THE TUNER OF SILENCES had a lot
stacked against it from the beginning. It’s the only book in the Tournament in
translation (originally in Portuguese); it’s about an African boy in
Mozambique, and I read about half of it before realizing that Mia Couto was a
man, not a woman, which definitely made the second half of it read differently
than the first had. (“How interesting,” I thought, “a book told from the
perspective of a boy who has never seen a woman before, written by a woman!”
Then, later, “Oh. No, then.”) The premise is a bit confusing, and actually remained
confusing for me throughout. The narrator’s mother dies when the narrator is
quite young, and the narrator’s father moves himself, the narrator (Mwanito), the
narrator’s older brother, an ex-soldier/current manservant, and possibly the
boys’ uncle to a very remote game preserve, where they create a little
homestead and the narrator’s father leads him to believe that they are the
post-apocalyptic last remaining settlers of the world. The boys’ uncle brings
them supplies regularly, which presumably he is then getting by plundering the
ruined towns still standing, or by trading with whatever diseased and
zombiefied locals remain, I’m not sure. In reality, the boys’ father has been
driven to madness by his wife’s death (and, prior to her death, her gang rape),
and is now both devoutly religious and totally nuts. He has replaced the boys’
mother with a donkey, and refuses to let the boys read or write.
To me, the premise of the book
is sad and terrifying, but the plot is driven by the mystery of what actually
happened to the boys’ mother Alma, and what a Portuguese woman is doing when
she suddenly appears in their camp. The narrator’s survival is not seriously
called into question, but the resolutions of the mysteries of these two women
occur very late in the story and were, to me at least, unsatisfying. To me, the
interesting part of a story about a child raised in deprived conditions is (a)
how does the child escape those conditions, and (b) how does the child then
adjust to regular life. Mwanito’s escape is kind of a deus ex machina, and his
subsequent adjustment to regular life is quite easy, and occurs late in the
narrative. The novel seemed less concerned with plot and more concerned with
experimentation around language, religiosity, and expressions of sorrow. There are
hints of magical realism. Parts of the narrative read like folklore. These
aspects did not endear me to the novel, but for a certain reader, they might.
The premise of THE GOOD LORD
BIRD, on the other hand, is quite interesting—a first-hand account of John
Brown’s abolitionist battle at Harper’s Ferry. Told from the perspective of a
slave nicknamed Onion whom John Brown freed, misgendered, and kind of condemned
to living as a girl for a couple of years (though, if the introductory chapter
is to be believed, Onion continued to dress as a woman for much, much longer). Frederick
Douglass and Harriet Tubman make cameos. Even to a less-than-keen student of
American history, this premise is interesting, and the story itself is
interesting even when it departs briefly from the story of John Brown.
There
are many anti-heroes in THE GOOD LORD BIRD, not least of which the narrator,
Onion, who weathers many a remark that he is only concerned with saving his own
skin. The narrative makes the good point that a slave probably has good reason
to not have many more pressing concerns than personal survival. I kind of loved
the book for that alone—acknowledging that John Brown and Frederick Douglass
performed great acts and were very important to American history, while
simultaneously acknowledging that a lot of slaves and free blacks weren’t
particularly grateful for their actions at the time. It puts more agency into
the hands of Onion and the rest of John Brown’s army, and gives the reader an
interesting view into what it would mean to be nonviolent during a time when
violence was so common, expected, and celebrated. The best reason I found in
the story for Onion’s cross-dressing was that his experiences with men, and
with manhood, are all of violence, shooting and death and dying. Even a female
character, upon being led to the gallows, exhorts her fellow prisoner to “be a
man.” John Brown’s son is told to “die like a man,” and he does; others escape
the battle unharmed by not fighting, but are thought to be cowardly. Onion’s
personal philosophy rejects violence, but he has trouble articulating this
philosophy, even to himself, and so falls back on an identity in which he can
be brave without being violent.
It’s a nice message. It wasn’t
my favorite book of the Tournament, by far, but I liked it well enough. This
round’s winner, then: THE GOOD LORD BIRD.
And, this is the first round in
which I and the Tournament agree! Read the official ToB judgment here.
No comments:
Post a Comment