The Prestige (soon to be a major motion picture), is regarded as his best and most well-known book. The Separation is a book that at one moment is similar (another novel about duality and identity) and at once utterly different. It very nearly defies a plot summary, since any attempt to convey the storyline would be in itself verging on a spoiler. But I will do my best.
A historian working in 1999 becomes intrigued by a minor historical figure, a pacifist in Second World War Britain briefly mentioned by Churchill in his war memoirs. This man, JL Sawyer, is soon revealed to be one of a pair of identical twins. In 1936 Jack and Joe Sawyer take part in the Olympic Games in Berlin as coxless rowers, winning a bronze medal, but soon the outbreak of war separates them: Jack becomes a bomber pilot, tormented by the destruction he wreaks each night on German cities. Joe, the pacifist, becomes a Red Cross ambulance driver helping find survivors of the nightly Blitz on cities such as Manchester and London. Their stories are related as a series of diaries and memoirs written by both and also in (mostly fictional) historical documents relating to the period, some by such personages as Churchill, Goebbels and Rudolph Hess. Other devices come into play, particularly towards the ending of the book.
Priest is well-known for his slippery plots, pulling off narrative sleights-of-hand and 'twist' moments that make M. Night Shymalan's films look like the work of an amateur hack. Here he seems to reveal the twist very early, within a few pages (and silencing the critics who claim his books are rarely 'overt' SF). However, he rapidly pulls the rug out from the reader's feet again, and then again. Amidst the confusion generated by the shifting narrative, however, a pattern slowly emerges which seems confirmed in the extremely haunting conclusion. Some may deem the ending to be a 'cop-out' but nothing it as it seems, for the revelation apparently inherent in the book's finale does not explain events earlier in the book, leading to much greater thought being demanded from the reader to examine the truth of the story.
The Seperation, like most Priest books, hides an incredible amount of depth behind its deceptively simple, almost sparse prose. Characters are built up and deconstructed with nearly contemptuous ease in front of us. Priest captures the atmosphere of WWII Britain and the moral confusion of the reality of war with vivid storytelling techniques and the use of statistics and historical texts (real and feigned). Priest even educates the reader in areas about the war that have not been very well explored (the state of conscientious objectors in WWII Britain is not something I had previously considered).
The Separation is an extraordinary book in idea, even moreso than The Prestige. The lack of an 'absolute' conclusion or explanation for what has happened in the book may irritate some readers, but I found it extremely refreshing to read a book that demands that the reader actually think, rather than being spoon-fed the answers on a plate. It is in places beautifully written: Priest's take on Churchill is so good I was startled to find several impressive and very 'Churchillian' pieces of dialogue were Priest's own invention and not taken from any kind of historical record. In other places the theme of the book is so vast that sometimes it threatens to overwhelm the more human moments of the story (the reader is perhaps invited to furiously think "What the hell is going on?" rather than simply sit back and have the tale unfold). However, this is more likely to have just been my reaction to the story rather than an inherent problem. I would say that I found myself preferring The Prestige to The Seperation by a hair's breadth, but this may just have been brain hoisting the surrender flag. After greater reflection, I suspect I will find myself approving it the more of the two books.
The Separation is an excellent, headily atmospheric novel that forces the reader to think about what they are reading carefully. I recommend it without hesitation. This book was nearly stillborn due to the stupidity of the publishers and the literary world would be a much poorer place without it.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Priest's best? - A first-rate counterfactual drama., 9 Aug 2002
By A Customer
For over thirty years, Christopher Priest has been one of the most distinctive and interesting presences in English fiction. If there's any justice at all, "The Separation" should win his work a whole new readership, being a brilliantly-conceived and executed study of contingency and conscience. In Priest's hands, twentieth century history is re-made through the oddly-echoing stories of the Sawyer twins. One Sawyer is a prominent pacifist and the other a bomber pilot, but both become embroiled in a clandestine attempt to cut short the Second World War. "The Separation" has a lot in common with "alternative history" novels, exploring on its way a strangely convincing other Europe where Britain made peace with Hitler in 1941. However, what makes "The Separation" stand head and shoulders above many another "What if ...?" novel is the consummate skill with which Priest assembles his skewed history through different viewpoints and sources, every section the product of first-rate research and imaginative identification. The counterfactuals are all the more gripping for being rooted in excellently conceived and convincing set-piece descriptions of (among other situations) the 1936 Berlin Olympics and terrifying combat-flights over night-time Germany. Fans of Christopher Priest should note that "The Separation" also boasts some striking new twists on his trademark concerns about identity and how we construct ourselves out of memory and incident. Christopher Priest has produced some first-rate fictions in his time, but "The Separation" may just be the best yet.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Separation, 14 April 2003
'The Separation' has crept under the Priest Radar, managing to miss even magazines such as SFX. It is, however, worth seeking out and, as ever with Chris Priest, leaves you with more questions than answers.We're in familiar Priestian territory: the nature of reality; the effects of the unseen; perspective distortions; the relationships between twins; fidelity, the meaning of fidelity, and just how nasty and brutish Fate and her tricks can be. 'The Separation' concerns the effect Joe and JL Sawyer (identical twins) have upon the Second World War. The book shifts perspective numerous times, with both twins relating their stories, but interspersed by the (conflicting) recollections of others. The book is framed as a piece of research by a historical author called Stuart Gratton, but this is a typical Priestian red-herring, and Gratton becomes an irrelevance - in all senses of the word by the time the book ends. What Priest does is to take a 'what if' scenario, turn it inside out several times, and leave you with an 'if what' scenario. No narrator throughout the book is reliable, but every single one is utterly plausible, and clearly telling the truth as they perceive it. The central characters interchange stories, motivations and personalities, but remain distinct throughout. Neither twin (Joe or JL) is especially likeable, but their fates become increasingly poignant as they are plunged deeper and deeper into the madness of WW2. The conclusion is, like most of Priest's novels, inconclusive, and whilst this is a strength in novels such as 'The Glamour' or 'The Prestige', you are left feeling that there's something missing. A final chapter would have provided some completeness that the novel requires. But this is a minor criticism. Priest takes WW2 and gives it a fresh perspective. Churchill is both the potent statesman and an reprehensible warmonger; Rudolph Hess is nastily sardonic and oddly vulnerable. And Priest never lets us forget the horrors carried out by both sides, and the horrors that endured. We gain a glimpse (through extrapolation of reliable documentation) what might have happened had peace resulted in 1941 rather than 1945. What is most potent is the relevance this novel has to now, given that Britain has just participated in pulverising Iraq. And it's fascinating to see how the use of doubles throughout the story contrasts with the outrage expressed in some quarters of Mr S. Hussein's use of doubles in public and TV appearances.
The moral questions that are raised - including those surrounding appeasement (or what is judged to be appeasement), make this one of Priest's most political (and if not his most political) novels yet. So, this is a fine, thought-provoking, gripping, and skilfully-told tale. If it ends a little abruptly and without full 'closure' (dreadful phrase, but oddly apt), it is not to the detriment of the story. And Chris Priest demonstrates, yet again, why he is this country's most undervalued and under-recognised author. 'The Separation' is Booker and Whitbread quality (but then most of his novels are), and it's a crying shame that he hasn't yet graced the shortlists.
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