Fifth Head of Cerberus

Just finished Gene Wolfe’s “Fifth Head of Cerberus”, and I loved it. Let me get into the details.

Gene Wolfe, in case you haven’t heard of him, was one of the greatest Sci-Fi authors. His magnum opus, for which most know him, is “Book of the New Sun”, a veritable four-volume saga, set in this bleak, mysterious future. I haven’t read that one yet, so I’ll hold off on value judgements.

Gene Wolfe in all his cynical glory.

I will say a couple things about Gene Wolfe. He knows how to introduce someone to a world he created, and he utterly refuses to do your homework.

See, too many authors have their characters go on long-winded monologues about how their world works, so you the reader can catch up. But if you take a step back, the way they do it is always a bit stilted, isn’t it? They’re in the world, why are they explaining it to… themselves? Have you ever had conversations like “Hmm, hold up, let me use my iPhone, you know, that device that lets you talk to people at a distances?” “Ah yes, I often use mine to browse the Internet, that super-connected network of devices that lets you access all sorts of content from around the globe!”?

Yeah, you haven’t, and in a Gene Wolfe story, neither do the characters. They are simply living their very interesting lives - you are just watching, and can piece together their world if you read attentively and gather enough info, but blink and you miss it. Skimming these books is fatal - you will miss important details without even having noticed that happened.

But Wolfe knows just how much or how little info to give the reader at any time. Too little and the reader gets confused and gives up - too much and it’s an overwhelming info dump. Wolfe straddles the line just fine - at every point you get more info about the mystery boxes he has built, and the plot per se advances at a steady pace.

The mystery alone is worth recommending the book on, but just like the masterful game Outer Wilds (which I fully and wholeheartedly recommend!), speaking of it too much diminishes the effect it has on the reader - you’re supposed to get the info I’d give you on your own, and piece it together yourself. So I’ll speak of it sparingly, focusing on the vibes of each and how they impacted me.

Now on to the book itself - it is divided into three different novellas. I will go by each.

The first is the eponymous “Fifth Head of Cerberus”. It deals with a narrator who is not-fully-reliable, Number Five, who is regaling you with the story of his life pre-incarceration, after being released. He tells of his origins, growing up with his brother David in his fathers’… burlesque establishment, with faithful tutor Mr. Million and the occasional friend dropping in. It’s the most “standalone” of the three stories, if that makes sense - the other two enrich it a smidge, but don’t really affect it all that much. It’s also the most straightforward of it - while the other two take a bit more work to be understood, this one mostly reveals all its mysteries to the reader by the end. The characters are likable, there are some nice crunchy themes to be had. 9/10.

The second tells the story of two twin brothers, separated at birth. The younger brother is clearly on a coming-of-age spiritual journey of sorts. Any further info would spoil the story, oddly enough. Of the three, I preferred this one - it reveals the most background lore of the entire setting, and the tone is something else. It has this quasi-mystical fever-dream theme running through it. It enraptured me for all of the evening in which I read it, and I could not put the book down. It’s told from an aboriginee perspective, and deals indirectly with drug use, the duality of identity, how two twins raised in completely different worlds can come to difer completely. If I had a complaint, it would be on how quick the story resolved, by the end, and how unclearly it does so. But it was worth the ride. 9.5/10.

The third is a puzzle-box in its own right. It tells the story of a long-time prisoner whose case is now suddenly being evaluated for a presumably final time. The story consists of the evaluating officer reading scattered bits and pieces of the documents recorded by the prisoner, which come either absurdly detailed and long, or feverish and short. It does an excellent job at portraying how someone’s mental state deterioration can be clearly seen in their writing. The officer does not care for you, the reader - having clearly gone through this case multiple times, he sees the various writings in whichever order he cares for, and it’s up to you to bring it all into a coherent (or is it?) narrative. However, this story is most dependent on the others - someone who isn’t paying attention will not notice the many incongruencies that stand out, and will completely misunderstand what is really happening. I don’t remember ever reading something else quite like this last story - I suppose it deals with how after patching together a bunch of narrative puzzle pieces, a greater narrative can arise. I do not know how to rate this however. I particularly loved it. ???/10.

And all of that makes up the book. The themes that undercut the whole thing seem to be, in no particular order - an unreliable narrator, a mystery in the background and the foreground that only comes together if you pay attention and bring together all the pieces, and and how someone’s environment and upbringing can change how they view the world and write about it. The “real” narrative here, however, is hidden right below the surface, and would be worth a whole other story in its own right. I leave it up to you to find it.

Rating - 9/10