Review of "The Strange" by Nathan Ballingrud

I received an ARC of this book from Saga Press in exchange for an honest review. This review will not contain any spoilers. 

While I am a big fan of Westerns on the screen, I've never felt any particular interest in seeking them out on the page. Still, when I read an excerpt of The Strange on Tor.com, I was immediately reminded of the Coen brothers' classic film True Grit (2010). When the blurb for the book mentioned it as well, I decided to get a jump-start on the release date next week and went looking for this advance copy. What I found was a compelling story that ended up drifting a little too far from its initial promise for my taste, but still kept me engaged for a weekend and brought some of the classic Western elements to a new setting.

Annabelle Crisp is not quite a ringer for True Grit's Mattie Ross (if you haven't seen True Grit, stop reading this review and go watch it! Nobody does dialogue better than the Coen brothers, and Hailee Steinfeld knocks it out of the park), but the opening chapters certainly seemed to follow in the same footsteps. But while Mattie's motivation is kept off-screen--when she is introduced, her father is dead and she's seeking revenge, while The Strange opens with the robbery of the Crisps' diner--this novel chooses instead to dwell on the consequences of that inciting incident rather than immediately sending Belle out into the frontierlands. This introspective, emotionally tense section was the highlight of the book for me, and did not shy away from the loneliness and fear that pervaded frontier life. Setting the book on Mars, further from any other human settlements than anyone in the Old West by orders of magnitude, and adding to that the loss of communication with Earth, created an internal claustrophobia that paired well with the openness of the Martian landscape. Belle's mother, returned to Earth just before contact was lost, is nevertheless an animating force for her, and even more so for her father, who clings to memories of a wife he cannot admit he will never see again. Seeing his descent into isolation after the diner robbery--becoming just as absent as Belle's mother, and even more painfully so for still being around--was a painful read, but a worthwhile one. Keeping him alive and around, a clear departure from the usual Western quest for revenge, surprised me given that I was expecting almost a straight True Grit retelling, but I was glad for the choice.

Ballingrud's Mars is a planet haunted by memories. He introduces this theme early with Belle's mother, and in particular the recordings she left on her (then presumed to be temporary) return to Earth, and unspools it further as Belle ventures into the Martian desert in search of the men who robbed her diner. The landscape descriptions in the middle section of the book shine, from the crooked streets of Dig Town which change character in Belle's eyes depending on the time of day, to the open desert haunted by specters both real and imagined. After reading the book's first section I was curious to see what impact setting this Western on Mars would have, since despite a few science-fictional elements the story seemed like it could be told in the usual Earthly setting. The journey to recover the recordings of Belle's mother and find revenge for the confidence and peace of mind that was stolen with it convinced me of the benefits of the speculative elements. Melding genres gives Ballingrud the ability to put his characters' fears and foibles in the real world, and make them precisely as tangible as he wants them to be. However, these speculative elements fell a little flat for me as the book moved towards its climax. There are some plot-driven elements there that I will refrain from spoiling, but in broad strokes, I felt the book moved too far into a kind of (cosmic?) horror that took away from the rich internality of the characters it had introduced so far. One of my favorite things about a good Western is its simplicity--few characters, clear initial goals, a small set of possible obstacles. The richness in those stories comes from the interactions between the limited set of elements, which leads to interesting subversions (again, see True Grit, and how each character proves themself to be both more and less than what the audience initially expects) and unforseen interactions. Here, I felt that simplicity fell apart as the book introduced new and surprising answers to its initial questions rather than trying to close the story using only the same characters and themes it began with. Despite these narrative choices, the ultimate conclusion felt in keeping with the first chapters, and made me glad I'd forged through a difficult last third to reach it.

Four out of five stars. A book of two halves (for me at least) that raised a lot of interesting questions but didn't always know how to answer them.