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By Light Alone
In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain...
The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation.
The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 2011
32 people are currently reading
1414 people want to read
About the author
Adam Roberts
258 books561 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
Adam Roberts (born 1965) is an academic, critic and novelist. He also writes parodies under the pseudonyms of A.R.R.R. Roberts, A3R Roberts and Don Brine. He also blogs at The Valve, a group blog devoted to literature and cultural studies.
He has a degree in English from the University of Aberdeen and a PhD from Cambridge University on Robert Browning and the Classics. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. Adam Roberts has been nominated twice for the Arthur C. Clarke Award: in 2001, for his debut novel, Salt, and in 2007, for Gradisil.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 133 reviews
January 14, 2016
A book whose central conceit and writing style make me want to be generous, even though there are all kinds of problems going on here. Our setting is a near future in which human civilisation has been changed forever by the development of photosynthetic hair: people can now spread their locks out in the sun and they never need eat again. World hunger is a thing of the past; but Roberts's insight is that, far from ending poverty, this might only make things worse. In the past, the poor had to be given at least a little in order to survive and therefore work; in this brave new world, the poorest of the poor can have literally nothing at all.
Roberts would like on the one hand to write a kind of neo-Swiftean, hi-tec social satire about the wealth gap (and the caricatures are very broad, with the rich all fat and deeply unpleasant and the poor stunted and feral) and on the other hand to write a post-apocalyptic feminist quest narrative. Both admirable ambitions, but they don't cohere at all – it's like they were written as separate projects and then glued together with Pritt-Stick and a rubber band. The result is a very, very odd structure indeed, where the first section takes twenty-six chapters to cover 180 pages, and the last section is just one massive, chapterless block of 150 pages which are scarcely related to the rest of the novel.
Adding to the confusion is a third-act twist – well not a twist exactly, it's pretty well signposted, even for someone like me who is usually oblivious; a reveal, let's say – which is supposed to make you go "Oh, shi-i-i-t—" but which actually just throws the whole timeline of the novel into serious doubt. (If you've read the book, talk to me. Because I'm not actually sure it makes sense.)
The only other Roberts I've read is Yellow Blue Tibia, which I thought was incredibly good. Here he is less funny but there is still a distinctive, flexible prose style to lead you through all the strangeness. As a stylist he can't be accused of being clichéd – if anything he's tempted to go a bit rococo in his descriptions, but at least it's never uninteresting.
Meteorological reflection seems to bring this out of him – a little later we hear that ‘The clouds are icebergs, and the day repeatedly crashes against them and eventually it goes down in flame-coloured splendour.’ Yeah, I like reading him – I like how he talks to me as a narrator, the apparently omniscient style that nevertheless throws in the occasional first-person interjection – I must say that, if you ask me though – it's endearing. But I've got to be honest, this book is a bit of a mess – a flood of good ideas without enough authorial control.
I hesitate to end on a ridiculous tangent, but I must record that every day I was reading this I ended up being reminded of that scene in The Young Ones where Rik, in a fit of energy-saving, bursts in on Neil while he's bathing to demand in outrage: ‘Do you need the light on while you're having a bath, Neil?’ To which Neil, confused, says, ‘Well…yeah.’
‘Why, what are you going to do? Photosynthesise?’
Roberts would like on the one hand to write a kind of neo-Swiftean, hi-tec social satire about the wealth gap (and the caricatures are very broad, with the rich all fat and deeply unpleasant and the poor stunted and feral) and on the other hand to write a post-apocalyptic feminist quest narrative. Both admirable ambitions, but they don't cohere at all – it's like they were written as separate projects and then glued together with Pritt-Stick and a rubber band. The result is a very, very odd structure indeed, where the first section takes twenty-six chapters to cover 180 pages, and the last section is just one massive, chapterless block of 150 pages which are scarcely related to the rest of the novel.
Adding to the confusion is a third-act twist – well not a twist exactly, it's pretty well signposted, even for someone like me who is usually oblivious; a reveal, let's say – which is supposed to make you go "Oh, shi-i-i-t—" but which actually just throws the whole timeline of the novel into serious doubt. (If you've read the book, talk to me. Because I'm not actually sure it makes sense.)
The only other Roberts I've read is Yellow Blue Tibia, which I thought was incredibly good. Here he is less funny but there is still a distinctive, flexible prose style to lead you through all the strangeness. As a stylist he can't be accused of being clichéd – if anything he's tempted to go a bit rococo in his descriptions, but at least it's never uninteresting.
A fishbone of lightning, discarded by the cloud. It made Marie's breath stick in her throat. Scaldingly white, coldly white, and then vanished. It was a bone picked clean, bleached clean, washed clean by the oceanic sky, glimpsed clean, and gone.
One, two, three seconds later: the cosmic empty-belly rumble.
Meteorological reflection seems to bring this out of him – a little later we hear that ‘The clouds are icebergs, and the day repeatedly crashes against them and eventually it goes down in flame-coloured splendour.’ Yeah, I like reading him – I like how he talks to me as a narrator, the apparently omniscient style that nevertheless throws in the occasional first-person interjection – I must say that, if you ask me though – it's endearing. But I've got to be honest, this book is a bit of a mess – a flood of good ideas without enough authorial control.
I hesitate to end on a ridiculous tangent, but I must record that every day I was reading this I ended up being reminded of that scene in The Young Ones where Rik, in a fit of energy-saving, bursts in on Neil while he's bathing to demand in outrage: ‘Do you need the light on while you're having a bath, Neil?’ To which Neil, confused, says, ‘Well…yeah.’
‘Why, what are you going to do? Photosynthesise?’
February 15, 2019
In the future, a bad hair day could kill you.
At least in Adam Roberts’ By Light Alone’s universe anyway, a strange world where hair delineates class, and not having enough of a rug up top could see you starve to death.
Essentially, this is a story about plant-people, but not like Invasion of The Body Snatchers or Batman’s Poison Ivy. There are no green people or folks sprouting leaves like a bad Star Trek or Doctor Who creature.
Instead, Roberts sets up a world where the discovery and dissemination of a microbe that allows humans to photosynthesize energy from the sun via their hair has changed everything. Freed from needing food (and therefore work) most of the world have grown their hair long and spend hours each day soaking up sunlight in lieu of chowing down.
With food now scarce (almost no-one grows it anymore) removal of one’s tresses is a death sentence.
In By Light Alone’s world the unwanted near-crewcut of a trim I got from a barber when I was fifteen wouldn’t have simply rendered me cripplingly unfashionable - the removal of my luscious locks would have seen me slowly waste away and die of starvation (which in my teenage mind was pretty much the same thing as the uncool-ness I endured until it grew back).
If you’ve read any Roberts you would know that ingenious concepts like this are his bread and butter. Each of his various novels is underpinned by one, and each is a testament to his titanic imagination. I’ve read many of his books and Roberts is one of my favorite authors. He’s that rare beast of a writer who is prepared to take risks in the pursuit of a great SF story.
By Light Alone isn’t one of his most brilliant works, but it’s a good read and Roberts’ strong writing and storytelling skills keep it moving.
In this dark scenario the advent of solar-powered hair has wrought vast and cataclysmic changes around the world, but rich and poor remain, allowing Roberts to explore current day inequalities via the far direr disparities in his imagined future.
Freed from needing to eat, the now long-haired masses of the Earth’s population have abandoned farming, working, or doing much at all, instead spending their daylight hours sunbaking, their hair spread around them like tiny solar panels.
The global wealthy, spurning sun-feeders as ‘longhairs’, are the only people left with the money to buy the remaining real food, which they consume as a status symbol to set themselves apart from their inferiors.
Roberts takes us on a journey through the worlds of both rich and poor – starting with a privileged family whose daughter has been abducted by the poor and finishing with the viewpoint of an impoverished longhair who gets herself tangled up in a revolution aimed at toppling the wealthy.
Roberts sells his world well, and the viewpoints of his respective characters are interesting, but this one doesn’t take off like Stone, Jack Glass or Bete, books that had my pulse pounding, books that I evangelically recommend to any reader of SF.
The final segment- which focuses on a longhair girl enduring the grind of unjust poverty – drags a little, and doesn’t connect as strongly as the earlier punches Roberts lands while showing us the lifestyles of earth’s plutocrats.
Still, the book draws to a fairly satisfying close, and Roberts makes the journey worthwhile, his skill with language and narrative keeping even a weaker story afloat, and I found myself thinking of this book long after I finished it. In particular I wondered how a family like mine, where male hairlines slowly recede like never-returning tide, would fare in his dystopia – I guess we’d need an urgent round of hair transplants!
Overall this isn’t one of Roberts’ best books – that’s a crowded field, with at least four of his works making my utter classic, must-read-SF list – but it’s still a well written and beguiling read.
Three pompadours out of five.
At least in Adam Roberts’ By Light Alone’s universe anyway, a strange world where hair delineates class, and not having enough of a rug up top could see you starve to death.
Essentially, this is a story about plant-people, but not like Invasion of The Body Snatchers or Batman’s Poison Ivy. There are no green people or folks sprouting leaves like a bad Star Trek or Doctor Who creature.
Instead, Roberts sets up a world where the discovery and dissemination of a microbe that allows humans to photosynthesize energy from the sun via their hair has changed everything. Freed from needing food (and therefore work) most of the world have grown their hair long and spend hours each day soaking up sunlight in lieu of chowing down.
With food now scarce (almost no-one grows it anymore) removal of one’s tresses is a death sentence.
In By Light Alone’s world the unwanted near-crewcut of a trim I got from a barber when I was fifteen wouldn’t have simply rendered me cripplingly unfashionable - the removal of my luscious locks would have seen me slowly waste away and die of starvation (which in my teenage mind was pretty much the same thing as the uncool-ness I endured until it grew back).
