“A meditation on grief and loss with some sex in it.”
One day, on the outskirts of a small town, a mountain suddenly appears. This novel, written like a myth, chronicles the effect the mountain has on the lives of those living near it.
The most distinctive feature of this novel is its prose style. It is written in a deliberately simplistic manner, baldly stating facts, with a lot of repetition. It reminded me of the way that a myth is written: this hero did this, this happened, then he did this. It reminded me of the first paragraph of Kafka's Metamorphosis: "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes." This is telling a fantastic story but it does it in such a pedestrian style that it allows no speculation as to how it can possibly be true. Compare it with four paragraphs taken from Book 3 (Elaine is not cold) of Ghost Mountain:
“As she was explaining everything she thought, ‘Am I cold? Is this a cold thing to think?’
But it was not a cold thing to think.
Elaine asked him what he would do afterwards.
Dominic said he would join a monastery. or he would go back to being the town drunk.”
Perhaps the only way to tell a fantastic myth is to do it simplistically.
The other feature of the story is the repetition of leitmotifs, something else that crops up in myths and religious texts. For example, it seems that no-one can lie down on Ghost Mountain without feeling the discomfort of a stone pressing against their tailbone. Two characters in separate incidents lose their front teeth. A mother and daughter both vomit into a patch of nettles, although one does it because she is dying and the other because she is pregnant. One character enjoys watching European films, each one being described in the same was, as “a meditation on grief and loss with some sex in it.” (Book 1: Ocho wasn't always like this)
There's also an unsettling moment (Book 2: Weeping Mountain) when a character seems to become another character momentarily while in a lift. Please tell me that's not a misprint!
It is these features that make the book haunting (like the mountain, brooding over the landscape) and, despite the echoes of Kafka (and, perhaps, of Ivy Compton-Burnett), utterly original. Other reviewers have detected a Japanese influence and it has also been described as 'post-modern'.
Selected quotes:
- “The new overseas landowner of Ghost Mountain sat at his desk, eating a sandwich he had bought from his savings. What he thought of as his savings was actually the limited spare capacity on his credit card.” (1: Overseas landowner)
- “He opened the cupboard to look for food but all he saw were ingredients.” (1: Ruth not with you?)
- “Ruth distrusted organised people. Organised people liked to take over, while pretending they were not taking over. Organised people liked to shape things their way and call it helping.” (1: Night on Ghost Mountain.)
- “They had organised a celebration or commemoration or festival. The organised people always seem to be carried away with something or other. They had a whole story about why the date was significant. It all sounded simplistic to Ruth. They were building a bonfire and playing crude, repetitive music. Drugs were involved.” (1: Bitter soup)
- “He and Ruth were like two sides of the same ladder. Her death was a sundering of the ladder down the middle. Holding one half of a ladder is in no way comparable to holding one side of a complete ladder.” (2: Ocho)
- “She thought about how even though young women were so pretty and older men were not so generally pretty, an older man with two missing teeth could still be a cause of jealousy.” (2: Is he dead?)
- “For the first time, Elaine began to understand likeness in her painting. It was not about recording what somebody looked like so that they could always look that way. It was about capturing a moment of change. A simultaneous moment of change in the subject and in the artist.” (2: Likeness)
- “She thought about the artist thinking about his meat pictures. How was he so sure they were terrible? That they weren't terrible art.” (3: Meat Gallery)
- “Ursula did not like landscapes. ... Most of all she disliked the mental projection that landscapes involved. The fly tipping of the mind onto the landscape. The turning of the landscape into things. Into metaphors.” (3: Ghost Mountain)
- “He had learned that credit disguised failure as success. That a person who owned and owed a lot was viewed as rich whereas a person who owned and owed a little was considered poor. That a rich person was someone who had access to credit and that a poor person was someone who had no access to credit.” (3: Christopher)
- “Dominic was no longer Elaine's husband. He was what was called a widower. That word felt new and also very old. It felt like a word that had been worn by many people and which was now offered to him to wear, even though it did not fit him. It felt too big and baggy and heavy. It was not tailored and had no lines. It was generic and it generically erased his past except for one event. My wife has died, it says. And that is who I am now.” (3: Diesel)
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