The Phoenician Scheme: Funny but Call a Script Doctor

 

 

 

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

Directed and screenplay by Wes Anderson

Focus Features, 101 minutes, PG-13

★★★

 

If I were a producer of a Wes Anderson film I’d insist on a script doctor. The Phoenician Scheme is one of Anderson’s better films in recent memory, but it could have been a fantastic one with some tightening and greater continuity.

 

Like many Anderson films, this one has a big cast with recognizable stars. I can understand why so many actors want to work with Anderson. His films have a chaotic feel that suggest the cast had free reign to improvise and had a lot of fun on the set. No one is likely to confuse an Anderson project with Citizen Kane, though it’s likely it and many other movies will be hinted at; one of the fun things about Anderson’s films is trying to decipher what inspired what detail. For instance, the art on the walls in The Phoenician Scheme is real and historical characters such as Aristotle Onassis and William Randolph Hearst are models for some of Anderson’s robber barons and amoral protagonists.

 

Putatively set in the 1950s, The Phoenician Scheme centers on armaments dealer Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro), who is as morality-challenged as they come, but even he has limits. After surviving his sixth plane crash, eHeaveneach an assassination attempt, he briefly visits Heaven where a divine court judges him unworthy. Korda decides to mend some of his ways, but he also needs an heir. He has nine sons, some adopted and maybe a few biological, but they are a den of vipers. Anderson likes reoccurring jokes and this film has a good one involving errant arrows, but the bottom line is that he doesn’t plan to leave anything to his sons. His choice of heir is daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet’s daughter) from the first of his numerous wives. One small problem: Liesl is a nun with whom he has had little contact since she was five and Zsa-Zsa is rumored to have killed her mother (Charlotte Gainsborough). Liesel professes commitment to the church, though she’s open to trying some decidedly secular things. Currently she is being tutored by Bjorn (Michael Cera), a putative Norwegian entomologist.

 

At this point Anderson switches to the episodic narrative for which he is known. Zsa-Zsa has a rather unholy plan to alter the economy of Phoenicia in a way that will deplete most of his assets, though it entails using slave labor in Phoenicia. His adversaries include a government program (Excalibur) that wants to shut him down, and virtually all of his investors and business partners who’d like to do the same or worse. Unbeknown to them is that Korda’s “scheme” is virtually the same, though it involves getting them to invest in his Phoenician economic scheme without telling them of the changes he has made.

 

One by one Zsa-Zsa confronts them, including: Marseilles Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a gangster; Californians Leland and Reagan (think railroad baron Leland Stanford and free marketeer Ronald Reagan); Marty (Jeffrey Wright), an East Coast business man; his half-brother Nubar (an unrecognizable Bendict Cumberbatch), and others. Anderson ends these dealings with a trick that’s perhaps lamer than Monty Python’s tactic of pronouncing a sketch “too silly” and moving on. Several of these encounters are quite funny, but as is true of much “sketch” comedy–and this is what it is–the confrontations vary in humor and usefulness in advancing the narrative.

 

Cera’s performance seems to have caught the attention of many reviewers, thought I’d judge Cumberbatch’s role as weightier and more significant. Anderson also gives cameo roles to other A and B+ list actors: F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Hope Davis, Rupert Friend, and Scarlett Johansson. For the record, Bill Murray (perhaps Anderson’s favorite) plays God. Such a stuffed cast isn’t needed for the small roles many of them play and it serves mainly to add chaos to the storyline.

 

The good news is that there are some terrific zingers, journeys into surrealism (tinged with steam punk), and laugh-out-loud moments in The Phoenician Scheme. Del Toro is terrific as the world-weary Korda and Threapleton is droll in the way Murray used to be when he played leads in Anderson films. In all, it’s worth a look. It’s also worth adding your name to the “Hire an Editor and Script Doctor” petition I’d happily circulate.

 

Rob Weir

 

You Won’t Get Bored in Bordeaux

 

 

I confess that before we booked a tour to the Perigord regions (aka the Dordogne  or the Périgueux) I seldom thought of the French city of Bordeaux. I vaguely knew that Celts lived there in the third century B.C. and that Julius Caesar conquered them centuries later. Four centuries of Roman rule gave way to the Gauls (also Celts) of the early Middle Ages. Back in the days when I was studying medieval history I learned that Bordeaux was the principal town of Aquitaine and that 14-year-old Eleanor became the Duchess of Aquitaine in 1137, then Queen of France. When Louis VII of France had their marriage annulled* in 1152, Eleanor married King Henry II of England and Aquitaine became part of the English crown. And so it remained until after the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 when it reverted back to France.

