Book Reviews: The Question Mark; The Man with Six Senses
Thus far in this newsletter, I’ve been reviewing new or relatively new books. But in fact, the plan has always been to review both new and older books. I just hadn’t gotten around to any older books yet.
Today, that changes! I’ve just been reading two science fiction novels from the 1920s, both of which were recently reprinted by the British Library as part of their Science Fiction Classics line. What caught my attention about these two is that they were both written by Muriel Jaeger, who went to Oxford with Dorothy L. Sayers and became lifelong friends with her. Anything and anyone related to Sayers interests me, as many of you know, so I snapped these up immediately!
The Question Mark by Muriel Jaeger (orig. 1926; reprint by British Library, 2019)
Jaeger was not nearly as popular a writer as her friend—even though she was published by no less prominent figures than Virginia and Leonard Woolf—and her books are all but forgotten now. Nonetheless, she expresses some interesting ideas in them. The Question Mark, neglected though it has been, is seen by some as a kind of bridge between H.G. Wells’s time-travel stories, and Huxley's and Orwell’s utopias gone sour.
Jaeger’s protagonist, Guy Martin, basically wills himself into the future to escape a disappointing and depressing life in the early 20th century. He wakes from a trance to find himself in the care of a kindly doctor, who takes him into his own family. At first Guy is delighted by all the improvements around him: the technology that simplifies or even eliminates daily tasks, the wealth of opportunity for everyone, the increased safety and security. And then the cracks start to show in the facade . . .
Unfortunately, this promising setup doesn’t lead to much of anything. The reason for the book’s lack of success was probably that so little happens in it. There are glimpses of intriguing ideas and possible subplots, there are some thoughtful discussions, there’s a mysterious messianic figure, there are two or three brutally shocking revelations. But even the shocking revelations soon drop into the background and nothing really comes of them. The pieces never quite fit together into a viable story.
The story’s ending is deliberately ambiguous, which is a fancy way of saying that I couldn’t quite grasp what was going on and I’m not even sure I was supposed to. It could be seen as a daring way to end things, but the novel has already dealt so much in ambiguities, held back so much from us, that the ending just feels all of a piece with the rest of it.
The Man with Six Senses by Muriel Jaeger (orig. 1927; reprint by British Library, 2020)
Now this is more like it. This is where Jaeger hits her stride. And that despite the fact that this isn’t an action-oriented novel, either. It’s mostly talk with very little action, besides which, Jaeger takes the risk of telling us the story thirdhand. Our narrator is not Michael, the titular man with six senses; it’s not even Hilda, the woman who’s trying to help Michael; it’s Ralph, the man who pines for Hilda and resents Michael.
As you might expect, telling a story through such a lens results in all kinds of distortions and questionable points of view, which Jaeger handles with great skill. She gives finely crafted character studies of all three people in this odd little triangle. Through Ralph’s narration, we witness his slow evolution from a chauvinistic snob into a still flawed but more complex and human character. In the portrayal of Michael, Jaeger manages to convey the strangeness and alienation of being tuned in to the world in a way that’s available to no one else. As for Hilda, we have to make a real effort to see her clearly through all the misconceptions and false ideals Ralph has built up around her—and still, she proves elusive. She has strength and fine qualities and high ideals of her own, but some of those ideals are dangerous in a whole different way from Ralph’s elitist ones, and there are hints—only hints—that they may lead her in a terrifying direction.
In The Mutual Admiration Society, a group biography of Jaeger, Sayers, and their circle, Mo Moulton correctly identifies a strain of eugenicism in The Man with Six Senses. It’s a very common thing to find in novels of that era. (Someday I’ll treat you all to my rant on the blatant eugenicism in Josephine Tey’s books. Bet you can’t wait.) But it’s hard to say with any certainty whether Jaeger is actually endorsing or critiquing it—partly because of all those layers of perspective getting in the way, partly because she again leaves things ambiguous at the end.
But this time I cared what would become of her characters—I was aching to know, in fact. I found myself wanting a sequel to The Man with Six Senses, so I could find out. But as Jaeger’s novel-writing career wasn’t going well, she gave it up after only four books, and concentrated on non-fiction. This novel, at least, makes me wish it could have been otherwise.
Cover images copyright British Library.
Book Links:
The Question Mark on Amazon
The Question Mark at the British Library shop
The Man with Six Senses on Amazon
The Man with Six Senses at the British Library shop