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An Exaltation of Larks
It's 1978 and you're a college senior. You see a cigar-store Indian who then mystifyingly vanishes. You are seduced by the literal woman of your dreams, and a turtle assures you that you are an integral part of some secret cosmic plan from the end of time. You're not crazy. Your name is Jesse Aylesworth, and your life as a coed magnet and the editor of the college newspaper is about to spin drastically out of control....
It begins when an enigmatic woman named Sully appears out of the swirling snow one winter night and offers Jesse a ride. Then radios and televisions cease functioning. Peculiar events continue to occur with startling frequency. A change of cosmic proportions is coming - one that will both transform Jesse into an immortal, and remake our reality into a universe of eternal life.
The Indian, a member of a time-traveling race, has come to recruit candidates for the giant leap through time. Jesse is their only hope for both the future and the past, but before he agrees to aid them, he wants some answers.
Who is Sully? Is she manipulating Jesse only to sabotage the Indian's plan, or is she fantasy made flesh - a peasant maiden from the painted landscape of Jesse's dreams come true? Somehow, the fate of all time depends upon how Jesse answers these questions.
It begins when an enigmatic woman named Sully appears out of the swirling snow one winter night and offers Jesse a ride. Then radios and televisions cease functioning. Peculiar events continue to occur with startling frequency. A change of cosmic proportions is coming - one that will both transform Jesse into an immortal, and remake our reality into a universe of eternal life.
The Indian, a member of a time-traveling race, has come to recruit candidates for the giant leap through time. Jesse is their only hope for both the future and the past, but before he agrees to aid them, he wants some answers.
Who is Sully? Is she manipulating Jesse only to sabotage the Indian's plan, or is she fantasy made flesh - a peasant maiden from the painted landscape of Jesse's dreams come true? Somehow, the fate of all time depends upon how Jesse answers these questions.
251 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
2 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 30, 2015
As strange a narrative as I can recall encountering, full of twists, sex, and psychedelia that perfectly echoes college life in the 70s while bending the reader's perceptions in clever ways. I picked it up after reading an essay on it by Jo Walton in her collected essays, WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT, where she says AN EXALTATION OF LARKS becomes a new genre every 10,000 words. It turns out that is not hyperbole.
A great read, and highly recommended.
A great read, and highly recommended.
March 9, 2014
‘Jesse is the kind of callow, sly college man who has it all. He’s editor of the student newspaper, enormously popular with the female students, breezing through with terrific grades. But he’s oblivious to the fragile balance of life… until something unutterably strange strips away the surface calm of his existence and exposes a universe that proves uncontrollable and endlessly mutable.
For Jesse has become the focus of a conspiracy of creatures from beyond the end of time to re-create our universe anew. Blinded by sex and greed, Jesse can’t see the terrible flaw in their vast plan… until a wonderful woman named Sully comes into his life and turns everything right side up.
The result is a wild, erotic joyride, a no-holds barred tour de force, and, finally, a novel of sublime grace and beauty, a testament to the transcendent power of love.’
Blurb to the Tor 1998 paperback edition
Reed here manages to turn a seemingly absurd premise into a thought-provoking and beautifully crafted novel in a minimal amount of pages.
There are Turtles at the end of time, but these are no ordinary turtles. They are Godlike post-organic entities and they are on a mission.
Our Universe is destined to continue expanding rather than subsequently contracting into another Big Bang (thus recreating the Universe) and will simply slowly fizzle out and go cold. The Turtles’ mission is to rebuild the Universe into a cyclic one, one that will perpetually die and recreate itself. To do this, the Turtles travel back in time.
One of the turtles arrives in an America of the mid Nineteen Seventies (in the guise of a Native American) where any vertebrate destined to die within the following fifteen months is given immortality, fated to become the next wave of turtles in a trillion years time, from whence they will leap back to fifteen months earlier than before. Thus, in fifteen month sections, the creatures are working their way back to the Big Bang itself.
Those not chosen to become turtles are dismantled and stored in a virtual library.
It’s an extremely well-written piece which vividly creates US college life of the time and concentrates on the characters and the changes they undergo as a result of the turtle’s actions.
It’s very much a character driven novel, a love story that manages to examine teenage relationships from both male and female points of view. The central figure, Jesse, is a serial dater with a reputation for using girls for sex until he simultaneously meets The Turtle and falls in love with the enigmatic Sally Faulkner. Or does he?
Nothing in this book is what it seems. The turtles’ awesome abilities allow them to alter people’s perceptions and memories, and in the course of their hunt for a ‘criminal’ who has travelled back in time in order to live another trillion years, reality is warped in order that the truth, if such a word has a meaning in this context, can be discovered.
It raises many ethical questions about the nature of the universe, the integrity of the individual, and the rights of an individual against the concept of a greater good. Who, for instance, decides what is good or right when deciding the destiny of the universe? Certainly, the denouement leaves one with many questions which are unanswerable, pondering on issues raised in the book long after the pages have been closed.