 

I then put Bordeaux out of mind unless I saw the name on bottles of red wine. Bordeaux and Burgundy wines are considered among the world’s best. (The difference is that most Burgundies are single varietals–just one type of grape–whereas those from Bordeaux are mixed, usually Merlot and one or two other grapes.) Bordeaux is still a major wine exporter for some 7,000 regional vintners, but it’s also a lively city whose metropolitan population has sprawled to 1.3 million. (The city proper is about 300,000 with immigrants coming in daily, many from Paris.) It has been a university town since 1441, and a major trading center even longer. The Garonne River is muddy and wide in the city as its mouth is just 15 miles away. On its banks approximately center city lies the impressive and photogenic 18^th century Palais de la Bourse (stock exchange), a testament to Bordeaux’s wealth. These days wine, retail, education, and tourism drive the economy. The nearby Grande Théâtre is another example of the city’s 18^th century “golden age,” as are several lavishly appointed cathedrals and churches. It was also a slave trade now coming to grips with its role in that horrific practice.

 

Bordeaux has seen upheavals, which is why there are a reputed 362 monuments in the city. Depending upon whom you ask, the French Revolution or the two world wars were the most traumatic occurences in the city. Given that Bordeaux has several squares and parks named for socialists, the man for whom the guillotine is named graduated from the university, and many abolitionists were socialists, I’d say the Revolution was popular here. (The socialist party tends to get a lot of votes in Bordeaux!)

 

Architectural historians can have a field day in Bordeaux. It has several impressive medieval gates and a well-preserved medieval quarter, the waterfront is mostly 18^th century, and Rue St. Catharine is France’s longest pedestrian shopping precinct (1.2 km). But there is also a district with Le Corbusier buildings, and lots of concrete brutalism away from the center, including the extraordinarily ugly brutalist shopping mall called Mériadeck in the hotel precinct. Why people go there is a mystery given how many shopping options exist in the center–everything from Monsieur T-Shirt to Galeries Lafayette.

 

We only had time to check out several museums: Musée des Beaux-Arts, the Museum of Aquitaine, and Cité du Vin. The latter is an interactive look at wine around the world–much preferrable to Atlanta’s Coca Cola World if you ask me. Its quirky home is supposed to resemble wine being swirled in a glass, but it looks more like a giant glass boot! But you can learn a lot about wine, get a sample at the top, and be treated to an aerial view of Bordeaux.

 

A final thing to mention is Bordeaux’s excellent public transportation. It has a TGV fast train to Paris (two hours), taxis, buses, and a four-line light rail tram system. Line A runs the whole way out to the airport and you can take its slower ride into the city for a          few Euros as opposed to the 25-30 Euros you’d spend for a cab.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

* Medieval marriages were almost always about land, not love. The Catholic Church did/does not sanction divorce, so Louis contrived the excuse that he and Eleanor were too closely related and petitioned for annulment. That’s weird as the couple had two daughters, which would mean they were guilty of incest. The real reason was that Louis wanted a male heir. Don’t blame Eleanor; she bore five sons for Henry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Dark Shore a Mesmerizing Tale of Climate Change, Etc.

 

 

 

Wild Dark Shore (2025)

By Charlotte McConaghy

Flatiron Books, 298 pages.

★★★★★

 

It’s hard to classify Wild Dark Shore, the latest novel from Australian author Charlotte McConaghy. Is it a climate change apocalypse tale, a family saga, a romance, a mystery, a series of moral dilemmas, or a thriller? All of these, but did I mention ghosts? It’s filled with mostly metaphorical ones, but some in that liminal “not sure” category. McConaghy writes in short paragraphs and has multiple narrators–including those who have died–but it’s a tribute to her skill that we never get lost in her unorthodox constructions.

 

The setting in Shearwater Island, which is more than remote. Next stop, Antarctica. (Her model was Macquarie Island, halfway between New Zealand and Antarctica.) It is where the Salt family lives in an old lighthouse: Dominic (“Dom”) and his three children:

Raff (18), Fen (17), and Orly (9). Dom’s wife Claire died in childbirth nine years earlier as her  youngest son Orly came into the world. Dom never recovered from her death and “speaks” with Claire every day. His collection of Claire’s items became a veritable shrine.

