Review of The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente

Title: The Habitation of the Blessed
Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Series: A Dirge for Prester John #1
Published: 1 November 2010
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Genre: mythology, fantasy, metafiction
Source: own copy
Rating: 9/10

Can you compose a review out of quotes? I suppose not, because that wouldn’t be a review, but I wanted to. The Habitation of the Blessed is such a beautiful, beautifully written book that I kept writing down quotes. This book was just unbelievably lovely from the very first line:

“I am a very bad historian. But I am a very good miserable old man. I sit at the end of the world, close enough to see my shrivelled old legs hang over the bony ridge of it. I came so far for gold and light and a story the size of the sky. But I have managed to gather only a basket of ash and a kind of empty sorrow, that the world is not how I wished it to be.” (5)

I love the sorrow-tinged humour there – a terrible historian but an excellent miserable old man. I love the imagery – light, gold, and the vastness of the sky, contrasted with a basket of ash and disappointment. And I love the pathos in those last words, “that the world is not how I wished it to be”. The speaker is a monk named Brother Hiob of Luzerne, and his words speak of the death of his faith.

Hiob was on a mission to find Prester John, a legendary Christian priest and king who supposedly ruled over many rich and powerful lands in the East. Hiob began his quest with a sense of awe inspired by this myth of Prester John and the East:

“We hoped to find so much in the East, hoped to find a palace of amethyst, a fountain of umblemished water, a gate of ivory. Brushing the frost from our bread, we dreamed, as all monks had since the wonderful Letter appeared, of a king in the East called Prester John, who bore a golden cross on his breast. We whispered and gossiped about him like old women. We told each other that he was strong as a hundred men, that he drank from the Fountain of Youth, that his sceptre held as jewels the petrified eyes of St. Thomas.” (6)

This dream turns out to be both exaggerated and nowhere near as magnificent as the truth. Hiob travels to the East with a group of monks, but instead of finding a utopia and an immortal Christian king, they find a dusty village where a woman sadly tells them that John is gone. To give him the story he wants, she leads Hiob to a miraculous tree that grows books instead of fruit:

“In clusters and alone, books of all shapes hung among the pointed leaves, their covers obscenely bright and shining, swollen as peaches, gold and green and cerulean, their pages thick as though with juice, their silver ribbonmarks fluttering in the spiced wind.” (10)

The woman allows Hiob to pick three books to transcribe. One is John’s story, telling of his time in a land called Pentexore, the utopia that the monks seek. The second is written by John’s wife Hagia, telling her own story and thereby giving us an idea of life in Pentexore. The third is a collection of stories written by Imithal, the nanny of three royal children. Imithal’s tales gives us some of the history and mythology of the land.

Pentextore is the idealised land of plenty, but also the home of mythological creatures (gryphons, phoenixes), talking animals, and some creatures that are completely unheard of, like the panottii who have huge, silken ears like wings and feed on sound. The earth is so fecund that anything planted in it will grow into a tree – animals, parchment, books, even people. When John first stumbles into Pentexore after crossing a sea of stone, he finds a ‘war garden’ where canons have sprouted peppery cannonball fruit and fallen horses have grown into trees with horse-head fruits that snort and whinny. When creatures die, their bodies are planted so they live on as trees. Death is something that generally only happens by accident though, because Pentexore has the Fountain of Youth, and its inhabitants are thus immortal. Being an immortal in paradise is not quite as simple as one might think though, and the Pentexorans have careful social practices designed to preserve their way of life. The most important is a ritual known as Abir, which happens every few decades. It’s a kind of lottery in which each person is given a new life and a new partner. You can deviate from the course set out for you, but you cannot acknowledge your previous lives. It can be painful, but it is essential to avoid being stuck in one life for eternity and turning paradise into hell.

As amazed as he is by these stories, Hiob is also deeply disturbed by them because they contradict his beliefs and his idealistic idea of John. One of the first passages he reads tells of John’s funeral, confirming that the immortal king is dead. Contrary to the belief that John was some kind of perfect Christian, the books reveal that he committed many sins and uttered many blasphemous statements. Hiob cannot believe that his idolised priest king could have “sullied himself with a spouse”, let alone a blemmye – a headless creature who carries her face in her torso. Hiob almost wrote her out of the story because she “could not be suffered to exist” (40). John himself could not even bear to look at Hagia when he first met her, because her eyes are on her breasts and therefore she does not cover herself as he believes women should.

Of course John himself experiences many blows to his Christian beliefs:

“It is as though every story I ever heard had broken itself on the shores of this places like blind, brittle whaltes, and I walked among their shards, that could never be made whole again.” (82)

“either this is the devil’s country or it is God’s. They invert everything I know to be true. But whatever they say is proven real by my eyes, my ears, my hands” (225).

Having proof of these supposedly impossible things is such a contrast to the idea of Christian faith and John often finds himself at a loss. How do all these strange creatures fit into God’s plan? They are not simple animals, and in fact some of the ‘animals’ think and speak like humans. If anything, the Pentexorans are superior to humanity, having managed to live in peace and happiness for so long. God’s promise of eternal life is pointless in Pentextore, where the Fountain of Youth has made them all immortal, and death is easily remedied by planting the body so that the person is transformed into a sentient tree. When John tries to preach to the Pentexorans, they ask him questions he can’t answer and find his ideas ignorant and unconvincing.

Despite all the magnificent things that John finds, he sticks stubbornly to his beliefs. He is always looking for his God, and trying to fit everything into Christian doctrine with a theory that Pentexore is Eden. Hagia and the other Pentexorans are baffled and frustrated by this. “He has never loved anyone but God. What kind of man is that?” (162), one of them wonders in disgust as he sees John continually rejecting or denouncing the beauty of the world and its inhabitants. Writing after John’s death, Hagia laments, “In all your world of sins, was it never shameful to reject life and all its works?” (84).

The Pentexorans are not without religion – each race has its own god or gods – but they cannot understand John’s devotion to the cruel Christian God. They find John’s bible stories “ugly” (63) and “uncivilised”. Why, for example, didn’t God forgive Adam and Eve? “A parent who does not forgive a child’s first offence is a tyrant” (135) a gryphon tells John. And why is Eve (and therefore women in general) so despised? Knowing what it is like to live in paradise, Hagia has a different interpretation of The Fall:

“Your Eve was wise John. She knew Paradise would make her mad, if she were to live forever with Adam and know no other thing but strawberries and tigers and rivers of milk. She knew they would tire of these things, and each other. They would grow to hate every fruit, every stone, every creature they touched. Yet where could they go to find any new thing? It takes strength to live in Paradise and not collapse under the weight of it. It is every day a trial. And so Eve gave her lover the gift of time, time to the timeless, so that they could grasp at happiness” (63).

Time is an important feature in the novel, and tinges all the beauty with sadness. The books that Hiob is transcribing are rotting like normal fruit, and as he progresses the pages are eaten by mould and turn to mush. In later parts of the novel, parts of the stories are cut off as the pages disintegrate, and eventually there’s nothing left. The story is left incomplete, and Hiob is devastated.

I was too. This is the kind of book you dream of reading. It’s written in a rich, mythical style that in itself has the power to transport you to the world it describes. Reading it is a sensual experience – it’s as if you’re sipping on fine wine or savouring a perfect dish, and even common words can seem like delicacies. The fact that you can’t have the whole story is terrible and yet it makes you appreciate the book more. That wouldn’t stop me from reading the sequel though – I want to taste that exquisite prose again. John and Hagia’s stories continue in The Folded World, with a new set of boos plucked from the book tree. I have the eARC of The Folded World, but I want a hardcopy anyway. I bought a hardcopy of The Habitation of the Blessed, and it’s definitely the kind of book that you’d want to read on paper. It’s a gorgeous book too, with deckle-edged pages. I strongly suggest you borrow or buy it – it’s a mythical must-read.

