My Weekly Book

2007 Reading Challenge: Book 60

The Walking Encyclopaedia of All Things Modesty Blaise that is sitting across from me as I type informs me that this is a bloody unfortunate choice for second novel in a series - and, having read it (or actually, luxury of luxuries, had it read out loud to me by said Walking Encyclopaedia), I know exactly what he means.

And the reason? Sabre Tooth is a novel of extremes. It is - and this is a spoiler, sorry - the book in which Modesty and Willie Garvin quite literally take on an army and win. It’s long been one that is spoken about with awe, not because of any qualities of its plot or characterisation but because it prefigures the invasion of Kuwait for its oil reserves, an invasion that is additionally set for September 11, and carried out by people hiding out in a lost valley in the Hindu Kush.

I remain relatively unimpressed by these facts. It is a well-known phenomenon that, with only 365 days in the calendar to choose from, events do tend to bunch up around certain dates, a fact that makes the job of predicting someone’s birthday a lot easier than you might at first imagine. And secondly you could say that realising Kuwait was ripe for the picking by some unscrupulous army commander and that Afghanistan was perfect territory for concealing mercenary armies was simply an accurate reading of the facts of the situation. Also you would be technically conflating three different wars, but that’s probably a minor detail.

It also tackles head-on a deeply unpleasant question about Modesty the spectre of which could be seen hovering in the background of the first book but which, thankfully, never actually made it into the narrative there. It is this: you may have a heroine who is physically strong, skilled in all kind of combat arts, a crack shot, utterly self-confident and intent on putting herself in many dangerous situations. But, as sure as night becomes day, a woman who takes on men on their own terms and who ends up being taken prisoner is likely to be put back in her place in the crudest and most brutal way available - by being sexually assaulted. I believe this something that is now tackled during training for female soldiers going into combat situations. And to duck this horribly thorny issue altogether, I think, would have been selling the character severely short as, thanks to the way these stories tend to be structured, it would always have been hanging over her, unacknowledged. And that would have wrecked things, I’m pretty sure of that.

On the other hand, the potential for this to be used for the kind of horrible, vicarious, misogynistic writing that I wouldn’t countenance on my bookshelves, never mind read, is right up there. And how does O’Donnell steer a course through this minefield? Well, I am not in the habit of persevering with stories that are going to keep me awake at night. And I felt that this stayed on the right side of my personal line, depicting nothing graphic, rather focusing on the effects of the incident for the people involved. On one hand we are told explicitly during the series that this is something that Modesty Blaise has had to deal with before, more than once. And I feel that to pretend it is not an issue for her would have compromised the character forever more.

I also feel that, on the whole, O’Donnell really does not try to glamourise the assault, but he does maybe take a slightly regrettable route when dealing with the characters’ reactions. Willie Garvin, when he eventually manages to intervene and get Modesty out of the situation she has been put in, is destroyed by it - in a way that is very character-driven, but even so. Narratively it is necessary for him to regain his equilibrium pretty quickly, and so he does, but his reaction is easily the most extreme of the two. Modesty is the one who has to cope, and be ingenious, and hold them both together, and I do actually question whether this is a reasonable treatment.

Modesty, by contrast, is shown as having coped with what happened by disassociation and absenting herself to the extent of practically being in a self-induced coma. I am in two minds about this. On the one hand I think O’Donnell may vastly overestimate the effectiveness of this approach and, in fact, it might be quite insulting to suggest that the victim of a violent sexual assault would be able to employ such techniques to protect themselves. She refuses outright to be a victim - but perhaps this suggests too strongly that simply willing away trauma is a viable proposition in real life, that if you are strong-minded enough you need not suffer from such things, obviously a terrible fallacy. On the other I am reminded that in Modesty we are not dealing with a regular (or indeed a real) person but someone with almost superhuman abilities in certain fields, including control of mind and body. In a later book we are shown a scene where the two of them are exposed to nerve gas, suffering really extreme pain - and they deal with it in exactly the same way, by using mind control techniques, by slowing their breathing and heartbeat and mentally absenting themselves until the situation becomes bearable again.

So there you have it. And Modesty’s character being taken to an extreme in this way is not the only example I have in mind. It’s a familiar trope that our heroes fall into the hands of villains and have to co-operate with them or work for them until they come up with a plan for escape - here an unexpected vulnerability is exploited and they are coerced into becoming commanders of two divisions of the putative invasion force. Modesty has to fight for her life - not unusual, but in this case the form of combat and the opponents are so extreme that the reader (as well as Willie Garvin and everyone else watching) has trouble seeing how she can escape death. The revenge they take on their enemies at the close of the tale is positively biblical and Willie has to act with superhuman self-control in order to fulfill his part in Modesty’s plan, an exercise that very nearly breaks him.

All this plus the militaristic setting and grotesque characters that populate the story might have left you with the feeling that this is the very last book you will be reading this year. ‘Bleak’ and ‘grim’ are both words I think you could reasonably apply - and yet. There’s a lot of humour in the book, especially at the beginning and end, at the points when the main engine of the narrative is not revving so hard. It’s an exceptionally well-told tale that takes wild risks with its characters, risks that pay off superbly. One could never accuse O’Donnell of taking the easy way out and of failing to stretch them to their limits.

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.