The Little Book - Selden Edwards

Over 30 years in the making, the care and detail lavished in Selden Edwards's debut novel is evident the love for which he depicts the splendour of turn-of-the-century Vienna, where the 'Jung Wien', the Secessionists, Mahler, Freud and the numerous important figures are about to modernise music art and philosophy and make an indelible mark on the twentieth century. That it sets about depicting this world through a time-travel adventure is intriguing and relevant to showing the tremendous impact this period would have on the world today, but it's also problematic. 

In this Vienna of Freud, Wittgenstein and the Secessionists Edwards finds the essence of modern day thought, enlightenment, emancipation and the greatness that humanity can aspire to, the cultural apex that sets the foundation for the modern world to create all-American heroes, athletes and musicians, men of honour, discipline and learning. That much is entertainingly achieved, even if the heroic qualities of the male line of the legendary Boston-based Burden family becoming all-round war heroes, academic geniuses, sports superstars and rock gods makes them rather tediously too perfect, dryly characterised and irritatingly saddled with preppy names like Dilly and Wheeler. 

How much of their superhuman qualities is inherent and how much of it comes with the conveniently unexplained time-slips back to fin-de-siècle Vienna is debatable, but it's also infuriatingly paradoxical in that typically time-travel way. It certainly seems that the legendary prowess of the men is less significant in the direction of world events than the "easy virtue" of the female members of the family, who have no qualms about upsetting the space/tie continuum through making use of their insider business knowledge of future trends and conducting somewhat borderline incestuous liaisons and overly convenient and scarcely credible extra-marital affairs. 

This aspect is likely to make or break the viewer's pleasure of the book, infuriatingly destabilising the integrity of the characterisation with its time travel paradoxes and playing free and loose with important historical figures and where they get their inspiration. On the other hand, the author's intricate interweaving of timelines, historical fact and fiction, his Back To The Future playing with several generations of the Burden family and their associates all converging in the same time period is often thrilling. If in the end it is somewhat over-elaborated, repetitive and rather too neatly wrapped-up, the time-travel aspect does convey some sense of the social and cultural benefits as well as the human cost and moral complexities of US foreign policy and the dangers of political and financial interventionism.