For Jesse has become the focus of a conspiracy of creatures from beyond the end of time to re-create our universe anew. Blinded by sex and greed, Jesse can’t see the terrible flaw in their vast plan… until a wonderful woman named Sully comes into his life and turns everything right side up.
The result is a wild, erotic joyride, a no-holds barred tour de force, and, finally, a novel of sublime grace and beauty, a testament to the transcendent power of love.’
Blurb to the Tor 1998 paperback edition
Reed here manages to turn a seemingly absurd premise into a thought-provoking and beautifully crafted novel in a minimal amount of pages.
There are Turtles at the end of time, but these are no ordinary turtles. They are Godlike post-organic entities and they are on a mission.
Our Universe is destined to continue expanding rather than subsequently contracting into another Big Bang (thus recreating the Universe) and will simply slowly fizzle out and go cold. The Turtles’ mission is to rebuild the Universe into a cyclic one, one that will perpetually die and recreate itself. To do this, the Turtles travel back in time.
One of the turtles arrives in an America of the mid Nineteen Seventies (in the guise of a Native American) where any vertebrate destined to die within the following fifteen months is given immortality, fated to become the next wave of turtles in a trillion years time, from whence they will leap back to fifteen months earlier than before. Thus, in fifteen month sections, the creatures are working their way back to the Big Bang itself.
Those not chosen to become turtles are dismantled and stored in a virtual library.
It’s an extremely well-written piece which vividly creates US college life of the time and concentrates on the characters and the changes they undergo as a result of the turtle’s actions.
It’s very much a character driven novel, a love story that manages to examine teenage relationships from both male and female points of view. The central figure, Jesse, is a serial dater with a reputation for using girls for sex until he simultaneously meets The Turtle and falls in love with the enigmatic Sally Faulkner. Or does he?
Nothing in this book is what it seems. The turtles’ awesome abilities allow them to alter people’s perceptions and memories, and in the course of their hunt for a ‘criminal’ who has travelled back in time in order to live another trillion years, reality is warped in order that the truth, if such a word has a meaning in this context, can be discovered.
It raises many ethical questions about the nature of the universe, the integrity of the individual, and the rights of an individual against the concept of a greater good. Who, for instance, decides what is good or right when deciding the destiny of the universe? Certainly, the denouement leaves one with many questions which are unanswerable, pondering on issues raised in the book long after the pages have been closed.
July 29, 2010
perfectly paced and infinitely satisfying.
i've reread this one several times, and i have to say this is my favorite tale to attempt to synthesize the ordinary and the otherworldly. it's written lusciously well - as are all of Reed's works - but the setting of this one drives that particular point home. on a small college campus in the 70s, an enterprising ladies-man journalism student, Jesse, finds himself in over his head when investigating the president of the school. beyond this, i can't say much - but it plunges headlong into the strange breed of scifi that Reed builds, posing an array of possibilities for life, love, mortality, and the future of time.
i've reread this one several times, and i have to say this is my favorite tale to attempt to synthesize the ordinary and the otherworldly. it's written lusciously well - as are all of Reed's works - but the setting of this one drives that particular point home. on a small college campus in the 70s, an enterprising ladies-man journalism student, Jesse, finds himself in over his head when investigating the president of the school. beyond this, i can't say much - but it plunges headlong into the strange breed of scifi that Reed builds, posing an array of possibilities for life, love, mortality, and the future of time.
April 27, 2024
Reed is an author whose short stories and novellas are really inspiring, with some great ideas and interesting, weird science fiction. These pieces are what really drew me to Reed as an author but his novels were often hard to find and thus I would spend years tracking them down. However, it turns out the weaknesses that sprinkle the short pieces become far more pronounced and numerous in the novels and they are rarely satisfying. This is another one of those novels.
I keep searching for and buying his work hoping to find more of the elusive gold, but perhaps this is a fool's errand.
I keep searching for and buying his work hoping to find more of the elusive gold, but perhaps this is a fool's errand.
May 26, 2023
This book is bananas. I really liked it. Not just because of the smut (bonus!) but the strangeness of it all. I found it surprisingly cozy, as the whole thing takes place over a very short amount of time on a college campus. Quick read, too.
August 7, 2018
Not at all what I was expecting.
November 29, 2022
The line between sci-fi storytelling and crankery is thin.
December 31, 2016
Robert Reed is best know for his novellas and novelettes, but this stand-out novel shows that he can rock the longer form as well.
Set in 1978 as the world is changing, a small midwest liberal arts college is the scene for conflict of two groups; the Birds and the Turtles. College students and faculty are caught up in the battle, which serves as a metaphor for the struggle between "altruists" and "cheaters." But who is who? Truly a metaphor for our times!
Set in 1978 as the world is changing, a small midwest liberal arts college is the scene for conflict of two groups; the Birds and the Turtles. College students and faculty are caught up in the battle, which serves as a metaphor for the struggle between "altruists" and "cheaters." But who is who? Truly a metaphor for our times!
December 22, 2014
Interesting story line. Too much explicit sexual detail that didn't really contribute to the story. Also felt that many of the characters and their motives weren't developed enough as part of the story, but then got explained with a few sentences towards the end of the book?
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews