This is Nina Allan's second book, and I continued to enjoy this, for me, new author.
I think I enjoyed her first book a little more, but this must be the peril of a new author - how to follow-up on a successful first effort.
She seems to me to be a sci-fi writer, but I see her genre described online as specualtive fiction. I'm not sure of the difference, but while The Rift has scifi elements, the author seems intentionally to shy away from focussing on those aspects.
So the book is about people, about tough passages in their lives, about family relationships - all set in a slightly non-normal environment.
The result? Well, I found myself re-thinking this book for quite some time after I finished, where I think a straight scifi telling of a similar story would have been much more ephemeral.
So 4-stars, and I'm looking forward to reading more from this author. ( )

* : Mélange des genres : Confus et peu convainquant.

It's only one of the many ways in which the book is slightly ajar, slightly disconnected from its own momentum, that its named after a chasm, a separation, but is actually about the opposite, about convergences, namely the coming together, the melding, of realities. One could say, of two half-realities into a single truth, even if it's no less still only a partial truth for it.

The novel, however, is ultimately ill-served by this discordance -- notwithstanding the ways in which it worked [the spots at which Allen more successfully demonstrated the realities of one world sliding into/giving deeper meaning to the other: the slow accumulation of fish-related encyclopedia articles, in which we gradually come to see Fiby-an nomenclature popping up; or the other almost-too-numerous-to-note instances of details from the Fiby narrative playing out later in the "real" story (one most notably being the conspicuous permissability of consensual sibling incest in Fiby, and us ending with all the domestic trappings of sibling love in the story itself)].

In this sense, the genre element of Allen's work is ill-served by what I would call her literary instincts as a writer [the dimestore experimentalization, the ambiguous/meaningful aside, etc.]. To that end, the story itself is an untied shoelace. We have, at the same time, so many minor details given post-facto weight existing right alongside so many loose ends [Stephen Dent], that we find it hard to dismiss the latter as sloppy given our uncertainty about the intent they might be meant to have.

Ultimately, the story is at points quite emotionally resonant, and the final plot unraveling caught me off guard in an effective way, esp. as one can't help but have gathered up dozens of guesses as to "what's really going on?" by that point in the story. Take it as you will. We probably can't do better than Marcel Inhoff, writing in Strange Horizons, who noted that Allan writes consciously in discrete genre tones, letting the resultant strange admixture do the alienating work of sf for her [namely, here, the sf middle "infects" both the content and our perceptions of the book's final third, which is undoubtedly true]. To that end, Maureen Kincaid Speller is likewise correct in Interzone that the work's very unevenness is intentional, a product of the "multiplicity of truths" with which it's operating. In essence, then, the book does not have loose ends so much as multiple, necessarily conflicting, resolutions.

Minor writing point: Allen has an annoying treading-water tendency to reference and dwell upon other cultural products. These often serve an analogizing point [this movie was about abduction, this historical event was about mistaken identity, etc.], yes, but often read simply as summary, as a writerly throat clearing that rarely moves anything along. Worst case in point: later in the book, “Vanja had true grit, like in the film, the film True Grit”?! That can’t be intentional, right? Literally three sentences later; “She would go out like a light, like Shauna Macdonald at the end of the The Descent.” I’m losing my mind. ( )

I've complained before about books that feel like expense reports, where you know the author had a stack of receipts for travel and more. You can spot them in the text like stepping stones: settings, restaurants, goods - this book is NOT one of those, but it evokes a similar sense of recognition for me - in this case a folder of unpublished vignettes that got taken out, dusted off and interspersed throughout - sometimes to amplify or repeat the themes of this intriguing novel, othertimes used more like filler or diversionary material during transitions. It's an interesting way of structuring a novel length work and entertaining to read.

Perhaps there was once upon a time a folder of loose leaf material - stories, fragments, pictures, postcards,excerpts, character sketches, etc and they scattered and were collected up. Then they were carefully arranged into a cunning and distinctly female piece of contemporary assemblage art ?

Depending on your mood, or whether you are looking right at it, or remembering it, or asking yourself if it changed the way you feel, your relation to this assemblage and it's creator can be one of frustrastion, admiration, dismissal, or suspended belief.

If you dwell on this assemblage too long, you're bound to wonder: "what if it was a bunch of crap in that folder? tucked in as padding? That book might have been great if it had been purpose built ? " But who knows ? Either way, the book explores some tough issues, draws some intense portraits of pressured relationships between women: sisters, admirers, friends, classmates, mothers & daughters, employees and bosses. It looks at the most difficult of male female relationships too: husbands and wives, fathers and daughters, an incestuous brother/sister pair, male abusers and their victims, and quietly consenting yet emotionally distanced lovers.

Unique, strangely timeless, recognized cities feel like themselves yet don't. An unsettling book that's meant to be that way ?! ( )

This book is touted as “science fiction,” and indeed, that’s the bookstore section in which I found it, but I think it is mislabeled. Rather, I would say it is primarily about family and trauma and possibly mental illness, with a bit of a "Twilight Zone" flavor.

This story is narrated alternately by two sisters, Selena and Julie Rouane. It begins when Selena is 34. Twenty years earlier, when Selena was 14 and Julie 17, Julie disappeared. Suddenly after all this time Selena receives a call from Julie, who is back in Manchester (in the U.K.):

“Selena knew full well who it was, only she didn’t. The same feeling you got when you ran into someone familiar out of context, and couldn’t think for the life of you who they were.”

They get together, and only reluctantly and gradually Julie tells Selena her story of where she has been.

Julie claims she went through a “rift” in the fabric of space to the planet of Tristane in the Aww Galaxy. Just prior to that, she had accepted a ride in a van with Steven Jimson, unaware he was “the Barbershop Butcher.” She told Selena how she managed to escape from him; passed out; and woke up on the shores of Shoe Lake, an analogous place on the other planet. She was rescued by a sister and brother, Cally and Noah, who contended that Julie was from that planet but had lost her memories. Julie tells Serena many stories about life on Tristane, but never how she got back to Earth from there.

After some time, Selena manages to convince Julie to go see their mother and let her know Julie is alive. But her mother claims this woman is not Julie.

Selena does her own research. Julie indeed knows the answers to Selena’s questions about their childhood that no one else would know. But there are odd aspects to Julie’s story. In addition, there is the matter of Shoe Lake. Selena had seen a movie (had Julie seen it too?) called “The Shoe” about a man who created a false past because he couldn’t face the real past. If a terrible thing happens, Selena thinks, it could be that “you would shut down your whole mind rather than face the memory of it.” She thinks about the rift between one version of reality and another, like the rift in her life from the time before Julie left and the time after. Has Julie constructed this whole thing as a way to deal with trauma? Indeed, is it really Julie after all?

Then something startling in the plot occurs, something so unexpected that in some ways it changes the whole meaning of the story. But the author leaves the determination of the meaning entirely up to the reader. As with many other missing pieces of the story, readers are asked to participate in its construction.

Evaluation: This is quite an unusual and creative book, and the ending is a knock-out one. So why didn't I rate it higher? There are several reasons. There are long passages on the geographical terrain of the other planet that didn't seem that interesting or relevant. The story about Cally and Noah was very incomplete and again, I was unable to make connections to what it meant to Julie. And finally, I would have liked a few more loose ends tied up at the end. Nonetheless, it would make an excellent choice for any book club that is willing to consider genre fiction. ( )