Pandora in the Congo

I still in the middle of reading this but wanted to share my excitement because it is such a clever and entertaining novel. Like Jerome K. Jerome or Flann O'Brien, the author constantly makes me laugh. The Publishers Weekly review is driving me crazy, though, because it refers to "Vernes Morlocks" (sic). The Morlocks were, of course, the creation of H.G. Wells, a very different writer from Jules Verne despite their shared connection to science fiction.

With fascinating imagination and great humor, author Albert Sanchez Pinol delivers a story within a story in a wild ride that can be compared with Indiana Jones meeting Joam Garral in a house of mirrors that just happened to plop down in a rain forest. The action is centered on a ghostwriter hired to weave a tale that may ultimately save a "killer" from a death sentence by hanging. And the paperback writer pounds out the pulp fiction that becomes a best seller. But does it save a life or has it "just" become a foundation to cranking out novels for an audience looking for wild adventures? Pintol twists and turns the plot with enough neat surprises to keep the heat up until the box of evil is closed tight forever or continues to deliver nasty surprises, with untold - and brutal - consequences.

I picked up this book as a result of it being mentioned in The Spectator as one of the best books of 2008, and it certainly is brilliant, one of the best books I've read in a long time. A combination of different genres, from Edgar Rice Burroughs to H.G. Wells to H.P. Lovecraft, it's consistently, invariably brilliant, exciting, exotic and fascinating throughout. It tells the story of an old man looking back at a book he wrote (and then rewrote many times) in his early years; this time around being the time he will write the "real story". I suspect the reason the book has not garnered more publicity is its creepy sexual element, similar to but not as stark as what was explored in Pinol's first book, "Cold Skin", which was deeply disturbing but highly memorable. Some readers may find it a bit offensive in its explicitness but it adds a certain exotic fantasy element to the book which makes it quite unlike any other of its genre. Other than that, the book is a substantial improvement over "Cold Skin" in its terrific cast of characters (including a rampaging turtle), and its intricate and consistently fascinating plot. The real question is whether or not here there is an actual piece of literary art - or does the subject matter and the plot bring it down to a lower level. This particular question has been driving me crazy for a while - clearly the intricate, wild story line is crafted at the highest level, but the subject matter is so utterly different and difficult - does the subject matter drag it down, or has Pinol created some kind of new style of literature, and if so, what would you call it? The book defies exact classification as fantasy, horror, adventure, so it's difficult to think of who to recommend it to except for people who are interested in reading everything that is new and exciting. So my final thought is that the book deserves more attention than it has received so far, and so unless someone convinces me otherwise it's staying high on my list of books.

I'll be honest. When I first picked this up, I was intrigued but not overwhelmingly excited about reading it. And then I started. Within seconds, I was hooked. The protagonist's name is Thomas Thomson, which immediately sets up a tone of whimsy and sort of naivety, which is exactly how the protagonist portrays himself. All one needs to know is Mr. Thomson was the ghostwriter of a ghostwriter of a ghostwriter and that leads him to a position working for a barrister writing the story of a prisoner awaiting trial. Throughout the course of the story, the reader begins to wonder who is telling the truth and questioning the outrageousness of the story the prisoner tells and Mr. Thomson relays. By the time I reached the middle of the book, I was completely absorbed in the stories taking place in the Congo and England. Strangely enough, Mr. Thomson's story evokes a bit of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness - whether or not that was intentional, I do not know, but I certainly saw some parallels. I also saw some similarities between Pandora in the Congo and Life of Pi, another favorite of mine because of how it makes the reader wonder what on earth just happened at the end of the book and which story is the truth and where is this really going! All in all, I was completely absorbed by this book. Upon completion, I put it down and simply sat there, digesting everything I had read. It's rare that I experience that sort of "Wow" moment, but Pandora in the Congo certainly does that and much more.

This is such a clever and multi-layered book that it seems perilous for a literary amateur to venture a review. Similar to Eco's "The Name of the Rose" Pandora in the Congo works as an example of its genre at one level, and a sophisticated critique of genre on another. On the surface we are presented with an exciting African adventure novel that goes underground in the spirit of Jules Verne; in that sense I could not put it down. Yet there are subtle and sophisticated ideas at play and plot twists and turns that it is not fair to allude to in a review. The reader's emotional associations with particular characters, including the narrator and the main character whose story he tells, are thrown into question at several points, as is the nature of literary truth and authorship. Thankfully, the "stitching" that holds Pandora together is rarely obvious, a tribute to the skill of the author, although at times I was not sure if anachronisms such as singing "God save the Queen" in the 1920s were deliberate or simply overlooked in the translation and editorial process. This novel is almost too clever, but for me it does not sucumb to the ernest, laboured literary criticism wrapped up in narrative that other post-Modern would-be epics cannot seem to avoid.