If you’ve read any Roberts you would know that ingenious concepts like this are his bread and butter. Each of his various novels is underpinned by one, and each is a testament to his titanic imagination. I’ve read many of his books and Roberts is one of my favorite authors. He’s that rare beast of a writer who is prepared to take risks in the pursuit of a great SF story.
By Light Alone isn’t one of his most brilliant works, but it’s a good read and Roberts’ strong writing and storytelling skills keep it moving.
In this dark scenario the advent of solar-powered hair has wrought vast and cataclysmic changes around the world, but rich and poor remain, allowing Roberts to explore current day inequalities via the far direr disparities in his imagined future.
Freed from needing to eat, the now long-haired masses of the Earth’s population have abandoned farming, working, or doing much at all, instead spending their daylight hours sunbaking, their hair spread around them like tiny solar panels.
The global wealthy, spurning sun-feeders as ‘longhairs’, are the only people left with the money to buy the remaining real food, which they consume as a status symbol to set themselves apart from their inferiors.
Roberts takes us on a journey through the worlds of both rich and poor – starting with a privileged family whose daughter has been abducted by the poor and finishing with the viewpoint of an impoverished longhair who gets herself tangled up in a revolution aimed at toppling the wealthy.
Roberts sells his world well, and the viewpoints of his respective characters are interesting, but this one doesn’t take off like Stone, Jack Glass or Bete, books that had my pulse pounding, books that I evangelically recommend to any reader of SF.
The final segment- which focuses on a longhair girl enduring the grind of unjust poverty – drags a little, and doesn’t connect as strongly as the earlier punches Roberts lands while showing us the lifestyles of earth’s plutocrats.
Still, the book draws to a fairly satisfying close, and Roberts makes the journey worthwhile, his skill with language and narrative keeping even a weaker story afloat, and I found myself thinking of this book long after I finished it. In particular I wondered how a family like mine, where male hairlines slowly recede like never-returning tide, would fare in his dystopia – I guess we’d need an urgent round of hair transplants!
Overall this isn’t one of Roberts’ best books – that’s a crowded field, with at least four of his works making my utter classic, must-read-SF list – but it’s still a well written and beguiling read.
Three pompadours out of five.
August 20, 2013
This is sort of two novels for the price of one.
First there's a scathing satire on the unequal world we live in, on how the privileged insulate themselves from the sufferings of the rest of the world, but also from themselves, from any real feeling. A wealthy couple's daughter is kidnapped while the family is on a ski holiday at Mount Ararat. There is much sending-up of conspicuous consumption, vacuous promiscuity, fad psychology and also of the way the wealthy pay others to ratify their own desired world-view rather than for any real expertise them may possess - and this included doctors.
All of this may sound clunky; it isn't. Roberts' satire is agile, pointed and Swiftian.
The other portion of the novel is a post-apocalyptic tale of a young girls snatched away from her upper-class life to live amongst the disenfranchised in a world where food is scarce, rising oceans threaten to wipe out more and more land and a wealthy elite are in open war against the poor. A technology called New Hair that lets the poor feed through photosynthesis has freed them from hunger and exploitative labour; but they are far from free, margnalised by the powerful minority and the victim of various forms of assault. Yet, the also form their own oppressive power structures, reminding that both wealth and poverty can make a person equally callous/callused. Among these 'long hairs', there are various revolutionary or messianic groups, and the girl falls in with the Spartacists. They are preparing to rise against the elite, and seize the man Rodion, who is associated with the creator of the New Hair, as a symbolic hostage. Leah/Nissa is shaped by her privations to emerge as a sort of heroine, rejecting the currents of revolution and history to strike out for a personal; resolution that is one of the most unexpected twists in this novel.
The satire in this novel is grotesque; the best satire always is. Structurally, this novel is interesting: there are four section, the first written from Leah's father's viewpoint, the second from the returned Leah's viewpoint, the third from Leah's mother's viewpoint and the last from the kidnapped Leah's viewpoint. Each section has its own momentum but there is a central voice that refuses to editorialise, while offering a vivid, often poetic sense of setting that helps ground what might otherwise be a novel that displays its armature too clearly. Also, Roberts is a writer who is extremely effective at showing us the interior worlds of his characters, and that's something I admire and enjoy for its own sake apart from everything else.
I've often described Roberts as my favourite living science fiction writer, and this novel reminds me why - he holds a twisted, yet revealing mirror to our own world, using the framework of science fiction and all the techniques of a superior novelist. There's little else out there to match him.
First there's a scathing satire on the unequal world we live in, on how the privileged insulate themselves from the sufferings of the rest of the world, but also from themselves, from any real feeling. A wealthy couple's daughter is kidnapped while the family is on a ski holiday at Mount Ararat. There is much sending-up of conspicuous consumption, vacuous promiscuity, fad psychology and also of the way the wealthy pay others to ratify their own desired world-view rather than for any real expertise them may possess - and this included doctors.
All of this may sound clunky; it isn't. Roberts' satire is agile, pointed and Swiftian.
The other portion of the novel is a post-apocalyptic tale of a young girls snatched away from her upper-class life to live amongst the disenfranchised in a world where food is scarce, rising oceans threaten to wipe out more and more land and a wealthy elite are in open war against the poor. A technology called New Hair that lets the poor feed through photosynthesis has freed them from hunger and exploitative labour; but they are far from free, margnalised by the powerful minority and the victim of various forms of assault. Yet, the also form their own oppressive power structures, reminding that both wealth and poverty can make a person equally callous/callused. Among these 'long hairs', there are various revolutionary or messianic groups, and the girl falls in with the Spartacists. They are preparing to rise against the elite, and seize the man Rodion, who is associated with the creator of the New Hair, as a symbolic hostage. Leah/Nissa is shaped by her privations to emerge as a sort of heroine, rejecting the currents of revolution and history to strike out for a personal; resolution that is one of the most unexpected twists in this novel.
The satire in this novel is grotesque; the best satire always is. Structurally, this novel is interesting: there are four section, the first written from Leah's father's viewpoint, the second from the returned Leah's viewpoint, the third from Leah's mother's viewpoint and the last from the kidnapped Leah's viewpoint. Each section has its own momentum but there is a central voice that refuses to editorialise, while offering a vivid, often poetic sense of setting that helps ground what might otherwise be a novel that displays its armature too clearly. Also, Roberts is a writer who is extremely effective at showing us the interior worlds of his characters, and that's something I admire and enjoy for its own sake apart from everything else.
I've often described Roberts as my favourite living science fiction writer, and this novel reminds me why - he holds a twisted, yet revealing mirror to our own world, using the framework of science fiction and all the techniques of a superior novelist. There's little else out there to match him.
March 1, 2020
Eine Erfindung verändert die Gesellschaft: Ab sofort ist es möglich, über seine Haare aus dem Sonnenlicht sämtliche benötigte Energie zu beziehen. Nahrung ist nicht mehr nötig. Was eigentlich eine utopische Idee ist, führt zur Entwicklung einer dystopischen Gesellschaft: Die Kluft zwischen Arm und Reich wird größer denn je. Die Schicht der Reichen schottet sich ab und führt ein luxuriöses Leben, in dem Essen und rasierte Kopfhaut als Statussymbol zelebriert wird. Der Rest der Menschheit verarmt und fällt in archaische Gesellschaftsformen zurück.
Spannend! Wie immer bei Adam Roberts: Aussergewöhnliche Ideen werden zu einem intellektuell inspirierenden Roman verarbeitet!
Spannend! Wie immer bei Adam Roberts: Aussergewöhnliche Ideen werden zu einem intellektuell inspirierenden Roman verarbeitet!
June 4, 2016
I have only relatively recently discovered Adam Roberts, with the likes of Jack Glass and The Thing Itself, but every one of his books I've read has been excellent, so it seemed time to start filling in the gaps.
I went for By Light Alone because of its interesting sounding premise. It's a cracker (as they say). The idea is that science has produced a mechanism where people can get all the energy they need from sunlight, thanks to a bug that turns their hair into super-photosynethic light absorbers. All they need to live is some water and a few essential nutrients. A clever (if technically verging on the impossible) idea, certainly. But where Roberts triumphs is in going into the unexpected implications of the change - the absolute heart of what makes science fiction, and which so few literary types who do SF down, and think it's all about spaceships and ray guns, appreciate.
One implication considered is that for the first time ever it's possible to have a group of people who have literary no money at all. Not just poor but literally penniless. Roberts also examines the possibilities for male/female distinctions, and how a small group of wealthy people might consider those who have the special hair to be a subspecies, and to conspicuously wear their hair short to emphasise they don't need it.
The book is divided into four parts, each seen from a different (but linked) individual's point of view. At the heart of the book is the story of a privileged family whose daughter is taken from them on a skiing holiday. They assume initially it is as a hostage, but the authorities gradually explain that something much darker is behind it.
The one fault I would say that the book has is that the forth segment, which is the longest, seen from the viewpoint of the captured daughter, is the least effective. It's partly because the environment she is in forces a slow, plodding development, with occasional dramatic outbreaks of violence, but also because it just doesn't work quite as well as the other sections. It's good, but the others are brilliant.
If you want to see what good, modern science fiction is like - or are looking for a new author to branch out into, Adam Roberts is an obvious choice. I wouldn't go straight to his latest, The Thing Itself, as it is his most complex book, but either By Light Alone or Jack Glass would make an excellent way in. Recommended.
I went for By Light Alone because of its interesting sounding premise. It's a cracker (as they say). The idea is that science has produced a mechanism where people can get all the energy they need from sunlight, thanks to a bug that turns their hair into super-photosynethic light absorbers. All they need to live is some water and a few essential nutrients. A clever (if technically verging on the impossible) idea, certainly. But where Roberts triumphs is in going into the unexpected implications of the change - the absolute heart of what makes science fiction, and which so few literary types who do SF down, and think it's all about spaceships and ray guns, appreciate.
