The Separation

The Separation by Christopher Priest


I had been meaning to read Christopher Priest's “The Inverted World” (published in 1974) for four decades. I don't know why I kept putting it off, but I finally read it in 2023. The story has one of the best opening line in science fiction – “I HAD REACHED the age of six hundred and fifty miles” – which just hooks the reader into finding out how this can be possible.

The setting of “The Inverted World” is the real attraction. Priest describes a city slowly winching its way through Europe. For some unexplained reason, the world has become topologically distorted. The world behind the city falls off as time slows down – people can spend months behind the city, but when they return only a day has passed. On the other hand, time speeds up ahead of the city – pioneers who go ahead for a day return to find that months have passed in the city.

The reason for this is not explained until – maybe – the end. The story deals with the problems of bridging rivers and gorges and climbing mountains as we discover the strange world that the protagonist – Helward Mann – lives in.

It is fascinating and somewhat claustrophobic story. The reader is constantly trying to make sense of the strange time/topographical features of the world, which serves as a useful distraction to problems with the plot or characters and compels the reader to the conclusion to find out “what the heck is going on????”

Alas, I found the conclusion to be muddled. I wasn't sure if the city residents description of their reality was true or was supposed to be a subjective hallucination caused by the power system used by the city.

Priest's writing technique in “The Inverted World” is mildly unconventional. He would alternate between chapters told in the first person by Helward Mann and chapters told in the third person by some other person, which added to the sense of confusion.

Thus, in The Inverted World we have themes of an unreliable narrator and utter confusion about what is going on, really.

The Separation (2002) is my second Christopher Priest book.

It is very well-written, but the themes of unreliable narrator and ultimate confusion about what is going on have become more acute. The writing is good. The presentation is compelling, However, if you are trying to keep the details straight, you will go bonkers.

Which seems to be the point.

The Separation appears to be an alternate-history (Alt-hist) science fiction book. At least that was how I was diagnosing it, until I thought it was maybe a mystery, but ultimately I concluded it was a very strange alt-hist novel.

The story starts with a historian named Stuart Gratton finishing a book tour on one of his books of oral history on Operation Barbarossa during World War II. Gratton's specialty is obtaining oral histories – the lived stories of people who fought during World War II. Almost immediately, Priest starts dropping hints to the experienced science fiction reader that we are dealing with a time-line that is not exactly our own. Priest via Gratton mention the “Sino-American War in the mid-1940s.” Well, that didn't happen, unless he is referring to American troops that were in China during Mao's conquest of China. My dad mentioned drinking Tsingtao beer in Tsingtao as he heard Communist shelling in the mountains when he was in the Navy in approximately 1949. So, maybe something like that was a jump-off for this alt-hist.

Otherwise, it seems that Gratton's history was much like ours. It seems that America did become involved in the European War and Germany was defeated. On the other hand, there is a reference to the Republic of Masada, which seems to be a Jewish State on the island of Madagascar. The deportation of European Jews to Madagascar was an idea floated by the National Socialists as a solution for the “Jewish Problem.”

Gratton is toying with the idea of hunting down a strange reference in Winston Churchill's notes about a “J.L. Sawyer” who was both a conscientious objector and a RAF bomber pilot. That is a strange combination and Gratton thinks there may be a short book in the subject.

He is presented with the memoirs that might be from man's daughter – Miss Angela Chipperton – in which we learn that there were two J.L. Sawyers. They were twins and rowed for England during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. One of them (“Jack” or “J.L.”) met Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess. The other (“Joe”) smuggled a Jewish girl out of Germany (Birgitte), whom he subsequently married. Jack became a bomber pilot; Joe became a conscientious objector.

We learn that Joe was killed in London during the Blitz. Jack was shot down and then assigned to work for Churchill for a short time, returned to the air war, was shot down again, spent two years in a German POW camp, learned that Birgitte had remarried, and then learns that he had a daughter – Angela – with Birgitte from an affair he had with her. Joe goes to Australia and seems never to have met Angela, except Angela gave Gratton the notes we are supposedly reading.

Thus starts the confusion.

The theme of twin confusion is repeated through the book. Hess chortles to Jack about the crazy pranks he and his brother must have played as identical twins. Later we learn that Churchill used a double to visit the bombed out British. Later still, Jack is assigned to meet Deputy Fuhrer Hess in a British POW camp after Hess's crazy flight to England on May 10, 1941 in an effort to broker peace between Germany and England. Jack determines that the man the British are holding is an imposter, which is a bit of this-timeline speculation. (Although “Hess” never denied being Hess during 40 years of imprisonment...as far as the public knows.)

The story keeps looping around to May 10, 1941. That was the day that Gratton selects as his jump off point because he was born on that day. It was the day of Hess's flight to Germany while being chased by the Luftwaffe. Jack sees the chase on a bombing run to Hamburg.

Then, the story starts to change in subtle, confusing, and jarring ways. We learn from Jack's Jewish navigator writing to Gratton from the Republic of Masada that he was the only survivor from the flight that Jack's memoirs claimed he survived and rescued the navigator. The two of them were rescued in the North Sea according to Jack's memoirs, but according to the navigator's letter to Gratton, only he was rescued.

We also learn that Jack claimed to have been married to Birgitte. Was this true or was Jack lying to his crew to cover up the affair.

Jack confirms to Churchill in 1941 that Joe was killed in the Blitz in 1940, but Birgitte gets a letter in 1940 telling her that Joe was discovered alive in a men's home with a concussion. Joe survives, joins the Red Cross, and then meet with Deputy Fuhrer Hess in 1941 in Portugal.

At this point, the reader starts wondering if he has misread the earlier chapters.

Joe and Birgitte's marriage is on the rocks, but Birgitte and he have a child – maybe Jack's child – who is a boy, not Angela. Angela disappears from the story as does Stuart Gratton. By the end of the story, Joe has helped to broker peace between Germany and England in 1941, which leads to a stronger post-war England, America invades Russia through China, and Germany withdraws from Western Europe.

We are now truly in an Alt-hist story.

All of this is told through memoirs, news clippings, and journal entries.

It is all fascinating. The change from one history to a completely different history is subtle. The reader initially is left thinking that they just misremembered things or perhaps the narrator lied. Maybe Joe lied to Churchill about the death of his brother in 1940? Maybe Joe did die in that time line. In the final timeline, it does not seem that Churchill ever met Jack, although he did meet Joe.

So, by the end of the novel, we have a really interesting, well-done experience – well-written, captivating, engaging – that leaves us wondering “what is going on here????”

Just like The Inverted World.

Along with May 10, 1941, the latter part of the story – the Joe Timeline – loops around Joe waking up in an ambulance from his concussion. We are repeatedly treated to long scenes where Joe moves forward into the future only to wake up again in the ambulance. There is a brief interlude where the report of a Red Cross psychologist describes Joe's concern that he may be hallucinating his current existence. It may be the case that the entire Joe Timeline is simply the report of a very unreliable narrator waking up from a concussion.

Again, an ambiguous ending like The Inverted World.

Ultimately, this is a work of literature, not really science fiction. Literature is about characters; science fiction is about plot and setting. The real story here is about the characters and seeing them engage with different and changing stimuli. Certainly, there is a plot and setting, but both are shifting, almost dreamlike affairs, with no fixed points.

I enjoyed the story. I would recommend it to someone with a high tolerance for ambiguity and reflection.