Buy The Habitation of the Blessed at The Book Depository

Review of Faustus Resurrectus by Thomas Morrissey

Title: Faustus Resurrectus
Author: Thomas Morrissey
Published: 17 April 2012
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Genre: thriller, crime, fantasy, horror
Source: review copy from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 7/10

Donovan Graham has just completed his Master’s Degree in Philosophical Hermeneutics, with a thesis on the Faustus legend. Philosophical hermeneutics, explains Donovan, is “the study of interpretation, but really it’s the search for truth. [...] Traditional hermeneutics studies interpretations of written works; religion, law, literature. Modern hermeneutics studies everything. That would be me, specializing in mythology and religion.”

Donovan’s studies make him a useful consultant in a police case involving two unusual murders with possible religious and mythological significance. Donovan quickly realises that the murders correspond to signs of the zodiac, as body parts corresponding to the star signs have been removed from each of the corpses. A serial killer named Cornelius Valdes is at work, and his murders are for the sake of a ritual that serves a larger, more sinister purpose.

Donovan works together with his mentor Father Maurice Carroll, and Sergeant Frank Fullam of the NYPD, to stop Valdes, but they’re largely unsuccessful. Valdes is resourceful, determined, and he has a monstrous, 7-foot tall henchman to aid him. He’s a man hell-bent on revenge, and to help him achieve that he plans to summon Dr Faustus, the scholar who sold his soul to devil in exchange for earthly knowledge and power.

 

Faustus Resurrectus is the debut novel of author Thomas Morrissey, and the first in a planned series featuring Donovan Graham. Donovan, I think, will make a nice protagonist for a series of occult thrillers. He’s part scholar, part man of action. He knows krav maga, he’s worked as a bouncer, and he rides a motorcycle. He currently works as a bartender in an upmarket restaurant, so we can probably assume he’s good at talking to people. And he’s got a sensitive side, as he shows when he’s with his fiancée Joann.

Of course, he also knows quite a bit about the occult, religion, mythology, and the Faustus legend in particular, as does his friend Father Carroll. Morrissey makes full use of this. The novel features loads of information about things like the materials used in rituals (from fertility rituals to Satanic ones), the symbolism behind the number 13, and the history of resurrecting people from the dead. Donovan and Father Carroll also discuss the Faustus legend on many occasions, quoting from both the Marlowe and Goethe versions of the story. It’s pretty cool.

Because the occult rituals themselves are so interesting, about half of the narrative is actually written from the perspective of the serial killer, Cornelius Valdes. In an odd co-incidence, ‘Cornelius’ and ‘Valdes’ were the names of two sorcerers who taught Faustus. Anyway, since we’re privy to the workings of the main villain, there isn’t all that much mystery to the novel, but it still makes a decent occult thriller. The story gets increasingly dark and twisted as Valdes progresses with insane schemes; readers with an aversion to violence and gore should avoid this one.

In keeping with the Faustus story, there are related themes about free will, faith and, most notably, the idea that reality is flexible. The latter comes up often, as characters struggle to deal with increasing intrusion of the paranormal into their world. This is partly what makes the investigation so difficult – the NYPD doesn’t exactly have a division that handles supernatural forces. Any suggestion of Satanic rituals immediately undermines Donovan’s credibility, and even he can’t quite believe what he finds sometimes. He and the others desperately need to adjust their ideas about reality, because although the story begins as a normal murder mystery but by the end it’s an apocalyptic fantasy horror (in the grotesque and gory way, not a scary one).

Then there’s the issue of free will. Donovan’s thesis “discussed predestination and free will in Marlowe—was Faustus destined to go to Hell, or was it his choices—his free will—that led him to ruin?” Donovan and other characters argue for free will – it is always our choices that either damn us or save us. One character argues that the essence of suffering is in knowing that our pain is caused by our own stupid, prideful choices.

There’s quite a bit of musing about faith, in yourself and in God, mostly from Father Carroll, who in my opinion has a tendency to get a little too preachy. In a recent interview though, Morrissey revealed that Father Carroll was actually the easiest character for him to write, because he uses Carroll to express his own ideals about faith. I’m grateful then, that Morrissey allows Donovan to temper Father Carroll’s words with his own, more sceptical views. If not, I think this novel might have come across as something of a religious lecture.

