Something New

 

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

“HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY” by Nicholas Sheppard (Eunoia Publishing, $NZ35);  “OCTAVIAN’S LIGHT” by Don E McGregor (Stargull Publishing, $NZ39.99); “MAKTUB” by Paulo Coelho (Harper One publishing, $NZ35)                                         

            This posting, I am bombarding you with three books that have been around for a few months. 

                                       

I admit to a certain negligence when I come to Nicholas Sheppard’s How to Disappear Completely. It was published in September of last year – that is, a little over eight months ago – but for various reasons, too tiresome to report, I was not able to read it until very recently.

Nicholas Sheppard is American by birth and upbringing, but now resident in New Zealand. This novel (his second) is set in America and deals with a very American situation – the alienation of young men who turn to lethal violence.

For whatever reason (you can work it out for yourself) the main protagonist of How to Disappear Completely is not given a name until the very last page when we learn that his name is Jack, so Jack I will call him.  Jack’s father is largely absent, divorced from Jack’s mother. As the years go by Jack’s mother becomes more and more stricken with chronic fatigue syndrome. She requires much care. Jack feels he is stuck in her deadening home. As a youngster, Jack seems precocious in the way he speaks, but he answers questions in an off-beat way. At high-school he plays with other teenaged boys, but he is seen as a weakling and he is generally humiliated. He retreats into his home and as he gets older he hides in the basement sitting in front of his computer, listening to grunge or thrasher music, watching more and more lurid pornography, and reading the likes of Nietzsche. On come the ideas of natural dominance over “weaker” and redundant people and in no time he’s mentally siding with white supremacists and admiring Nazis. On top of that he has no luck in finding a girlfriend. He pines for a girl called Katie, but at very best she is polite to him. She has no other interest in him. So he’s a loner, he’s loaded with self-pity, he feels he’s unfairly victimised and after dropping out from college his angst gets worse. He gets a gun.

You can see where this is going.

There is, however, another protagonist, taking up almost as much space as Jack. This is the dedicated social worker Clayton who has a very large group of deprived or impoverished people to deal with. Taking us away from the main focus of the novel we are given in detail some of Clayton’s clients. Among them are an Hispanic girl who has been trafficked for sex and is trying to avoid sinking back into prostitution; some drug addicts; a lonely old woman who wants company; and Jack’s chronically sick mother. Clayton is Black. Jack shouts at Clayton and wants him out of the house. Clayton is the only character who intuits where Jack’s ideas are taking him, but Jack bars Clayton from giving him advice. Though the character of Clayton is credible, the detailed accounts of his clients often seem a distraction from the central idea of the novel. Perhaps, though, there is some merit in what we are told about Clayton’s domestic life. He is married to Harriett. She is upset that she has not been given a position in a company that she had aimed for. (It is not said that this was because she is Black, but it is implied.) Despite the difficult jobs Clayton and Harriett have to deal with, however, they stick together and the last we see of them in the novel is almost idyllic. Could  Nicholas Sheppard be suggesting that a couple who look after each other and stay with each other, in spite of hardships, is much healthier than the life of a loner who believes he is superior to everybody? Possibly.

Recently I read a review of a different novel, which the reviewer said relied too much on “didactic exposition”. Sheppard’s prose is generally clear, but I do think there is too much “didactic exposition” when he tells us about the nature of the “dark web”; and the places on- line that could lead young men to adopt destructive ideologies; and the statistics of suicide in America; and the feminism taught in college that enrages Jack; and in fact many things that are more journalism than the psychological case that is the novel’s core.

I appreciate Nicholas Sheppard’s aim in writing this novel – a warning of how lethal ideas can be hatched – but it does sometimes come near to preaching.

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As I’ve said more than once on this blog, I have no prejudice against yarns when they are told well. A good yarn keeps readers turning the page and there’s nothing wrong with that. But there are yarns and there are yarns, and a yarn can sometimes go off the track.