One implication considered is that for the first time ever it's possible to have a group of people who have literary no money at all. Not just poor but literally penniless. Roberts also examines the possibilities for male/female distinctions, and how a small group of wealthy people might consider those who have the special hair to be a subspecies, and to conspicuously wear their hair short to emphasise they don't need it.
The book is divided into four parts, each seen from a different (but linked) individual's point of view. At the heart of the book is the story of a privileged family whose daughter is taken from them on a skiing holiday. They assume initially it is as a hostage, but the authorities gradually explain that something much darker is behind it.
The one fault I would say that the book has is that the forth segment, which is the longest, seen from the viewpoint of the captured daughter, is the least effective. It's partly because the environment she is in forces a slow, plodding development, with occasional dramatic outbreaks of violence, but also because it just doesn't work quite as well as the other sections. It's good, but the others are brilliant.
If you want to see what good, modern science fiction is like - or are looking for a new author to branch out into, Adam Roberts is an obvious choice. I wouldn't go straight to his latest, The Thing Itself, as it is his most complex book, but either By Light Alone or Jack Glass would make an excellent way in. Recommended.
August 27, 2011
I finished By Light Alone and it's one of the few books I read that I cannot truly make my mind about it since the ending utterly baffled me structure-wise.
It is hard to discuss why without spoilers, but the book's structure and direction do not really balance with the ending so By Light Alone feels unfinished; on the other hand the ending in itself has power and a sense of conclusion but not for this book so to speak, but for a book that would have consisted of (an expansion of) its last fourth part only.
So I need some time to pass and let the book settle to write a more coherent review; otherwise By Light Alone has the great writing style of the author, excellent characters and it's structured as a successive tale of four pov's that advance the story and interpret somewhat what came before, though neither is an "unreliable" narrator, just that each sees the picture in a very narrow way.
I will add the full FBC review here soon where I plan to talk in more detail about the novel, but overall it's Adam Roberts at his most literary like in Splinter (a huge favorite of mine) and the book is one I would like to see on a mainstream literary prize like The booker longlist since it fits there the way say The Testament of Jessie Lamb does. Though i still have to decide if the ending is a masterstroke or a huge flaw...
Full FBC Review
INTRODUCTION: After recently reading and enjoying Adam Roberts first experiment in independent publishing, the "dwarf novel" Anticopernicus, his main 2011 novel By Light Alone became even a bigger expectation book than before and I got it on its publishing day on August 18. I will present its blurb below though I want to note that while generally accurate, it does not convey the power and richness of By Light Alone which turned out to be the best of the author's more literary offerings and climbed to my top three overall of his generally superb body of work alongside Land of the Headless and Stone which are both huge favorites of mine.
"In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain ...The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation."
Link
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: By Light Alone is a difficult novel to review because most of its power resides in the main characters and their interactions between themselves and the interesting but weird world the author postulates once a genius geneticist had offered humanity the gift of the "hair bug", allowing people to grow special hair which synthesizes food from sunlight, gift which turned out to be a mixed blessing to say the least.
"Preacher said: ‘Hair’s made all men preachers, now. Made all men preachers or else lazy dogs in the sun. Hair took our work, which had sustained us for millennial generations. It took our power over women and our power over the things of the Earth. These things were ours, and the Hair took them away.’"
So the book strongly depends on style and your enjoyment will correlate with how much you will appreciate the rich and luxuriant prose of the author. In the first part of the book that takes roughly a third of the total number of pages, we meet George Denoone, an aimless and bored member of the super wealthy class that regards Earth as its playground even more than usually in the past, disdaining both what has remained of the middle classes aka the "jobsuckers" and the poor aka "the longhairs".
"He swept out, past his upended and absorbed daughter. A flash of Arsinée’s aghast face. And, in the elevator going back up to the penthouse bar, he did feel a little better. These footling little humps of up-and-down emotion. Demeaning really. Not for the first time in his life he was aware of the sense that he needed some project. It didn’t really matter what, of course; only to find something purposeful to help elevate him, keep him on a more noble emotional level."
Married with a rich woman on her own, Marie Lewinsky and having two kids, 11 year old Leah and five year old Ezra, George is drifting through life, occasionally seducing the wives of his wealthy companions while paying scant attention to his wife or children. Until on a skiing vacation on Mount Ararat's slopes, the incredible happens and Leah is kidnapped, crime that is the only one authorities cannot solve however much money George throws at them, for the reasons explained below, reasons that have a lot to do with the way the world has rearranged itself once most people starting feeding on light:
"Dot nodded, as if this were fair comment. ‘Now, the bosses aren’t stupid,’ she went on. ‘And women aren’t stupid. Easier to grab a child than carry it two thirds of a year in your womb. The women get a kid; the bosses get their population of serfs renewed. That’s why they’re so reluctant to intervene. If a Turk or Iranian had stolen your gold-plated Fwn, then the police would’ve run the news round the local villages, a boss would have shaved a couple of heads, pocketed the reward and the trinket would have come back to you. But the bosses make a point of not getting involved where child theft is concerned.’"
In the second part of the book, we follow the retrieved Leah adjusting to her life back in New York, while then the novel continues for some time with Marie's tale only to end in the fourth revelatory part with the tale of Issa, a strange girl from the underclass with a true odyssey of her own.
So By Light Alone is structured as the consecutive tales of four characters where pov follows pov and illuminates what happens before while also moving the story forward, and once this structure is understood everything falls into place and the novel comes together perfectly well in a very powerful ending that first threw me off a bit since I did not expect it...
Of course as an Adam Roberts novel you get a lot of musings through the characters voices and there is a lot of interesting stuff thrown almost casually in there, stuff about the nature of historical inquiry, the whys and how the world works in addition to sfnal speculation and ideas.
And there is action too since from about half on, the novel changes pace somewhat starting with Marie's tale, only to accelerate with Issa's pov in a crescendo till the powerful finale. There is romance, revolution, brutality, joy and sorrow, all in a superb weave it truly pays to reread at least once.
Overall By Light Alone (A++, top 25 novel of 2011) is a masterpiece of literary sf and a book that could stand proudly alongside any literary novel of 2011. The novel's pieces fit perfectly together and I strongly recommend to reread it once you finish it since you will appreciate it in a different way once you understand everything that has been going on.
It is hard to discuss why without spoilers, but the book's structure and direction do not really balance with the ending so By Light Alone feels unfinished; on the other hand the ending in itself has power and a sense of conclusion but not for this book so to speak, but for a book that would have consisted of (an expansion of) its last fourth part only.
So I need some time to pass and let the book settle to write a more coherent review; otherwise By Light Alone has the great writing style of the author, excellent characters and it's structured as a successive tale of four pov's that advance the story and interpret somewhat what came before, though neither is an "unreliable" narrator, just that each sees the picture in a very narrow way.
I will add the full FBC review here soon where I plan to talk in more detail about the novel, but overall it's Adam Roberts at his most literary like in Splinter (a huge favorite of mine) and the book is one I would like to see on a mainstream literary prize like The booker longlist since it fits there the way say The Testament of Jessie Lamb does. Though i still have to decide if the ending is a masterstroke or a huge flaw...
Full FBC Review
INTRODUCTION: After recently reading and enjoying Adam Roberts first experiment in independent publishing, the "dwarf novel" Anticopernicus, his main 2011 novel By Light Alone became even a bigger expectation book than before and I got it on its publishing day on August 18. I will present its blurb below though I want to note that while generally accurate, it does not convey the power and richness of By Light Alone which turned out to be the best of the author's more literary offerings and climbed to my top three overall of his generally superb body of work alongside Land of the Headless and Stone which are both huge favorites of mine.
"In a world where we have been genetically engineered so that we can photosynthesise sunlight with our hair hunger is a thing of the past, food an indulgence. The poor grow their hair, the rich affect baldness and flaunt their wealth by still eating. But other hungers remain ...The young daughter of an affluent New York family is kidnapped. The ransom demands are refused. Years later a young women arrives at the family home claiming to be their long lost daughter. She has changed so much, she has lived on light, can anyone be sure that she has come home? Adam Roberts' new novel is yet another amazing melding of startling ideas and beautiful prose. Set in a New York of the future it nevertheless has echoes of a Fitzgeraldesque affluence and art-deco style. It charts his further progress as one of the most important writers of his generation."
Link
OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: By Light Alone is a difficult novel to review because most of its power resides in the main characters and their interactions between themselves and the interesting but weird world the author postulates once a genius geneticist had offered humanity the gift of the "hair bug", allowing people to grow special hair which synthesizes food from sunlight, gift which turned out to be a mixed blessing to say the least.
"Preacher said: ‘Hair’s made all men preachers, now. Made all men preachers or else lazy dogs in the sun. Hair took our work, which had sustained us for millennial generations. It took our power over women and our power over the things of the Earth. These things were ours, and the Hair took them away.’"
So the book strongly depends on style and your enjoyment will correlate with how much you will appreciate the rich and luxuriant prose of the author. In the first part of the book that takes roughly a third of the total number of pages, we meet George Denoone, an aimless and bored member of the super wealthy class that regards Earth as its playground even more than usually in the past, disdaining both what has remained of the middle classes aka the "jobsuckers" and the poor aka "the longhairs".
"He swept out, past his upended and absorbed daughter. A flash of Arsinée’s aghast face. And, in the elevator going back up to the penthouse bar, he did feel a little better. These footling little humps of up-and-down emotion. Demeaning really. Not for the first time in his life he was aware of the sense that he needed some project. It didn’t really matter what, of course; only to find something purposeful to help elevate him, keep him on a more noble emotional level."
