The cover for the ARC of Aliya Whiteley’s new literary science fiction novel Three Eight One has the same background design as its official release. But, in place of the author and title the cover simply displays, in large font, “YOU WILL KNOW YOUR PLACE”.
On the back cover: “WHEN YOU ARE DONE”.
I’d previously read and enjoyed Whiteley’s novella The Arrival of Missives from Unsung Stories, and I accepted this new work solely on that memory, without looking into what the story is about. With no synopsis inside, I had no choice but start down the road of the novel with no idea where I was going. I highly recommend reading Three Eight One with the same ignorance, if one is able.
This raises a bit of a problem for a review, however. How do I give potential readers enough information on whether they’d be interested in reading this, while revealing nothing remotely specific about its story? The plot and themes of Three One Eight connect with its unconventional elements of narrative and construction. These are wonderful discoveries for the reader to make without forewarning.
Well, I’ll make an attempt. If you haven’t heard about this book already, and can’t decide based on my review here, and want to know more details, there are plenty of reviews out there that will provide further nuggets, still without major spoilers.
Three Eight One combines elements of science fiction and fantasy genres, but with literary emphases over characters or plot. It’s a metafictional narrative on the nature of authorship, both in the sense of fiction and the sense of one’s own life. At the same time, it’s also a deconstruction of Coming-of-age and Quest stories. Whiteley frames these within a story composed in present day that is being read and annotated by an individual from the future as historical document analysis. The journey of the character in the one story impacts that of its future reader, while at the same time Whiteley impacts the reader of Three Eight One. Through it all resonates the themes of uncertainty and appreciation of what the unknown has to offer, even if never fully comprehended.
“‘When things are beyond our understanding, it pays to learn to think beyond understanding things..’
“‘What does that even mean?’
“‘It means that sometimes less knowledge is better.'”
Whiteley’s composition of Three Eight One is intimately tied to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and lockdown experience with which we are all familiar. While many writers turned to exploring the emotions of pandemic through fiction that directly relates, Whiteley takes the most unique (and meaningful) approach that I’ve yet encountered, one that delves into the philosophical core of what unsettled us through the experience.
“Here’s what I know about humans. I tell it to you for posterity, for all the quest-bound children who might read these words I write, knowing the folly of trying to pass on knowledge… (but feeling certain about this: what is life if we do not make the effort?).
“I know that whatever there is in this world that controls us, it is formed by us.
“I know that whatever we create is taken from the world as we walk through it, creating straight and laid-out roads.
“I know we don’t understand the roads we lay or the forms we create.
“Does all this seem circular to you?”
…
“We build our reason for being alive from the experiences we have lived. Not only that: we build it from the lives other people have lived, and it doesn’t matter whether they make any sense to us or not.”
Three Eight One is a puzzle novel that is not meant to be coherently or definitively resolved. It is a literary manifestation of these themes above, a novel that disorients readers trying to find firm footing, just as surely as it disorients its protagonists. Such disorientation includes shifts in narrative perspective, which are linked to an element of the fictional world. It can be jarring to the reader, yet paradoxically another time could pass unnoticed, depending what the reader’s senses and mind are focused upon.
I am a fan of Gene Wolfe’s writing, of its depth, subtlety, and spectrum of interpretation. While not matching his style, and lacking any distinct signs of unreliable narration, Whiteley’s Three Eight One nonetheless shares a lot with the flavor of literary techniques that Wolfe employs, as well as the focus on ideas over action. While a lot happens in Three Eight One – it is a Quest after all – events often pass with brief mention and lingering questions over what exactly occurred, with details there to augment what the events mean for the character’s psychological or emotional journey. Also, like Wolfe’s work, this is a novel that fans would probably enjoy rereading for new discoveries and interpretation.
There is a lot more that I could get into with the novel, from the enigmatic Cha to the meaning of the title itself (and its link to the novel’s structure). But, as much as I’d like to keep talking into the void about the novel and how I viewed it, it’ll be far better for you to just go out and give it a read. Readers who like this type of literary genre novel and are in the mood for it should know from all this whether it’s a fit. If you want familiar genre fiction consisting of a fun story and character interactions that play to your trope obsessions, this isn’t a book to pick up right now. But at some point, fans of fantasy and science fiction should check this out.
