Razvan Petrescu’s Rubato: The Coordinates of World-class Romanian Fiction
by Claudia Moscovici
Despite charting very unfamiliar territories in fiction, the writer Razvan Petrescu is quite familiar—and famous—in his native country, Romania. A versatile and award-winning author, Petrescu is an essayist, fiction writer and playwright. Among his numerous literary prizes, he won the award Book of the Year at the National Salon of Books in Cluj; a fiction award for The Farce (Farsa, Editura Unitext, 1994) from the Association of Writers in Bucharest (Asociatia Scriitorilor din Bucuresti); the award UNITER for the best play of the year, Spring at the Buffet (Primavara la buffet, Editura Expansion, 1995), and the Prose Prize given by Radio Romania Cultural. Some of his works have been translated into Hebrew, Spanish and will be soon translated into English as well.
Traddutore Traditore
I have to admit, however, that I don’t envy the translators’ job, which I’m sure is very challenging. They say that poetry is the most difficult genre to translate, but in my opinion fiction that is unique in content and employs stylistically many dialects—such as the writing of Ion Luca Caragiale, Romain Gary and Razvan Petrescu–is the most difficult kind of literature to translate. And yet, that is usually also the most noteworthy and ingenious fiction. My main goal in this review is to convey the fact that Razvan Petrescu is a world-class author to an international audience, which may not be familiar with the Romanian language or with Romanian literature. How will I go about doing that? In mathematics or geography, you pinpoint a location, however remote or difficult to find, in terms of known coordinates. There’s no equivalent precise guide in the arts and humanities, however. The best I can do to offer such coordinates is to explain the relatively unfamiliar in terms of the relatively familiar: canonized authors that everyone knows; psychological fiction; universal themes and philosophical currents. The book I’ll be discussing here is Rubato (Curtea Veche Publishing, 2011), which is a collection of several of Razvan Petrescu’s prize-winning short fiction, published from 1989 to 2003. Rubato is like an album of the author’s best hits, if you will, but it is also far more than that: it’s world-class fiction, comparable, I believe, to the works of legendary writers like Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges.
Unique, uncategorizable fiction
Most fiction writers can be integrated rather easily into a genre, a movement or a style: be it realism, fantasy, horror, or magical realism. There are a few writers, however, who are so quirky in style and unique in content that they’re almost impossible to categorize in terms of any neat and familiar literary labels. Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges are two of my favorite authors among those. How do you attach a label to Kafka’s psychological realism of the subconscious and dream; to what do you compare Borges’ mathematical paradoxes translated into a puzzling fiction? I think Razvan Petrescu’s Rubato fits into this uncategorizable category of fiction. Which is why I believe that the best way to describe it to those who haven’t read it yet is in terms of equally innovative and quirky authors, such as Kafka and Borges. What Rubato shares with, for instance, Kafka’s The Castle (1926) is a psychological realism that goes far beyond—and beneath—the layers of our conscious reality.
photo Herb Ritts
The psychological realism of the subconscious
If Kafka’s The Castle (1926) or The Trial (1925) feel so real to us it’s not because they are actually realist in either content or style. It’s because these works focus so well on our unconscious fears—of powerlessness and alienation in a modern, bureaucratic society—that they bring them to the surface of our awareness. In reading the works of Kafka, we face our misgivings and fears, confront them and even laugh at them, since they appear absurd. Yet we no longer minimize them and are unable to shove them back under the rug, into the unconscious, to dismiss them. That’s why the works of Kafka remain so eerie and unsettling to us. Despite their sense of the absurd and humor, they’re as far removed as possible from superficial farce. The same phenomenon is at work when you read Razvan Petrescu’s Rubato. This slice of life tale depicts a psychiatrist’s “normal” day at work, which is full of abnormalities.
