Another re-read. Another worthwhile re-read. I really only meant to look at it again because I’m discussing Kehlmann’s Ruhm, and wanted to check how Mitchell had put his novel of separate stories together, in comparison with Kehlmann. And once again, having started there was no way I was going to put it down; and once again the futuristic section in the middle slowed me right down.
Mitchell starts with the journal of a 19th century lawyer aboard a ship in the South Pacific, moves forward in time to letters from a young Brit who finds work as amanuensis to an ageing composer in Belgium between the two wars, then a thriller style tale set in California in the Seventies, a first person narrative of a vanity publisher who suddenly and fatefully lands a bestseller, an interview with a freed replicant slave in the near future and then a central piece where civilisation as we know it has come to an end. Then the second half of the first six tales is narrated in reverse order so that the end is the journal of the lawyer. The central section is exhausting as Mitchell has invented a dialect that is not easy to read, but nevertheless I’m deeply impressed by Mitchell’s ventriloquism, how he manages to create very different, utterly convincing voices and how he creates the suspense that pushes the narrative forward even though the breaks between the separate stories might bring you up short. I also have great respect for the device of each narrative appearing in the next one, which gives a stringency and structure to the whole, and provides a reward for reading the tales in the order they are printed. These are all elements that are missing from Kehlmann’s ‘novel in nine stories’: the arc and running structural thread is just not there, and a few repeated motifs don’t turn it into a novel.
No comments:
Post a Comment