Sharp Words

8 out of 10

In her latest novel, The Margarets, Sheri S Tepper picks up once more on one of her most common themes: humans are ruining their own planet and civilisation (as in Beauty and The Companions, for example). She interlaces this with other themes common in her work: aliens both benign and malignant (as in The Fresco), and mysteries that affect everything that happens.  It’s this last that’s an important reason why she’s one of my favourite authors; she manages to weave little mysteries as well as big ones into her stories.

In The Margarets, the central mystery is that of Margaret herself. Brought up on one of Mars’ moons in the late 21st century, she imagined secret selves as a child - a queen, a warrior, a spy, amongst others - and as she grows older, these personalities fragment until there are seven Margarets. Each has a different name and a different role, and lives on a different planet - Earth and its colonies are part of the Dominion, but due to Earth’s horrendous population problem (18bn humans; no more animals, no trees, very little water), strict population controls are in place with most humans either shipped off as colonists or sold to mercenary alien races as slaves. The seven Margarets suffer a number of these fates, and the main mystery is of course, why exactly there need to be seven of her. Is it coincidence? Alternate universes? (Hints throughout the book where a Margaret or her friends are aware of her other selves indicate not.) Or does the enigmatic organisation, The Siblinghood of Silence, have something to do with it?

There are little mysteries in the story as well; perhaps they should be classed merely as plot twists, but some of them aren’t essential to the plot even if they are essential to character development.  There are other, bigger, mysteries too: what are the ghyrm that menance humankind; where did they come from and what are they being used for?

Although on first read, I didn’t think this was one of Sheri S Tepper’s better novels (on a par with The Visitor, perhaps, rather than The Fresco), a second reading has made me appreciate more of the nuances. And as with The Family Tree (another favourite of mine), reading it again with knowledge of the twists and turns of the plot makes it doubly interesting.

If you’ve never read anything of hers before, this is not a bad place to start.