It's roughly ten years since I wrote a post about American fantasy novelist Tim Powers. I did make a further brief mention of him in a piece on psychogeography a few years ago, but nothing much since. Am I my brother's keeper, after all?
He's not been idle in that time: that's putting it mildly. Anyone would think he was doing it for a living! He's published a trilogy of books (with, apparently, a fourth yet to come) about a couple of Mulder and Scully-like investigators - Vickery and Castine - and their explorations of the Los Angeles motorway system and other haunted sites around the city.
"The Ghosts of the Freeway are rising," as the cover of the first of them proclaims.
He's also put out a substantial collection of his short stories and novellas to date: Down and Out in Purgatory. As you can see from the listings at the bottom of this post, it's not complete, but still a pretty comprehensive selection of his work in these forms over the years.
The main event in these years, however, would have to be his new novel about the Brontës, My Brother's Keeper.
Set - more or less - in the same magical universe as his earlier books The Stress of Her Regard and Hide Me Among the Graves, My Brother's Keeper continues the conceit of an underlying occult explanation for the odd behaviour of various constellations of closely related Romantic poets and artists: the Shelley circle in The Stress of Her Regard, the Pre-Raphaelites in Hide Me Among the Graves, and now the three visionary sisters of Haworth Parsonage ...
Perhaps Charlotte, Emily, Anne and their hapless brother Branwell are not quite so well known among fantasy readers as they are to fans of Victorian fiction, however, given the bold legend:
Howarth.
Yorkshire.
1846
on the back of my paperbook copy of the book. I suppose "Haworth" might well look like a misprint for "Howarth" if you hadn't been brought up on the arcane lore of the Brontës.
I wrote an earlier post about about what sceptical historian Lucasta Miller called "The Brontë Myth" à propos of Frances O'Connor's 2022 film Emily.
Emily, the fiercest and most enigmatic of the three sisters, is at the heart of Tim Powers' novel, too, and the similarities between the two projects are quite revealing. Both O'Connor and Powers gift Emily with an illicit love affair: O'Connor with timid young curate William Weightman, Powers with surly (albeit reformed) werewolf Alcuin Curzon.
Both authors are at a bit of a loss at how to deal with Emily's elder sister Charlotte, so O'Connor turns her into a tedious, uncreative nag, while Powers makes her the only one of the Brontë children not to make a childish pact with the powers of darkness by smearing their blood on a rock in a nearby cavern.
Both take considerable liberties with the well-documented realities of the Brontë's lives, but in O'Connor's case this involves rewriting history to a startling degree, whereas Powers sticks to his usual artistic principle of feeling free to invent reams of extra supernatural action just as long as he's governed by the actual canonical timeline of his subjects' lives.
I guess it's a matter of taste, but I myself found O'Connor's inventions more intrusive because they had the cumulative effect of somehow normalising the oddities of Emily's personality. As I said in my previous post:
I share director (and script-writer) Frances O'Connor's fierce appreciation of Emily's genius - she is, for me, the pick of the bunch, and her novel a masterpiece on a quite different level from Charlotte's and Anne's more numerous works ... She's the only one of the three sisters who's ever been regarded as a poet of distinction, and the ... clockwork machinery of her sublime Gothic novel belies any attempts that have been made since to write it off as hysterical melodrama.However, "the film's decision to show Charlotte sitting down to write her own novel in the wake of Emily's death, and thus - in a sense - carrying on her work, just doesn't seem a necessary fiction to me." I don't see what it adds to our sense of Emily's deep strangeness as a human being to invent a lot of belittling lies about the other sisters.
As Carrie S. remarks in her enthusiastic review of Tim Powers' phantasmagorical reinvention of the Brontë saga:
I love my Brontës and I get so annoyed when either adaptations of their work or stories based on their lives get EVERYTHING WRONG ... My Brother’s Keeper is an eerie story involving the Brontë family, werewolves, and warring cults, and, darn it, it gets everything just absolutely perfect.She goes on to quote a comment by fantasy illustrator Michael Hague to the effect that "the more outlandish the the things he wanted to represent, the more convincingly realistic the mundane details must be":- Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (6/3/2024)
The story works because, first of all, the mundane details feel correct. Things that ought to be heavy do, in fact, cause the characters difficulty when they try to lift them. People have to eat and drink and sleep. Much mention is made of potatoes, either eating them or peeling them or cutting them up. Struggles are as much mundane as mystical. For instance, the characters make frequent references to their efforts to convince local government to move the town’s well uphill from the cemetery –- a real-life problem for the residents of Haworth ... was that the cemetery drained directly into their drinking water.The plot is definitely as busy and complicated as in any of Powers' other novels, but it somehow feels more weighty and serious this time. It was a little difficult to credit that he actually believed in the existence of his Dr. Polidori vampire (in Hide Me Among the Graves) or his stone-disease cursed poet Percy Shelley (in The Stress of Her Regard).
