The Clockwork Man

July 12, 2010
The eponymous narrator, a diffident automaton named Ernst, tells of his early life in 1880s Germany serving his inventor, Karl Gruber, in this perplexing steampunk tale. Ernst falls into a delicate, private romance with Gruber's daughter, Giselle, while stoically enduring the torments and prejudice of Gruber's son and mother. Giselle's murder breaks up the family and sends Ernst into a long hibernation from which he wakes in the present day. Jablonsky conveys the mood of a true period piece more effectively than many of his steampunk siblings, but that classic viewpoint comes at a price: Ernst is a veritable Uncle Tom of robots, content to stay with a near-abusive owner and scrupulously hesitant about disobeying even the most blatantly unjust application of the law. Victorians would be charmed, but modern readers will want to get poor Ernst some assertiveness training.

August 1, 2010
Ernst is a marvel of nineteenth-century automationa man constructed entirely of clockwork. He is praised as the greatest achievement of his creator, the clock maker Karl Gruber, of Frankfort. Educated in the Gruber household to be gentle and caring, Ernst eventually develops a deep love for Giselle, the clock makers daughter. But when she is killed, and her father goes mad as a result, Ernst allows himself to run down in self-destruction. Over a century later, Ernst awakens in a display window in Milwaukee. As he tries to make sense of this new world, he is aided by a well-meaning but slightly unstable homeless man. And he still struggles with the tragedy from his former life. The story is a charming variation on a classic theme, and both the pacing and use of language are perfect for the plot development. This is Jablonskys first novel, but a collection of his short fiction, The Indestructible Man, was published by Livingston Press in 2005.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)