Article first published as Book Review: The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon on Blogcritics
Some years back when I reviewed Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind for The Compulsive Reader,I found it a combination of page turning story telling with significant post modern overtones. And although the climactic ending was something of a disappointment, it was a comparatively minor flaw (and who can forget Samuel Johnson's comment on a passage he found objectionable in Milton's Paradise Lost--flaws so great who could wish away) in what was otherwise a truly excellent novel. Not surprisingly, when Zafon's latest, The Angel's Game came out, I was quite eager to get my hands on it.
Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed. Not that the story is poorly told, Zafon is nothing if not a fine story teller. There are mysterious secrets to be revealed; there are thwarted lovers. There are Gothic settings, supernatural presences, murders and betrayals. It is a big novel in the tradition of the great nineteenth century story teller, Zafon refers to over and over again in the novel, Charles Dickens. Not only does he subscribe to the Dickensian emphasis on elaborately plotted fiction, he peoples that fiction with a cast of characters, major and minor that could easily find a home in one of the darker Dickens novels.
The hero and narrator, David Martin, although a talented writer, finds it expedient to produce pulp supernatural fiction as a means of paying his bills. Like Pip's in Great Expectations, his story begins in childhood, and like Pip he is helped through life by mysterious benefactors, whose motives he doesn't understand. Indeed like many first person narrators he is often the last to understand what is going on around him. Much of the mystery in the book is grounded in Martin's failure to see things, almost at times refusing to see them for what they are. He has a love interest who feels obligated to another. He has a love interest that he either pays no attention or treats badly. A variety of characters come to Martin's aid in the course of the book—another writer with wealth of his own, a book store owner, an editor, a publisher, a young girl who wants to be a writer—some with good intentions, some with evil. There are villainous policemen who play good cop, bad cop, witch-like old women, and pettifogging lawyers.
Moreover there are even one or two of those nice little post modern ironic moments tucked into this book as well. David Martin makes himself a success writing in the Grand Guignol, a thriller genre that he thoroughly deprecates, yet it is quite obviously the genre of the work in which he appears, and a genre in which Zafon himself excels. While his thrillers are hugely popular and sell extremely well they are not the kind of work he respects, and when he finally does write something that he considers has worth, it has no success at all. There is an interesting discussion of the relationship between books and the souls of the writers as well as of those who read them. Thus when a writer sells his work to a publisher there are certain obvious Faustian indications, especially when that publisher seems to be making an offer that certainly looks too good to be true.
Although The Angel's Game is not really a prequel to The Shadow in the Wind, it does have its echoes in the earlier book. Most importantly there is the Barcelona setting. The city, its cafes, streets and architectural landmarks provide a loving richness of detail to the story. Barcelona holds a place in Zafon's novels similar to that of London in Dickens. The "Cemetery of Forgotten Books," a huge labyrinthine library in which all books are saved until someone comes along and adopts one, vowing to keep it alive, makes an appearance in both books. And the owner of the Sempere bookstore who aids David as a young boy, turns out to be the grandfather of Daniel Sempere the hero of the The Shadow in the Wind.
The problem with The Angel's Game is that for all his supposed talents as a writer, David Martin's narrative is not always very compelling. Despite the novel's length, David never comes to life either as a poor orphan or a wealthy author. Zafon is content to develop his character in stereotypical ways, rather than creating a multi-dimensional personality. This is in many way true of all the characters—too many of them seem to belong in B movies. If it's hard to care about the characters, it's hard to care about their story. Finally the prose style doesn't always do justice to the content. This is especially true of the dialogue. In the end, The Angel's Game is not a bad book, it's just that sometimes when you have 'great expectations,' they don't always pan out.
Showing posts with label Contemporary British Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Contemporary British Fiction. Show all posts
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Book Review: The Dead Republic, by Roddy Doyle
The Dead Republic is the final novel n Roddy Doyle's trilogy about the life of Irish revolutionary Henry Smart which began with A Star Called Henry and Oh, Play That Thing. Born in 1901, Henry begins as a hit man for the IRA until it is determined that he is a liability to the movement and his execution is ordered. He escapes to America where he and his family trek around the country until he becomes separated from them in a train accident which also costs him his leg. This last installment of the trilogy begins in 1946, where Henry turns up collapsed on the desert set of a John Ford film. In something of a parody of the grand entrance he is discovered inadvertently by one of the film's stars, Henry Fonda, who has stepped out behind a rock to relieve himself.