Married with a rich woman on her own, Marie Lewinsky and having two kids, 11 year old Leah and five year old Ezra, George is drifting through life, occasionally seducing the wives of his wealthy companions while paying scant attention to his wife or children. Until on a skiing vacation on Mount Ararat's slopes, the incredible happens and Leah is kidnapped, crime that is the only one authorities cannot solve however much money George throws at them, for the reasons explained below, reasons that have a lot to do with the way the world has rearranged itself once most people starting feeding on light:
"Dot nodded, as if this were fair comment. ‘Now, the bosses aren’t stupid,’ she went on. ‘And women aren’t stupid. Easier to grab a child than carry it two thirds of a year in your womb. The women get a kid; the bosses get their population of serfs renewed. That’s why they’re so reluctant to intervene. If a Turk or Iranian had stolen your gold-plated Fwn, then the police would’ve run the news round the local villages, a boss would have shaved a couple of heads, pocketed the reward and the trinket would have come back to you. But the bosses make a point of not getting involved where child theft is concerned.’"
In the second part of the book, we follow the retrieved Leah adjusting to her life back in New York, while then the novel continues for some time with Marie's tale only to end in the fourth revelatory part with the tale of Issa, a strange girl from the underclass with a true odyssey of her own.
So By Light Alone is structured as the consecutive tales of four characters where pov follows pov and illuminates what happens before while also moving the story forward, and once this structure is understood everything falls into place and the novel comes together perfectly well in a very powerful ending that first threw me off a bit since I did not expect it...
Of course as an Adam Roberts novel you get a lot of musings through the characters voices and there is a lot of interesting stuff thrown almost casually in there, stuff about the nature of historical inquiry, the whys and how the world works in addition to sfnal speculation and ideas.
And there is action too since from about half on, the novel changes pace somewhat starting with Marie's tale, only to accelerate with Issa's pov in a crescendo till the powerful finale. There is romance, revolution, brutality, joy and sorrow, all in a superb weave it truly pays to reread at least once.
Overall By Light Alone (A++, top 25 novel of 2011) is a masterpiece of literary sf and a book that could stand proudly alongside any literary novel of 2011. The novel's pieces fit perfectly together and I strongly recommend to reread it once you finish it since you will appreciate it in a different way once you understand everything that has been going on.
December 26, 2018
The only redeeming feature of this book is the last 150 odd pages. Prior to this it’s a rambling mess with no sense of purpose, character, or world building.
No one in the first half of the book is capable of a coherent thought or conversation, which is made all the more baffling when people who can string thoughts together suddenly appear.
The setting makes no sense, with a ton of things that are just jarring and throw you out of the setting at any given moment. The history is vague, with science advanced enough to make the photosynthesis drug and ice cream ski slopes possible, but still old fashioned enough to understand the concept of Star Wars. Language is used in a nonsensical manner (such as calling films books) just to show us that the world has moved past certain concepts without really showing it.
Most baffling is the society. The drug is optional, and yet the people who don’t use it and do need to eat barely eat anything. The entire middle east is clustered into one large tribal stereotype where mob bosses force the drug on people (which cannot be free) so that they don’t have to pay people to work. Everything is pushed to a nonsensical extreme just to make a statement about the rich flaunting resources and it becomes silly.
And yet the section of the book narrated by Issa was, by and large, well written. It’s strange that no editor got hold of the author and asked what on Earth he was doing
No one in the first half of the book is capable of a coherent thought or conversation, which is made all the more baffling when people who can string thoughts together suddenly appear.
The setting makes no sense, with a ton of things that are just jarring and throw you out of the setting at any given moment. The history is vague, with science advanced enough to make the photosynthesis drug and ice cream ski slopes possible, but still old fashioned enough to understand the concept of Star Wars. Language is used in a nonsensical manner (such as calling films books) just to show us that the world has moved past certain concepts without really showing it.
Most baffling is the society. The drug is optional, and yet the people who don’t use it and do need to eat barely eat anything. The entire middle east is clustered into one large tribal stereotype where mob bosses force the drug on people (which cannot be free) so that they don’t have to pay people to work. Everything is pushed to a nonsensical extreme just to make a statement about the rich flaunting resources and it becomes silly.
And yet the section of the book narrated by Issa was, by and large, well written. It’s strange that no editor got hold of the author and asked what on Earth he was doing
June 16, 2012
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1893075.html
In By Light Alone, humanity has become universally able to photosynthesise enough energy to stay alive through their hair by virtue of a drug which is freely available, and has consequently collapsed into a Gatsbyesque dichotomy of the super-wealthy and the poor. The plot concerns a couple who are holidaying in an exotic resort, whose obscenely comfortable world is upended when one of their children is stolen - not kidnapped, no ransom involved; we then follow first their efforts to get her back and then the real story of her return. It's lushly descriptive, but most of the characters are so unpleasant that it's rather difficult to enjoy (and then the missing daughter is almost too heroic when she finally turns up).
Roberts' future world is also a world without conflict, where his characters (both rich and poor) are able to wander across borders that in our world are tense and contentious but in the world of By Light Alone are sunk into a sullen peace, watched over by local militias and strongmen whose desire for a quiet life apparently doesn't include conquering the next village. (Though the book ends with renewed conflict between rich and poor, personified in the family who are his core characters.)
Those of us who take an interest in the origins of conflict occasionally debate the extent to which access to resources is a universal factor (my own take is that it can be over-rated; cultural factors can exacerbate conflict even in areas which are wealthy, or prevent it in areas which are poor). Iain M. Banks portrays a post-scarcity future where conflict is pretty much absent except for those outside the Culture. I was a bit disappointed that the disappearance of traditional conflict from Roberts' world wasn't really a matter of comment within the novel; Tbilisi, Yerevan and Mount Ararat are basically far-off places which are not like New York and are full of poor people, and while that's explicitly the view of the unpleasant rich characters, I felt it was implicitly the view of the novel as a whole, and an opportunity missed.
In By Light Alone, humanity has become universally able to photosynthesise enough energy to stay alive through their hair by virtue of a drug which is freely available, and has consequently collapsed into a Gatsbyesque dichotomy of the super-wealthy and the poor. The plot concerns a couple who are holidaying in an exotic resort, whose obscenely comfortable world is upended when one of their children is stolen - not kidnapped, no ransom involved; we then follow first their efforts to get her back and then the real story of her return. It's lushly descriptive, but most of the characters are so unpleasant that it's rather difficult to enjoy (and then the missing daughter is almost too heroic when she finally turns up).
Roberts' future world is also a world without conflict, where his characters (both rich and poor) are able to wander across borders that in our world are tense and contentious but in the world of By Light Alone are sunk into a sullen peace, watched over by local militias and strongmen whose desire for a quiet life apparently doesn't include conquering the next village. (Though the book ends with renewed conflict between rich and poor, personified in the family who are his core characters.)
Those of us who take an interest in the origins of conflict occasionally debate the extent to which access to resources is a universal factor (my own take is that it can be over-rated; cultural factors can exacerbate conflict even in areas which are wealthy, or prevent it in areas which are poor). Iain M. Banks portrays a post-scarcity future where conflict is pretty much absent except for those outside the Culture. I was a bit disappointed that the disappearance of traditional conflict from Roberts' world wasn't really a matter of comment within the novel; Tbilisi, Yerevan and Mount Ararat are basically far-off places which are not like New York and are full of poor people, and while that's explicitly the view of the unpleasant rich characters, I felt it was implicitly the view of the novel as a whole, and an opportunity missed.
January 28, 2021
Not only did I love this book and cover it in post-its, but I think I might have a new favorite author.
This book won't be for everyone. I get that. There's really no one to like because they're all (with one exception that will break your heart) painted a shade nasty and too real. And yet, compelling af! It's satire, full of content warnings and terrible people, and just generally sharp and unforgiving. It has that old-school feel where morality creates tension.
I loved it. So. Much. You can open this book at any page and find a stunning line. Every single page. It's brilliant.
It has perhaps the best first page and best last lines I've ever encountered. There are echoes and threads and insights that show a powerful ability to write freely and fully. Orchestral. The heart was not edited out of this book. Someone did an excellent job keeping in the slants needed to make this book sing instead of shout.
You could study this book through several semesters. The meaning of light to George, the meaning of water to Issa, the garden, the food. Each thread a symbolic story all its own. I got to the point that when George noted light moving across a room, I braced for the inevitable revelation and aftermath.
I'm so happy I bought this book in paper form! aaaahh! I'm excited to read all of Roberts' work and re-read this one on a regular basis just to remind myself that THIS, this is what SFF can do.
This book won't be for everyone. I get that. There's really no one to like because they're all (with one exception that will break your heart) painted a shade nasty and too real. And yet, compelling af! It's satire, full of content warnings and terrible people, and just generally sharp and unforgiving. It has that old-school feel where morality creates tension.
I loved it. So. Much. You can open this book at any page and find a stunning line. Every single page. It's brilliant.
It has perhaps the best first page and best last lines I've ever encountered. There are echoes and threads and insights that show a powerful ability to write freely and fully. Orchestral. The heart was not edited out of this book. Someone did an excellent job keeping in the slants needed to make this book sing instead of shout.
You could study this book through several semesters. The meaning of light to George, the meaning of water to Issa, the garden, the food. Each thread a symbolic story all its own. I got to the point that when George noted light moving across a room, I braced for the inevitable revelation and aftermath.
I'm so happy I bought this book in paper form! aaaahh! I'm excited to read all of Roberts' work and re-read this one on a regular basis just to remind myself that THIS, this is what SFF can do.
January 15, 2016
Why haven't I heard more about this book?
As topical and timely goes, it can hardly be surpassed: a novel about food insecurity as food becomes scarcer worldwide, a novel about income inequality in the year of the Occupy movement, and a novel about unintended consequences of benevolent ideas as we watch climate change unfold around us--why isn't it being reviewed in every newspaper and magazine from Iqualiut to Brisbane? Add to that a smart, well-written novel with well-drawn characters of literary quality. Where is the bruhaha?
So: picture a family of wealthy Manhattanites--so wealthy they do not need to work for a living. Moreover, picture a family of wealthy Manhattanites in the hands of an author who obviously doesn't care much for them (and you won't, either, though one of them is sympathetically drawn). Picture a world in which a genius has developed a medical treatment that induces a genetic enhancement: human hair that photosynthesizes, so that the receiver of the treatment no longer needs to eat. Say goodbye to poverty and hunger, yes? Or that's the idea, anyway.
