Greenland is the night that separated the evening when I retired to sleep, cheerful and young, from the morn when I awoke a palsied old man
The book is
Greenland is the night that separated the evening when I retired to sleep, cheerful and young, from the morn when I awoke a palsied old man
The book is set in the last two decades of the 18th Century, mainly in Denmark and its then colony Greenland. The main character of the book (told in a series of lengthy point of view chapters written from in the third person and present tense) is Morten Falck, the son of a Norwegian schoolmaster and newly ordained as a priest. After five years in Copenhagen and a love affair which he terminates, he accepts a post as a missionary to the Inuit inhabitants of Greenland, based at one of the Danish trading posts there.
At that post he forms strong links with the trader’s wife and with two locals: “the widow”, who arrives at the trading post one day with a young daughter seeking work and who becomes his housekeeper and eventually lover; his catechist (or assistant as priest) Bertel Jensen. Two other religious figures also feature heavily in the story: another priest – the Missionary Oxbow, whose bastards seem to litter the island; the Prophets of the Eternal Fjord a (historically existing) religious commune run by two Inuit converts, Habakkuk – a charismatic preacher - and Maria Magdalene – who sees visions from Jesus, considered as heretics by the official church and as potential rebels by the Danish authorities. The book contains lengthy set pieces – for example on Morten’s perilous sea journey to his new post (with a cow as his main luggage); on his walking journey across Norway back to his home at the end of his time in Greenland; of Bertel’s adventures as a harpoonist on a whaling ship when he leaves the trading post after the death of his son; of the great Fire of Copenhagen which Morten witnesses on his return to the City).
However the majority of the book examines the hardness of life on Greenland (with graphic detail of rape, a bodged abortion, bodily fluids and functions, medical procedures) and of the inequities of the Danish colonisation.
Overall an epic and hugely atmospheric novel – one I read in a single sitting which added to its impact and perhaps made the changing timelines and list of supporting characters easier to follow. My only disappointment with the book is that the two Copenhagen based sections which book end the novel and take more than 100 excellently written pages would perhaps by better in a different novel, but are covered in more detail than the Prophets themselves....more
The emptier one’s life, the more it is people by those who have already gone, the exiled, the insane, the dead. In Kulumani, we all idolize the dea
The emptier one’s life, the more it is people by those who have already gone, the exiled, the insane, the dead. In Kulumani, we all idolize the dead, for in them we preserve the deepest roots of our dreams
The story is set in a village Kulumani which is suffering from a series of fatal lion attacks. The book is alternately told by two first party narrators – Mariamar, the sister of the most recent victim and Archie (Archangel) Bullseye a hunter sent to deal with the lions. Both have complex and analogous family backstories involving: a sense of family destiny now coming to an end (Mariamar’s grandfather was a de facto village chieftain, Archie is the last of a line of legendary hunters); abuse (Mariamar’s father appears to have raped his children, Archie’s caused his wife’s death after a crude chastity operation and was in turn shot by Archie’s brother); madness (Mariamar and her mother both seen as eccentrics, Archie’s brother in an asylum). They also were linked – 16 years ago (when Mariamar was 16) Archie visited the village to hunt a crocodile, saved Mariamar from police abuse and seems to have had a one-night relationship with her, forgotten by him due to his drunkenness but which has dominated Mariamar’s life ever since as she thought it was her ticket to escape the narrowness of her village life and the abuse of her father.
The story of both Archie but particularly Mariamar mixes and contrasts: traditional practice and superstition with religion; the City and town with the country; the official local government with the reality of tribal and village practices; the tangible world of the living with the intangible influence and presence of the dead; apparent reality with the world of dreams and visions. A key theme is the marginalised role of women in Mozambique society. Kulumani is still recovering from the effects of a brutal civil war, and even still recovering from the more ancient impact of colonialism and even before that the slave trade.
From what seems a series of potentially interesting premises though, the book never really finds its way.
The biggest difficulty is that while the book is written in a kind of magic realist style, there is too much magic and close to no realism.
The story of the lions is never vaguely plausible as anything other than allegory, parable and fantasy – not helped by the opening to the book when in an Author’s note Couto claims the story is based on a real incident, in which he was involved, when there was a series of fatalities from lion attacks around a town in Northern Mozambique, but then goes on to say that the hunters sent to kill the lions “underwent two months of frustration and terror ………. [and] gradually .. realized that he mysteries they were having to confront were merely symptoms of social conflicts for which they had no adequate solution”.
