Oh Boink! Found this one a bit of a head melter ( Phew, imagine saying that about a Michael Moorcock book.Strewth!)Una Persson and Catherine Corneilius begin this book living together in a peaceful idyll of their own making but being the kind of people they are they do grow bored with this. So out they go, striking for new times and places. Their choices and how they choose to live causes their relationship to flip over into a very different state of play. The course of these changes was gradual andnot understandable, for me. The trelationship between the two undergoes something of a role reversal, mirroring the times they are living through. A bit like reallife I suppose, or at least as real as the lives of two time traveling women can get. Time traveling is not all jolly hockey sticks after all.
It takes more than a change of clothes and era appropriate small change to time travel properly. Time pays no attention to changing scenes, time is not aware it passes, like gravity time as a concept is complex. Slipping backwards or forwards in time is like a writwatch bobbing about in uncharted seas. At least as it rests on the bottom it will tell the correct time twice a day. What I am trying to find the words to describe is the notion that a time traveler might well get some details correct but in a larger sense they will only marginally be able to see the bigger picture.
Catherine and Una's attempts to love others other than each other often end in violence and calamity, as they seem perpetually drawn to historical and political intrigue. I think this is largely down to the fact they happen to history as opposed to history happening to them. Catherine Corneilius in particular trips down a twisted path of love and abuse, especially the ones she walks down with her brother Jerry as it tips over into sado-masochism. I do not believe I have ever read a book in which the love between a brother and a sister is explored in such painful detail. Certainly not one where themes such as fteishism and pain become a component in that love. What could ever be a safeword in such a scenario?reading this book must have been something of an eye popping experience back when it was first published although I doubt the shared cultural zeitgeist of modernity is any better equipped to deal with such mature themes. Whatever that means...
Yet it remains an important component of the vast tapestry Michael Moorcock has woven over the years. One that is neither good nor bad, healthy or ill. It just is...
