Walking backwards in Lisbon,a gruesome autopsy, a tale of man and ape … Martel saves the best until final in this collection of strange and farcical storiesThe tall Mountains of Portugal, and in Yann Martel’s novel of that name,turn out to be grassy uplands rather than tall mountains; and the book turns out to be three stories rather than a novel. The stories, connected ingeniously, and vary greatly in tone and quality. The first two display so little of the author’s narrative skill that they may offer more temptation to stop reading than to proceed on. Liking the final fraction of the book much better,I could wish that it stood alone.
In Martel’s Booker-winning Life of Pi, the author within the story tells us that he went to India with the intention of writing a novel set in Portugal. Then he met the Indian who told him the tale of Pi, and and Portugal was forgotten. It’s recollected in the first fraction of this book in great detail: “He heads off down Rue São Miguel on to Largo São Miguel and then Rua de São João da Praça before turning on to Arco de Jesus.” This sort of street-rosary may delight Lisbon initiates but to others is made titillating only by the fact that the protagonist,Tomas, is walking backwards, and that he always does so. After some elaborate rationales for walking backwards,and a farcical encounter with a lamppost, we learn that he walks with “his back to the world, or his back to God”,not because he is grieving for the sudden, recent death of his wife, or his child,and his father, but because “he is objecting”.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com