Picture a world in which the rich continue to hold onto their separateness and privilege by shaving their heads and getting fat off of real food, which most people can no longer afford. And picture a world in which billions of poor humans with photosynthesizing hair no longer have a thing to lose because, since they no longer need to be paid for their labour in order to eat and survive, they aren't.
Now picture that the preteen daughter of this wealthy Manhattanite family is kidnapped while the family is on vacation, and a year later is returned to them (or is she?) vastly altered by having lived on light for a year.
It's not a thriller, as the action does not centre around the kidnapping or the return, but her parents' reactions to both of those things--at least, until you get to Issa's chapter, which is hearbreaking. It's not about the hair (we never learn how it works). It's about how our best and most fabulous inventions always create problems we are neither equipped nor prepared to solve, and how the rich and powerful will hang on to their privilege and their ability to exploit regardless of the cost, even to themselves. It's a great book, well worth the read.
As topical and timely goes, it can hardly be surpassed: a novel about food insecurity as food becomes scarcer worldwide, a novel about income inequality in the year of the Occupy movement, and a novel about unintended consequences of benevolent ideas as we watch climate change unfold around us--why isn't it being reviewed in every newspaper and magazine from Iqualiut to Brisbane? Add to that a smart, well-written novel with well-drawn characters of literary quality. Where is the bruhaha?
So: picture a family of wealthy Manhattanites--so wealthy they do not need to work for a living. Moreover, picture a family of wealthy Manhattanites in the hands of an author who obviously doesn't care much for them (and you won't, either, though one of them is sympathetically drawn). Picture a world in which a genius has developed a medical treatment that induces a genetic enhancement: human hair that photosynthesizes, so that the receiver of the treatment no longer needs to eat. Say goodbye to poverty and hunger, yes? Or that's the idea, anyway.
Picture a world in which the rich continue to hold onto their separateness and privilege by shaving their heads and getting fat off of real food, which most people can no longer afford. And picture a world in which billions of poor humans with photosynthesizing hair no longer have a thing to lose because, since they no longer need to be paid for their labour in order to eat and survive, they aren't.
Now picture that the preteen daughter of this wealthy Manhattanite family is kidnapped while the family is on vacation, and a year later is returned to them (or is she?) vastly altered by having lived on light for a year.
It's not a thriller, as the action does not centre around the kidnapping or the return, but her parents' reactions to both of those things--at least, until you get to Issa's chapter, which is hearbreaking. It's not about the hair (we never learn how it works). It's about how our best and most fabulous inventions always create problems we are neither equipped nor prepared to solve, and how the rich and powerful will hang on to their privilege and their ability to exploit regardless of the cost, even to themselves. It's a great book, well worth the read.
January 11, 2013
Adam Roberts is a master of the High Concept, which means a high degree of experimentation and no two novels that are alike. Hence By Light Alone is totally different in tone and style to New Model Army, for example.
BLA is a peculiar novel, an old-style dystopia/utopia discourse like Le Guin or Delany might have written, teasing out the socio-political implications of a different world that refract deficiencies in our own.
Except Roberts has chosen as main viewpoint characters a couple at the privileged apex of his dystopia/utopia, a couple so pampered, vain, short-sighted, emotionally and intellectually stunted that it is excruciating for the reader to spend any time with them ... to the point where, halfway through, I was fully prepared to put this book down and move on to something else, simply because I found the main protagonists so detestable...
Then Roberts does something remarkable. It is as if he wanted to see how far he could push a reader's tolerance, for suddenly the remaining half of the novel switches to a single, long chapter, told from the viewpoint of the lumpenproletariat. This section is simply breathtaking, with an incredible sting in the tale.
BLA is a peculiar novel, an old-style dystopia/utopia discourse like Le Guin or Delany might have written, teasing out the socio-political implications of a different world that refract deficiencies in our own.
Except Roberts has chosen as main viewpoint characters a couple at the privileged apex of his dystopia/utopia, a couple so pampered, vain, short-sighted, emotionally and intellectually stunted that it is excruciating for the reader to spend any time with them ... to the point where, halfway through, I was fully prepared to put this book down and move on to something else, simply because I found the main protagonists so detestable...
Then Roberts does something remarkable. It is as if he wanted to see how far he could push a reader's tolerance, for suddenly the remaining half of the novel switches to a single, long chapter, told from the viewpoint of the lumpenproletariat. This section is simply breathtaking, with an incredible sting in the tale.
September 22, 2012
A great Science Fiction conceit, but the author doesn't really seem to be concerned with developing his conceit. Or his plot. Or his characters. The first third is a truly awful satire of the rich carried along only by the promise of an interesting world beyond what the main characters are doing. It honestly felt a lot like Hemingway-rich people doing things that are hard to care about. The final third of the book is more interesting than anything before and a twist certainly pays off, but like most capital-L literature authors, he doesn't feel like the audience is entitled to any sort of conclusion. There's books that are "meh" because it is tough to care about them. Then there are books like this that are "meh" because there is so much good stuff hidden behind all the distractions.
September 15, 2014
I made it to chapter 20, I found I was not invested in any of the characters, and then the biologist in me rebelled- not in terms of the hair, that's great- its the blokes 'content simply to loll in the sun.' while the ladies are motivated to do everything. This would not be the case- guys would want their offspring to get the best chance in life too, so why wouldn't they help? Also if they did, the ladies would pick them over other chaps who do nothing, so very quickly the whole lying around thing would fall apart.
Maybe this is sorted out later, however- I'm giving up.
Maybe this is sorted out later, however- I'm giving up.
April 28, 2021
I loved the way this was written; such an unusual and original use of words and structure. It's cool when science fiction is literary, when it doesn't lay it on thick with exposition and just allows me to take in the environment like I've always been there... though to be fair it's hard to tell if it does this because the world itself isn't wholly convincing, but with prose this lovely I didn't much care.
November 21, 2022
So dry and boring. Did my head in. I don’t care about the boring self centred pricks in this book. Only read if you can’t sleep.
March 16, 2015
Motivated to read this after reading several really good short stories over recent years I was quite pleased with this although it is a somewhat challenging read and I can see how it wouldn't be for everyone.
The author must have asked himself what fundamental discovery might allow even more extreme levels of inequality than our already unequal world entails? A new kind of hair that allows people to draw nourishment from the sun is one possible answer to this question and the author explores the implications of this in a four part narrative that focuses on four different characters centred around a core story.
The story focuses on an extremely rich family that go on holiday on a resort near Armenia but their daughter one day is kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. The police seem powerless to help and the effect if this is very different on the mother and father. I can't talk too much about the story without giving away spoilers but I will say that the book is as much about exploring a world re-shaped by the aforementioned discovery as it is about the devastating impact of losing a child has on the parents.
One is torn between sympathising and despising the parents who were so oblivious to poor and downtrodden whilst also hoping that they will be re-united with their lost child. The former decadence and frivolity of their lifestyles cannot carry on as before and they begin to re-examine their lives, relationships and values.
Roberts' writes with a pleasing yet rambling prose style and the direction of the plot feels a little diffuse at times yet there was enough all the way through to sustain my interest and engagement. If it wasn't for the somewhat underwhelming ending I would have awarded another star.
The author must have asked himself what fundamental discovery might allow even more extreme levels of inequality than our already unequal world entails? A new kind of hair that allows people to draw nourishment from the sun is one possible answer to this question and the author explores the implications of this in a four part narrative that focuses on four different characters centred around a core story.
The story focuses on an extremely rich family that go on holiday on a resort near Armenia but their daughter one day is kidnapped, disappearing without a trace. The police seem powerless to help and the effect if this is very different on the mother and father. I can't talk too much about the story without giving away spoilers but I will say that the book is as much about exploring a world re-shaped by the aforementioned discovery as it is about the devastating impact of losing a child has on the parents.
One is torn between sympathising and despising the parents who were so oblivious to poor and downtrodden whilst also hoping that they will be re-united with their lost child. The former decadence and frivolity of their lifestyles cannot carry on as before and they begin to re-examine their lives, relationships and values.
Roberts' writes with a pleasing yet rambling prose style and the direction of the plot feels a little diffuse at times yet there was enough all the way through to sustain my interest and engagement. If it wasn't for the somewhat underwhelming ending I would have awarded another star.
September 19, 2011
I thought that after Land of Headless, Adam Roberts had completed his literary evolution. I was wrong, his voice is still evolving into totally new and interesting ways. This is a story of a world in which the need for food was eradicated because the hair was genetically engineered so that it can photosynthesise sunlight. You think that this is an utopia. Wrong, in the hands of Roberts this book is a dystopia, in which the poor grow their hair and become poorer and the rich shave their heads, consume food like our world consumes the latest fashion clothing and become richer. By disposing of our hunger, Adam Roberts (much like a patient who removes his clothes in order to be properly examine by a doctor) writes a clearer but a disturbingly frightful mirror image of our world, our society, our families, our husbands and wives, daughters and sons. We explore this world through the eyes of 4 fascinating main characters, each of them being the voice of one of the 4 chapters. These 4 stories collide, then part away more than once, but in the end all the threads come together into something totally unexpected and mind blowing. And everything is narrated in a beautiful prose, that reminded me of Margaret Atwood. But in this book Roberts' prose is not as good as Atwood's, is better. And that says a lot. Fortunately for us Roberts broke free from the mind chains that will forever keep Atwood from exploring new and interesting territories. I think this is Roberts best book and one of the great novels of 2011. I can't recommend it enough.
April 25, 2012
The last book by Adam Roberts that I read, Yellow Blue Tibia, I did not enjoy. At all. So I was a little dubious about reading this one until I saw the cover, and I am willing to admit here and now that in this case at least, the cover totally sucked me in. An art deco sensibility is definitely the way to at least make me interested in starting your book.