Henry becomes involved with director Ford who wants to shoot a film about the Irish uprising based on Henry's life. Henry agrees, but soon discovers that there is a great divide between movies and life. What Ford is creating is a sentimentalized version of Henry's life; one that Henry finds insulting to everything he remembers. In a story much reminiscent of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry learns that there is a significant gap between one's reality and the artistic representation of that reality. Presumably, they are collaborating on the film that was to become The Quiet Man, but very soon Henry discovers that there is a difference between life and art.
Like the characters in Pirandello's play, Henry keeps complaining about the liberties that Ford wants to take with his life. Like the Stage Manager in Six Characters in Search of an Author, Ford keeps trying to explain the need to telescope the events of a life time into two hours of screen time. Henry complains: "He knew what I was doing. I was reclaiming my life. I knew what he was doing. He was making me up. There were two stories being dragged out of me." And Ford's story was nothing but a sentimentalized idyll. The grim grit of the revolution was out, and the beauty of the red headed colleen, as played by Maureen O'Hara was in.
Henry goes along with it for awhile, but when they finally go back to Ireland to begin shooting and he gets a look at the final script, he runs off in search of the truth of his past. This leads to a happy period of anonymity, equivalent to a kind of tending to one's garden, as he becomes caretaker in a boys' school near Dublin and romances a woman who may or may not have been his lost wife. The dreamland lasts until he is caught in a terrorist bomb blast, recognized as a icon of the revolution and taken up by the IRA as a heroic connection to their roots—a connection to be exploited for their current purposes.
Like John Ford, the leaders of the IRA want to create a Henry for their own purposes. Neither is concerned with the reality. They are all concerned with creating a reality that will have the desired effect—be it aesthetic or political. For the IRA, Henry becomes a tool for their propaganda. As one of their leaders tells Henry, the war for independence is about "the ownership of the definition of Irishness." "The copyright," he goes on. "The brand. Who owns Irishness, hey?" Henry Smart, the real Henry Smart, is unimportant. The Henry Smart that they create, that Henry Smart, is significant, and that Henry Smart is to become a kind of saint of the revolution.
In Roddy Doyle, Ireland has once again produced a truly gifted story teller. He weaves in and out, back and forth through a half century of a man's life with finesse. He has created in Henry Smart, a character who embodies a "brand" of Irishman quite different from the stereotypical version created by Ford, embodied in character actors like Barry Fitzgerald. He has created a complex round character who is both idealistic when he can afford to be idealistic, and practical when necessary. He has created a character that is not perfect, a character who like most of is flawed, and not always strong enough to do what we know we should. Still, when push comes to shove, Henry will do what little he can.
While the story line of The Dead Republic is clear enough for those who haven't read the first two books, it would probably be a good idea for readers to start at the beginning. Besides, Henry Smart is a character worth knowing about from the start.
Henry becomes involved with director Ford who wants to shoot a film about the Irish uprising based on Henry's life. Henry agrees, but soon discovers that there is a great divide between movies and life. What Ford is creating is a sentimentalized version of Henry's life; one that Henry finds insulting to everything he remembers. In a story much reminiscent of Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, Henry learns that there is a significant gap between one's reality and the artistic representation of that reality. Presumably, they are collaborating on the film that was to become The Quiet Man, but very soon Henry discovers that there is a difference between life and art.
Like the characters in Pirandello's play, Henry keeps complaining about the liberties that Ford wants to take with his life. Like the Stage Manager in Six Characters in Search of an Author, Ford keeps trying to explain the need to telescope the events of a life time into two hours of screen time. Henry complains: "He knew what I was doing. I was reclaiming my life. I knew what he was doing. He was making me up. There were two stories being dragged out of me." And Ford's story was nothing but a sentimentalized idyll. The grim grit of the revolution was out, and the beauty of the red headed colleen, as played by Maureen O'Hara was in.
Henry goes along with it for awhile, but when they finally go back to Ireland to begin shooting and he gets a look at the final script, he runs off in search of the truth of his past. This leads to a happy period of anonymity, equivalent to a kind of tending to one's garden, as he becomes caretaker in a boys' school near Dublin and romances a woman who may or may not have been his lost wife. The dreamland lasts until he is caught in a terrorist bomb blast, recognized as a icon of the revolution and taken up by the IRA as a heroic connection to their roots—a connection to be exploited for their current purposes.
Like John Ford, the leaders of the IRA want to create a Henry for their own purposes. Neither is concerned with the reality. They are all concerned with creating a reality that will have the desired effect—be it aesthetic or political. For the IRA, Henry becomes a tool for their propaganda. As one of their leaders tells Henry, the war for independence is about "the ownership of the definition of Irishness." "The copyright," he goes on. "The brand. Who owns Irishness, hey?" Henry Smart, the real Henry Smart, is unimportant. The Henry Smart that they create, that Henry Smart, is significant, and that Henry Smart is to become a kind of saint of the revolution.
