By Jo Walton
This is a beautiful ethereal fever dream of a story. It is difficult to categorize what this novel is about exactly. it’s about Venice but not really. It’s not a romance. It doesn’t really have a main protagonist or much of a story. There isn’t quite an ending or even a beginning, the reader is just placed into the Seranissimo, a magical plane of existence that is a city built on islands and connected by canals. If it resembles Venice it is not accidental as the history goes that Venice discovered the plane and the magic built the city to what Venetians expected to see. The Seranissimo is a place that can be reached by eight worlds, populated by humanoid creatures that use the city as a hub to trade and travel between worlds. On Earth, the Venetians guard their secret, which has allowed Venice to prosper in trade and politics, which enhances the mystery and mysticism of the city to the rest of the world. Basically, outsiders who feel Venice feels magical and otherworldly are being truthful, even if they don’t know why.
This is a contemplative novel. There are nine chapters with each chapter the point of view of one of the beings that access The Seranissimo. The story unfolds through the narrative, but the story is not the point. The chapters are character studies of how their life and their upbringing has shaped them to be who they are in this time and this place. The narrative travels from character to character, giving the reader their story, their flaws, real or perceived, their worries, their dreams and their traumas. And passing the narrative to the next character by gaining something that they have lost, a love returning to them, an outcast finding community, a way to go home, fulfilling a life’s quest, the nature of compassion and the nature of service to a god who demands it or a service as an act of love. There are just so much to think about in such a simple novel.
I am finding it difficult to describe this book to give a potential reader a sense of the journey they are about to embark upon. In some ways the narrative reminds me of the melancholy tone of Katherine Addison’s Cemeteries of Amalo series where the protagonist, Celehar, is lost and alienated like the majority of our narrators here and regains his self through the love others have of him. They see him even if he is unable to see himself – and the theme of ‘being seen’ is echoed in Everybody’s Perfect. Surprisingly, I’m also reminded of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, a novel I haven’t read in many years, but somehow the spiritual journey of Siddhartha, where it is life experiences, not purity of thought, are what brings him enlightenment. Our characters here are also enlightened through their real life interactions and experiences, their imperfection is the key to achieve perfection, whatever that looks like for our characters. The magical realism of the hidden plane also reminds me of the dreamy absurdism of Angela Carter stories.
Each character has a distinct voice and describes The Seranissimo in their own language and context. The character is introduced with a descriptive prompt, as if I was studying a Tarot card, with their individual aspect, their muse, their animal, their sign, their viture and a stylized description of their representation on the card, ie. “A man with a face that is blank except for eyes and a jutting chin is lifting a house from where it has fallen on a lion. The lion is grinning” Also, each character’s description is similar to Venetian masks. Does that mean that the masks are made to honor these other worlds, or did venetians create the other worlds as part of the magic of the Seranissimo?
The author’s acknowledgements mentions that this book was written in “a world that is literally and metaphorically on fire” and hopes that “it can maybe help you find a little space to breath and go on working for a better future”. The book does leave the reader in a place of hope, and lightness and just feeling a breath of clarity in a world where the future is uncertain, it’s nice to have something that makes you feel that maybe things will be OK after all.