Secondly, the story works because, to me, the portrait of the Brontës, specifically Patrick, Branwell, Charlotte, Emily, Anne, their housekeeper Tabitha and Emily’s dog Keeper, is spot on. Everything they do and everything they say is perfectly in character. As bizarre as the plot is, it actually makes aspects of the Brontës’ lives make more sense rather than less.
I don't feel the slightest doubt that he's fallen in love with his own fearless Emily Brontë, though. As she strides across the moors, shooting at lycanthropes and guarding her worthless brother Branwell from the consequences of yet another betrayal, she gradually assumes the larger-than-life status which her admirers (myself among them) have accorded her all along.
If there could ever be such a thing as a human being whose ethical judgement and moral courage is definitively beyond question (for us true believers, at least) it's Emily Brontë - and Powers sets out to substantiate this view. Anne comes out pretty well, too - far better than in the O'Connor film. Admirers of Charlotte will probably be a little disappointed, but there's a good deal of Jane Eyre in Powers' story, too, so they won't feel as disgusted as they did by the lies and calumnies included in in the Emily film.
Nor is it the smallest virtue of Powers' book that Emily's faithful dog has such a big part to play in the story. As Carrie S. succinctly expresses it:
He is a Very Good Dog.Overall, I'd say that My Brother's Keeper is Powers' best book since his defining fantasy novel The Anubis Gates some forty years ago. And given that this one made me cry - though Emily's death tends to do that to me, even in O'Connor's film - I think that it's very probably better.
Chapeau bas, messieurs! as old Doctor Rieux in Camus' La Peste dreams that his readers may someday say when they read the opening sentence of his own novel: "Hats off, boys!"
Another surprisingly difficult feat which Powers pulls off with style and panache is weaving so many vital details from Wuthering Heights into the even wilder action of My Brother's Keeper.
"Heathcliff's lost years" is the approach many writers have taken to the problem of how to continue - or supplement - the storyline of Emily's masterpiece. Powers takes the opposite tack. He makes the character Heathcliff a dim avatar of the actual demon "Welsh", who has haunted the Brunty family (renamed Brontë, accordingly to Powers, not by analogy with Admiral Nelson's title as Duke of Bronte, a commune in Sicily, but as an invocation of Brontes, one of the three Cyclopes who forged Zeus's thunderbolt) for three generations.
I won't go into all the ins-and-outs of the foreshadowings and connections Powers manages to excavate from Emily's plot, but suffice it to say that a rereading of Wuthering Heights, perhaps in Janet Gezari's 2014 annotated edition, might help to appreciate that aspect of his work.
For the rest, I'm a little surprised to see that Powers has managed to produce yet another novel since My Brother's Keeper, set - this time - among the American expatriates in 1920s Paris. I suppose when you're on a roll it pays to keep going. In any case, I look forward to reading what mayhem he's managed to wreak amongst Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and the other Moderns:
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Novels:
- The Skies Discrowned [aka Forsake the Sky, 1986] (1976)
- Included in: Powers of Two: The Skies Discrowned & An Epitaph in Rust. 1976, 1986, 1989. Framingham, MA: The NESFA Press, 2004.
- An Epitaph in Rust (1976)
- Included in: Powers of Two: The Skies Discrowned & An Epitaph in Rust. 1976, 1986, 1989. Framingham, MA: The NESFA Press, 2004.
- The Drawing of the Dark (1979)
- The Drawing of the Dark. 1979. London: Granada, 1981.
- The Anubis Gates (1983)
- The Anubis Gates. 1983. London: Triad Grafton Books, 1986.
- Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1985)
- Dinner at Deviant's Palace. 1985. London: Grafton Books, 1987.
- On Stranger Tides (1987)
- On Stranger Tides. 1987. New York: Ace Books, 1988.
Polidori series: - The Stress of Her Regard (1989)
- The Stress of Her Regard. 1989. London: HarperCollins, 1991.
- Hide Me Among the Graves (2012)
- Hide Me Among the Graves. 2012. Corvus. London: Atlantic Books Ltd., 2013.
- Last Call (1992)
- Last Call. Fault Lines, 1. 1993. New York: Avon Books, 1996.
- Expiration Date (1995)
- Expiration Date. Fault Lines, 2. London: HarperCollins, 1995.