 

The population of Shearwater was cut in half. It was also the home to a research team headed by Hank Jones, an NYU professor, who ran a seedbank there. With climate change ravaging the globe, his team of scientists–Naija, and brothers Alex and Tom–have set up a seed repository for whatever survives of humankind. The team is now dead or presumed so after a storm washed away Hank’s cabin and an inflatable Zodiac carrying Naija and Tom. Alex died earlier and is buried on the island. The biggest population of Shearwater are seals and penguins who, ironically, cavort on the beach near vats once used by traders to render them into oil.

 

For reasons McConaghy holds onto until near the end, Dom’s daughter Fen refuses to live in the lighthouse. She’s happiest among the marine animals, “speaks” to the dead ones, and resides in a fishing shack on the beach. It is from there that she spies a body floating in the tide, swims out to retrieve it, and is surprised to find a faint pulse. The population of Shearwater is about to grow by one; she is Rowan, who came to be with her husband: Hank. Like everyone else on Shearwater, she harbors a secret. Raff is probably dyslexic, but holds within him a lot of unresolved anger and heartache. We learn that another brother, River, is dead but McConaghy holds onto that secret as well.

 

Life on the island centers around Dom, whose many skills keep things in working order through improvisation and jerry rigging, but not even he can fix the radios sabotaged by one of the researchers who went berserk. Dom also controls his children’s education and stretches food supplies until naval officers return to the island. Hopefully Rowan’s presence will not exhaust the larder. She was badly injured when her boat wrecked and you can imagine how rudimentary her emergency surgery was. As she recovers Rowan begins to explore the island and helps out. Young Orly takes a shine to her and Dom struggles with his own attraction to her.

 

You could think of Wild Dark Shore as a version of “Survivor” without cameras and lifelines. Dom is sturdy and handy, but he’s not exactly Mr. Empathy–his answer to Raff’s anger is send him up to the lantern room to hit a punching bag–and he’s certainly not attuned to Fen’s heartaches given his inadequacy to grasp his own. Moreover, the waters are rising, storms are growing more fierce, and the beach and island are crumbling away. Staying isn’t an option, but all talk of the future seems more wishful and perfunctory than realistic.

 

Wild Dark Shore plays out in ways that you might anticipate, but solving that mystery might not be the point. Remember that the family surname is Salt, a preservative. In the game of survival, who gets chosen or has the resources to do so? In a tale of secrets, which ones leak out and how do they matter? In many ways, everything in the novel, including its characters, animals, and the island is a metaphor. The concept of rewilding is much discussed, but is the seed bank an unrealistic conceit? As I read this gripping work, I pondered climate change and ghosts. Is this how it all ends?

 

Rob Weir

 

Give Dublin a Chance To Be Sure, To Be Sure

This piece launches a new-for-me concept. Instead of a conventional travelogue I thought I’d add a new “Adventures With Rob” tab on the blog with short remarks designed to direct you to Facebook to see images the next day.

 

Dublin is the first post. We stopped in Dublin on our way to France because there are no direct flights to Bordeaux and we’d consider flying to Lapland if it meant avoiding the nightmare of changing planes at Heathrow. Travel tip: Never go to Heathrow unless London is your final destination.

 

Why Dublin?

 

1. Aer Lingus has a direct flight of about 5 ½ hours from Bradley Airport (Windsor Locks, CT). It lands at a stupid early time (around 4:30 am Irish time), but there are airport cafes where you can caffeinate. Some have comfy sofas where you can take turns catnapping.

 

2. I hadn’t been there in about 20 years and it has come up in the world.  

 

3. Its free archaeological museum is pure gold. Literally! It takes you from the days of slab dwellings and thatched huts to the present. There are stunning displays of gold jewelry and artifacts dug from bogs (mostly in the 20^th century). Although it’s not as rich, the National Art Museum is also free and has unique finds.

 

4. There’s plenty to entertain you in two days whilst you recover from jet lag and go on to your next destination.

 

5. Transport from and to the airport by bus is cheap and easy. Get off or on in the city center near Trinity College.

 

6. There is no need to spend a fortune on special tours or Hop On/Hop Off buses. Dublin is very walkable. If you cross the Ha’Penny Bridge over the Liffey River you can walk the whole way to the Calatrava Harp Bridge (officially the Samuel Beckett Bridge) in about 30 minutes. On your way you’ll see the Famine Memorial and a docked tall ship, the Jeanie Johnston.

 

7. Forget what tourist sites tell you, there are tons of pubs where you can catch “sessions” of traditional Irish music. By all means avoid places advertised as Irish “shows.” They are about as “Irish” as a stuffed leprechaun or a fiddler playing a hoedown.

