Mona DashA Roll of the Dice

Abstract

fathers and sons at getting inside one another’s heads. So what does this meeting with a blind, crazy astronomer mean for the philosopher Leibniz? It is quite wonderful to contemplate The Organs of Sense as the tragicomic illustration of Leibniz’s universe of selfcontained monads between which no communication is possible. Arthur Willemse University of Maastricht Erik Martiny Ne soyez pas timide Paris. Pierre-Guillaume de Roux. 2019. 302 pages. After a novel written in English, The Pleasures of Queuing (2018), Erik Martiny has produced a French-language novel that is somewhat similar in terms of its grotesquely comic tone. The apparent protagonist and narrator of Ne soyez pas timide (Don’t be shy) is a fifty-year-old high school teacher who has an affair with one of his teenage students. However, this initial storyline is quickly overtaken by a subplot that grows to the point of filling most of the novel and brings the reader back to the Paris (and, more surprisingly, Thailand) of the interwar years. The writer and director Jean Cocteau takes center stage during much of the oversized subplot, initiating a young and very shy narrator into a world of drugs (mostly opium), sex, and bizarre social experiments (including living as a panhandler), all of which is presumably designed to shatter the narrator’s bourgeois inhibitions and guide him, however harshly and awkwardly, toward his emergence as a full-fledged writer. The middle-aged Cocteau as a literary mentor and sexual initiator to inexperienced young men is more than plausible. The rest of the novel is an exercise in Rabelaisian humor, alternating between learned disquisitions and outlandishly disgusting sexual and/ or scatological encounters. Martiny lives in France and teaches British and American literature. Unsurprisingly, his novel is full of references and allusions to writers,suchasGuillaumeApollinaire,Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Franz Kafka, and Vladimir Nabokov. Greek mythology is also referenced through a character named Tirésias. As for the second narrator, his ludicrous name is Thomas Corbillard (hearse). The linguistic profusion favored by the author regularly overtakes any notion of narrative continuity. Seemingly intent on providing advance warning as to his literary methods and objectives, the narrator often appeals directly to the reader: “Don’t hold it against me when I resort to puns, to digressions”; “if you only appreciate friendly and admirable characters, stop reading this book.” The title of the novel itself can be seen as an admonishment to readers, who are called upon to transcend their shyness and immerse themselves in this raunchy, profane version of a bildungsroman. Edward Ousselin Western Washington University Mona Dash A Roll of the Dice London. Linen Press. 2019. 302 pages. Mona Dash’s debut memoir , A Roll of the Dice, is an odyssey of an invincible mother who, despite her best efforts, loses her firstborn son diagnosed with SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency). The etiology of this disease is perhaps not known yet, and, therefore, the treatment is not possible in India’s underdeveloped medical system. The death of her son proves to be a cornerstone of a decisive change in her life and perhaps the genesis of this book. Knowing that if she bears a child again, her next child may well be inflicted with the same disease, her intense desire to be prepared leads her to London, where she procures a job and makes a new home. A Roll of the Dice is a story of the glorious transformation of a woman; her sense of unassimilable loss and abiding hopes go hand in hand throughout the book. Although the void of her first lost child reverberates so often, her astute circumspection , conjectural observations, and unwavering trust propel her toward becoming a mother again. Dash’s story is emblematic of life’s unpredictability, darting back and forth between sudden delightfulness and creeping despair. Divided into six sections with an introduction by Bobby Gasper, a professor of pediatrics and immunology, the book describes SCID in a meticulous fashion. At some instances, the memoir reads like a drab manual of medical science dealing with diseases and prognoses. However, the simple narrative tapestry of the book is spun around the medical terms sprinkled throughout its pages. As a hawk...