It certainly takes a very black and white approach to good and evil; there are no debates here about it being better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Still, the clash between good and evil has always been a reliable source of entertainment, and it’s no different here. Faustus Resurrectus is a strong debut and a good read for those who like to dabble with the darkness. I look forward to more Donovan Graham novels from Thomas Morrissey.

Buy Faustus Resurrectus at The Book Depository

Review of Nevermore by William Hjortsberg

Title: Nevermore
Author: William Hjortsberg
Published: first published in 1994; this eBook edition published 13 March 2012
Publisher: First published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This eBook edition published by Open Road Media
Genre: metafiction, historical, murder mystery, fantasy
Source: review copy from the publisher via NetGalley
Rating: 4/10

It’s the year 1923. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famed creator of Sherlock Holmes, is embarking on a United States tour to give a series of lectures on spiritualism. The author is an ardent believer in psychic powers, and frequently takes part in séances for communicating with the dead. In New York, Doyle meets up with his friend Harry Houdini, the famous vaudeville magician and escape artist. Unlike Doyle, Houdini believes spiritualism is bunk, and he makes every effort to expose mediums and other psychics as frauds, putting a strain on his relationship with the author. However, Houdini’s scepticism is challenged by Opal Crosby Fletcher, a stunningly beautiful, staggeringly wealthy young widow who appears to be a true psychic.

During Doyle’s tour, a New York murderer is killing people in an imitation of Edgar Allen Poe’s grisly tales. It’s assumed that the murders are the random outbursts of a lunatic, but Houdini later realises that the victims were all linked to him in some way, and the killer is moving closer to him and the people he cares about. The ghost of Edgar Allen Poe starts appearing in Doyle’s hotel rooms; an inexplicable phenomenon that Doyle can’t help but connect to the murders. Eventually both he and Houdini have to work together to track down the killer before they’re brought to a gruesome literary demise.

 

Historical drama, mystery, fantasy and metafiction – this makes Nevermore cross-genre fiction, but unfortunately it doesn’t combine these genres as fluidly. The result is that it reads like a historical drama interrupted by a murder mystery, with fantasy wandering around aimlessly throughout.

The murder mystery is, at first, the driving force behind the plot. The use of Poe’s stories makes the discovery of bodies bizarre and intriguing events. And of course there’s the question of why the killer uses Poe’s stories. Sadly, your interest will be met with disappointment. The mystery is often treated as a subplot, with the narrative focusing on Houdini and Doyle as they go about their professional and personal lives. For a while the crimes are little more than news stories to them.

As a type of story, murder mysteries typically thrive on the investigation process, but in this case the reader is not privy to the clues found by the police. There are a few passages that are written from the perspectives of law enforcement officials connected to the case, but none of them are major characters and they have little to offer. When Doyle and Houdini eventually turn their attention to the murders, they mostly do so as laymen, using whatever scraps of information they’ve gathered from the media, along with a few personal experiences. You’d think that Doyle’s experience writing Sherlock Holmes stories would come into play here, but it doesn’t really. At one point their entire ‘investigation’ hinges on suspicion and a facial expression. But of course they manage to learn more than the police, who appear not to have made the slightest bit of progress (not that we’d be told about it) in the months since the first murder. It’s very contrived.

Most of the fantasy elements in the book seem largely unnecessary. Poe’s manifestations keep Doyle in mind of the murders, but otherwise have no real effect on the story. Doyle asks him for advice regarding the investigation, but the very depressed Poe has none to offer. There’s also a weird little detail about Poe that really bugged me. Whenever Poe appears, Doyle refers to him as a ghost or a dead man, while Poe insists that he is alive and that Doyle appears to him as a ghost. It seems pretty obvious to me that neither is seeing a ‘ghost’ but are somehow connecting to each other through time. However, this idea never occurs to Doyle, and as a result he keeps wondering if his ideas about the afterlife are all wrong, since Poe doesn’t think he’s dead and at one point he even vomits (the dead aren’t supposed to suffer from nausea). The man who created Sherlock Holmes and his intricately detailed investigations is suddenly far too daft to consider the evidence and come up with a better theory.