In Roddy Doyle, Ireland has once again produced a truly gifted story teller. He weaves in and out, back and forth through a half century of a man's life with finesse. He has created in Henry Smart, a character who embodies a "brand" of Irishman quite different from the stereotypical version created by Ford, embodied in character actors like Barry Fitzgerald. He has created a complex round character who is both idealistic when he can afford to be idealistic, and practical when necessary. He has created a character that is not perfect, a character who like most of is flawed, and not always strong enough to do what we know we should. Still, when push comes to shove, Henry will do what little he can.
While the story line of The Dead Republic is clear enough for those who haven't read the first two books, it would probably be a good idea for readers to start at the beginning. Besides, Henry Smart is a character worth knowing about from the start.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Book Review: How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
Some novelists preach and pontificate about life and art. They speak directly and with assurance. Some novelists explore and imply. They speak indirectly. They speak through metaphor and suggestion. As the poet Robert Browning says, they "do the thing shall breed the thought." How to Paint a Dead Man is a novel that does the thing that breeds the thought. It is a complex book that teases the reader from page to page with the promise of great truths, and when it delivers those truths, it does so with the ambiguity to which all great thought should be entitled.
Sarah Hall weaves together what at first appear to be four very separate stories. They seem to have very little to do with one another. They are narrated through different points of view. They take place in two different countries, England and Italy. Each of the four is set in a different time period. Only gradually, is the reader made aware of connections between the stories. The speaker in one turns out to be the daughter of another. An Italian still life painter who narrates one story tutors a grade school class in painting, and the central figure in another is one of his students. In the end it turns out that there are relations between the characters in all of the stories.
More importantly, all the central figures are, in one way or another, artists. An interviewer questioning the author about the fact that two of the characters were artists provoked her to protest that, in fact, all of the central figures were artists. Two of them, the interviewer's artists, are painters, one, Giorgio, of still lives; the other Peter Caldicutt, a landscape painter. But Hall admonishes, of the other two, Susan Caldicutt is a photographer, and Annette Tambroni is a flower arranger.
"The Mirror Crisis," which begins the novel is narrated in the second person, an unusual point of view to say the least, and in the voice of Susan Caldicutt. She is a fraternal twin, and she has just learned that her brother has been killed in a traffic accident. Besides, being a promising photographer, she is also a curator working in a London art gallery. Her brother's death is devastating, not only as one would expect any death of a family member to be, but because they have as twins been two parts of whole. His death in some sense destroys her as well. One might be forgiven for thinking of Madeline and Roderick Usher.
"Translated From the Bottle Journals" is a first person account of Giorgio an Italian painter modeled on the painter Giorgio Morandi. He is dying of cancer as he tries to complete a last painting, a still life arrangement of bottles. He is very much concerned with explaining the relationship between his art and life, to make clear that still life, is still life—keeping in mind that still has more than one meaning. "The Fool on the Hill" is told in the third person from the point of view of landscape painter, Peter Caldicutt, Susan's father. He comes from a working class background and is fond of inventing a Bohemian past for himself, especially for his children. He couple this with a continuing flaunting of convention.
The last of the four interwoven threads is "The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni." It is narrated in the third person in the voice of Annette, a young blind girl who lives with her mother, two brothers, and an uncle and sells flowers in the village market. Although sightless, her other senses have developed to the point where she is quite capable of "seeing," seeing especially that which may not be visible to those with sight. This is no doubt the divinity of her vision. One is invited to remember all Annette's literary forbears who found in blindness the ability to see.
These characters and their stories are the bones of the novel. The heart is in their thoughts and emotions as they struggle to understand themselves and their relation to the other, to deal with the essential isolation of each individual: "Inside solitude people see the many compartments of unhappiness, like the comb of a pomegranate." Indeed, objects speak more clearly to these people than do other people. Giorgio maintains that only when he can make Peter understand "the timeless gifts of nature morte," will he begin to understand "living art." Examples of nature morte" are the objects in still life paintings. Peter finds that the rocks on the mountains are alive; he wonders if they are out to get him. Objects begin to speak to the blind Annette.
Truth is in the object. When people talk, too often truth disappears in the noise, so that even when they mean to tell the truth no one can hear it. Peter has told so many tall tales of his younger days, that when he tries to give Susan one of Giorgio's bottles, she won't believe it is really his. When he needs help, no one can hear his cries. Annette's mother cannot protect her with constant admonishments to be careful. Annette finds it impossible to explain her fears about the beast she feels around her.