And then I read the blurb, and decided that this could indeed be a book for me.
One of the great answers to "how would you change the world" in stereotypical beauty pageants is, aside from world peace, an end to world hunger. It's something that writers of near-future sf occasionally deal with: do we get awesome new genetically modified wheat? Do we farm algae in the seas? Do we ship everyone off-planet? Roberts suggests something entirely different: create a bug that, once ingested, turns human hair into a light-gathering factory. That is, allows it to undertake photosynthesis.
Et voila! Hunger solved! As long as you have access to sunlight. And as long as you have hair long enough to catch enough sun.
Marvellous! But, now that all of those people over there are no longer starving, how do the fancy people over here prove that they are still at the top of the social scale? Easy: they eat real food. Also, they shave their heads.
It's a bizarre world that Roberts imagines, in some ways: people lying around quite literally soaking up rays, the changed language that reflects changes in society, and so on. But, most frighteningly and tellingly, actually this future world is a lot like our present one. Maybe worse. There are haves and have-nots, at all point on the spectrum; there is discontent, both individually and collectively; there are power struggles, and cultural misunderstandings.
The novel begins as a family drama, when George and Marie's daughter is kidnapped while they are on a family skiing holiday in Turkey. (George and Marie are skiing; their children stay with their nanny in the designated children's play area, and get brought out when the nanny is summoned to do so.) Their experience with the local authorities is frustrating to say the least, no ransom is demanded, and the outlook is bleak - until George finds someone willing to undertake an investigation on their behalf. Dot explains why children are sometimes kidnapped: the energy from New Hair is not sufficient for a pregnancy. So either women have to get food somehow as a supplement, or... they get themselves a pre-made one. As it were. While there are indications before this event that this brave new world is not a perfect one for everyone, this is the first big crack, suggesting that the worst of human nature can still exist even when one of the major crises is lifted. This whole experience also reveals some of the cracks in George and Marie's marriage, and they just keep getting bigger.
Just less than half the novel is taken up with George's story - losing and eventually finding Leah, everyday life as a rich man in New York, his friendship with various people and a slowly developing interest in not continuing as normal. His perspective is rather abruptly abandoned in favour of a short vignette from Leah's perspective, which confirms what the reader has already suspected fairly early on (um, mild spoiler?): she is not Leah. Thanks to this insert the reader is given a brief, fascinating glimpse into life in a village somewhere in Turkey (maybe; the geography is unclear), where New Hair is how people survive and power games have shifted accordingly. And this is contrasted with her experiences as the pampered daughter of a rich American family, which is of course rather stark.
The rest of the novel is divided between two more perspectives: that of Marie, George's wife, a fairly shallow woman floating along on her own indulgences; and that of a girl living with New Hair, in a no-account little village, who ends up leaving her village and commensurately its protection and familiarity. The comparison between these two is striking, and says a great deal about power, expectations, and the impact of an individual's choices.
Am I glad I read it? Yes indeed. While it's by no means action-packed, the plot does move along at a steady pace, even though the events could sometimes be regarded as trivial; when the focus is a single family struggling with grief, interactions with doctors and friends and a daughter returned naturally assume significance. And just like ordinary life, these events are taking place against a background of seriously geopolitical events, if the reader cares to pay attention. Of the characters, George starts off like Konstantin in Yellow Blue Tibia - annoying and self-centred and self-pitying - he improves as a human in general, plus his interactions with people also make him more interesting than he initially seemed. I cannot say the same for Marie - she never becomes a person I would want to know - but her perspective provides a crucial, and crucially different from George, view on the world. And finally, exploring how a world so different from ours, without hunger, can still be so much the same, is a sobering reflection on human nature. One that I rather hope need not prove true.
I read this basically as soon as I finished 2312. It was a serious headspin to go from THAT world to this.
And then I read the blurb, and decided that this could indeed be a book for me.
One of the great answers to "how would you change the world" in stereotypical beauty pageants is, aside from world peace, an end to world hunger. It's something that writers of near-future sf occasionally deal with: do we get awesome new genetically modified wheat? Do we farm algae in the seas? Do we ship everyone off-planet? Roberts suggests something entirely different: create a bug that, once ingested, turns human hair into a light-gathering factory. That is, allows it to undertake photosynthesis.
Et voila! Hunger solved! As long as you have access to sunlight. And as long as you have hair long enough to catch enough sun.
Marvellous! But, now that all of those people over there are no longer starving, how do the fancy people over here prove that they are still at the top of the social scale? Easy: they eat real food. Also, they shave their heads.
It's a bizarre world that Roberts imagines, in some ways: people lying around quite literally soaking up rays, the changed language that reflects changes in society, and so on. But, most frighteningly and tellingly, actually this future world is a lot like our present one. Maybe worse. There are haves and have-nots, at all point on the spectrum; there is discontent, both individually and collectively; there are power struggles, and cultural misunderstandings.
The novel begins as a family drama, when George and Marie's daughter is kidnapped while they are on a family skiing holiday in Turkey. (George and Marie are skiing; their children stay with their nanny in the designated children's play area, and get brought out when the nanny is summoned to do so.) Their experience with the local authorities is frustrating to say the least, no ransom is demanded, and the outlook is bleak - until George finds someone willing to undertake an investigation on their behalf. Dot explains why children are sometimes kidnapped: the energy from New Hair is not sufficient for a pregnancy. So either women have to get food somehow as a supplement, or... they get themselves a pre-made one. As it were. While there are indications before this event that this brave new world is not a perfect one for everyone, this is the first big crack, suggesting that the worst of human nature can still exist even when one of the major crises is lifted. This whole experience also reveals some of the cracks in George and Marie's marriage, and they just keep getting bigger.
Just less than half the novel is taken up with George's story - losing and eventually finding Leah, everyday life as a rich man in New York, his friendship with various people and a slowly developing interest in not continuing as normal. His perspective is rather abruptly abandoned in favour of a short vignette from Leah's perspective, which confirms what the reader has already suspected fairly early on (um, mild spoiler?): she is not Leah. Thanks to this insert the reader is given a brief, fascinating glimpse into life in a village somewhere in Turkey (maybe; the geography is unclear), where New Hair is how people survive and power games have shifted accordingly. And this is contrasted with her experiences as the pampered daughter of a rich American family, which is of course rather stark.
The rest of the novel is divided between two more perspectives: that of Marie, George's wife, a fairly shallow woman floating along on her own indulgences; and that of a girl living with New Hair, in a no-account little village, who ends up leaving her village and commensurately its protection and familiarity. The comparison between these two is striking, and says a great deal about power, expectations, and the impact of an individual's choices.
Am I glad I read it? Yes indeed. While it's by no means action-packed, the plot does move along at a steady pace, even though the events could sometimes be regarded as trivial; when the focus is a single family struggling with grief, interactions with doctors and friends and a daughter returned naturally assume significance. And just like ordinary life, these events are taking place against a background of seriously geopolitical events, if the reader cares to pay attention. Of the characters, George starts off like Konstantin in Yellow Blue Tibia - annoying and self-centred and self-pitying - he improves as a human in general, plus his interactions with people also make him more interesting than he initially seemed. I cannot say the same for Marie - she never becomes a person I would want to know - but her perspective provides a crucial, and crucially different from George, view on the world. And finally, exploring how a world so different from ours, without hunger, can still be so much the same, is a sobering reflection on human nature. One that I rather hope need not prove true.
I read this basically as soon as I finished 2312. It was a serious headspin to go from THAT world to this.
May 15, 2016
First Impression: I enjoyed other Adam Roberts books and so I went into this book with high hopes, this may be why I was left feeling a little disappointed. I am not going to say this is not a good book, it was just not my cup of tea. Plot heavy and very little action or suspense made me feel disappointed.
Summary of the Book:
By Light Alone is set in a world where hunger is no longer a pressing matter, humans have the ability to get sustenance from the rays of the sun through their hair. The rich are the only humans left that get a taste of the real deal, food is a luxury only the powerful can obtain and this creates an even bigger rift between the upper and lower classes.
George, Marie, Leah and Ezra come under the category of filthy rich and they flaunt their wealth, eating, drinking and ignoring the poverty and the revolution that its soon going to spring up soon. The poor maybe weak, but there are many of them and they though they have all the food they need they are still hungry for a taste of a better quality of life.
George and Marie's life change when while on holiday their eldest daughter Leah is kidnapped. Without a ransom or any demands of any kind the family is left with no option but to believe their 'beloved' daughter is gone for good. George does not accept this and spends the better part of a year trying to get his daughter back. With the help of some professionals he tracks down his daughter and brings her home. Things aren't the same but the family believe this maybe the trauma Leah has been through, but is it something else?
From George, Leah and Marie's perspective we get to experience this new world that Adam Roberts has created, the rich carrying on with their heads in the sand and the poor getting to a new level of poverty. Experience George's transformation from well off naive idiot to the man on the street who loves his daughter and wants to help the revolution. Experience Marie's delusional view on herself and the world her family lives in. Also experience Leah's journey from hell all the way back to her fathers arms.
My Review:
By Light Alone is definitely an adventure. The book covers a multitude of difficult themes and Adam Roberts did a great job putting it all on the page. The third person perspective was the best choice, the setting is vivid, disturbing and very realistic. (I could see us inventing technology to help us feed from the sun sometime in our future.) Adam Roberts puts all his focus and energy on the characters in this story, everything is experienced through their thoughts and opinions. This approach would have been very enjoyable had I not had a lot of disdain for nearly all the characters in this piece of work.
George is up first, he is a rich idiot who sleeps around in front of his wife's face and is naive beyond belief. Across the span of the first half of this story he is transformed from a bumbling fool into a street wise man who wants revolution. This transformation is well written but I found myself annoyed and upset by his thoughts and actions for a good chunk of the book. George is a saint compared to Marie. Marie is a delusional rich lady who spends her days looking down on her husband, complaining about the help, ignoring her children and taking credit for other peoples ideas.
