The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Having discovered my unexpected interest in sci-fi (never would have thought it) after reading 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale, I thought I'd try some by Philip K. Dick (1928 - 1982, American) who is rather well known and has a large cult following I believe. So I saw this volume in Waterstones and having just got turned down for yet another job I thought I'd buy it to cheer myself up.

Probably not the best book to do that! The scenario behind The Man in the High Castle is that the Nazis and Japanese won WW2 and have now divided the American continent between them, with a kind of no-man's-land in the Rockies. The Nazis have carried out a Final Solution in Africa, leaving it as a radioactive wasteland and doing awful things to the corpses of the Africans. The action of the novel takes place in the Pacific side of the USA (now the PSA and run by the Japanese, although a strong Nazi presence is also there). So not the most cheering of scenarios, but an interesting concept.

The narrative follows several different characters - Mr. Tagomi (a Japanese official), Frank Frink (a Jew), Robert Childan (a shopkeeper specialising in American historical artefacts), and the mysterious Mr Baynes, among others. The narratives of these characters never quite interconnect but the actions of each have repercussions on the lives of the others.

The book is so called because of an important undercurrent to the narrative - a book in circulation despite its being banned in Nazi-controlled areas, entitled 'The Grasshopper Lies Heavy', in which its author - the Man in the High Castle - imagines a world where the Allied forces won WW2 - in other words, the world that we, the reader, inhabit.

In terms of this writing, this book is quite unusual. A lot of the prose is written with the articles ('a' and 'the') quite often absent, perhaps to imitate the Japanese way of talking and thinking that is now the norm in the PSA. Many of the characters also consult the I-Ching and much of the book is made up of this, and of abstract philosophical musings. Also there are lots of snippets of German - something that I found quite hard as I don't speak a word. So it reads quite strangely, and took a while for me to get into.

My reaction to this book? Not what I expected at all, and surprisingly intellectual! Having just finished it, I feel like I didn't understand a word! Sometimes I feel like I have a hold on the underlying message of the book and other times I feel completely nonplussed. From second to second it changes from a vividly imagined political commentary juxtaposing disparate utopic and distopic visions of the past/present to the 'potpourri of pointlessness' to use Dick's own turn of phrase.

For me, this book failed to hit the mark. Perhaps because I don't really understand it, but also I think because of the way it is constructed. The separateness of the characters, and the way that the narrative flashes between them, meant that as a reader I didn't really get to know any of them particularly well, none of them becoming particularly sympathetic, and no clear protagonist emerging. This is probably intentional by Dick, however, for me as a reader it meant that I didn't really identify with any of the characters and never really got into the plot as a result. And due to my complete lack of knowledge I found the German and I-Ching sections rather isolating.

Conclusion? One I might read again, more carefully, and having done extensive research into the I-Ching and philosophy!