Several Canadian literary magazines have recently released so-called “sex issues.” Pick up these earnest journals and you’ll find plenty of writing devoted to pop culture and shades of afternoon light. Etymology will abound. But no one will actually have sex.
Portraiture is both a subject for the novel and its principal device. Thomas originally finds his espionage quite similar to painting someone’s face and character, to “slipping into an alter ego.” Indeed, the novel itself seems to be more a collection of portraits than an evolving story.
When Michael Ondaatje or Salman Rushdie address political violence, we learn, however uncomfortably, something about its motives and perpetrators as well as its victims. Here Eggers chooses to cast Valentino solely as a Job among the AK-47s.
Shockingly candid, the novel piles one chilling emotional truth on top of another as flawed lovers pile up on the restless heroine’s bed. This investigation of non-procreative female sexuality is multiply welcome here in Canada where we endure one baby-mad story after another.
In his first book, Booker Prize winner Yann Martel argues, “People who don’t share the same poetics can’t be real friends.” In his character’s example, to not like Neil Armstrong or the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins is to not like the character. In Canadian letters, Mordecai Richler is equally divisive. He’s loved or hated, [...]
