en passant, a critical history of the way we have been thinking and writing about children. “In exchange for love,” he observes at one point, “the children are required to uphold the myth of their innocence. Not only do they have to be innocent, they have to perform it.” To be sure, the story of the children whose language remains as much a mystery as their origins and whereabouts is in itself masterly told and easily captures the attention of the reader the way a Hitchcock movie entices us at times to identify with the perspective of the intruder. The real pleasure of the text, however, originates with the dense and elegantly woven net of cultural, sociological, and psychological references to our imaginations about childhood. It is simply fascinating to see how the author has the gang of the destitute children roam though the streets of the city while seducing the city’s own children and terrifying their parents, who begin to look at their own kids with different eyes. One needs to turn to the novels of José Saramago to find similarly empathetic, intelligent, and moving accounts of hysteria engulfing communities by a blight that they don’t understand, not because it is so very foreign, but instead so very close to them. “Childhood is stronger than fiction,” muses Barba’s narrator. His creator has convinced us that this piece of fiction about childhood is among the strongest to be found on the shelves of our libraries. Thomas Nolden Wellesley College Marie-Helene Bertino Parakeet New York. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2020. 240 pages. FOUR DAYS BEFORE HER wedding to an elementary school principal, our protagonist , known only as the bride, is confronted by her grandmother, in the form of a parakeet, who tells her to find her estranged brother, a reclusive playwright who made his name writing one of the worst moments of his sister’s life. Once found, her brother confides that she has transitioned and goes by the name of Simone . The pair, over the next few days, find their way back to each other as sisters. All the while, the bride’s wedding plans fall down—literally—around them. Marie-Helene Bertino’s second novel, Parakeet, is a weird, ultimately uplifting journey, equal parts whimsy and wisdom. She draws in her audience with eccentricity and levels them with devastating, relatable, human thoughts. She makes readers vulnerable , more connected, laughing along the way. Her razor-sharp, observant eye recreates ultraspecific details and thoroughly rounded characters through the strength of her skill on the level of the sentence. The magic in Bertino’s writing comes when her individually laudable sentences are pieced together like a mosaic. Her choices are purposeful, meticulous even, but the effect is delightful, seamless, and unexpected. She includes unique images that do double work for the novel: not only do they advance plot, but they also serve to more deeply expand our understanding of the characters. Every line works with those around it to evoke a deliberate picture and feeling. Her avian word choices (“perched”; “my heart beats solid in its cage”; “I hold my sister’s hand, a small, precious bird”) Books in Review Jon Fosse The Other Name: Septology I–II Trans. Damion Searls. Oakland, California . Transit Books. 2020. 340 pages. JON FOSSEisawell-knownandrevered multiple award-winning writer in his native Norway. He has published for more than twenty years across genres as a playwright, poet, essayist, children’s author, short-story writer, and novelist. He is often compared to Henrik Ibsen, Samuel Beckett, and Harold Pinter for his choice of subject matter, distinctively recursive style, and clipped dialogue with resounding silences between lines. His name is frequently mentioned for the Nobel Prize in Literature. One of his best regarded plays is Someone Is Going to Come (1996), with its obvious allusion to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. A collection of his short stories, Scenes from a Childhood, (2018) seems a pointed precursor to the overwhelming project that begins with The Other Name: Septology I–II, a threevolume series scheduled to be released through 2022. Fosse established the language of his rhythmical stream-of-consciousness rhetoric in the five easy pieces...
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Feb 1, 2020
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