photo Vadim Stein
All sorts of patients come in and out of his office, including a security officer/spy, a prostitute suffering from venereal diseases and a woman with psychopathic tendencies, who likes to torture and kill birds. Though they are all quite severely disturbed, the readers can’t help but laugh when reading their plights. The security officer has stinky feet and a very shallow conscience; the prostitute takes her clothes off and asks the psychiatrist to cure her venereal diseases; while the sadistic woman that likes to torture birds is beat at her own game (cruelty), as the psychiatrist admits to being more weird than her (and better at “befriending” and then killing birds as well). The name of the game for each of the characters is a complete detachment from the elements that render us human (empathy, caring, emotion, deep and meaningful connections to others). Despite this serious psychological deficiency, the tone of the narrative is so realistic in its style—the dialect and mannerisms of speech of each character constitute in themselves masterpieces of modern fiction—that the reader too becomes somewhat detached and laughs at them. Yet in laughing at them we also laugh at ourselves. Razvan Petrescu captures the most disturbing elements of the human condition through a series of hallucinatory characters, dialogues and diatribes that simultaneously appear absurd and implausible yet also seem more real than our daily, conscious reality. How does he do that? Through what may be called “laughter through tears,” that authors like Ion Luca Caragiale, Anton Chekhov and Shalom Aleichem are best known for.
Laughter through tears: Neither satire nor irony
The kind of narrative that establishes layers of psychological distance among the narrator, characters and readers in literature is usually described as “satire” or “irony”. But like Anton Chekkov, Ion Luca Caragiale or Shalom Aleichem’s fiction, Rubato provides neither: or rather, it offers much more than that. Irony and satire are rhetorical stances that assume a position of superiority towards the characters and their actions from the narrator and/or author and readers. Authors that rely heavily on irony often ridicule the characters’ weaknesses and follies. I see no evidence of any narrative sense of superiority or authorial arrogance in Rubato. When we laugh at its characters, we realize we’re also laughing at ourselves. Hence the sense of unease that accompanies Rubato’s keen and pervasive sense of humor, which brings to light our phobias, perverse desires, abnormality and insecurities.
Even more disturbingly, Rubato constantly reminds us of the fragility of human life and of our mortality. Scenes of death and decay pervade Razvan Petrescu’s fiction. No matter how theatrical and comical the depictions of illness and death may be, unlike the scenes we see on the daily news, they still touch and disturb us psychologically. With a sense of indulgence and even love for humanity—and placing himself on the same plane as his characters and readers–the author opens up, like a doctor, the worst of our human qualities and examines them closely, one by one. We greet this complex process with mixed emotions–laughter, horror, revulsion and indulgence–because in these narratives, like in a hallway of mirrors, we see reflections of our inner lives.
photo Herb Ritts
Love, misogyny and women
In a recent interview with Esquire Magazine (Romania), Razvan Petrescu described himself—tongue-in-cheek, of course–as a “misogynist womanizer.” I’ve never in my life met a misogynist who admits to hating yet needing women. Misogynists tend to hide their contempt for women under the pretext of loving them (a technique common for psychopathic seducers) or of respecting certain women (such as mothers or the “virtuous” few) and hating all the rest. There’s no trace of such underlying misogyny in any of Petrescu’s works. What we find in Rubato, for instance, is a compelling depiction of fear of the object of desire. This fear is a far cry from Arthur Schopenhauer or Henry de Montherlant’s flagrant and self-righteous misogyny. Many gorgeous, sexy women populate Petrescu’s fiction. Their erotic power is attenuated by humor; their emotional appeal is neutralized by fear.
In the short story The Door (Usa), for instance, a mother and a daughter exchange worried whispers about their husband/father, who is dying on a hospital bed in an adjacent room. The doctor, about to go to a surgery and utterly indifferent to his patient’s plight, attempts to persuade the two women to take the moribund patient back home. There’s nothing he can do for him at the hospital anymore. Rather than worrying about the poor state of health of the patient, the two women debate in hushed voices the cost of transporting the ill man home. The patient overhears the whole conversation through a slightly cracked door. He expires, in a scene as vivid but more concise than Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886), knowing that he’s neither appreciated nor loved by his wife and his daughter. Razvan Petrescu’s fictional world is filled with such uncaring women, indifferent doctors, loveless marriages and spoiled children. They show the following thought experiment in action: When cynicism is pushed as far as it can go, it becomes psychological realism.
