Invisible World

I have always hungered for an adventure that was ambigious enough that I would be forced to complete it in order to unravel the mystery. Clayton Smith left Andy Mann just such an adventure. Although Clayton Smith is a dead character, he is the most interesting character in the book. Even at the end, I was not convinced that he was really dead; like Elvis and Jim Morrison, I can readily imagine folkore explanations about how he still lives. Read Invisible World and you will find out that Inner Mongolia has more dimensions than shown on the map.

Andy Mann, the son of a Chicago pipe-fitter, is awakened one night by a phone call that informs him his childhood friend, Clayton Smith, is dead. Suicide. Found on the floor of his Hong Kong apartment. The funeral is in three days, in Hong Kong. Sensible Andy decides to forego the funeral--until a package arrives from the deceased, with a plane ticket and an invitation. Such is the opening act in Stuart Cohen's inaugural work of fiction, Invisible World. When Andy lands in Hong Kong many hours later, he arrives not just in another continent, but another world, Clayton's world, one where legendary textiles weave the dreams of many, where the philosophy of Mencius is paramount, and where money printed with the face of Genghis Khan is the currency.Having received only sporadic correspondence from Clayton over the previous few years, Andy begins to meet the people mentioned in his friend's letters. There is Jeffrey Holt, the textile merchant, whose own world straddles Asia and South America; Silvia, the sultry Argentinian with a checkered past; and Chang, the Hong Kong businessman with a head for Confucian philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, Andy learns more about his distant friend Clayton, the dreamer whose intricate paper sculptures both enriched and ruined his life.In his wake, Clayton leaves a series of clues and instructions, which lead first to Shanghai, then Beijing, and then to Inner Mongolia, in search of a fabled map of the Mongol empire, a gift for the Pope that never reached the Vatican. The search for the map leads the trio on a criss-cross through the Mongolian grasslands, complicated by shifting alliances and always haunted by Clayton's influence and memory.Invisible World could have been set anywhere outside of Europe or North America, and the fact that its story is not implicitly a China one is part of what makes it such a good read. Cohen described the book as a "Confucian thriller." Cohen has not forcefully grafted the story onto a China background, unlike recent novels such as Flower Net. It's a solid story first and foremost, and that's why it works. Cohen's turns of phrase, especially when we hear the voice of Clayton, help to make Invisible World far more than a first novel; it leaves the reader begging for a sequel, a prequel, just more.

A shockingly absorbing plot drawn with taut, muscular prose. I could see every bit of this exciting trek through Asia so vividly I felt as if I were there. It's like bobsledding along a wild, mysterious course: you never know what lies around the next curve. And to top it all off, there is SUBSTANCE! IDEAS! This guy makes John Le Carre pale by comparison. When is the next one coming out?

Antique textile smuggling in South America, plots in Hong Kong, lost monasteries in Mongolia. This book has everything, but unlike your average potboiler, it's complex and well written.At the end of a smuggling trip through South America, moving from back alleyways with gravediggers to 747's, you will feel that you yourself have just experienced the chase, the fear, and the terrible loss suffered by the protagonist. At the end of his rope in Inner Mongolia, Clayton checks into the capitol's hotel and says, "I could see immediately that it was the kind of room people commit suicide in." A man in the hotel dining room looks at him strangely but tells him, "I had that room last trip," and they agree that Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region is a hell of a metaphore, whichever way you slice it. (I could feel that region myself just then, located somewhere behind and below my heart, where fears wait in ambush.)What is Clayton doing in Inner Mongolia, anyway? Committing suicide or searching for his Holy Grail? And is it with good or evil intention that he lures his childhood friend to follow him?I was reminded of The Magus, another book in which another's hand manipulates the characters. But unlike that heart-of-the-60's book, which confounds spirituality with sexuality, this is a 90's book which works at the borderline of spirituality and possession (for money? for the beauty of a perfect work of art?) High adventure, travel, layers of betrayal, the mysteries of the spirit, and the mysterious plan which Clayton, the now-deceased genius, has left behind him, are all awesomely combined by Stuart Cohen. "A good unknown," Cohen writes, "is the best thing you can give somebody." And, as he says, finding a good unknown becomes rarer and rarer the older we get.With Invisible World, Cohen gives us that rare gift: a book about a good unknown, in all senses of the word. And he gives us just a glimpse or two of the invisible world we all seek.