umbling After, the second fantasy novel by Paul Witcover, author of the acclaimed Waking Beauty, tells two very different but parallel tales. One is told from the point of view of Jack Doone, a 12-year-old boy who, with his twin sister Jilly, is spending the summer at his father's Chesapeake Bay summer house during the late 1970s. The other story begins in the Many-Sided City of Mutatis Mutandis, where Kestrel, a winged humanoid mutant known as an aerie, must prepare for a dangerous pilgrimage into the Waste, a wilderness devastated by viral wars but still haunted by enemies known as the Norms. Not coincidentally, Kestrel's world is, in Jack's world, also the background of a fantasy role-playing game, Mutes and Norms, created by Jack and Jilly's Uncle Jimmy, a game designer who is looking after the twins and their teenage sister Ellen while their father, a journalist and talk show regular, is at work during the week in Washington.
A hurricane is bearing down on the Delaware coast. While trying to ride a wave into shore on a dare from his sister, Jack nearly drowns, then suddenly finds himself on shore. He recalls riding the wave, but Jilly only remembers pulling him in from the ocean after he was hit by the wave; this is the first time Jack's memory of a particular incident appears to diverge from actual events. The hurricane soon forces the Doone children and their uncle to take shelter at a local school, where Jack and Jilly sneak off to an empty classroom and overhear Uncle Jimmy and Ellen having sex, something they have apparently been engaging in for a while. It is then, while hiding with his twin sister, that Jack becomes fully aware of his dual set of memories, only one of which can be true. In the meantime, in his world, Kestrel is seeking out the four members of his pentad, the group that must travel with him on his pilgrimage into the Waste; not all of them will survive, and at least one of them is likely to betray him.
Jack soon begins to believe that each time his remembered experiences don't reflect reality, he has somehow managed to escape death at the hands of an unseen enemy. Like the beings in the game invented by his Uncle Jimmy, he fears that he may be in the midst of a great battle. Is Jack, approaching adolescence and sexual awakening, having some kind of mental breakdown, or does he actually have the power to alter reality? Will Kestrel survive his pilgrimage, or is he destined to lose his companions and his life in the battle against the Norms?
Two compelling stories at once
Paul Witcover's lapidary, evocative prose is perfectly suited to Tumbling After, which can be seen as two coming-of-age stories. One is that of Jack Doone, set in the familiar setting of late 20th-century America; the other is Kestrel's, set in a baroque fantasy world of mutants with advanced technology and various psionic powers. Happily, Witcover's writing is well up to the task of telling both of his parallel yet very different stories, and equally compelling in either setting.
Jack's growing uneasiness with the onset of his sexuality and his troubling divergent memories are mirrored in Kestrel's pilgrimage and his relationships with the other members of his pentad. Each setting is beautifully detailed, with well-realized and believable characters. Readers will find this a hard book to put down as they move from one story to the other, drawn on by the psychological suspense of Jack's story and the perils of Kestrel's journey.
It isn't giving anything away to say that Witcover avoids any easy or conventional resolution at the end of Tumbling After, while still managing to link his two stories in a meaningful and psychologically satisfying way; the dark conclusions of both narrative threads feel both right and tragically unavoidable. This is an unusual and challenging novel that will repay thoughtful readers looking for something beyond the usual trite and overworked trappings of much fantasy.
