This is an interesting book and worth persisting with,
despite the flaws that I will mention in a moment. It is difficult to allocate
it to a genre. I suppose it fits into the ‘literary fiction’ catchall, but that
doesn’t say much. There is almost an air of magical realism about the book. I
say ‘almost’, because the elements that contribute to this impression turn out
to have a logical explanation: for example, a prisoner finding writing upon the
wall of a prison cell that relates directly to his own life. For a moment the
laws of nature appear fragile. Almost.
The story begins with a family situation, Howard and his
parents, which ends with a death. This then segues into the trial of a young
man, Ethan, for murder; he is suspected of being a notorious serial killer. The
connection between these two parts of the story is not immediately obvious.
This then segues into the story of Jack, which is written by Jack himself on
the walls of Ethan’s cell. This, then, becomes a first person narrative,
whereas the surrounding story is in the third person. Again, the connection of
this story with the other stories is not immediately apparent, but gradually
emerges. This is a very successful and clever device, despite the apparent
implausibility. Then the different strands of the story begin to interact and
are skilfully woven together. Even minor characters in the story—a lawyer, a
policeman, a forensic investigator—find their place in the back story that
emerges.
This is cleverly done, and I think it works, although I did
at times find myself a little confused, wondering if the ‘Matt’ (for example)
mentioned at this part of the story was the same as the ‘Matt’ mentioned
earlier. I think I had it sorted in the end, although one or two nagging doubts
about who was who, when and where, remained.
The characters are well drawn and complex. I particularly
liked the character of Jack, whose story is written on the cell wall. I am not
always a fan of first person narration, but I think this works particularly
well. The writing of this particular stream of the narrative was also of a
higher quality.
This brings me to the major flaws of the book. In many
places the English is very poor. There is poor grammar and incorrect word choice.
I imagine that English is not the author’s first language. Several times,
particularly early on, I almost gave up on the book because of this, although I
am glad that I didn’t. The language at times is excessively flowery, and the
characters and narrator are sometimes prone to lapsing into philosophical
discourses. This may work well with an Indian audience (the author was born in
India) but less so with a Western audience. Although there are still flaws in
the ‘Jack’ narrative, I thought the writing was of a higher quality, at times
even acquiring a certain beauty.
Many will be put off by the flaws in the writing, or will
not have the patience to wait for the strands of the story to be woven
together; but those who persist to the end will, I think, be pleased with the
result.
I have decided to no longer rate books using the star system. I don't think it is helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment