When an unnamed speaker is contacted by a gravedigger and his “depraved friend” to write a biography of the recently deceased philsopher Abd al-Rahman, “the existentialist of Baghdad,” he is told that the biography will be financed by a wealthy merchant and that they have documents to give him for his research. Though the writer knows that these people are scoundrels, he is so destitute that he agrees to accept the job. Part II, “The Writing Journey,” consists of biographical snippets by the writer/biographer, though the presentation of information is not chronological. Flashing back to the life of Abd al-Rahman in the 1960s, the story unfolds, a challenging story in which the philosophy of Sartre becomes irrevocably intertwined with the pleasure-seeking desires of the well-off Abd-al-Rahman, who is always seeking the goal of “nausea” through wine, women, and self-indulgence. Iraqi author Ali Bader, now living in Jordan, has written a novel which is fascinating for the glimpses it offers of the cultural life of Baghdad in the 1960s, even though some aspects of this life are satirized for their pretentions.
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“Natives” and “exotics,” terms often used to describe the relationship of plants to their environments, also refers, in this novel, to the characters who populate it, since all of the main characters live in foreign environments which have their own native populations. The Forder family, in the first of three major story lines, is on assignment in Ecuador in 1970, where the father works for the US State Department. In the second section, which takes place in 1929, Violet Clarence (Rosalind Forder’s mother) is living in the bush in Australia, helping clear the land to build a home in the bush. Part III follows a distant relative, a Mr. Clarence, who in 1822 lives in Scotland, though he is not Scottish. He and his foster son George emigrate to St. Michael in the Portuguese Azores. In each of these three story lines, the “exotic,” foreign residents permanently affect the environments in which they live. Alison clearly believes that despoiling a natural environment by removing or adding new plants and/or animals is both dangerous and foolish, no matter how honorable the motives might be.
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Posted in 9c-2009 Reviews, Coming-of-age, Croatia, Experimental, Historical, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Yugoslavia on Jan 17th, 2011
Croatian author Josip Novakovich crafts a novel here which bursts the bounds of genre. Both naturalistic in its depiction of the Yugoslavian war and its atrocities, and fantastic and darkly absurd in its depiction of the life of main character Ivan Dolinar, the novel seesaws between the horrific and the hilarious. Surprising in his ability to wrest unique images from universal experiences, Novakovich writes with such clarity and directness that the reader immediately identifies with Ivan in his predicaments and empathizes with him as uncontrollable forces buffet him throughout his life. The novel follows him from childhood to his fifties, and the conclusion is a blockbuster, sixty pages of the most absurd, farcical, and hilariously ironic writing in recent memory, a section which comes close to slapstick at the same time that it is indescribably bleak.
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The Ventriloquist’s Tale opens and closes with addresses by a mysterious, third person ventriloquist/narrator, representing the old Amerindian culture of myth and magic of southern Guyana. This narrator indicates that he is not the hero of the book because, as he tells the reader, “Your heroes and heroines are slaves to time…. They’ve forgotten how to be playful and have no appetite for adventure.” As the narrator unfolds the stories of the McKinnon family, half Scottish and half Wapisiana, we see illustrated in their lives the conflicts (and occasional melding) of their ancient ways with western science, religion, and exploitation. The narrator and, one understands, the author come down strongly on the side of the ancients, as the Amerindian characters enchant, amuse, and play with us while they show us their struggle with European intruders, including, at one point, Evelyn Waugh in search of inspiration.
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Peter Hoeg’s first novel in ten years takes the reader on a trip through an almost psychedelic world of circus clowns, children with mystical abilities, powerful nuns, evil financiers, mysterious security agencies, and bizarre foundations. Kaspar Krone, a circus clown, has discovered that “SheAlmighty has tuned each person into a musical key,” and he is able to hear the music that SheAlmighty creates for each person. By tapping into the music of people’s psyches, he can understand their moods and thoughts. Often the music he hears emanating from those around him is that of Bach, the ebb and flow of a person’s inner spirit paralleling the changing moods of specific Bach masterpieces. Complex and sometimes mystifying, The Quiet Girl builds its non-linear “story” through impressionistic scenes, presented seemingly at random from the past, present, future, and even the imagination. It is up to the reader to create a narrative from the scenes presented as the characters overlap and as additional information is revealed.
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