The best book I've read in a while. It accomplishes so much for a very small book.
This book is very difficult to discuss without giving away its plot..but here goes. Firstly, it's a great example of a true work of art. This is because everything that it sparingly creates (story, characters, setting) it accounts for and nothing is wasted. This can be tricky to do with books - often the reader can get picked up and dragged along like a piece of driftwood on the tide only to feel when they've reached the end of the book that they've gone nowhere & wasted their time. Many books fall victim to this - in fact I can only name a handful of books I've read that I felt delivered in the end on the promise set forth in their beginning. Ha, it's not unlike life in general in that respect, I guess. How many of us never learn to pace ourselves, or fall into a deathly trap, or get sucked into a downward spiral somewhere along the way and consequently our life gets drained of the energy, vitality, honesty, true sense of itself that it/we began with. So yeah, as with life so it is with the life of a book and the process of crafting it. And, therefore, it is very difficult to craft something that doesn't suffer from waste or that is taut - like a healthy/functioning muscle. Well, this book does that.
So, this thrifty creation that doesn't seek to just dazzle you is something I read at a time when I found that refreshing and very soothing.
So what's it about? That, as I said, is a harder question to answer without ruining the book. Well, it's a story about a man who is a fugitive from the law and finds himself alone on an island. It is a very small island with only a few man made structures (see the map above) that is subject to strong tides over most of its surface each day. It is a very isolated island - apparently far away from any other bits of land and difficult for boats to approach, because of these riptides, even if the sight it. However, suddenly, other people do appear on the island and the fugitive hides from them as he's terrified they are going to turn him in to the law. He observes them from a distance for some time and discovers a woman among the newly arrived group that captivates him. He wants to get her attention and her favor but is it possible to achieve this given the circumstances? How could he achieve this if he did break his silence? Eventually his desire overwhelms his fear and he breaks his silence. At that point it turns out that the task is more difficult than he could have imagined - nothing on the island is what it seems. Not to sound melodramatic or fluffy romance-y - because, in fact, that's not at all what this book is like. It's just complicated... So that's plot.
This book is also an example of Latin American "magical realism." If you know nothing of this trend in literature - essentially there are "magical" twists to realistic images, life events, people, etc - so things are recognizable and yet slightly different, otherworldly. Casares was very good at creating a character/a world in this way.
If one thinks of fantasy novels - those are usually steeped in excursions from reality (i.e. the author has changed natural laws like defying gravity, or created people who are telepathic, or created whole new types of animals than those we know to exist, or finally, he/she may have created a whole new world apart from Earth). If fantasy is a bold departure from reality as we know it, "magical realism" is a gentle, quiet amble that takes only a few steps towards the fantastic every once in a while and then proceeds to return to the main path.
"The Invention of Morel" is a classic example of this. For the majority of the book nothing happens that suggests that there is anything out of the ordinary occurring. The reader wonders how the fugitive survived to make it as far as he has and wonders why the narrator provides little detail about this. But that's it.
Then, slowly, strange things begin to happen like suddenly the narrator observes two suns in the sky. Or when he finally musters the courage to speak to the woman he's attracted to he realizes that she isn't responding to his words. It's as if she doesn't see or hear him standing right next to her. Why?
I cannot mention any more specifics at this point for fear of giving away the plot of the book. However, I can say that the effect of being in the mind of a narrator who is dubious of what his senses are perceiving is unnerving and confusing. The reader is confused because the narrator is confused.
If you are like me, and tend to like narrators who are unreliable, even devious you may/may not like this book. If you prefer books that do not test your reading skills to that degree - you will not enjoy this book. That is, if you like narrators who you can take at their word. I agree that having such a narrator makes reading an easier/more pleasant/less active experience. And sometimes you just want to read a good story. Even good stories can challenge a reader's skills. But nothing is more challenging to a reader than when their ambassador, the narrator, is a tricky sort - someone that observes their environment poorly, has biases, or even lies to themselves and therefore to the reader. It makes a reader work a lot harder than one usually has to. But, as this book is testament to, it can also bring rewards beyond that of those books that challenge you less.
So I hope that I have given you the bare bones of the story along with a good sense of the flavor of the book. It was an impressive read & I'm definitely glad that I read it.
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