Cynicism versus nihilism
There’s no doubt that Razvan Petrescu’s fiction is pervaded by an underlying sense of cynicism. Not nihilism, but cynicism. Nihilism, or the questioning and negation of human ideals and values, may be great for philosophy—think Nietzsche—but it can be awfully boring and preachy when we encounter it in fiction. Who needs a dissertation on the meaninglessness of life and human values from some uppity character delivering lectures from up high, on a pedestal? Cynicism, on the other hand, tends to be a very welcome perspective in fiction. It avoids both the unforgivable naiveté of idealism and the arrogance of nihilism. Of course, in modern usage, cynicism has little to do with the original Greek Cynics, who believed that the purpose of life was to live a virtuous and modest life, deprived of unnecessary luxuries: in other words, a life in accordance to Nature. Perhaps modern Cynicism uses as its frame of reference only the most comical and extreme of the Cynics—Diogenes of Sinope—who rejected his society, begged to survive, and lived in a stone jar in the marketplace. Either way you look at it, cynicism offers a critical perspective of the human condition and of our societies with enough humor and sense of the absurd that even humanists can take it. Written in a dramatic, hallucinatory and utterly engaging polyphony of dialects (and characterizations); confronting our deepest fears and flaws with a disarming honesty and contagious cynicism; probing psychologically the limits of our humanity and moral values, Razvan Petrescu’s Rubato is a masterpiece of world (not just Romanian) literature.
He looked at her body as she was walking down the street. Before he saw her face, he was amazed by that slim, tall female body, lightly wrapped in a flowing black dress. That youthful body which was approaching him, as if moved by the focused attraction generated by his own desire. He saw the evocative curves of her breasts, slightly exposed by the low neckline of her dress. He saw her narrow, undulating waist as she seemed to be gliding toward him, into his arms. He saw the slight sway of her hips and the gentle outline of her long legs rhythmically extending the fabric of her garment in an easy, fluid motion. He grasped this approaching feminine figure in an instant.
The next instant his eyes were already transfixed by the beauty of her face. By those large brown eyes, those full lips, that flowing red hair parted in the middle caressing her fragile shoulders. She was stunning. This beauty, matched by so many girls he had seen walking down the city streets during the course of the week, never ceased to enthrall him. Every time he followed it with his eyes, entranced. Every time he felt that momentary sensation of distanced, almost abstract reverence for feminine beauty. For each one of its manifestations, each one of its accentuated features. He indiscriminately paid this silent homage to every pretty woman he saw.
Quite often, he felt as if his body spoke a different language from his mind. Or at least, different imagistic patterns of thought invaded his body, moving it closer to its potential pleasures. While his intellect kept its distance from the woman he appreciated almost like a work of art, his body moved toward her with anticipation and excitement, on the verge of betraying its focused, pleasurable needs. Then, acting with a partly conscious coordination of body and mind, he would walk closer to the pretty woman to see her better, to catch her fragrance, and perhaps even to brush her dress lightly with his leg, as if unintentionally, while moving past her through the crowd.
Once they had passed each other, he would quickly spin around and look at her, careful not to miss a single moment of seeing her departing body from behind, defenseless without eyes before his gaze. Once the danger of her own potential glance diminished, his mind and body could act as one. He would no longer revere her, he would want her. He would want to ravish her, to visually consume her right then and there, before she disappeared from his potent sight.
Fortunately–for him, for her–he would be aware of the physical barriers separating his bodily thoughts from their possible actions. Other people would circulate within the space forever distancing him from her, thoughtlessly eclipsing the movements of her departing form. Then he would turn around full of vague regrets and tangible yearnings, without making a spectacle of his desire. Withdrawn into himself, he would attempt to take her with him: by thinking about her, by memorizing her features and the sensations caused by her fleeting presence, by unfolding the drama of his desire within the more permissive theater of fantasies and dreams.
One time he saw a beautiful young woman with very short black hair. When he looked at her, instead of continuing to look straight ahead proud of the admiration she excited, she returned his gaze. She appeared to be as transfixed by his body as he was by hers. He felt slightly embarrassed by her boldness, caught as he was in his habitual voyeurism by the mirror of her reciprocating gaze. His desire momentarily withdrew when hers advanced.