 

Downsides?

 

1. Irish food still sucks with the exception of its excellent tea scones. Try Keough’s, which now surpasses Bewley’s. There are loads of ethnic restaurants in Dublin these days, so you won’t be forced to eat colcannon. Only barefoot, muddy peasants think creamed mashed potatoes and cabbage is dinner and, if you’re really unlucky, some places use kale instead of cabbage. That’s called adding insult to injury.

 

2. Don’t be suckered into drinking Guiness in a pub. It’s better than the swill imported to the States, but both are akin to having a glass of polluted water. Go to “free houses” not beholden to any single brand. Irish barkeeps are very friendly. Tell them what you like and ask for recommendations. You can also forego brewery factory tours. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

 

3. Be careful in the Temple Bar area at night. You’ll be safe enough, but dodgy characters come out when the sun goes down. Pickpockets prey upon distracted rubberneckers. It’s a lively and crowded area, so be aware.

 

4. It costs 25 euros to see the Book of Kells, an outrageous sum given that most of the books have been taken from the library. The library is magnificent when its shelves are full, but even then you only see a few Book of Kells pages. Wait until you get home and buy a volume with crisp color plates of the entire Book of Kells. You can also see illuminated manuscripts in the archaeology museum for free.

 

5. Even devotees of Jameson’s Whiskey will tell you that if your travels are taking you to Scotland, that’s where the real whisky—the only one allowed to be spelled that way–should be sampled. I had a funny conversation with an Irish museum guard who practically cried when I told him I could buy Scottish Lagavulin in the States for well under the equivalent of 150 euros!

 

Wolk Pack: Discover the World of C. J. Box

 

 

 

Wolf Pack (2019)

By C. J. Box

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 370 pages

★★★★

 

If, like me, you've burned through the back catalog of numerous mystery writers and are looking for a new addiction, C. J. Box might be your new rodeo. His Joe Pickett series has swollen to 20 titles. Pickett is not your typical detective; he's a game warden who hit the jackpot by marrying Marybeth and raising a stable of daughters. The youngest, Lucy, is about to leave the homestead for college. Life is good in Shoestring, Wyoming.

 

Wyoming game wardens do more than write tickets; they also have limited law enforcement powers. Joe has a solid circle of friends and colleagues, a good thing as game wardens are more tolerated than liked. It's safe to say that animal rights and game laws aren't popular in Big Sky regions.*

 

The Wolf Pack shows how small problems can become huge when the human body count begins to rival the number of deer jackings. Two small things set things in motion. Katelyn Hamm, a warden in an adjoining district, tells Joe that someone is using sophisticated drones to hunt wildlife. Secondly, Herman, a cranky rancher calls Joe to tell him wolves have been killing his livestock. Problem: Officially there aren't any wolves in this section of Wyoming. Herman begs to differ; he has a wolf in his stock trailer that he lassoed!

 

Things get stickier when the drone is traced to Tom Kinnison, who no one including Joe  knows. Joe's search leads him to Bill Hill, a recent arrival and recluse living in a gated compound. His son Justin happens to be dating Lucy. Who is Hill exactly? That’s also a local conundrum. Joe's attempt to hold a civil conversation with him comes to naught. Worse, a string of murders sounds alarms as they have all the earmarks of being both brutal and random. To top it off, four Hispanic individuals have been throwing their money and weight around. It's not unusual to see Hispanic visitors in Wyoming, but there's something about these four that unsettles Joe. Hill remains uncooperative but violence makes its way to his compound. Moreover, Joe cannot fathom why he has been ordered to cease his attempts to cite Hill for obvious game violations. He can't even figure out who issued such an order though he naturally suspects Hill is linked to local troubles. Who or why would anyone in authority ask Joe to stop investigating crimes. He is told that he has no need to know.

 

When, however, some of Joe's friends and associates are gunned down and he fears  that Lucy could be in jeopardy, Joe is prepared to ignore his instructions. If you read enough C.J. Box novels you will learn that Joe has a pattern of doing runarounds of higher authorities and that he is usually correct in doing so. But not even Joe or Marybeth, whose high-level job provides her with access to those who can tell her things she's not supposed to know, can enlighten them fully. Rumors fly that the  assassins were working for Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, yet it’s difficult to imagine any of the victims would so connected.  

