Book Review: Scott Hawkins The Library at Mount Char

Scott Hawkins's The Library at Mount Char is a disturbing and strange little book. It begins with a great opening sequence and a pretty good opening line (see here for some other great opening lines):

Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78.

This effectively sucked me in, and I was kept reading along by the far-better-than-average writing quality. But at the end I was left dissatisfied. And it took me a while to adequately explain to myself why.

The novel primarily follows Carolyn, orphaned in some kind of disaster, and adopted along with 11 other orphans by Father, a godlike being who has lived for many tens of thousands of years. Over these years, he has accumulated his wisdom into a library and each of the children is assigned the task of learning a catalog comprising roughly one-twelfth of the library. Carolyn learns languages, Jennifer learns medicine, David learns warcraft and murder, Michael learns of animals, and so on. Each is forbidden to learn another's catalog.

When we join the action, Father has gone missing and the orphans find themselves barred from approaching the library. Separately and together the authors set out to find out what happened. As we go along we learn of the astounding cruelty with which Father educated them and the terrible consequences that this has wrought on their psyche's. Indeed, one of my problems with the book was the very detailed depiction of murder, torture and rape. These acts appear to have had a purpose; Father had a plan in mind. But it emerges slowly that the orphans have their own plans, too, and that one of them may be behind Father's disappearance.

I usually try to keep my reviews as spoiler free as possible, but in order to understand my problems with the book I need to delve a little bit deeper into the plot. And so, beware this warning: SPOILERS BELOW.

One of the things that makes it difficult to like Carolyn, the book's protagonist, is that she takes a number of actions that are both staggering in their cruelty and appalling as regards the indifference she shows to both human and animal suffering; people and animals are disposable to her. The fact that the actions are all in support of her plan---it emerges that she is behind Father's disappearance---is somewhat lessened by the knowledge that Father is a despicable creature, but only somewhat because Carolyn's motive is purely and simply revenge for one of Father's acts of cruelty. This is, of course, part of Hawkins's point; the assumption of godlike powers combined with Father's training has made Carolyn lose her humanity.

About two-thirds of the way through the book, Carolyn's plans succeed and are finally revealed. There is a bit of a god from the machine thing going on here; we never get to see understand Carolyn's implementation of her plan as it goes along so that when it works it all comes as a bit of a surprise. This is explained by the fact that, because her opponents have some power to read minds, she was not able to think about her plans. But it left this reader unsatisfied, as though having watched a heist movie in which the preparations for the heist all occurred off screen, and suddenly the protagonist ends up in possession of the stolen goods.

The remainder of the book, then, sees Carolyn grappling with the loss of her humanity with the help of Steve, a childhood friend from before the incident that killed her parents. During this process, she brings Father back to life and it is revealed that this was all his plan, too. Carolyn seems to accept that the cruelty was necessary as a way of grooming her to take his place and they are reconciled. Again, I found this ending unsatisfying. I think Hawkins wants us to see Carolyn's forgiveness of Father as necessary for her to recapture her humanity. And it certainly does not come easy to her. But I nonetheless found Carolyn's transition from little-ball-of-revenge-fueled-hate to wise-and-magnanimous-future-god-of-our-world a little too abrupt. There is not enough questioning of Father's methods, and whether alternative teaching methods would have worked; whether the callous disregard of people's lives and suffering was worth it. It is simply accepted that these things needed to happen.

Is this intended as some form of religious allegory? Should we accept the suffering in the world as just a part of god's plan? I have heard that message before, and do not need to hear it again. In fact, the greatest disappointment of all was that in the end I just did not care about the answers to these questions at all.

Let me stress that the book does have some redeeming features. The premise is intriguing, the writing is very good (I zipped through the book in a couple of days), and the characters are unforgettable. But to fully enjoy that you have to look past the torture porn, the deus ex machina, and the religious allegory. I wasn't fully able to do so, which is why this receives a rating of "decent" ...

R⁴ Rating: 6 out of 10.