Don E McGregor’s Octavian’s Light is essentially an historical yarn, and a pretty long one – 477 large pages to be precise. The story spans from 56BC to 15AD, tracking the rise of Julius Caesar’s great-nephew Octavian, who eventually becomes the Emperor Augustus. This is seen and reported to us by a Latinised Gaul called Riccar, with other voices sometimes taking over – mainly Riccar’s immediate family, but especially his wife Mischella. In one chapter (Chapter 67) Augustus himself narrates. The fictional Riccar is of course interested not only in the fortunes of Octavian-Augustus but also in the fortunes of his family – a lost mother, his wife, his children, and those servants he acquires. Yes, there is a sort of happy ending for him in the last pages, but not before some severe family tragedies. If you want basic Roman history and familiar set pieces, this might be for you. As expected in this genre of yarn, there are parades as victorious Roman soldiers march through Rome; a couple of circuses where wretched criminals or slaves are torn apart by wild animals; a Roman military camp being set up in a campaign; the slave market; battles etc. etc. It’s a very familiar mix.

But, for this reader at any rate, there are many problems with this novel.

First there is the implausible nature of the leading character, Riccar, who in the end comes across as a fantasy figure rather than as a real person from ancient days. Riccar, so the tale goes, is a guttersnipe who happens to be an artistic genius. He can remember things exactly and can draw them exactly, and when he does portraits he can virtually read the soul of the person being portrayed. Verily Don E McGregor presents him as if he were a painter from centuries later in the Renaissance. Octavian picks Riccar to be in his inner circle, believing Riccar can tell him things about his possible rivals simply by viewing them. He takes Riccar with him on his campaigns, so in effect Riccar becomes the equivalent of a modern certified journalist – or photographer. The real reason the author puts Riccar in Octavian’s inner circle, however, is the easy way to have a narrator who is able to observe all the budding manoeuvres of the growing Octavian. Many other authors of historical novels have used this technique. In fairness to the author, though, I note that the depiction of Octavian-Augustus in this novel is reasonably accurate. He is the young thug who uses violence as he pushes his way into power, but who then becomes relatively benign when he has disposed of most of his rivals and has supreme rule over an empire. Even so, the benevolence Octavian sprinkles over Riccar’s family seems over the top and unlikely.

Regrettably too, there are insinuated modern sentiments – that is, unlikely things that are supposedly said by people approximately 2000 years ago. This is a fatal trap for novelists who attempt to fictionalise the past. The historical facts (wars, famines, political manoeuvres) can be depicted credibly, but too many writers of historical novels then proceed to assume that people hundreds of hundreds of years ago thought just as we do – or, more often, historical novels will insert one major character who thinks just as we do. They fail to get into the soul of another era and how people then thought. Thus we have Riccar and his wife Mischella a number of times saying how bad colonisation is (i.e. the spread of the Roman Empire). They may be Gauls resenting the Roman capture of Gaul… but as for colonialism in general?? The characterisation is too pat, too flat.

Finally, there is what I can only call “History Lite” – the way we are neatly fed historical events, almost like bulletins. Most often it is the centurion Arman, a sort of bodyguard for Riccar and his family, who neatly gives us history lessons on Rome and its rulers; or he gives lessons on current affairs such as the assassination of Julius Caesar. Riccar himself is present at some momentous events involving Octavian, but the big historical events read like a fairly elementary history.

If you are not too well versed in Roman history, some of this long tale will be revealing and enjoyable – but watch out for the matter-of-fact prose.

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     Eight years ago on this blog, I tore apart Paulo Coelho’s novel The Spy, about Mata Hari. I saw it as a naïve novel pandering to current tastes. However, I knew that the Brazilian author has a huge number of fans around the world – so I thought it was only decent to take a look as his most recent book to prove if I had judged his work too harshly. Maybe there was something worthwhile in his work after all.

            As it happens, his most recent work to be published in the English language is Maktub … but it turns out to be a work that was first published in the Portuguese language thirty years ago, in 1994. More important, it is not a narrative  novel. It is a collection of brief anecdotes which originally appeared in a newspaper column. Coelho is in the business of being “inspirational”. Most of his (very) short anecdotes are conversations between a “master” and a “disciple”;  or they are tales told by a wise monk to a wavering believer. The imagery is very Catholic, with angels frequently appearing to set thing straight and proving that God is right, and many references to the Virgin Mary. Nearly all the anecdotes have a neat conclusion like an Aesop’s fable.

            I’m not hostile to religious tales, but in the inevitability of each story, Maktub does become repetitive. This little book does have wide margins, padding out the book. There is a market for this sort of thing, so I hope they enjoy it..