- Earthquake Weather (1997)
- Earthquake Weather. Fault Lines, 3. 1997. London: Orbit, 1998.
- Declare (2001)
- Declare. 2001. New York: HarperTorch, 2002.
- Three Days to Never (2006)
- Three Days to Never. 2006. William Morrow. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.
- Medusa's Web (2015)
- Medusa's Web. 2015. Corvus. London: Atlantic Books Ltd., 2016.
Vickery and Castine series:
- Alternate Routes (2018)
- Alternate Routes. Vickery & Castine, 1. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2018. [Uncorrected Proof Copy]
- Forced Perspectives (2020)
- Forced Perspectives. Vickery & Castine, 2. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2020.
- Stolen Skies (2022)
- Stolen Skies. Vickery & Castine, 3. A Baen Books Original. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2022.
- My Brother's Keeper (2023)
- My Brother's Keeper. 2023. Head of Zeus. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2024.
- The Mills of the Gods (2025)
- Night Moves and Other Stories (2000)
- Itinerary (1999)
- Night Moves (1986)
- Pat Moore (2004)
- The Way Down the Hill (1982)
- Where They Are Hid (1995)
- [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
- [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
- [with James P. Blaylock] The Devils in the Details (2003)
- Introduction (Tim Powers)
- Through and Through (Tim Powers)
- Devil in the Details (James P. Blaylock)
- Fifty Cents (James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers)
- Mexican Food: An Afterword (James P. Blaylock)
- Strange Itineraries (2005)
- Itinerary (1999)
- The Way Down the Hill (1982)
- Pat Moore (2004)
- [with James P. Blaylock] Fifty Cents (2003)
- Through and Through (2003)
- [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
- Where They Are Hid (1995)
- [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
- Night Moves (1986)
- Strange Itineraries: The Complete Short Stories of Tim Powers. Introduction by Paul Di Filippo. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2005.
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (2011)
- The Bible Repairman (2006)
- A Soul in a Bottle (2006)
- The Hour of Babel (2008)
- Parallel Lines (2010)
- A Journey of Only Two Paces (2011)
- A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
- The Bible Repairman and Other Stories. San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2011.
- Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Salvage and Demolition (2013)
- The Bible Repairman (2006)
- Appointment at Sunset (2014)
- [with James P. Blaylock] The Better Boy (1991)
- Pat Moore (2004)
- The Way Down the Hill (1982)
- Itinerary (1999)
- A Journey of Only Two Paces (2011)
- The Hour of Babel (2008)
- Where They Are Hid (1995)
- [with James P. Blaylock] We Traverse Afar (1995)
- Through and Through (2003)
- Night Moves (1986)
- A Soul in a Bottle (2006)
- Parallel Lines (2010)
- [with James P. Blaylock] Fifty Cents (2003)
- Nobody's Home: An Anubis Gates Story (2014)
- A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
- Down and Out in Purgatory (2016)
- Sufficient Unto the Day (2017)
- Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers. Foreword by David Drake. Introduction by Tony Daniel. 2017. Riverdale, NY: Baen, 2019.
- Night Moves [novella] (1986)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] The Complete Twelve Hours of the Night (1986)
- [by Phil Garland] A Short Poem by William Ashbless (1987)
- Where They Are Hid [novella] (1995)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] On Pirates (2001)
- [as 'William Ashbless', with James P. Blaylock] The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook (2002)
- The Bible Repairman [novella] (2006)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Nine Sonnets by Francis Thomas Marrity (2006)
- A Soul in a Bottle [novella] (2006)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Three Sonnets by Cheyenne Fleming (2007)
- A Time to Cast Away Stones (2008)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- 'Death of a Citizen.' In A Comprehensive Dual Bibliography of James P. Blaylock & Tim Powers, by Silver Smith (2012)
- Salvage and Demolition [novella] (2013)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Nobody's Home [novella] (2014)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Appointment on Sunset [novella] (2014)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- Down and Out in Purgatory [novella] (2016)
- Included in: Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017)
- More Walls Broken [novella] (2019)
- The Properties of Rooftop Air [novella] (2020)
- After Many a Summer [novella] (2023)
- [Katz, Brad. “An Interview with Tim Powers (21/2/96).” Brow Magazine (1996).]
Fault Lines series:
Short Story Collections:
Chapbooks:
Secondary:
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Tim Powers: The Last Call Series (1992-1997)
Tim Powers: The Vickery & Castine Series (2018-2022)
Pierre Mornet: The Brontës’ Secret (2016)•