Explaining the central analogy to the book before it even begins seems very clumsy and heavy handed and is only matched by the equally clumsy and heavy handed dialogue, with almost all the characters speaking in a portentous, dull way....more
A very well written book in individual passages and moods which are reminiscent of Andreï Makine and an interesting discussion of an ordinary life whiA very well written book in individual passages and moods which are reminiscent of Andreï Makine and an interesting discussion of an ordinary life which draws flattering comparisons to Stoner or Gilead – however the book simply lacks the weight to convey a whole life, in particular the avalanche which kills the narrators wife is clichéd and the treatment of the war and prison camp simply too perfunctory – nevertheless an enjoyable, easy read....more
Gustavo “Highway” Sanchez is (in his own telling, or as we later learn an autobiography written after his death) a factory security manager in a juiceGustavo “Highway” Sanchez is (in his own telling, or as we later learn an autobiography written after his death) a factory security manager in a juice factory which funds a huge art gallery, who retrains as an auctioneer. He invents his own theory of auctioneering whereby he assigns greater value to objects by spinning fictional stories about their provenance (most noticeably auctioning his own removed teeth while claiming they belong to historical literary and art figures) and even auctions (stolen) modern art exhibits by spinning allegorical stories inspired by them.
The book we learn in an afterword by the author was written for an exhibition in the non-fictional juice funded gallery – and clearly is meant to reflect on how art objects acquire or lose value by their context and the associations around them or in the author’s words
How do art objects acquire value …..How does distancing an object … from its context in a gallery … effect its meaning and interpretation …. How do discourse, narrative, and authorial signatures or names modify the way we perceive artwork and literary texts
In this spirit I only read the book due to its shortlisting for major literary price (The International Dublin Literary award) http://www.dublinliteraryaward.ie/. With or without this context, and perhaps distanced from the original purpose of the novel, I was unable to assign any significant value to this artwork and did not perceive anything of real interest or merit in this literary text....more
We were displaced persons, but it was time more than space that defined us. While the distance to return to our lost country was far but finite, th
We were displaced persons, but it was time more than space that defined us. While the distance to return to our lost country was far but finite, the number of years it would take to close that distance was potentially infinite. Thus for displaced persons, the first question was always about time. When can I return …………. Refugee, exile, immigrant – whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backwards in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock .. was that we were only going in circles.
These are the reflections of the narrator as he views a clock (carved into the shape of Vietnam but with the hands pivoting in the South around Saigon and the clock set to Vietnamese time) on the wall of the small Vietnamese restaurant the General and his wife open in exile in the US, to their despair given its squalidness
In my view these reflections would serve equally if not better as an introduction to Nguyen’s more recent The Refugees which examine the Vietnamese dispora in America via a series of short-stories.
Unusually given my strong (and almost universal) preference for the novel over the short story form I preferred The Refugees to “The Sympathizer”.
Overall I found the blend of characters and situations in the former more nuanced, revealing and intriguing, whereas in this novel the interesting themes above were for me swamped by the implausibly wide range of different narrative scenarios experienced by the single narrator in this novel (dramatic evacuation from Saigon just before its fall, undercover spying, assassinations of communist sympathizers in America, post-war mission into the Vietnamese borders, detailed torture scenes both as perpetrator, accomplice and victim and above all a rather bizarre intermission as a type of cultural advisor to an apocalyptic Hollywood Vietnamese war movie).
Perhaps also I am of a generation and nationality where the Vietnam war simply does not have the same cultural resonance as it would for other readers....more
Story revolving around Jude, a very successful litigation attorney with a traumatic past and those whose lives revolve around him, in particular: his Story revolving around Jude, a very successful litigation attorney with a traumatic past and those whose lives revolve around him, in particular: his three college friends – JB (an erratic black artist who gets his fame from paintings of photographs of the four friends), Malcolm (a brilliant black architect) but more particularly Willem, Jude’s closet friend who eventually becomes his lover as well as a world famous actor; his law professor Harold who with his wife adopts Jude when is he 30; Andy – a Doctor who treats Jude at college and becomes the only member of the medical profession he will trust as well as the closest he has to a confidant.
Very memorable and ultimately harrowing not for the very difficult abuse passages, but far more for the lasting effect that they have on Jude’s life. At passages, particularly in the middle of the book, the times the reader (alongside the characters – and most noticeably his adopted father whose first person narrated sections are the most striking and poignant in the book) longs for Jude to finally realise that he is loved or for some form of retributive justice to be exercised in his name.
