Review of Engine Summer by John Crowley

This blog does take its time, basking in the sun beside mainstream waters. But that thimbleful of regular readers will know that diving into the rich undercurrents of lesser known fiction is likely its sweet spot—or at least hopes to be. There may be no sweeter spot of lesser known writers than John Crowley. His sophomore effort, Engine Summer (1979), sticks out to this day.

Engine Summer is the story of Rush-that-Speaks. Teen member of a river tribe, he lives and works building simple homes, collecting food for winter, and ensuring rituals and traditions are carried out. A pastoral, peaceful existence, they do not worry about attacks or violence. Rush-that-Speaks befriends a young woman named Once-a-Day, but when she chooses to leave the tribe to go on a walkabout, he decides to follow his own heart too and see what's out there in the big, wide world.

The story that follows loosely fits the mold of bildungsroman. Rush-that-Speaks has some unexpected adventures traversing the countryside, encountering other tribes, gurus, and alternate ways of living. While never directly stated, Crowley gently guides Rush-that-Speaks to a core of personal truth, and on that journey so too goes the reader.

Though it came before them, Engine Summer is in the same vein of novels as Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and Russel Hoban's Riddley Walker. In all these stories, characters walk the face of a future Earth with minimal connection to our present conception of existence. Technology and tools that we consider normal are arcane or unknown or, in some cases, so far advanced to what we know now that they seem magic-esque. Needing to be accepted at face value, Crowley (like Wolfe and Hoban) never peels back the covers to connect his world to ours. In fact, the reader might be better served going in thinking it's a fantasy world—or at least the ultimate hippie novel, what with the free love, peace, and smoking bubble pipes for sustenance.

Given its esoteric nature, Engine Summer has a learning curve. The reader needs be patient coming to understand the norms of the setting and where the narrative is going. The conversations of Rush-that-Speaks feel otherworldly in the early going. The reader has no problem understanding his syntax and lexicon, but they must exercise thought—to figure out—the context. To put this another way, a film couldn't be made of Engine Summer without destroying the book's mystique. What's behind the words truly lives in the imagination.

There is a weakness of Engine Summer: poor transitions. Rush-that-Speaks is in one setting for several chapters, there is one or two paragraphs of transition, and bang, he's at another setting for the next several chapters. The reader doesn't get the feeling he'd journeyed—that a distance had been covered and hardship had been had earning the pearls of knowledge he picks up at each setting. To be clear, the waypoints themselves feel relevant narrative, just the bits connecting them needed more space to give the proper “journey” feel. By contrast, the reader completes Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun feeling like Severian has indeed been around the world.

In the end, Engine Summer is one of those novels which distinctly affects the reader but they can't put their finger on why. Ethereal, it packs a silent epistemological punch in its sublime prose. For readers who enjoy the salience of a flashy futuristic setting, this book will be light on details; action is not as important as dialogue or progression. It is heavy vernacular—a vernacular familiar for the grammar and vocabulary, but lacking in common reference. As mentioned, if you enjoyed Hoban's Riddley Walker or Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, then try Engine Summer.