“The Porpoise“ by Mark Haddon:
Life is fragile and nothing can be taken for granted. - This motto might as well apply for this novel. It is a gripping adventure, a fast paced narrative, a stunning telling of a multi-layered tale. It is full of beautiful prose and themes of love, cruelty, abuse and family. It stretches the mind with metafictional structure and references to Greek Mythology and Shakespeare.
This contemporary story mirrors the ancient legend of Antiochus, whose incestuous love for the daughter of his dead wife was discovered and threatened to expose by the young adventurer Appolinus of Tyre. Much later it inspired Shakespeare to write his play “Pericles”.
Starting with one of the most fast-paced fulminant beginnings I have encountered for a long time, this novel wanders between genres: Fantasy, tragedy, Greek mythology and adventure. In imaginative vivid detail the mythology is pulled into the present with intertwined narratives about fathers, daughters, mothers and men who threaten them.
In its quick wanderings from realism to epic to family tragedy and back again the book is a bravado act of storytelling, an astonishing feat. The use of language is dazzling, beautiful in its descriptions of places, landscapes, people, situations, complex emotions. It is full of love and cruelty in many forms, again showing that man is wolf to man, its own worst enemy.
The novel is clearly fueled by the love of storytelling but it is not only a metafictional game but also a bow to the power of literature, its ability to touch and alter our lives, to consume us for a moment and transport us to a different reality. It is simply a great joy to read!
#robertfaeth, #painterinBerlin, #painting, #art, #bookblog, #bookreviews, #literaturelover, #poem, #poetry
No comments:
Post a Comment