Leah story is the better part of this tale and it occupies the second half of this novel. Leah's kidnapping, her time away and her eventual return is tragic, stressful and doesn't quite add up, but this all changes when a mysterious character called Issa turns up looking to get back to her old home of New York City. I did enjoy the time spent with Leah, her part in this story was the most honest and it mapped out the reality of what the rich want to ignore. Leah experiences poverty, abuse, revolution and violence but she is the eventual hero of this tale.
I spent the time reading this book frustrated as there was very little momentum and AR spends 3/4 of the book building this tale, then drops everything to start almost afresh with Issa. That made it feel like I had started a completely new book and the past characters plot points were left almost completely unresolved, there maybe a sequel but I didn't see enough sotry left to really carry it on. With sporadic action and almost no suspense I didn't feel that the characters alone could really carry this book.
As I didn't really enjoy much of this book I will focus on what I found good. George's transformation was interesting. Both parts of Leah's story kept me reading and I kept going to until a semi-satisfying conclusion. I wouldn't recommend to many people unless you prefer heavy story and difficult characters, though that does add some appeal to this book, enjoying the demise of smug people.
I was disappointed by this novel. but I know Adam Roberts is a great writer so I will happily return to his work. By Light Alone maybe hard to chew but it will appeal to many readers, just not myself.
4/10
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This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 11, 2024
I did not like this book, and the only reason i read to the end is because it seems so highly regarded. The writing was quite good, but i did not enjoy the story or the characters.
April 14, 2019
I wanted to like this book, I really did. It sounded like such a great idea. But the reality was that I hated all of the characters, the plot dragged on and on without anything really happening, the overly descriptive prose didn't add anything to the story and I just wanted it to end sooner. I stuck it out because some of the reviews I read said that there was a twist at the end. It wasn't worth it. But I learnt something from this. If you don't like a book after the first few chapters, it's probably not going to get better. Do yourself a favour and choose another one.
January 13, 2014
This and more reviews, interviews etc on Dark Matter Zine, an online magazine. http://www.darkmatterzine.com. This review was written by Nalini Haynes for Dark Matter Zine.
George and Marie, a wealthy couple holidaying at an elite ski resort with their nanny and two children, are completely self-absorbed, unsympathetic characters making a game of adultery.
Their daughter Leah is stolen, resulting in what appears to be the first real discomfort either parent has ever experienced. Marie flees, returning home with their remaining child, while George continues his holiday, reveling in self-pity, over-indulgence and adultery, between daily visits to hotel security.Hotel security and the local police are, at best, demonstrably ineffectual whilst being more concerned about the inevitable lawsuit than recovering Leah.
Eventually a family friend funds an investigator to recover Leah; why George failed to take this step is unclear as he clearly has staff to do everything else for him. This is probably the biggest flaw in the story.
By Light Alone is told in four portions using third person point of view with different point of view characters: firstly George’s point of view, then Leah’s, Marie’s and, finally, Issa’s point of view. This segmenting of the storytelling is a strength of the narrative.
By the time George told his portion of the story in his pompous, self-involved way, much of the world-building was revealed. I was relieved to leave George behind. By far my favourite portion of the story was Issa’s (concluding) story but the preceding narratives were essential to build the framework.
George and Marie may be shallow and self-absorbed but their characters are shaken to the core and exposed under harsh light even within their own point-of-view stories. Although they left me with a foul taste in my mouth I applaud Roberts’s skilful weaving of character and narrative. Issa’s story serves as poignant counterpoint.
Roberts’s world-building is intricate and believable with its detailed analysis of sociological ramifications resulting from the introduction of new technology.
There were some questionable aspects in the world-building. Village bosses and enforcers are all men while all other men of low socioeconomic status were indolent to the point of lassitude. Women did all the work; why would women not be the village bosses too? Why would women slave so hard to have children when bearing and raising children is so costly? Why would men not be interested in investing in their own children?
In contrast, the other ramifications of this ‘new hair’ enabling people to subsist on light, absorbing most of their energy needs from the sun like plants, were well-thought out. Peasant labourers received less pay because they no longer needed nearly as much food. Many (in this story it was the men) ceased work altogether because they could live by absorbing energy from the sun, eating only the occasional grubs or chewing mud. The remainder who wanted to work were slave labour.
By Light Alone is worth reading for the prose alone; Roberts achieves description effectively without resorting to cliché or superlatives. The prose helped me endure George’s narrative while I remained unaware that a change of point-of-view was impending.
“The landscape was a purified ideal of white, and the sky put down a kind of swallowing brightness. The trees lost their trunks in amongst all the radiance, becoming floating piles of dark green. Behind them the hotel, and its many balconies, looked like a chest with all its drawers pulled out…’
By Light Alone is not merely an unflattering character portrait of two spoilt parents; it reflects existing social structures within the framework of improved technology while exploring the outcome of a wealthy minority withholding the essentials of life from the masses of poor. By Light Alone is an intelligent, thought-provoking novel with inventive prose.
George and Marie, a wealthy couple holidaying at an elite ski resort with their nanny and two children, are completely self-absorbed, unsympathetic characters making a game of adultery.
Their daughter Leah is stolen, resulting in what appears to be the first real discomfort either parent has ever experienced. Marie flees, returning home with their remaining child, while George continues his holiday, reveling in self-pity, over-indulgence and adultery, between daily visits to hotel security.Hotel security and the local police are, at best, demonstrably ineffectual whilst being more concerned about the inevitable lawsuit than recovering Leah.
Eventually a family friend funds an investigator to recover Leah; why George failed to take this step is unclear as he clearly has staff to do everything else for him. This is probably the biggest flaw in the story.
By Light Alone is told in four portions using third person point of view with different point of view characters: firstly George’s point of view, then Leah’s, Marie’s and, finally, Issa’s point of view. This segmenting of the storytelling is a strength of the narrative.
By the time George told his portion of the story in his pompous, self-involved way, much of the world-building was revealed. I was relieved to leave George behind. By far my favourite portion of the story was Issa’s (concluding) story but the preceding narratives were essential to build the framework.
George and Marie may be shallow and self-absorbed but their characters are shaken to the core and exposed under harsh light even within their own point-of-view stories. Although they left me with a foul taste in my mouth I applaud Roberts’s skilful weaving of character and narrative. Issa’s story serves as poignant counterpoint.
Roberts’s world-building is intricate and believable with its detailed analysis of sociological ramifications resulting from the introduction of new technology.
There were some questionable aspects in the world-building. Village bosses and enforcers are all men while all other men of low socioeconomic status were indolent to the point of lassitude. Women did all the work; why would women not be the village bosses too? Why would women slave so hard to have children when bearing and raising children is so costly? Why would men not be interested in investing in their own children?
In contrast, the other ramifications of this ‘new hair’ enabling people to subsist on light, absorbing most of their energy needs from the sun like plants, were well-thought out. Peasant labourers received less pay because they no longer needed nearly as much food. Many (in this story it was the men) ceased work altogether because they could live by absorbing energy from the sun, eating only the occasional grubs or chewing mud. The remainder who wanted to work were slave labour.
By Light Alone is worth reading for the prose alone; Roberts achieves description effectively without resorting to cliché or superlatives. The prose helped me endure George’s narrative while I remained unaware that a change of point-of-view was impending.
“The landscape was a purified ideal of white, and the sky put down a kind of swallowing brightness. The trees lost their trunks in amongst all the radiance, becoming floating piles of dark green. Behind them the hotel, and its many balconies, looked like a chest with all its drawers pulled out…’
By Light Alone is not merely an unflattering character portrait of two spoilt parents; it reflects existing social structures within the framework of improved technology while exploring the outcome of a wealthy minority withholding the essentials of life from the masses of poor. By Light Alone is an intelligent, thought-provoking novel with inventive prose.
April 1, 2021
Well realised world with a cynical edge.
August 25, 2012
Dopo aver letto 'Never let me go', che ho amato molto, si è riacceso in me l'amore per i romanzi distopici, che avevo messo provvisoriamente da parte per dedicarmi ad altri generi.
Futuro. Il divario tra ricchi e poveri è sempre più marcato, specie dopo l'invenzione dei Capelli che, se impiantati nel corpo umano, provvedono nutrimento assorbendo la luce solare. I ricchi, disgustati, mostrano fieri la loro calvizie e mangiano a più non posso, mentre le popolazioni più povere e ferventi gruppi religiosi e politici sostengono l'uso dei Capelli per i motivi più svariati (uguaglianza tra gli uomini, digiuno per comunicare con Dio, il ritorno ad una vita semplice...).
Un'abbiente famiglia di New York si reca in vacanza in una località della Turchia. La figlia maggiore viene misteriosamente rapita e ritornerà un anno dopo, emaciata e con i Capelli, una persona irriconoscibile.
A mio avviso questo romanzo, pur essendo molto interessante e proponendo vari spunti di riflessione, ha due problemi fondamentali: la mancanza di una trama consistente e la mancanza di coesione.
Nella prima parte, la dinamica delle vicende dei protagonisti è fin troppo semplice: famiglia in vacanza / bambina scomparsa/ dolore per la perdita /bambina ritrovata. Per allungare il tutto, l'autore si è sentito in dovere di intrattenerci con scene di sesso tediose e ripetitive. Talvolta esagerando un pochino.
La seconda sezione del romanzo si può considerare a parte ed è significativamente chiamata 'Odissea'. La misteriosa eroina, la cui identità è facilmente deducibile, intraprende un viaggio estenuante ed epico per ritornare a New York, la città di cui dice di essere Regina. Il suo cammino è anche un viaggio alla scoperta di un mondo in subbuglio e contrastante.
È fantastico il passo in cui la protagonista assiste a diverse conferenze di gruppi religiosi, dove ognuno propone la propria versione sulla vita dell'Inventore dei Capelli (che passa dall'essere un musulmano ad ortodosso ad accanito comunista con una velocità spaventosa). E ognuno prevede un utopico futuro...rifiutandosi di spiegare come ci si arriverà, a questo futuro.
