The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party

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Title: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume One: The Pox Party
Author: M. T. Anderson
Publisher: Candlewick
Year: 2006
377 pages

Good enough that I may replace my paperback with a hardbound copy. Classified as young adult fiction (perhaps only because of its young adult protagonist) this first volume of Octavian Nothing reads a bit like Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, only interesting, coherent, and with a discernible plot and character empathy. In addition to the action, set in the early U.S. Revolutionary War period, the major thematic material concerns Octavian's identity. He is simultaneously royalty and slave, collaborator and experimental subject, learned and naive. Volume two may (as the subtitle of this volume suggests) explore Patriot vs. Loyalist. Octavian Nothing raises many questions about whether ends justify means, about struggles for liberty (liberty for whom?), and the virtues and limits of empirical knowledge.

Some reviewers have complained that the language is too mannered and stylistic, but I found it atmospheric rather than detracting. It adds to the historical flavor, and also serves to demonstrate Octavian's rarified upbringing and separation from the general community. The text is suffused with a dry wit and symbolic events that satirize aspects of the plot and characters' struggles and aspirations. Some of these are recognized by some characters; others are not. The mannered tone, arch at times, provides linguistiic containment for otherwise horrific content. Anderson manages this balance quite elegantly. This meticulousness of form and language extends to the book's typesetting in Casalon, a font popular in the American colonial period.

Of note is a self-referential joke on page 203 in the paperback edition. Dr. Trefusis muses, "When I peer into the reaches of the most distant futurity, I fear that even in some unseen epoch when there are colonies even upon the moon itself, there shall still be gatherings like this, where the young, blinded by privilege, shall dance and giggle and compare their poxy lesions." This, of course, is the initial action in Anderson's previous novel Feed.