If someone asked me what I thought was the best novel in the world, I'd say this one; it's desert island material. Rooted in a bizarre historical event, the story branches off to address the horrors of academia, the complexities of madness and sanity, the identical nature of human and animal, and the mad beauty of the organic world, but this story goes far beyond its probing themes and fits itself together in a structure so satisfying that I felt grateful to the author for his care and craft. The main character, Hope, walks like a ghost through a vivid world bursting with loud, demanding people. She is almost breathtakingly unaware of herself, but catalogues the world around her like the scientist she is, missing the meanings until they explode, and so is in a constant sort of
Hejira, always retreating to keep her integrity. And she
does keep her integrity, and so we are carried along in the chaos of her life, making sense of outrageous fortune, and then, finally, just seeking an honest path to tread.
This is one of the books, like
The Risk Pool, that I got in Slovakia, so I read it there, for the first time. (See that entry for details). An American woman with Slovak parents came to teach at our university. She'd been planning and saving for that trip for years, but then someone back home took sick and she only got to stay a couple of week, and that meant that she didn't need the cache of books she'd brought. She had
I Claudius and
Hotel Du Lac and I don't know what all, but it was a feast for my hungry mind, in a town where it was a rare treat to have a conversation in English. This is not that exact copy, though. This is another of those books I never have around because I keep giving them away, but there was one on the free desk in the library, so I picked up and read it again with relish about a year ago.
I think I need to hang onto this a little longer. Maybe it find a proper home.
Score - +1 (4 saved, 3 released)
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