Month: July 2012

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker

Just finished The Twin, literally minutes ago, and want to get my thoughts down as quickly as possible. Not because I’m so very excited. It’s just that I know I have a problem doing a proper review after a few days have passed, and the truth is I don’t even know what I think of this book right now. Maybe I should let it marinate, but just in case, here goes.

The original title in Dutch is Boven Is Het Stil, which translates roughly to “Above Is Quiet.” I would have liked to have known that, as the novel begins with the main character, Helmer, swapping rooms with his dying father, moving the old man into a room upstairs in the house they share. And then there’s the metaphor for heaven that “Above” suggests… not the heaven of paradise, but the heaven of where dead people go. Helmer is a man who, now in his fifties, is largely defined by the dead—his mother, his twin brother, his soon to be dead father. Not to mention a surfeit of dead animals throughout, which has only now occurred to me, upon reflection. If Helmer is defined by these deaths, and the dead are quiet, then Helmer is quiet too.

Quiet in the sense of silent, and Bakker repeatedly mentions sounds: a buzzing electric clock, a small radio playing jazz… but I don’t recall his making much of barnyard animals sounds, the sheep and chickens and cows. Helmer has no voice, can’t express his desires, doesn’t even know what his desires may be. His best hoping at finding desire at all is in putting a map on the wall of his bedroom.

And quiet in the sense of still, in that Helmer is unmoving, frozen by the deaths of those around him. At the moment when he would have become his own person, going off into the world to make himself into whatever he could, his brother dies, forcing him to return to the farm and take up the role his brother would have taken. Not exactly a square peg in a round hole, but nevertheless not the life he might have led, and certainly not the son his father would have chosen.

But this is not a maudlin story, a tale of tragedy and bitterness and regret. It’s sad, yes, the kind of sad you accept because that’s the way of life. Bakker, in Colmer’s translation, is gentle, simple, contemplative, without being barren or terse or merely laconic. Dutch winters are cold without being harsh, and spring is just another season, without being lush or refreshing. Sheep give birth to lambs, and some of them are stillborn—that’s the way of things.

This is a book that is rich with symbols and images, and plenty of opportunity for any given reader to bring as much as he or she wants to a reading. What do you make of the two donkeys, the television set, the binoculars, the broken bicycle, the windmill… I could go on. I mean this as only high praise, that this is a book that will be read and taught and examined and cherished.

Or, take it as it stands—a simple story about a sad man.

View all my reviews

Machine Man by Max Barry

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In my reviews of Barry’s Jennifer Government and Company, I called his style “a bit stark, a bit plain, matter-of-fact.” Here in Machine Man, the narration is in first person, so this same style comes across as slightly autistic (or as if the narrator has Asperger’s, for those who insist on term for the popular understanding of socially functional autism). Perhaps a bit of a stereotype for lab engineer, but then Barry doesn’t seem interested in bogging down his novel in superfluous details, so why should his narrator. And that’s not just a quip on my part—at one point, his character stops even going home, choosing to live at work instead. This doesn’t have much to do with the story; it’s as much a convenience for the author and the reader as it is for the character.

What we have here is Flowers for Algernon by way of Frankenstein by way of Robocop. And while my personal critical point of view has never been of the historical variety, I can’t help but think how Barry’s novel changes how I see each of those other texts. Or even a story like that laughable movie Limitless (which I just found out was based on a book, so maybe I’ll add it my to-read list, if only for yet another perspective on this type of tale). Combine the basic Greek tragedy, with its heroes and hubris and falls from grace, but attach a good-old-fashioned self-made man story at the beginning. That the main character in Machine Man is literally self-made is even more compelling.

Again, I’m drawn to a more historical analysis than anything else. The self-made-man story is very much an American ideal, and thus it begs the question if Machine Man (or Flowers or Frank or Robo) is a cautionary tale about where the United States is heading. Certainly in these times of economic struggle, it’s looking more and more like “The Great Experiment” has run its course and we’re all doomed to become Canadians. But then I can’t think of a time when we didn’t say we were struggling with a difficult economy, so this is, like those Greek tragedies, a timeless story.

That’s reading way too much into it, of course, and this is supposed to be a review, not a sophomore essay. Fine. I thought Jennifer Government was clever and Company exploited a sense of irony, but here in Machine Man Barry trades in those forces to instead write something a little more human, which itself is ironic given what the main character goes through, not mention clever. And he achieves it, as I said above, within a very matter-of-fact style of narration, holding us emotionally at arm’s length which nevertheless makes us feel even more for the main character. His flaws are our own.

A magnum opus, then? Not quite. I think Barry’s got chops, and I think his greatest work is still to come. And if nothing else, reading Machine Man will lend that much more perspective to his other work. Max Barry is still building himself, and I’m looking forward to the results.

View all my reviews