The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep began a series of disappointing books that I would read from March into April. While there are things to like about this book, especially for old-style bookworms, the writing is often confusing and distracting and the book is entirely too long. I enjoyed reading it, despite its many faults, but I would hope there are better book-loving books out there to recommend. And while I might remember it and reference it, I do not need to read it again. I won’t, in fact.

Rob is a young, successful lawyer in his city of preference, Wellington, New Zealand. He has a beautiful girlfriend who he loves. A position at a firm downtown. Supportive parents an hour away. And a prodigious, academic brother who reads storybook characters—Sherlock Holmes, (pseudo-)Nancy Drew, a murderous Uriah Heep—into existence, sometimes on accident and in the middle of the night. It doesn’t take long after coming to Rob’s town, for Charley’s abilities and creations to take over their relationship and threaten to take over more—their lives, their town, maybe even the whole world. And what is Rob thinking trying to help out a brother he both resents and belittles when magical problems are way, way outside of his expertise and abilities? Why does he keep coming to Charley’s aid? And why does Charley keep asking him to?

I have a short history of falling for the marketing of a book written expressly for bookish types. Then I read the book. Then I am disappointed. Then I tell you about it. Aaand… this book is no exception to this pattern. Technically I didn’t come across it on my own, but I was thrilled that my speculative fiction book club was cycling into fantasy with a bookish read. I mean, characters read into life by readers? The appearance as characters of Victorian literature greats? A main character who is a genius professor of literature, an expert in Dickens, and has a flat (apartment) which functions as little else than a receptacle for his towers of books? Sign me up! And since it was for book club, surely it was popular enough or good enough to make it on to the ol’ TBR.

As one book club reader put it, “It’s like literary analysis meets fan fiction.” And like another reader put it, “If you engage intellectually too much, you’ll run into trouble.” So I was supposed to just shut up and sink into the book and have a fun time watching my favorite (and not-so-favorite) characters show up on the page and be funny and fun and take me through a story. Just for fun. But that’s not the whole story with this book, because some of the thoughts about literature, reading, and literary criticism are interesting and deep. Our discussion of it included such words as “misanthropic” and “obsequious,” yet everyone either didn’t like the book or they liked it despite itself. In other words, falling into it and calling in entertaining was the only way to enjoy it, to appreciate it. But what about the cleverness? Let it go, Devon. Let it go. (That’ll be funny in a minute.)

And falling into the story isn’t possible, anyway. Why? The writing style. A common attribute of this unfortunate series of books I have just read is bumpy writing. It has been weeks since I have been pulled into a story by clear, fluid writing style. Uriah Heep was constantly distracting, making the process take much longer and just basically annoying me. Either I wasn’t sure what the author had just meant to say and had to go back and re-read, or I was irritated by the way it was said and was thinking about words and not story (and not in a good way). Bumpy. Rocky. Distracting. I couldn’t just lean back and let go.

Here are some basically measurable things: there are typos, actually grammatical and spelling mistakes; there are moments of confusion and confusing syntax (“It was the best she could hope for, the best but one, and that was for the time not to come at all” (p196)); there are spatial impossibilities (often in action scenes); there are character inconsistencies; there is impossible timing, unlikely (haha) scenarios (they go out to pizza after emerging from the ocean), and unintentional absurdness (Rob could see the type of fabric and skin on a hand slightly up a tunnel under the water of a windy bay). The book is too long for what it is, has too many scenes and details that are repetitive or unnecessary. (Many people at club lamented about 100 pages (maybe even 200) they thought should have been cut from the book, and several readers didn’t even finish the book because of its length.) Humor sometimes ends up just confusing, like Parry is referring to something we aren’t in on (“His hair was still windblown from the death trap.” What?). And boy does Parry try so hard to be funny. (Note: sometimes she is.)The writing style is plain. The writing skill is, um, unrefined. And yet. And yet. Did I enjoy reading the book? I actually did.

