This unusual book showcases the author’s versatility
and ingenuity: the versatility with six writing styles deployed in six
different settings; and the ingenuity by the structure, as each story unfolds
in succession with tenuous but compelling links to its predecessor.
The first story starts, then is suspended
midway and another begins; then it too is interrupted to start the next, and so
on. It is nested like a set of Russian dolls, but I think of it more like a
necklace. Each component is its own polished gem, cut in half and strung
symmetrically around a central pearl. Thus:
A nineteenth century diary relates the
experiences of a South Seas voyager; years later, between the world wars, it is
discovered in a Belgian country house and mentioned in letters from an
itinerant rake of a composer who is working there to his student friend in
Cambridge; the friend becomes a top nuclear physicist and a key character in a sixties
thriller; the manuscript of which is sent years later to a current day vanity
publisher and read while comically incarcerated in a home for the elderly; his
attempted escape becomes a cult movie in a global corporation dominated future,
which is mentioned in the account given by a cloned worker of the transcendence
of her destiny and the consternation it caused to the ruling elite; this is recorded
on a futuristic media platform which, as a relic, turns up further in the
future within the final tale, related in the oral tradition, by a post-apocalyptic
survivor in Hawaii.
You get the idea; the tales are then
completed in reverse order – having climbed the mountain and been left with
five cliff hangers, the descent is massively satisfying.
Whatever the simile – nested dolls, strung necklace,
or mountain journey – it is a master work by a master at his craft.
No comments:
Post a Comment