 

Wolf Pack is a fast-paced novel that is filled with uncertainties that will keep you turning the pages and holding your breath. Wyoming is not exactly the ends of the earth, but it is vast and far from the centers of federal control. One of the attractions of Box novels is that they often contain vestiges of the Wild West mythos. It helps to know that the Wild West never really existed as most people imagine in the first place, so why not yield to a novelistic convention that’s more Zane Gray than U.S. history? There are indeed legitimate questions of credibility, but they are analogous to Louise Penny novels that make you wonder how one small village can spawn so many murders!

 

Wolf Pack straddles the line between mystery and thriller, so perhaps it’s best to dust off grains of doubt and surrender to its heart-thumping dangers and action. It certainly has one of most vicious killers in recent fiction and leave us with a gruesome, yet satisfying denouement.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Technically, mine is a partial anachronism. Neighboring Montana officially bears the “Big Sky Country” nickname. Call it literary license!

 

Group of Seven on Display in Ottawa

 

 

 

 

Lawren Harris, Winter Morning, 1924

Art is an inherently creative act, but it tends to thrive when others gravitate to the same styles and genres. When a particular style is new, it’s not uncommon for it to get bad or ho-hum reviews. But when it attracts a critical mass of the like-minded, a veritable "school" of art is born.

 

Canada gained the right to self-governance in 1867, but it remained in Great Britain’s shadow until the passage of the Canada Act in 1982. Think upon that; you could make the case that Canada has only been fully independent for 43 years. No wonder the Canadian “identity” has been much discussed for much longer. What does this have to do with art?

 

It would be ethnocentric to say there was no Canadian art before (take your pick) 1867 or 1982–First Nations people such as the Inuit and other northern peoples, Indians, and the Métis had rich traditions–but insofar as formal painting went, much of what was considered “fine” art was European, especially British, in style and content.

 

The first important school of painters to paint in a distinctly Canadian style was the Group of Seven: Frank Carmichael (1890-1945), Lawren Harris (1885-1970), A. Y. Jackson (1882-1974), Frank Johnston (1888-1949), Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), J.E.H. MacDonald (1881-1969), and Frederick Varley (1881-1969). But what defined a Euro-Canadian? No one could quite agree, hence the Group of Seven got tepid reviews from the first exhibitions of their work. World War One didn’t help matters as Canadians fought under the Union Jack.

 

 

 

Tom Thompson, The Pool, 1915

 

 

Nevertheless, the Group of Seven came together shortly after the war.  They took their cue from Tom Thompson (1877-1917) who died just before the Seven formed but he was friends with several of the painters. Several of Thompson’s  canvases inspired the Seven to the degree that Thompson is often cited as the eighth member of the Group of Seven. In particular, Thompson suggested that geography defined Canadians. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Group of Seven explored how Canadians were shaped by its vastness. It is, after all, the world’s second largest nation (after Russia), yet a considerable majority of its land is Sub-Arctic, muskeg, and Arctic–filled with resources such as fresh water, oil, animals, and minerals, but relatively inhospitable. That’s why approximately 90 percent of its population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

 

The Group of Seven were mainly considered landscape painters. They seldom painted people because of the remoteness of its northern reaches. I will offer a few samples of the artists below, but two final codicils. Seven didn’t always mean seven literally. Thompson is one example of that, but at least four other painters were invited into the group. If I tell you that Jackson’s first name is Alexander and MacDonald’s was James, you’ll also see that it was a fraternity. Yet the wonderful British Columbia painter Emily Carr (1871-1941) was considered a peer.   

 

Let’s take a look. If you get a chance to visit Ottawa, be sure to dip into its National Gallery of Art!

 

Frank Carmichael, The Hilltop 1921

Harris, Lake Superior North Shore, 1926. Steve Martin collects his work.

 

 

Harris, Sun on Lake Superior, 1924. Harris is also my favorite of the 7.

A. Y Jackson, 1924. Note the human figures in this one.

J. E. H. MacDonald, March Morning, Northland

 

F. H. Varley, Stormy Weather Georgian Bay 1921

 

Emily Carr, British Columbia Totems, 1930 (My 2nd favorite of the Seven)

 

 

 

Carr, Graveyard Entrance, 1912   

You might notice that some of the landscapes are similar. I like Harris because he went to the Arctic North and captured spectacular landscapes, and Carr because she worked in British Columbia and likewise recorded different subjects. 

 

The Group of Seven (sort of) disbanded upon MacDonald's death in 1931. However, several of the Seven took part in the Canadian Group that formed in 1933 and initially had 28 members with more to come. Here are a few other paintings and, I suspect, they simply "look" Canadian. Where else, except northern Maine or Wisconsin could they be with all semblance of human activity immersed and at the mercy of Mother Nature? Such was the impact of the Group of Seven. 