Vediamo che i Capelli, che in origine dovevano essere un aiuto per l'umanità, presto si sono trasformati in uno strumento di discriminazione, un motivo di lotta tra idee diverse, uno strumento per soggiogare i deboli.
È un caso che l'Inventore dei Capelli sia stato soprannominato il Redentore, 'the Redeemer'?
Pur essendo senza dubbio la parte migliore – l'Odissea non è forse una delle storie più belle di sempre? - anche qui ci ritroviamo spesso di fronte ad orribili scene di stupro e/o abuso.
Adesso, io non mi sono scandalizzata, dico solo che non è il massimo essere costantemente aggiornati nel dettaglio su tutti i 'favori' che la protagonista deve fare in giro, specie se è solo una ragazzina di quattordici anni. Un po' di non detto, qualche allusione, un po' di finezza insomma...
Ma a questi passi si alternano riflessioni profonde sul dolore della perdita e sulla gioia del ritrovo, sulla confusione e smarrimento che un'ondata di felicità porta.
Siamo vicini alla protagonista che soffre di essere terribilmente sola, finché non realizza che questo significa essere adulti: poter stare da soli al contrario dei bambini,che sono alla ricerca della propria metà per capire chi sono veramente.
Futuro. Il divario tra ricchi e poveri è sempre più marcato, specie dopo l'invenzione dei Capelli che, se impiantati nel corpo umano, provvedono nutrimento assorbendo la luce solare. I ricchi, disgustati, mostrano fieri la loro calvizie e mangiano a più non posso, mentre le popolazioni più povere e ferventi gruppi religiosi e politici sostengono l'uso dei Capelli per i motivi più svariati (uguaglianza tra gli uomini, digiuno per comunicare con Dio, il ritorno ad una vita semplice...).
Un'abbiente famiglia di New York si reca in vacanza in una località della Turchia. La figlia maggiore viene misteriosamente rapita e ritornerà un anno dopo, emaciata e con i Capelli, una persona irriconoscibile.
A mio avviso questo romanzo, pur essendo molto interessante e proponendo vari spunti di riflessione, ha due problemi fondamentali: la mancanza di una trama consistente e la mancanza di coesione.
Nella prima parte, la dinamica delle vicende dei protagonisti è fin troppo semplice: famiglia in vacanza / bambina scomparsa/ dolore per la perdita /bambina ritrovata. Per allungare il tutto, l'autore si è sentito in dovere di intrattenerci con scene di sesso tediose e ripetitive. Talvolta esagerando un pochino.
La seconda sezione del romanzo si può considerare a parte ed è significativamente chiamata 'Odissea'. La misteriosa eroina, la cui identità è facilmente deducibile, intraprende un viaggio estenuante ed epico per ritornare a New York, la città di cui dice di essere Regina. Il suo cammino è anche un viaggio alla scoperta di un mondo in subbuglio e contrastante.
È fantastico il passo in cui la protagonista assiste a diverse conferenze di gruppi religiosi, dove ognuno propone la propria versione sulla vita dell'Inventore dei Capelli (che passa dall'essere un musulmano ad ortodosso ad accanito comunista con una velocità spaventosa). E ognuno prevede un utopico futuro...rifiutandosi di spiegare come ci si arriverà, a questo futuro.
Vediamo che i Capelli, che in origine dovevano essere un aiuto per l'umanità, presto si sono trasformati in uno strumento di discriminazione, un motivo di lotta tra idee diverse, uno strumento per soggiogare i deboli.
È un caso che l'Inventore dei Capelli sia stato soprannominato il Redentore, 'the Redeemer'?
Pur essendo senza dubbio la parte migliore – l'Odissea non è forse una delle storie più belle di sempre? - anche qui ci ritroviamo spesso di fronte ad orribili scene di stupro e/o abuso.
Adesso, io non mi sono scandalizzata, dico solo che non è il massimo essere costantemente aggiornati nel dettaglio su tutti i 'favori' che la protagonista deve fare in giro, specie se è solo una ragazzina di quattordici anni. Un po' di non detto, qualche allusione, un po' di finezza insomma...
Ma a questi passi si alternano riflessioni profonde sul dolore della perdita e sulla gioia del ritrovo, sulla confusione e smarrimento che un'ondata di felicità porta.
Siamo vicini alla protagonista che soffre di essere terribilmente sola, finché non realizza che questo significa essere adulti: poter stare da soli al contrario dei bambini,che sono alla ricerca della propria metà per capire chi sono veramente.
April 19, 2015
High-concept bioengineering -- human hair can be artificially altered so that it photosynthesize sunlight into energy -- fails to resolve human inequality as expected, but rather, increases it still further, as the wealthy shave or crop their hair and eat real food as a luxury, and the poor are exploited in new ways.
The story centers around a spoiled and wealthy New York couple, George and Maria, whose daughter Leah is kidnapped from a hyperlavish ski resort (one of its slopes is made of ice cream, just for novelty's sake). A year later, she is returned to them, but profoundly changed.
First published in 2011, this is a sharp satire of the 1%, but also a horrifying exploration of well-intentioned bioengineering and its consequences. Roberts has a Ph.D. on Browning from Cambridge and his novel contains clever shoutouts to Ruskin, Dostoevsky, and The Who, among many, many others. Basically, reading this book makes me think that at the very least, I should read a lot more Roberts and, quite possibly, we should be long-distance BFFs (erm, I did my dissertation on Victorian lit too, teach science fiction (and composition) to Engineering students, and my husband's family used to live outside of Cambridge?).
Seriously, I had not heard of this book until I stumbled upon it in NYC's legendary Strand bookstore, and I'm really impressed. I suspect Roberts is better-known in the UK than the US, but his stuff should really break out big here too . . .
The story centers around a spoiled and wealthy New York couple, George and Maria, whose daughter Leah is kidnapped from a hyperlavish ski resort (one of its slopes is made of ice cream, just for novelty's sake). A year later, she is returned to them, but profoundly changed.
First published in 2011, this is a sharp satire of the 1%, but also a horrifying exploration of well-intentioned bioengineering and its consequences. Roberts has a Ph.D. on Browning from Cambridge and his novel contains clever shoutouts to Ruskin, Dostoevsky, and The Who, among many, many others. Basically, reading this book makes me think that at the very least, I should read a lot more Roberts and, quite possibly, we should be long-distance BFFs (erm, I did my dissertation on Victorian lit too, teach science fiction (and composition) to Engineering students, and my husband's family used to live outside of Cambridge?).
Seriously, I had not heard of this book until I stumbled upon it in NYC's legendary Strand bookstore, and I'm really impressed. I suspect Roberts is better-known in the UK than the US, but his stuff should really break out big here too . . .
November 30, 2016
Another novel read whilst recovering from a stomach bug. Not Adams’ best in my view, although it contains elements in common with his other novels (unreliable and unsympathetic narrator, story structured around strikingly original technological conceit, emphasis on gap between rich and poor, etc). In this case, I found the pacing undermined my fascination with the central conceit, of the poor having photosynthetic hair that means they needn’t eat. The implications of this technology were explored in the latter half of the book, whereas the former half dwelt on the existential ennui of the future-1%. Although the world-building was excellent throughout, the second half of the book was simply more exciting and the points of view less maddening. The ending seemed somewhat rushed, unfortunately. I don’t have the energy right now to discuss the politics of the world evoked in ‘By Light Alone’, suffice it to say that they’re interesting and convincingly complex. Adams writes sci-fi unlike any other writer, coming up with unfailingly new and thought-provoking ideas. This novel is well worth reading, but the first half is something of a slog. (Perhaps I would have a greater appreciation for its subtleties if I wasn’t ill.)
March 31, 2014
A strange, beautifully written, ambitious novel, both satirical and post-apocalyptic. The setting, in spite of its detail (the near-future world is completely altered by a virus that grows photosynthetic hair, thus allowing the poor to live pretty much without eating; a severely socially stratified world of poor-with-nothing/workers/the very rich who have everything and can do whatever they want -- including eat and drink for fun and status) to me lacked verisimilitude; as a reader, I couldn't suspend my disbelief and spent too much time thinking about the implausibilities of the scenario. We also spend too long within the bubble of the protected rich -- and then there is a very jarring transition to the violent, abusive world of the poor and their 'bosses'. However, some gorgeous writing and some interesting characterization made the book interesting.
February 20, 2023
An interesting read where we follow the travels of a 'free long hair' as she is known in a world where most of the world population has genetically altered hair that can photosynthesise, negating the need for food.
Do not think that this is a good thing, as the book explains how an equity of wealth had magnified, among other issues that has resulted in this future.
The concepts are only grazed upon during the normal flow of the book, which in some cases is a shame, as these futurist concepts are worthy of fleshing out further.
The end is a tad sudden, but equally provoking in speculating of what will happen next.
Whether that was intentional or not, one can also speculate that too.
Do not think that this is a good thing, as the book explains how an equity of wealth had magnified, among other issues that has resulted in this future.
The concepts are only grazed upon during the normal flow of the book, which in some cases is a shame, as these futurist concepts are worthy of fleshing out further.
The end is a tad sudden, but equally provoking in speculating of what will happen next.
Whether that was intentional or not, one can also speculate that too.
August 3, 2012
Not quite what I expected, but turned out to be discussing the moral in rich-poor and wether it will disappear when the poor get out of their shackles, or need for food. I would have liked some more elements in the story - more twists of the theme, and the book could have been one or two chapters longer.
July 28, 2012
A very interesting premise thought out to its logical conclusion. The novel is science fiction at heart but is written with such panache and grace, Roberts has a lively philosophical and inventive mind. He reminds me of Doris Lessing. He has a lot to say about the world we live in now as the future he imagines is only very subtlety different to today.
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