I mean, this sort of list of complaints could be made against many a popular fiction book that is also, somehow, a fun time. Is it too much to ask that a bookish person write a bookish book for bookish people that is actually good or even great literature? Perhaps. (What came the closest so far? The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, though I would argue this is more historical fiction than meant for book-lovers.) Part of me thinks that the book-loving type would be the most difficult to please but that publishers would think it would sell. But I might be wrong. Book lovers might be—in general—a rather undiscerning lot. Die-hard readers are not the same as English Literature academics. Though they might overlap on the Venn diagram. Many readers read so much that they can’t afford to be very picky. They know what they want and as long as they have a good time…

Parry is an academic, though, and the book did explore some more weighty things than your typical fan fiction. On the literary side, it was a meta approach to literary critique, a little. The storybook characters are never the same twice, for example, because they are translated by a specific person at a certain point in their life from a certain passage. They are translated as they are read, and everyone has a different idea, sees a different thing. The book is, on one level, about reader interpretation. And within all this, there are really clever moments, like a character called Implied Reader, or even authors read out through the lenses of their own stories like in the semi-autobiographical sense of David Copperfield. Or when Charley and Rob have to take on the Jabberwocky and have a hard time making sense of the nonsensical language enough to read something meaningful out of it. Then some of the thoughts and themes seep into universal contemplations about life: is living the same as writing a story and how so?; How are we different from stories?; in what sense are we a reaction to how people around us read/interpret us? We change each other. This is a super important (and fresh) theme.

Also fresh? The centrality of a brother relationship. This book is a love story, but the love is between a pair of brothers. I mean, how often do you come across that? I was really happy to see it. It’s imperfect and complicated, but I was actually crying. Fraternal love, even just platonic love, is a thing I don’t see enough in the books I read. It was hands-down my favorite thing about the book.

What else is there to say? I still can’t decide if the POV character (Rob) is the story’s protagonist. (Actually, there is more than one POV character, including a few chapters from a third (I’m sorry, but random) POV perspective.) In some senses, Charley is the protagonist. The choices of POV are a little loopy, I think. I did not find the plot twists to be surprising. I understand why Parry went with mostly Victorian characters, and why she made up a new character to be like a Nancy Drew (yes, Millie is made up for this book but none of the other storybook characters are): they needed to be in the public domain for this book to even happen. Can you imagine if Parry tried to slip a Harry Potter in there? Lawsuits would be flyin’! Unfortunately, using known and well-loved characters was always going to be a minefield (though I think she skirted around this rather neatly by having people interpret/read themselves into the characters). I found the “real world” characters like Rob and Charley to be much more believable and interesting than all the Darcys and White Queens and Matildas. Though, if I’m being honest, I thought even the “made-up” characters suffered from cliches. Rob was the only one I could really sink my teeth into, full stop.

Along with all the cutting that should have happened (452 tightly-packed pages), I thought the book should have ended earlier. And differently. The first ending, meaning the climax, was satisfactory, inevitable, sensical. Bu the second ending, meaning the resolution, was cheesy and hinged on one off-handed comment about what had to happen (which I found unbelievable). Speaking of the ending, many readers found the nemesis to be a strange one (once you find out). When they said this, I realized that if I give it like five seconds of thought, I feel the same way. Both the real and false bad guys were not set up right. They came from nowhere. They were unconvincing, lacked motivation and proper foreshadowing. Parry should have just stuck with Uriah Heep. BTW, this novel takes place in New Zealand. Parry is a New Zealand author.

And speaking of Uriah Heep, do you need to have read all of Victorian literature to appreciate The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep? No, you do not. You will understand everything just fine, but you are not exactly the target audience and there are things you will miss. Maybe you could just look up a few of the books and/or characters before reading? (Someone in book club also pointed out that Frozen would be an excellent movie to watch before or after reading this one because there are many similarities. Darn it if they aren’t right.)

Characters (some of them are merely mentioned, some of them are main characters, most of them are in between)