 

Clarence Gagnon Village in the Laurentians (PQ)

 

 

 

Kathleen Moir Morris, Byward Market, Ottawa

 

 

Marc Aurele Fortin, Saint Urban in Winter, 1942

 

 

Yvonne Housser Rossport Lake Superior, 1929

 

Harris, Halifax

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

The Names: Fascinating and Frustrating

 

 

 

The Names (2025)

By Florence Knapp

Viking/Penguin, 328 pages.

★★★

 

Perhaps you’ve heard of the “butterfly effect,” which avers that the smallest variable introduced into an experiment or scenario can dramatically alter the outcome. The movie Run, Lola, Run is a brilliant depiction of it. Novelist Florence Knapp plays with that butterfly premise in The Names.

 

The book opens as Cora, a former ballet dancer, and Gordon Atkin have just had a son. In Gordon’s mind there is only one choice for his name: Gordon. His family has had a Gordon for as many generations as anyone can remember. Cora doesn’t think it fits and prefers Julian, but her husband orders her to go to the city hall and register the name Gordon. Maia, the baby’s sister, has taken to calling her brother Bear and the name is growing on mom. When Cora actually registers the name Bear, Gordon goes ballistic. Although he is a skilled doctor respected by his patients, he’s a bully and an abuser who pummels Cora for defying his will. She gets it again when she goes to city hall and changes it to Julian. This time, something very serious happens to a neighbor.

 

What would have happened had the boy been named Bear? Or Julian? Knapp imagines differing scenarios via snapshots in six different years: 1987,1994, 2001, 2008, 2015, and 2022. Her stories are sometimes discrete and sometimes continuous. Remember, that a small change can lead to very different outcomes. Our supporting characters–father Gordon, Cora, her mother Sílbhe, Maia (“Bees”), and Cora’s friend Mehri–are retained, but depending upon the timeline they have different lives, friends, and personalities. 

 

Gordon 2 bears some of his father’s traits, though he is better at recognizing the effects of internalized anger. Nevertheless, Gordon 2 is mostly a reactive character, as if his father is a magnet and he a flimsy piece of metal. The externals of Gordon I change according to which timeline is at play. It’s hard to be specific without venturing into spoilers. It would be fair to say, though, that Gordon 2 has the least interesting life.

 

Bear is exactly as young Maia envisioned him. Most people like him and he ends up marrying his longtime squeeze Lily, though Bear’s quiet, cuddly charm presents challenges. As his name suggests, Bear loves nature. Julian, by contrast, moves to Ireland and develops a dislike for the English and crass commercialism. One of his grandmother’s former lovers, teaches Julian silversmithing and he goes on to become a skilled jeweler. He will wed Orla, also an artist.

 

It is often in the supporting cast where the butterfly changes manifest most dramatically. That’s because Knapp has something up her sleeve. We get more background on Sílbhe, who was once a hippie, and has had an (ahem!) adventurous love life. Maia is a lesbian who, in 2008 is married to a woman named Charlotte, but this changes. Mehri is Cora’s best friend, but her personality is fungible. Characters we’ve not previously met appear in different scenarios. 

 

As the novel wends its way through time, Knapp springs a surprise. Most of the characters appear in the same timeframe, as if there were a merging of the various Gordon I’s, Gordon 2’s, Bears, Julians, and Coras. This flight into the multiverse is common in graphic novels, but not every reader is going to applaud Knapp’s use of the technique. Frankly, I have mixed feeling about it. On one hand, it’s a bold shift; on the other, it’s often hard to figure out exactly what’s happening to whom and, if I might, who “whom” is at a given moment. Nor is it entirely clear what we are to conclude about Knapp’s foray into trifurcation. Any of a number of possibilities emerge. Is there one narrative with the same son switching identities? Are three parallel universes in play? It’s interesting to contemplate what another you would be like in a different universe, but it’s ultimately a dead end as we have objective evidence that a multiverse exists.  Knapp selected her time periods carefully: 1987 was the end of stagflation,1994 the year the first Web browser appeared, 2001 Y2K and terrorist attacks, 2008 the end of the Great Recession, 2015 the legalization of same-sex marriages, and 2022 the next page of her seven-year cycles. (Are we reading a postmodernist 7 Up?)

 

We can but speculate. I found The Names both a fascinating and perplexing read.

 

Rob Weir