Evex’s Weblog

Pete chose this one: if I remember rightly, he’d read it before and wanted to share it with the rest of us. It’s set in 1960s America, and centres around the titular hero who, through very odd occurrences, is constantly put at odds with society. Which is ironic as fitting in should really be easy for him as he can read people’s minds (sometimes). We all agreed that it was very readable, however, I think that Ann, Pete and Nicky enjoyed it the most, whereas as Ciara and I thought it had irritating elements. Ann enjoyed the second half more but agreed that at times it could be very clumsy.

I think that my main problem with the book is that the author tried to cram far too many ideas in. Most of us had noticed that Lee’s ability to hear voices was only used in certain parts of the book, leading us to wonder if he author didn’t really know what to do with this device (or forgot it at times!).

There was some disagreement as to which was the better half of the book – male or female! Ann felt that there were better gags when Lee was a woman, and Ciara thought it was amusing that he presented himself as a very stereotypical ’sexy’ woman after his change.

Pete brought up the character of Angelina who united us all in annoyance. I picked up that her name was a reference to Lee’s discovery of his own heavenly nature, but only Ciara had worked out that he was her guardian angel! That got me thinking about Lee’s changes of colour and gender etc, and I realised that these all occurred in response to her situation at the time. Presumably in order to enable him to fulfil his role in her life. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the other characters in the book but Ann was a big fan of Doc in particular, the drugged up, suspended sex-change happy medic.

I found it very surprising that the author was English – something that I wouldn’t have picked up just from reading the book itself. Ann felt that this was a question of setting, and the treatment of racial identity would have had to be treated very differently if it was set in Britain. She thought that the author was able to use cliches and turn them into a likeable and funny stories.

There was a strange element of medical science fiction running through the stories with the effect of Lee’s brain operation and his enrolment in the psy-corps during the war. This took us away from the book for quite a chunk of the evening discussing weird science. Chimeras loomed large if I remember correctly.

The Ballad of Lee Cotton does take on lots of really weighty themes: American identity politics such as civil rights and radical feminism, poverty, the Vietnam war. However, it does bounce quite merrily through them so pick it up if you’re hoping for a light, comic read otherwise you might be quite disappointed!