There’s a second fantasy element in the rather odd character of Opal. As I mentioned, she’s a true psychic. This makes perfect sense for the spiritualism aspect of the plot. However, Opal also claims to be the reincarnation of the goddess Isis, and believes Houdini to be the reincarnation of the god Osiris, Isis’ husband. She takes an unnerving interest in him, leading to a weird sex scene featuring a dildo filled with warm milk. As with the Poe appearances, I’m don’t know what purpose this Isis/Osiris thing is supposed to serve.

The historical drama is the strongest aspect of the story. It seems that Hjortsberg put a lot of research into his depiction of Doyle and Houdini. We learn a lot about Houdini’s work as a magician and escape artist. The relationship between Doyle and Houdini is based on fact, as are their beliefs regarding spiritualism. In fact, their difference in opinion eventually ruined their friendship. In the novel, tension arises after Doyle’s wife invites Houdini to a séance where she claims to put him in contact with his deceased mother.

Hjortsberg also goes into great detail depicting New York and other American cities in the 1920s. He does an admirable job, but it can get tiresome. There are too many references to the streets, brand names and music of the time, most of which would be meaningless to most readers now. It can get confusing if you don’t know what item a character is using or what the reference to a song or address is supposed to imply. There are also scenes depicting what I assume are actual events, like sports matches and the public murder of a gangster. Annoyingly, these things feel like time-wasting props – they’re meant to lend a sense of authenticity to the novel, but they’re irrelevant to the story.

Nevertheless, I feel that if Hjortsberg has chosen to cut the murder plot and focus solely on the historical aspects of the story, specifically the friendship between Doyle and Houdini, their beliefs and the consequences thereof, then this would have been a stronger book. The fantasy element could either have been ambiguous, or refined for a better fit. We could have taken a closer look at the psychologies of the characters. Houdini is particularly interesting in this regard, because he actually wants to find a genuine psychic so that he may speak to his “sainted mother” once again (the man has issues). He wants very badly to believe in the abilities that he frequently mocks and exposes as fraud. Opal’s power forces Houdini to accept that contact with the dead is possible, and it would have been interesting to explore the character dynamics here a bit more, while scrapping that pointless Isis/Osiris business.

As it stands, Nevermore tries to be too many things at once, and fails to excel at any of them. The result is a book that feels arbitrary and is largely quite boring. It doesn’t help that there are also a lot of info dumps and unnecessary scenes and characters. When the story is eventually wrapped up, the plot is paper thin and thoroughly unsatisfying. It’s such a pity; it all sounded like quite a good idea.

Buy a copy of Nevermore by William Hjortsberg

The Book Ferret: Tereza, Karenin, Nietzsche and a horse

Unfortunately I’ve been too busy this week to research anything for this post, so instead I’ll just share one of my favourite extracts from one of my favourite books, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It’s a piece of writing that sparks an emotional reaction whenever I read it. I love its tragic, beautiful depiction of the relationship between animals and human beings, and the fond way Kundera muses over his own character and the philosopher who has inspired him. It also permanently endeared Nietzsche to me, and left me with bottomless contempt for Descartes whose philosophy argues that animals are mere machines who do not feel pain or suffer.

Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump, petting Karenin’s head and ruminating on mankind’s débâcles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears.

That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologise to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, ‘the master and proprietor of nature’, marches onward.

The Book Ferret is a weekly feature on Violin in a Void that will showcase a cool or interesting book-related find every Thursday. Notable new releases, great bookshops, events, cover art, websites, gadgets and accessories – anything to make bookworms happy.

If you want to join in, grab the Ferret pic, link it and your post back here, and add your name and url to the comments.

After Dark by Haruki Murkami

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I unwittingly picked the ideal time to read this novel – alone, late at night, when I simply didn’t feel like going to bed. Being awake while surround by the silence of sleep and darkness perfectly complemented this surreal, hypnotic read. It’s my first Haruki Murakami novel, and a guarantee that I’ll be reading more.