He was surprised. Women whom he didn’t know rarely came to life under his gaze. Most often, when he looked at them he felt protected from any real interaction, as if he were watching a movie. So when this short-haired woman, a stranger, looked at him in the same way that he looked at her, he felt as if his spectator cushion was jolted from under his seat. Momentarily, he lost his balance. He looked away from her with slight confusion. She walked passed him. Feeling more secure, he reoccupied his spectator position. Out of force of habit, he turned around to watch her disappear into the crowd like the hundreds of other beautiful women before her. Then the curtain of life would be drawn, and the encore would be played, with poignant differences, in his imagination.
But this time his look froze as soon as it found her. She had also turned around and was looking back at him. He didn’t know how to react. He felt like he could no longer continue to pretend that he was a spectator watching her, the spectacle. The distinction between them, a man and a woman, had become more complex in this interplay of glances.
Like him, she seemed confused by their situation. Perhaps she felt that she had been too bold but didn’t know how to withdraw herself from the slightly awkward situation she created. Or perhaps she did not wish to retract her steps. He couldn’t tell. It was possible that she was only considering how she could advance further. Toward him. These considerations filled him with a mixture of excitement and intimidation. He decided to ease the tension with a friendly gesture.
He smiled at her. As if with some relief, she smiled back. He marveled: she was even prettier now, when she smiled. Her formerly inexpressive features came to life. They became bright and accessible, inviting closer contact; calling for the meeting of their two separate worlds: his and hers. Perhaps another world would eventually emerge. A world which was theirs.
This is an essay about my fresh impressions about my native country, Romania, thirty years later, published in Litkicks.com and translated into Romanian on Catchy.ro.
Like the best, most delicious novels, Claudia Moscovici’s psychological thriller, The Seducer, grips you in its opening pages and holds you in its addictive clutches straight through to its dramatic, remarkable conclusion. This is a fascinating novel, on every page of which Moscovici’s intimate understanding of the psychology of psychopaths and their victims gleams with a laser’s concentrated brilliance. The result is a narrative that builds with a patient, yet propulsive, force; a narrative whose intensity and suspense, in tandem, leave the reader eager to know, at every step of the way, what happens next? I encourage the reader to start this novel with a full set of nails, because it’s a nail biter in the most literal sense.
Steve Becker, MSW, LCSW LoveFraud.com feature columnist, Expert/Consultant on Narcissism and Psychopathy
What is love in this seductive new novel? Hypnotic attraction or deadly trap? A dream come true or a world filled with obsessions in the absence of genuine feelings? The Seducer probes the chilling depths of alienation and selfishness as the heroine, Ana, is caught in the spider’s web of her narcissistic lover, Michael. No magic, just cruelty. Claudia Moscovici wrote a powerful novel about an unfortunate reality many women face: the unraveling of their romantic dreams as love turns into a cold and calculated game of chess.
Carmen Firan, author of Words and Flesh
The Seducer offers a thrilling look at the most dangerous men out there, that every woman is warned about and many encounter: the psychopathic predator. We’ve seen these men featured in the news for their gruesome crimes. But few would expect them to be the charming, debonair, romantic seducers that love stories are made of. When the heroine of the novel, Ana, met Michael, she was in for the roller-coaster ride of her life. In her exciting second novel, The Seducer, Claudia Moscovici depicts with talent and psychological accuracy the spellbinding power of these charming yet dangerous Don Juans.
D. R. Popa, author of Lady V and Other Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2007)
Claudia Moscovici’s new psychological thriller, The Seducer, reminds us of classics like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but with a contemporary twist. The new seducer is a psychopath, a dangerous predator without genuine emotion. And yet, we remain fascinated as he charms two women: one of them utterly dependent, the other seduced but autonomous. The reader’s outrage toward the reprehensible Michael may feel neutralized by the author’s meticulous studies of the psychopath in action and by what I call “ethical irony,” an often hidden moral perspective. Moscovici’s epic of betrayal and self-deception draws the reader into the convoluted mind of sexual predators and their victims. The narrative is bold, vivid and lucid.