On the other hand: "The kestrel achieves perfection in stillness."
Still, one may not want to lay such a heavy burden on art and the artist. This is perhaps the significance of the novel's title. How to Paint a Dead Man comes from The Craftsman's Handbook by Cennino d'Andrea Cennini where he gives the aspiring artist instructions on how to paint a dead man. Giorgio parses this passage: "I have often wondered if the condition of death is perhaps less grave to the human anatomy than physical injuries. For in death there is release from suffering. Sadly, the master craftsman is unable to instruct us in the healing of wounds."
Sarah Hall weaves together what at first appear to be four very separate stories. They seem to have very little to do with one another. They are narrated through different points of view. They take place in two different countries, England and Italy. Each of the four is set in a different time period. Only gradually, is the reader made aware of connections between the stories. The speaker in one turns out to be the daughter of another. An Italian still life painter who narrates one story tutors a grade school class in painting, and the central figure in another is one of his students. In the end it turns out that there are relations between the characters in all of the stories.
More importantly, all the central figures are, in one way or another, artists. An interviewer questioning the author about the fact that two of the characters were artists provoked her to protest that, in fact, all of the central figures were artists. Two of them, the interviewer's artists, are painters, one, Giorgio, of still lives; the other Peter Caldicutt, a landscape painter. But Hall admonishes, of the other two, Susan Caldicutt is a photographer, and Annette Tambroni is a flower arranger.
"The Mirror Crisis," which begins the novel is narrated in the second person, an unusual point of view to say the least, and in the voice of Susan Caldicutt. She is a fraternal twin, and she has just learned that her brother has been killed in a traffic accident. Besides, being a promising photographer, she is also a curator working in a London art gallery. Her brother's death is devastating, not only as one would expect any death of a family member to be, but because they have as twins been two parts of whole. His death in some sense destroys her as well. One might be forgiven for thinking of Madeline and Roderick Usher.
"Translated From the Bottle Journals" is a first person account of Giorgio an Italian painter modeled on the painter Giorgio Morandi. He is dying of cancer as he tries to complete a last painting, a still life arrangement of bottles. He is very much concerned with explaining the relationship between his art and life, to make clear that still life, is still life—keeping in mind that still has more than one meaning. "The Fool on the Hill" is told in the third person from the point of view of landscape painter, Peter Caldicutt, Susan's father. He comes from a working class background and is fond of inventing a Bohemian past for himself, especially for his children. He couple this with a continuing flaunting of convention.
The last of the four interwoven threads is "The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni." It is narrated in the third person in the voice of Annette, a young blind girl who lives with her mother, two brothers, and an uncle and sells flowers in the village market. Although sightless, her other senses have developed to the point where she is quite capable of "seeing," seeing especially that which may not be visible to those with sight. This is no doubt the divinity of her vision. One is invited to remember all Annette's literary forbears who found in blindness the ability to see.
These characters and their stories are the bones of the novel. The heart is in their thoughts and emotions as they struggle to understand themselves and their relation to the other, to deal with the essential isolation of each individual: "Inside solitude people see the many compartments of unhappiness, like the comb of a pomegranate." Indeed, objects speak more clearly to these people than do other people. Giorgio maintains that only when he can make Peter understand "the timeless gifts of nature morte," will he begin to understand "living art." Examples of nature morte" are the objects in still life paintings. Peter finds that the rocks on the mountains are alive; he wonders if they are out to get him. Objects begin to speak to the blind Annette.
Truth is in the object. When people talk, too often truth disappears in the noise, so that even when they mean to tell the truth no one can hear it. Peter has told so many tall tales of his younger days, that when he tries to give Susan one of Giorgio's bottles, she won't believe it is really his. When he needs help, no one can hear his cries. Annette's mother cannot protect her with constant admonishments to be careful. Annette finds it impossible to explain her fears about the beast she feels around her.
On the other hand: "The kestrel achieves perfection in stillness."
Still, one may not want to lay such a heavy burden on art and the artist. This is perhaps the significance of the novel's title. How to Paint a Dead Man comes from The Craftsman's Handbook by Cennino d'Andrea Cennini where he gives the aspiring artist instructions on how to paint a dead man. Giorgio parses this passage: "I have often wondered if the condition of death is perhaps less grave to the human anatomy than physical injuries. For in death there is release from suffering. Sadly, the master craftsman is unable to instruct us in the healing of wounds."
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