Tatterdemalion by Sylvia V. Linsteadt

It does no good to blame those before
you for the world you have inherited,
and then do nothing for it.

Tatterdemalion is anything but ragged and unkempt. Dispassionately speaking, one could wax lyrical over its superlative production; it looks, feels and smells gorgeous. Unbound have made another beautiful book.

However (you knew it was coming)…

… Passionately, or whatever the antonym of dispassionate might be (biased?), I’m not much enamoured with the design or the paintings.

The story goes that author and certified animal tracker Sylvia Lindsteadt wrote these interconnected post-apocalyptic fables in reaction to the paintings of Rima Staines. To my eye, the paintings/prints are crude, evocative of an anachronistic style (which is likely the point), and trouble me with their impressionistic perspective, and cut-aways to show children growing inside wheeled elephants / trees / fish and so on.

I am absolutely not saying they are bad paintings. They capture the spirit of that which they inspire, which is a very good thing. They are objectively both pretty and bizarre, which would normally light my pipe, and would certainly grace the reclaimed breeze-block and scaffold-plank shelves of any modern hippy.

But they’re not for me.

As to the fables themselves, I’m told they are feminist re-imaginings of European myths but are set incongruously in Lindsteadt’s native California. At some point in the collective past of her characters, something bad happened to the world, and a band of misfits rode out on a wheeled elephant they dreamed up called Lyoobov to create their own world, where children have wheels, a juniper bush holds the collective memory of the remaining peoples of the Earth, and a fish lives underground with some rabbits who have glowing eyes like head-lights. As allegories or cautionary tales for an environmentally aware audience they serve a somewhat limited purpose, another noise in an admittedly well-intentioned echo chamber; as tales of feminine strength and determination they work as well as anything written by Angela Carter or Ursula Le Guin, two luminaries name-checked on the front cover. I can’t say I was engrossed, gripped or delighted by them, but I’m not sorry to have read them and supported their emergence into the light. A lot of lovely people will be extremely happy to find and read them.

To me however, it just feels a bit like an artistic exercise, no less worthy for the effort but just not all that interesting. Maybe judge for yourself.

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