I've Finally Read Something By Tim Powers! 'Itinerary' (From 'Strange Itineraries, The Complete Short Stories of Tim Powers')


It's going to be another fairly short post today I'm afraid... This is mostly because of work, child-care and Christmas all coming together, in a big mob of 'priorities', and insisting that I dealt with them before I did anything else. Which leaves me not very long to post something today ;o) The other reason? Well, we'll get to that in a minute.

Before anything else though, I can now finally say that I've actually read something by Tim Powers! After years of trying to get into his novels (and failing, and feeling like I was the only one who 'didn't get it'), all it took was one short story and I can now see what the fuss was all about. Kind of... I'm getting ahead of myself again. Having no prior experience of Tim Powers (apart from several of his books, unread on various TBR piles), I thought I'd start at the beginning of 'Strange Itineraries' and see where the journey took me. I'm still not sure where it took me but the journey was beautiful. Let me try and tell you about 'Itinerary'...

'The day before the Santa Ana place blew up, the telephone rang at about noon.'

As I've got older, I find that I much prefer books and stories that do a lot of the heavy lifting for me; I don't really have a lot of time for much else you see (I refer you back to the first paragraph of this post, it wasn't just me moaning...). I'll get straight to the point, 'Itinerary' is not one of those stories but I'm cool with that because I got to read it and it is beautifully told, whatever the hell it is about.

That's the thing, 'Itinerary' is a mystery waiting to be solved and while I suspect the main character knows exactly why he is there, we don't and 'Itinerary' invites us to try and find out for ourselves. It was an invitation easily accepted by me as it's such a haunting and unsettling tale that I couldn't help but read along. 'Itinerary' feels like it's about examining memories and where that can leave us as a result but that's not the answer or the mystery. When you read the ending, and see how tightly it ties back into the beginning... Well, that was when I thought I had it but I'm not sure and that's part of the beauty of this particular tale, it stays in your head and gives you plenty to ponder over.

And that is why this is a shorter post than normal, I'm still living 'Itinerary' and trying to decide whether I solved the mystery or not. What I can say though is that 'Itinerary' is a tale that is so easy to fall into and spend time in, both through some beautiful imagery and a question that might not have an answer...

If this is what Tim Powers is about, I think I definitely need to read more.

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