Mysterious pencils raise questions about secrets, stories and memories
King is a writer and software engineer living in Cambridge, Mass. who has had short stories published in Fantasy magazine, Diabolical Plots, LeVar Burton Reads and other publications. The Phoenix Pencil Company is her first novel.
The novel revolves around Monica Tsai, her family and friends and the family's business, the Phoenix Pencil Company. Monica's family has a secret — the pencils the company produces have the capacity to record what users write with them. A process called Reforging can reveal those words to anyone who knows how the pencils work.
The Phoenix Pencil Company
Although the characters begin to question the ethics of reading someone else's personal correspondence, the power of Reforging is too much for them to resist, and they frequently give in to the temptation to see what people have written.
Meanwhile, Monica has her own problems to deal with when her grandmother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Monica must decide between staying to help her grandparents, who raised her, or returning to the university studies that she enjoys. A compromise that would allow her to work with her professor's social media project, EMBRS, seems ideal until she becomes concerned about the invasion of people's privacy the project entails. She must decide how deeply she wants to be involved in the work.
How people connect and interact with each other is at the core of this story. While Monica's grandmother loses her own story to Alzheimer's, and other people's stories are being gathered without their knowledge or consent, the characters wonder whether the technology of computers or the magic of their pencils are really substitutes for human connections.
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For Monica, the issue becomes acute as the novel progresses, and she sees her world falling apart around her. When her grandmother is taken to the hospital, Monica questions her work with the pencils, concluding 'The power was ultimately useless when it mattered.' For her, the loss of her grandmother's ability to communicate was more important than any magical powers she might possess.
The story is told in a series of letters or texts between the main characters and some of the people in their lives, interspersed with diary entries that help explain the background to the action. Each chapter includes a heading indicating who is narrating the next section to help readers follow the flow of the story. Occasional untranslated Chinese characters might confuse some readers, but the narration still flows well.
Using different narrators with changing perspectives helps give the story variety but can be confusing at times, even with the headings at the beginning of each chapter. However, the book generally flows quite well and is easy to follow. Although the Reforging sections include descriptions of the characters cutting themselves, most of the book could appeal even to squeamish readers.
With its insights into technology, family life, privacy and more, The Phoenix Pencil Company is a good example of speculative fiction that delves into some of modern society's core issues.
Susan Huebert is a Winnipeg writer and pet sitter.
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