Friday, April 21, 2006
Fuir, the most recent novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a strange, but wonderful one. His seventh, but only the second I’ve read so far - it seems very different in tone from Television (which is available in English from Dalkey Press), more poetic, more adventurous, more mysterious. Some of those adventurous sections are probably the sections of the book that are a little less successful. The first two-thirds of the book, set in Shanghai and Beijing, never give a particularly effective impression of those cities, could be anywhere. But those same sections also feature some of the book’s most effective moments - when our wanderin’ narrator first meets Li Qi - and then later, during a long phone call from halfway across the world that really captures the magic of telephones at their best. Always on the move, one wonders, “where is this book going? what’s this all about anyway? just to flee?” The narrator arrives in Shanghai and delivers an envelope stuffed with cash as a favor for his girlfriend to a strange fellow with no French and minimal English. He ends up hanging out for a while, involved with a couple of possibly shady characters without really knowing what is going on finds himself train bound for Beijing. Then finds himself, during one of the novel’s longest scenes, hanging out at a bowling alley! The book takes on the feeling of a dream, not unlike a more coherent version of a Steve Erickson style novel. The final third (again not unlike Erickson) takes a completely different turn, as the narrator again finds himself on the move across the globe, first to Paris and then to Elba Island for a funeral (never fun). These final wanderings across Elba take on a more ghostlike, haunted, end of the world tone as he reunites with his girlfriend Marie / or does he? A moving and compelling read.
