"The Windup Girl"

Since a while I'm having trouble writing at the "standard" frequency of one entry/week, fixed as target when I started this blog. But I'm counting ... I have a delay of 6 entries up to now for 2016, which I'm fooling myself that I'll catch back this summer. The problem is that I don't really get to see anymore at least one movie every week, including the one that just ended. However, I've just managed somehow to finish my "travel book" = a novel that I'm reading between long breaks while I'm waiting in airports or when I'm flying, I'm in a train, etc. Let's just say that I noticed at some point that I don't work well while I'm in transit and since the rest of the time I don't have time to read anything else than scientific stuff, I decided that fiction gets total priority for travel time. So, moving back, lucky me ... I don't have a movie for this week, but I have a book: "The Windup Girl" by Paolo Bacigalupi - Hugo & Nebula winner in 2010.

If I remember well, the prizes were a part of the reason why I bought the book. Quite disappointing I would say compared to other Hugo winners, but let's delve a bit into the subject first. The action is set in a future where few countries still have their own natural production of food, the market being dominated by various companies activating in creating artificial species and in gene hacking (including also live beings). The situation is a follow-up of several epidemics propagated through food infestation, which apparently killed lots of the world's population. Not so many in Thailand though, the place where the novel is set, where the Ministry of Environment is a sort of armed force managing the country stability on this matters, and relying on a secret seed bank - point of interest for many foreign enterprises. From here an entire political intrigue gets built up, having on the opposite side the Ministry of Trade, an entry point in the country for various shady deals. Somewhere lost in the middle of all this we have "the windup girl" - Emiko, an artificial being, created to serve as a secretary (made in Japan), a forbidden product on the import market, which somehow ended up from her initial role to being the property of a brothel owner. Initially she's a minor character, but as I think it's written also somewhere on the book cover, she will have a decisive impact in the destiny of the kingdom ...

This happens, however, after many many many chapters, out of the total of 50. Without spoilers, I think it's the novel with the longest intrigue I've ever read. I could say it's spanning up to after half of its length. Maybe I'm exaggerating, but the development of the action up to a key point when "the windup girl" finally advances to being more of a main character, just seemed to serve as construction for what follows. The novel is highly descriptive and very visual, which adds some lengths that sometimes I found a bit exaggerated. Actually, the author's writing style relies on this - you have for quite some time a slow advancing pace after which you get hit with a shock scene, most often an unannounced death a la Game-of-Thrones, to keep you following. Besides the twists that evaporate shortly, the only part that's more consistent is a constant dialogue with a ghost, or you could say it's with the inner self, of a member in the armed forces of the Ministry of Environment, one of the characters that's getting "upgraded" from secondary to main character status until the ending. Which ending leaves open some questions ... but I said I'll withhold from spoilers ...

The verdict: I think it's one of the few cases where a screen version has serious chances of being better than the written material. I don't know if there's anything planned, but the novel is relatively recent. That's pretty much all for now, back next time with hopefully a good movie ...