The Birthgrave - Tanith Lee

In January I read Crying in the Rain (1987), a short story by Tanith Lee. It was the first story I read by her and it made me curious about her other work. Since her death in 2015, new editions of her books have appeared in a steady stream, so I decided to pick up The Birthgrave (1975), the  novel that launched her career. Although she had been publishing stories and a children's novel since 1968, it was The Birthgrave that allowed her to become a full time writer. The novel was rejected by many UK publishers but found a home with DAW in the US. It seems to divide readers. Some absolutely love it, the novel was even nominated for a Nebula, others think it is a poorly written book. I must admit I am leaning towards the latter.

A young woman wakes up under a dormant volcano. She has no recollection of who she is and how she came to be in this place. When she starts looking for a way out of the volcano she encounters the goddess Karrakaz, who tells her she is cursed. Death and misery will follow her wherever she goes, until she finds her 'soul-kin of green jade'. After leaving the volcano she soon finds out that the world outside is violent and brutal, but also that she has powers beyond that of mere mortals. The curse propels her into the world and drives her onward, in search of the mysterious jade.

The story is told from a single perspective in the fist person, which means the reader knows as much of the world as the main character does. By the end of the novel, this is still not a whole lot. Many of the cultures she encounters are mere sketches, history is largely unknown and the limited point of view doesn't offer much beyond the main character's immediate surrounding. It appears to be a fairly standard primitive sword and sorcery setting right until the end of the novel. There, Lee mixes genres and introduces a science fictional element. Although much more explicitly sexual, the sexual revolution had arrived by the time of the writing after all, Robert E. Howard would still have recognized this as a fantasy adventure.

Lee does an awful lot of things in this novel that would drive an editor to despair. The main character does not seem to have a will of her own for instance. Things happen to her and she lets them happen. Sometimes she can be provoked into opportunistically seize control, but for most of the novel, there is no plan, no drive, and no initiative in her whatsoever. Foreshadowing is almost unheard of in the novel, making it appear like a series of more or less random events. To drive the plot forward, Lee resorts to a series of deus ex machina style interventions. The climax of the novel, in which Lee gets her heroine out of a fix by introducing a space ship and then resolves the plot with some dubious psychology, is especially bad in that respect. I am not altogether surprised many publishers turned it down.

But there is that Nebula nomination, the fact that it has been in print for over forty years and the lavish praise heaped upon it by reviewers, authors (a glowing example of which can be found in Marion Zimmer Bradley's introduction to the edition I read) and readers alike. The book must have something going for it. The prose is one thing that stands out. Whether you like it is a matter of taste but keeping in mind that Lee wrote this around the age of 22,  it is quite impressive. Her writing is vividly descriptive, something that no doubt won her many admirers.

Another thing that is noticeable about this novel is the female protagonist. In a time where women in sword and sorcery novels were usually little more than decoration, or at best cast in cliché roles, The Birthgrave presents the reader with a woman who is all those cliché roles in one person and moves beyond them. Not that the book is a feminists' dream. Given the heaps of blatantly sexist stuff DAW was publishing in the 1970s under Wollheim himself, that would have been a miracle. There is quite a bit of sexual violence in the book. While the main character doesn't approve, she is not particularly outraged by it either, even when she is the victim herself. Still, her choice of protagonist was noteworthy. Bradley even comments on how female authors often, out of necessity, wrote from male point of views. Lee shows them it is not necessary.

All things considered, I don't think this is a novel that really deserves the label classic. It is a book that had an impact when it was published, but one with so many flaws that I can't really call it a good book. If I compare this with the short story that made me pick up this novel, Lee must have developed considerably as a writer throughout her career. It is a fairly quick read if you let yourself be swept away by Lee's lovely prose and the emotional turmoil that surrounds the main character. For the slightly more analytical reader, this book has little to offer. The Birthgrave will probably remain a popular book for quite a while yet, but I was mildly disappointed with it.

Book Details
Title: The Birthgrave
Author: Tanith Lee
Publisher: DAW
Pages: 452
Year: 2015
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-7564-1105-3
First published: 1975

Short Fiction Month: Crying in the Rain - Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee was a prolific British author of novels that moved all over fantasy, science fiction and horror. When she passed away in 2015, I looked into her bibliography for WWend.com and added a lot of her work. Until now I have never read any of it though. Her most prolific and commercially successful period was in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s. Crying in the Rain appeared at the tail end of that phase of her career. It originally appeared in 1987 in the anthology Other Edens edited by Robert Holdstock and Christopher Evans. As far as I know it is not connected to any of Lee's other work.

In a toxic post-apocalyptic world, a young girl lives with her mother and younger siblings outside the dome that shelters the wealthy from the worst of the hostile environment. One day her mother takes her into the dome. It is a day she has seen coming for quite a while. She will be sold to one of the rich men in the dome. Her mother groomed her for this moment for years. The experience will make the young girl see her mother's harsh ways and strict upbringing in a different light.

This must surely be the saddest story I read in ages. In a few short pages Lee creates a bleak world where life is short, and often ends in a painful death. It does not contain an explanation for what happened or even very many details of the every day life of the main character. The author still managed to convey enough of the girl's world to make it completely convincing and thoroughly heartbreaking.

The choices her mother makes for her are horribly unfair. Her looks will be enough to allow her to have a comfortable, although probably still short, life. Which is more than the mother has herself. Prematurely aged, she is in a hurry to see this task completed. Her methods are calculating and cruel, and the relationship between mother and daughter strained. It is the best of a bunch of poor options however. The daughter's gradual realization of what was done for her and the shift from fear, caution and sullen anger to respect and even affection are what really make this story tragic.

The way Crying in the Rain was written makes it a downright painful read. The reader cannot fail to respond to the tragedy that unfolds on the pages. It is a brilliant exploration of how far the will to survive will push a person. Mix in the tendency of children to look back on their parents' decisions with more understanding than they felt when the decisions were made for them, and you end up with a very powerful story indeed.

Story Details
Title: Crying in the Rain
Author: Tanith Lee
Language: English
Originally published: Other Edens, edited by Robert Holdstock and Christopher Evans (1987)
Read in: The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (2016)
Story length: Short Story
Awards: None
Available online: Not that I am aware of.