The story is driven mostly by dialogue and observation, not plot, but despite the consequent slow pace, After Dark held my attention and before I knew it I was almost done with the novel. It’s composed of three intertwined stories that take place over one night, each unfolding as it connects with another. It begins with Mari, a 19-year old student reading alone in a busy diner just before midnight. She is joined by Takahashi, a musician who remembers Mari from a holiday several years ago. As Takahashi chats to Mari, we are able to learn about her sister Eri, who we then find deep asleep in her room.

The narrative continues to develop in this manner, exploring the connections between people and events, moving to a new character only once a link to them has been established. As a result of her conversation with Takahashi, Mari meets Kaoru, the manager of a love motel where a Chinese prostitute has just been beaten up in one of the rooms. This incident links us to Shirikawa, a businessman working through the night. The office Shirikawa is working in reappears when we return to Eri – the office is seen on her TV screen in the novel’s most surreal and perplexing scenes.

These interconnections are the lifeblood of the narrative, and in addition there are myriad threads of detail delicately weaving things together, some of which the characters themselves find significant. Takahashi can’t recall Mari’s name, but he does remember that it differs from Eri’s name by a single syllable. Mari notes with some tenderness that the beaten Chinese prostitute is the same age as she is. Eri and Shirikawa are both using sleep to escape their troubles, while Korogi, one of the staff members at the love motel, wishes she could do the same.

All these connections fit neatly into an idea expressed at the beginning – that the city is a “single collective entity, created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm” (3). Takahashi later echoes this concept with a theory that all systems are like living organisms.

The organisms are given life by the information passing through them, as are people. The information circulating through us is made up of memory: “people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel” (168-169). In a literary parallel, the novel itself is given life by the very stories it is telling. Or rather, the stories are being observed instead of written or read. The novel is framed as if there were no author and no reader, just an invisible “we” watching people and events. This is one of its most interesting aspects. Murakami experiments with narrative, using a present-tense “we” and breaking down the barrier between author and reader leaving only passive observers of reality. After Dark begins when ‘our’ “[e]yes mark the shape of the city”, and ‘we’ sweep in from above “like a high-flying bird” before “[o]ur line of sight chooses an area of concentrated brightness and, focusing there, silently descends to it” (3). We enter a restaurant, where we could focus on anyone, but Mari, reading alone, “very naturally” (5) captures our attention and provides the entry point for the stories to follow. It gives the novel an organic, unplanned feel. In fact, the viewer/narrator doesn’t seem to have any real intentions other than to see what’s going on in the city on this particular evening. ‘We’ are “pure point of view” (108), unable to have any effect on the scene we’re watching because we’re not actually there: “We are invisible, anonymous intruders. We look. We listen. We note odours. But we are not physically present in the place, and we leave behind no traces… We observe, but we do not intervene” (27). All that we can do is “gather data, and, if possible, judge” (108).

After Dark is a book pretending that it hasn’t been written and isn’t being read. It’s an experience in observation and the author is as powerless as the reader to influence anything; both are on equal footing as the viewer/narrator. Lacking omnipotence, it should also be noted that we are not omniscient – we are only privy to those details we can perceive with our eyes and ears as the viewer/narrator. For example, we don’t know what book Mari is reading because we can’t see the title and Mari never says what it is, but we can guess from her expression while reading that it’s relatively complex. Takahashi doesn’t tell Mari his name, so it remains unknown until it’s mentioned later.

Because of our limitations as viewer/narrator, much of the story remains a mystery. What the characters don’t know and thus don’t talk about, we cannot know either. And because it does not always make sense for them to explain their actions or discuss their feelings, we left to draw our own conclusions from what we are able to observe. It’s clear from Shirikawa’s actions and a conversation with his wife that he’s avoiding his family, but because he never voices his reasons for this, they remain unclear. Nor do we ever find out what exactly is going on during the strange events in Eri’s room or why she has chosen to sleep for so long because she is unable to offer any explanation.