Uriah Heep (David Copperfield, Charles Dickens)the hound of the Baskervilles ( The Hound of the Baskervilles , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)Sherlock Holmes (The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol.s 1 and 2, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)Dorian Gray ( The Picture of Dorian Gray , Oscar Wilde)Fagin ( Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens)Heathcliff ( Wuthering Heights , Emily Bronte)The Artful Dodger (Jack Dawkins, Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens)Humpty Dumpty ( Through the Looking Glass , Lewis Carroll. At least that’s who I think this character is, in the background. It could just be the Implied Reader.)Monster ( Frankenstein , Mary Shelley)White Witch (Jadis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis)Darcy ( Pride and Prejudice , Jane Austen)Millie Radcliffe-Dix (The Adventures of Millie Radcliffe-Dix, Jacqueline Blaine, which is a totally made-up character, series, and author)Miss Matty (Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell)Lancelot (Arthurian legend)Duke of Wellington (biography, Simon Fitzpatrick, which I think may be made up though the character was an actual, real person as well as biographical “character”)Dr. Frankenstein ( Frankenstein , Mary Shelley)Ebenezer Scrooge ( A Christmas Carol , Charles Dickens)Griffin ( The Invisible Man , H. G. Wells)Lady Macbeth (“Macbeth,” William Shakespeare)Mad Hatter ( Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Lewis Carroll)Huck Finn (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain)implied readerAnna Karenina ( Anna Karenina , Leo Tolstoy)Mr. Maui (“Maui and the Sun” and other references)The Scarlet Pimpernel (Sir Percy Blakeney, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Emmuska Orczy)Matilda (Matilda, Roald Dahl)Mr. Tumnus (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis)dragon (A Lion in the Meadow, Margaret Mahy)Scheherazade ( One Thousand and One Nights )Odysseus ( The Odyssey , Homer)The Invisible Man (The Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison)Abel Magwich (Great Expectations, Charles Dickens)Estella (Great Expectations, Charles Dickens)butterflies (Aesop’s Fables, Aesop)Jabberwock(y) ( Through the Looking-Glass , Lewis Carroll)Nancy (Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens)David Copperfield (David Copperfield, Charles Dickens)Charles Dickens (implied, David Copperfield, Charles Dickens)Dracula ( Dracula , Bram Stoker)Mr. Hyde ( Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , Robert Louis Stevenson)Daniel Quilp (The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens)Moriarty ( The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol.s 1 and 2 , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)flying monkeys ( The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , L. Frank Baum)Bill Sikes ( Oliver Twist , Charles Dickens)crowd of stars (“When You Are Old,” William Butler Yeats)

And a few titles/authors mentioned without specific characters:

Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy, Lynley Dodd“Mandalay,” Rudyard KiplingA Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens“The Adventure of the Red Circle,” Sir Arthur Conan DoyleGreen Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss The Princess Bride , William GoldmanAgatha Christie

So that’s it. I liked reading this book but I would not say it is a good book. And plenty of people at book club either DNRed it or didn’t like it. I can see their points. Still, there are some really interesting themes and lots of fun romping around with familiar characters. After you’ve read like thirty classic novels, make yourself a dinner of meat pie, mashed potatoes, mushy peas, and stout pale pudding studded with raisins and approach this book slowly and over time. If you even want to go that far.

“…poetry…. Those postmodern things that read like a dictionary mated with a Buddhist mantra and couldn’t possible make any sense to anyone” (p3).

“’It would be like a self-fulfilling prophecy,’ Charley said. ‘People write about faeiries; because they’ve been written, they’re read out of books; and then they’re in the world, and people write stories about them. We’ve read our own myths into the world’” (p110).

“’She’s from a children’s book,’ Charley pointed out. ‘That makes her by definition more capable than most adults’” (p113).

“…a place can suit a person aesthetically as well as pair of trousers or a jacket” (p114).

“He shrugged. ‘That’s how all secrets are revealed, in the end. Either someone else betrtays us, or we betray ourselves’” (p184).

“’There are no innocent people,’ Dorian said. ‘I know the darkness in their hearts. I’m a creature of the Gothic imagination; more than that, I’m a creature of the Internet. I don’t hold it against them, I’m no better than them. But believe me, Millie, there is no happy ending to read life’” (p185).

“He says that feelings are the mind picking up on things it doesn’t always understand” (p306),

“’Every supporting character is the protagonist of his own story,’ Dickens replied, somewhat haughtily” (p311).

“I am, I think all this has proved, neither as articulate nor as intelligent nor as kind as I need to be, but I’m not a complete idiot” (p440).

“’Well, of course.’ It was almost defensive. ‘That’s what people do to each other every day, and to themselves. Are you the same person who nearly went into a book?’” (p450).

“And for a moment, the space between heartbeats, I felt I could glimpse the world Charley saw. A world of light and shadows, of fact, truth and story, each blurring into one another as sleep and wakefulness blur in the early morning. The moments of our lives unfolding as pages in a book. And everything connected, everyone joined, by an ever-shifting web of language, by words that caught us as prisms caught light and reflected us back at ourselves” (p452).

IMDB shows a series in development based on this book, but I see no evidence of that elsewhere.