Without Absolution

Amy Sterling Casil Without Absolution (2000)
This came into my possession because I'd added it to an Amazon wishlist and somebody felt like buying me a birthday present, which was initially puzzling as I couldn't remember who Amy Sterling Casil might be or why I'd been drawn to the book. Eventually I recalled having read Casil's Mad for Mints in a back issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which only presented further confusion because while I remember thinking it was sort of entertaining…

Well, whatever the case - I'm glad to have read this, not least when considering the alternate realities in which I might not have bothered. Casil's introduction mentions her having been influenced by Ray Bradbury, which I'm definitely feeling, although I think maybe I prefer her writing in an admittedly general sense. It's been a while since I read Bradbury, and I remember a few crackers, but Casil's people seem less at the mercy of the sort of borderline cloying sentiment to which Bradbury occasionally succumbed. That said, Casil's emphasis on evocative image rich detail seems very Bradbury, and she treads a fine line in supporting the narrative on a flow of sensations without formally spelling everything out. In a few cases, it doesn't quite work, and I found An Officer of the Faith a little too abstract for its own good, but mostly it's powerfully effective once you've cottoned on to what's happening.

Without Absolution is mostly science-fiction, or speculative, or whatever you want to call it - that ambiguous literary hinterland inhabited by the aforementioned Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin and others - a non-genre of girth sufficient to encompass both the future of plastic surgery and a sequel to Beowulf - which must have taken some balls to write, never mind pull off, as us rootin' tootin' folk say. There's also some poetry, and I'm afraid I still don't really get poetry, although it's clear that it's very closely related to Casil's gorgeous, if occasionally slightly disturbing prose; and The Renascence of Memory is a masterpiece.