What is particularly admirable in a book which explicitly namechecks and lives out the American dream, is the way that the author rejects any form of ultimate redemption and makes it clear that the greatest career, the most amazing houses, the most successful and interesting friends, and the unconditional devoted and sacrificial love of friends cannot overcome the physical but more importantly psychological after effects of abuse.
However the book is not an enjoyable read – both significantly too long, and with the equally unlikeable contrast of harrowing and completely overblown tales of abuse and ludicrously and obnoxiously successful and self-satisfied characters.
The book also suffers from a ridiculous sense of time and place – despite being set over apparently around 40 or more years in the characters’ lives, the world setting for the entire period is rich New York in the mid 2000’s contemporary.
It also suffers from its incredible (in the literal sense) but one can only assume deliberate lack of wider perspective.
Firstly in the book itself: given its time and place setting to not even mention 9/11 is astonishing; the rest of the US let alone the Rest of the World exists only as a venue for the characters to own, build or rent sumptuous holiday homes – even as the book is closing Jude arranges for Willem to have a private personal opening of the Alhambra.
Secondly in the life and times of the characters - those around Jude are seemingly obsessed with Jude to the complete exclusion of all other parts of, or people in, their lives and to the point of implausibility, Andy for example seemingly basing his entire practice around Jude and being capable of treating any type of physical condition while still maintaining a successful practice, JB apparently becoming a world famous artist from taking pictures of other characters looking at Jude, Malcolm largely designing properties for Jude.
Interestingly the Jude character is seen by all of the other characters as remarkable for their whole lives, whereas even the emotionally hooked reader after 300 pages starts after 500-600 pages to despair of his self-absorption and selfishness.
The author appears to have made a number of deliberate choices and effectively based the timelessness, one person fixation, the implausible successes and the equally implausible abuse on fairy tales – but the authors attempts to sustain this over a 800 page pretentiously literary novel more than jar with the reader....more
Ostensibly the story of a reclusive Portuguese lady Ludo who after “the accident” lives with her sister and subsequently moved to Angola with her afteOstensibly the story of a reclusive Portuguese lady Ludo who after “the accident” lives with her sister and subsequently moved to Angola with her after her sister’s marriage and lived in a luxury apartment. After her sister and brother in law disappear following the declaration of Angolan independence, Ludo bricks herself in the apartment and lives there (alone other than for pets) for 30 years.
A book which completely fails to live up to (in fact does not even try to live up) to its premise – the contrast between Ludo’s isolation and unchanged situation and a country and city torn between civil war and rapid transformation.
We get no sense of Ludo’s isolation other than very short scenes of her hunting pigeons or burning furniture for fuel and frequent snatches of poetry that she supposedly writes on the wall (and which simply read like another book).
Instead the author ranges, almost George R. R. Martin style, around a large and confusing list of characters such as Ludo’s own daughter, an investigative journalist specialising in disappearances, a Portuguese torturer left for dead after a botched execution, some tribesmen, a political prisoner turned businessman, an intelligence agent turned into a private detective, a child street criminal –the author then simply has all of the characters arrive at once (and turn out to be completely interrelated) just as Ludo leaves her apartment for the first time.
Clearly the book’s themes are forgetting (particularly of unsavoury past events or happenings) and for the reader that is the best attitude to take to the book....more
A good but not excellent book – great at picking out family tensions, and interesting for how we see a detailed snapshot of each character but have toA good but not excellent book – great at picking out family tensions, and interesting for how we see a detailed snapshot of each character but have to peace together their development until 2005 (particularly for the bitter, alcoholic Hanna) but one where the overall narrative does not really hang together....more
Mevlut moves to Istanbul to join his father (who together with his brother – Mevlut’s Uncle) moves from a small villEpic family tale set in Istanbul.
Mevlut moves to Istanbul to join his father (who together with his brother – Mevlut’s Uncle) moves from a small village to Istanbul and starts work as a yoghurt trader. Mevlut’s Uncle and particularly his children (Mevlut’s two cousins) get more involved in property development (and in time right-wing politics) and middle-class success while Mevlut stays in relative poverty as a street vendor of Boza – a drink of fermented wheat (which traditionally was taken as non-alcoholic and so acceptable to Muslims).
The real character though is Istanbul – and its development over a 20-30 year period (against a background of world events).
Mevlut himself is a simple good-natured character full of nostalgia for an increasingly lost world which his stubbornness in selling Boza echoes – and he himself serves for other characters both as an emblem of backwardness (mainly for his cousins) and for many of his customers as an emblem of nostalgic tradition in a rapidly transforming world.
Overall an enjoyable and deeply evocative novel - with one of my favourite cities as a key character. ...more
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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