This might be frustrating for some, but for me part of the pleasure of reading After Dark lies in the details themselves, in poring over fragments of information or finding the connections between people, places and events. Consequently, I suggest you avoid this if you want action or drama, if you demand closure, or if your preference is for stories that you don’t need to think too much about – it will be a complete waste of a great book.

The lack of conclusion means you probably won’t feel blown away, but it might leave you feeling blissfully calm and contemplative, making this a rare beauty of a novel.

Flyleaf by Finuala Dowling

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Flyleaf is a tired sigh of rambling detail. Part of its weariness is perhaps the result of the fact that I’ve read this story before, in Dancing Naked at the Edge of the Dawn by Kris Radish. In both novels, a university-educated woman who has unwisely married too young leaves her unfaithful husband and goes to stay with her best friend, giving her a chance to ‘find herself’ and decide what she wants out of life. The best friend is a beautiful, free-spirited, self-confident hippy, in stark contrast to our dull, meticulous protagonist and her insecurities. Yawn.

Dancing Naked at the Edge of the Dawn went to great dramatic lengths with this, as only American novels can, flying off to exotic locations on journeys of self-discovery, while beautiful female sages spew forth New Age pseudo-feminist philosophies. Flyleaf is at least more down-to-earth. The place is Cape Town and its surrounds, the philosophy is linguistics. Middle-class married women take note.

Violet Birkin teaches English literature and designs Adult Literacy courses, but this leaves her exhausted and miserable. The pay is poor, and although she loves teaching English lit, the college is less interested in an appreciation of literature and strictly focused on teaching their clients according to neat pre-defined goals. Violet however, takes a personal interest in her third-year class, and would like to nurture rather than simply teach them. She is envious of all the possibilities lying before them, and wants them to “explore, discover and act upon their full humanity” and realise “just how extraordinary they were” (218).

Violet’s newly discovered passion, however, is linguistics. After leaving Frank she tires of her PhD on doors and windows in Virginia Woolf’s writing, and concludes that “[a]ll i really want to do is write things down on index cards… to record all the wonderful things people say and look at the deep structure of their utterances”. For the narrative, this means that Violet occasionally gives the reader little lessons in grammar using phrases that grab her attention, from a neighbour’s crude retort “Go suck another man’s cock” (25) to the slightly desperate “What are you going to do?” (248).

As an English major, I’m should be the sort of person who should appreciate this: the academic context, the literary references, the lessons in grammar and linguistics. And in other books I have, but in Flyleaf these are all as flat as the story and merely add detail rather than illuminating anything. I didn’t take much interest in Violet’s experiences as a lecturer, or in the depictions of her students, many of whom frustrate her with their need for easy answers and their general lack of interest in English literature. We get snippets of their lives but it seems these are meant to be interesting in themselves, as they have little or no bearing on the story as a whole. In fact much of the novel plodded along indulging in detail for detail’s sake, which would have been fine if this detail were amusing or particularly poetic, but it’s not. Every now and then there’d be a sentence or reference that would make me smile or elicit a nod of admiration, but more often I’d cringe. At one point Violet makes a terrible joke about honking geese failing to read a sign reading “HOSPITAL NO HOOTING” (118). Perhaps the worst moment in the book is when Dowling rips off a scene from the movie American Beauty for a flashback showing Frank and Violet happily in love: “Once in a late night street… we were intrigued by a passing plastic bag. Gusted by the southeaster, it seemed to have a personality of its own.” (39).

And then it becomes ludicrous: “Frank just ran with the idea, delivering extempore the bag’s stream of consciousness as it entered gutters or was briefly wrapped about a telephone pole. He even danced a little way down Belvedere Road in an impromptu pas de deux with the floating filament of plastic” (39). To be fair, Violet mentions a line later that they feel like actors, like this isn’t real life, so perhaps this is intended to be a reference, not just a rip-off, but we’re still left with a man narrating the ‘thoughts’ of a plastic bag and then dancing with it.

Besides being bored with the details and the language lessons, I found nothing engaging about Violet either. She’s mostly quite passive, and instead of empathising with her concerns about being dull, I tended to agree that she was. Her hippy best-friend Marina is also a little too bourgeois. She lives off an inheritance and has no need to work, so she spends most of her time indulging in various hobbies that she discards once she reaches proficiency. Marina actually doesn’t ‘believe’ in employment because it’s “self-defeating” (30). She gives a little speech explaining this while lying in a hammock drinking gin & tonic, just in case you mistake her individualism for a socialist or communist ethic. Marina isn’t wrong about employment and no doubt most of us would love to be free of it, but in Cape Town, in South Africa, with our appalling unemployment rates, Marina’s unquestioned luxury seems rather insensitive.

You might be wondering where all of this goes, but it’s hard to say because there isn’t much of a plot. Life goes on, things happen, Violet agonises over things, then decides what she wants to do with her life, all without too much fuss. If you enjoy meandering through this sort of narrative, then this could well be a good read for you, but I really can’t stand this kind of whine.

Chasing ideas down rabbit holes: The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an adventure in thought experiments. This is idea porn. It’s the most cerebral fun I’ve ever had. The End of Mr Y is a cocktail of postmodern philosophy, quantum physics, metafiction, science fiction and adventure. If any of that sounds intimidating, rest assured that this isn’t like reading Derrida, Heidegger, Baudrillard or any of the convoluted philosophies that Ariel Manto likes to immerse herself in. Early on she says that she “quite like[s] the way you can talk about science without necessarily using mathematics, but using metaphors instead” (29) and that really goes for all the key theories so beautifully woven into the story. The End of Mr Y is in itself a thought experiment for all the science and philosophy it explores, a mind-warping vision of a postmodern existence where language creates reality rather than just describing it. I wish I’d read this when I was doing my honours in English lit – I would have understood what Derrida was on about, instead of stumbling, completely perplexed, through differánce and then nervously avoiding Derrida for the rest of my degree.

The story begins, aptly, with the collapse of the Newton Building, signifying the collapse of common-sense, cause-and-effect Newtonian physics. In its place we have much more interesting, counter-intuitive, and altogether weird quantum physics. Forced to leave the university campus after the building collapses, Ariel ends up at the bookshop where she finds a copy of The End of Mr Y by the Victorian writer and philosopher Thomas Lumas, a supposedly cursed book that shows her how to enter Mindspace or the Troposphere – another dimension, constructed entirely of thought, where all consciousness is ‘stored’, where you can enter other minds and travel through time.

Although she’s hardly my favourite character, Ariel has the kind of mind that makes this story possible. She’s smart enough to understand the likes of Heidegger and Derrida and intertwine them quantum physics. She’s endlessly curious and so relentless in her pursuit of knowledge that she spends all the money she has to buy a cursed book that she doesn’t hesitate to read. Ariel’s also got a taste for sexual deviance that leads to some brief but alluring sex scenes. Tangled up with this is psychological and physical scarring that prevented me from finding Ariel truly likeable, but the novel more than compensates for any uncomfortable distance between reader and character.

I was hooked on the mysteries and ideas from the start, turning back to re-read interesting bits or look for clues, pausing to scribble notes and quotes, figure out the puzzles, or just muse. I got excited when I figured something out, or discovered something clever, such as the word games in the names: the name Samuel Butler (whose theories about consciousness are mentioned) contains all the letters for Saul Burlem, leaving out only the ‘t’ and an ‘e’, which lead to T.E. Lumas – Thomas Lumas (and Lumas can also be taken from ‘Samuel’) which brings us back to Scarlett Thomas. And of course there’s the oft-mentioned anagram in the narrator’s name: Ariel Manto – I am not real. What does it all mean? I’m not sure, but it’s kind of fun.

When it was over I was obsessed, unhappy that it had ended, hungry for more. Cursed? I like to think so. The curse of Lumas’s novel is not so much a curse of death as a curse of knowledge, of curiosity, the seduction of that need to know more, with all its unknown consequences. The End of Mr Y is about ‘the end of mystery’, the surreal journey towards that end, chasing ideas down rabbit holes, and the scary uncertainty of whether or not that’s somewhere you want to go.