From The Guardian, Saturday 17th January, 2004
Review of ‘A STERKARM KISS’, BY Jan Mark
When H G Well’s time traveller boarded his machine he travelled from the 19th century to the
future in a spirit of scientific curiosity. He was a gentleman adventurer; he funded himself. It would
be too much to hope that in the 21st century any enterprise requiring massive investment would be
undertaken without the prospect of big bucks in return.
FUP, the corporation behind the development of the Time Tube, has pioneered time travel into the
past with the intention of plundering the untapped reserves of gold and fossil fuels. Aware that to do
so will seriously interfere with the status quo 21st side, as they call it, they cannily descend on the
16th century of a different dimension, but with the same history. The place is the Anglo-Scottish
border – lawless, ungovernable and territory of the reivers, tribal sheep-stealers locked in an
unbreakable cycle of bloody feuding. In the country around Carlisle, where the Time Tube operates,
the warring families are the Grannams and the Sterkarms.
This novel is the sequel to The Sterkarm Handshake, which came out five years ago. Its original
readership may have moved on; will those coming to the Sterkarms for the first time be satisfied by
a second helping without having tasted the first? The prime test of a sequel is that it should not
disappoint loyal readers, but also important is whether it can stand alone, independent of lengthy
explanations about what happened last time.
Price overcomes this hurdle with authoritative economy. It is immediately clear that the last attempt
to outwit the Sterkarms ended in pitched battle, hideous slaughter and the destruction of the Tube.
But too much is resting upon the enterprise to abandon it. The Tube is being reopened into yet
another dimension, 16th side, and this time FUP has a cunning plan, to unite the feuding families by
marriage so that 21st siders can get on with their looting in peace. Andrea Mitchell, who once
‘embedded’ in a Sterkarm stronghold, is lured back to work fro FUP by the promise of being
reunited with Per Sterkarm, the man she knew and loved the first time around. Being from another
dimension, he is not quite the same Per, but she is desperate to recover her lost happiness, however
hair-raising the circumstances, and agrees to go back once more. This time, though, she is on the
alert.
To find Grannams and Sterkarms marrying with a Bible and a Christian priest is startling. They
bring the same violent enthusiasm to merrymaking as they do to massacre. Charming and ruthless,
they have high ideals of honour and hospitality, making love and war with elemental simplicity. The
minions of FUP, under the direction of its repellent executive, James Windsor, employ the usual
methods of wooing primitive peoples, not with beads and blankets but with aspirin. Given their
injury count the Sterkarms are in desperate need of painkillers and, like most primitive peoples
coming into contact with civilisation, they are about to be betrayed on a colossal scale.
It does occasionally cross the mind that FUP might have saved itself a lot of trouble by debouching
from the Time Tube to somewhere a bit quieter – the Notts-Derby coalfield, perhaps – but this is a
quibble. Does A Sterkarm Kiss pass the test and stand alone? Without doubt it does, and to make
sure, I read them in reverse order myself. Moreover, it sends the reader in eager pursuit of the first
book, happily available in paperback. It gives away nothing of either plot to reveal that a Sterkarm
kiss is quite as antisocial as a Sterkarm handshake.
Jan Mark’s ‘The Stratford Boys’ is published by Hodder. She is a highly respected writer (and much
admired by Susan Price). Other titles by Jan Mark include, ‘The Ennead’ and ‘Thunder and
Lightenings’.