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A review by shauninmpls
Nation by Terry Pratchett
5.0
This was my 2nd or 3rd read of Nation and I still love it. That said, the longer I read and re-read Terry Pratchett the more my attention shifts away from the immediate storytelling and more to his overarching preoccupations. One of the dominant themes of Nation is the existence of gods, which Pratchett always treats pretty fairly for being a pretty dogmatic humanist and probable atheist. A related theme, and the one that interested me this go-round, was the power and function of language.
In Nation, "myth," "story," "legend," "metaphor," "rhetoric," "trick," and "lie" don't exactly become the same thing, but they're definitely described as being in the same flavor family. I sometimes wonder if this was a function of Pratchett's facility with storytelling: what we mere readers experience as the magic of a story he reduces to a trick he does with language, as if anyone could do that trick so long as an old man with a "lucky" leg tells them the secret. It reminded me a little of Granny Weatherwax's "Headology," which is at times described as a mere trick. Neither Headology nor really great storytelling are tricks, or lies, or even truth disguised as lies: they're carefully honed skills, combined with luck and talent, combined with a level of insight (powers!) most people don't have. Granny Weatherwax, with all her ego, knows this—which makes me think that Pratchett does too.
Language in Nation is slippery, and sometimes unnecessary as people find their way to each other through a mixture of good will, desperation, and lucky gesturing. At other times, though, it's critically important, not only because having the right words at the right time will save the day, but because knowing language when other people don't—and other people think you don't—is about as powerful as it gets.
Nearly every character in Nation gets a chance to express or explore a slightly different theory of language, and although Mau's voice is the loudest single voice on this as on most topics, it's the mixture of all the voices that makes Nation so interesting and thought provoking. Which, I suppose, is something Pratchett would love for his readers to conclude.
In Nation, "myth," "story," "legend," "metaphor," "rhetoric," "trick," and "lie" don't exactly become the same thing, but they're definitely described as being in the same flavor family. I sometimes wonder if this was a function of Pratchett's facility with storytelling: what we mere readers experience as the magic of a story he reduces to a trick he does with language, as if anyone could do that trick so long as an old man with a "lucky" leg tells them the secret. It reminded me a little of Granny Weatherwax's "Headology," which is at times described as a mere trick. Neither Headology nor really great storytelling are tricks, or lies, or even truth disguised as lies: they're carefully honed skills, combined with luck and talent, combined with a level of insight (powers!) most people don't have. Granny Weatherwax, with all her ego, knows this—which makes me think that Pratchett does too.
Language in Nation is slippery, and sometimes unnecessary as people find their way to each other through a mixture of good will, desperation, and lucky gesturing. At other times, though, it's critically important, not only because having the right words at the right time will save the day, but because knowing language when other people don't—and other people think you don't—is about as powerful as it gets.
Nearly every character in Nation gets a chance to express or explore a slightly different theory of language, and although Mau's voice is the loudest single voice on this as on most topics, it's the mixture of all the voices that makes Nation so interesting and thought provoking. Which, I suppose, is something Pratchett would love for his readers to conclude.