I have just written a post about Proust and his biographers, who attempt to render this classic 20th-century writer palatable and relevant to 21st-century readers. Proust stands the test of time partly because he delves into the depths of our dreams, desires, fears and all the hidden regions of our subconscious, which seem to have their own logic and are perennial. He also puts a writer’s magnifying glass on the world of 20th-century French aristocracy–studying them as an entomologist would insects–to magnify the neuroses, deviancy and intrigue that lie beneath a thin veneer of worldliness and respectability.
Today I’d like to present the works of a Romanian-American fiction writer and literary critic, Dumitru Radu Popa, who continues the genre of psychological fiction in our times. Psychological fiction is, in many respects, timeless. As much as our social and political institutions may change, arguably the basics of human nature remain more or less the same. However, the challenge for a fiction writer remains to render basic human fears, emotions, obsessions and desires interesting and engaging for a contemporary audience. Dumitru Radu Popa relies upon his broad cultural training in literature, philosophy, philology and law–as well as his keen artistic sensibility–to accomplish this task, in his short stories, novellas and novels that have won critical acclaim both in his native Romania and in the United States.
As a writer, literary critic and intellectual, Dumitru Radu Popa has been well-known since the 1970′s. His works in Romanian include a book of literary criticism about Saint-Exupery, several collections of short stories (Calatoria, 1982; Fisura, 1985 and Panic Syndrome! 1997), the anthologies Skenzemon! (2005) and Lady V. and Other Stories (2006) as well as two novels, one of which–Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions–has been recently translated into English (Outskirts Press, 2011) and the second of which, Traversind Washington Square (Crossing Washington Square), I’m currently translating into English.
One of my favorite books, Lady V. and Other Stories harks back to the talent of exquisite, well-crafted psychological fiction reminiscent of the modernist style of Henry James and Marcel Proust. This beautifully written collection of short stories is universal in its appeal. It is subtle, even exquisite in the way physical descriptions and details (of gestures and movements) speak volumes about the characters’ states of mind and feelings. The narrative, fluid and delicate in style, places itself in the tradition of literary fiction without being in any way arcane or pretentious. Moreover, Dumitru Radu Popa’s ironic touches are incisive and honest, without ever becoming brutal. They are similar in tone to Chekhov’s fiction, which depicts human beings as they are–flaws and all–without hating us for our foibles and fallibility.
Dumitru Radu Popa’s newest novel, Traversind Washington Square (Crossing Washington Square) is, in my opinion, the closest in style and introspective bent to Proust’s La Recherche. On the surface this is the story–or, more like it, fantasy–of an illicit love affair between a professor and his graduate student. When one delves deeper into the text, however, one discovers a meditation on the nature of time, about how the ingrained memories of childhood infiltrate our memory in unexpected ways and shape our identities as adults as well as lyrical analysis of human mortality itself. To give you a feel for the narrative, I’m including below the first chapter of this intriguing novel.
Crossing Washington Square, by Dumitru Radu Popa
(Tr. Claudia Moscovici)
Swedish Hood
I.
Like every morning, crossing Washington Square from University Place towards 4th Street, losing myself in the anonymity of the red building, with the brick facade, of the Philosophy Building–a perfect edifice made to reduce everything to the absence of worries and metaphysical torments–I thought that time materialized, gaining a consistency difficult to pinpoint yet lacking, at core, any ambiguity. It could be the beggar on the other side of the fence, exhibiting malodorous wounds or urinating, through his pants, on the bench where he slept all night, covered by newspapers, with a stitched together rag, or sometimes even with a torn American flag, left by God knows what Puerto Rican parade that transformed for an evening the whole neighborhood into a deplorable trash bin: beer cans and Pepsi tumbling with an irritating noise; left-over junk food; packages and trampled cigarettes.
Or perhaps it could be the policeman with a Hispanic name, moving back and forth, on his electric scooter or astride a horse—as useless as it is traditional in the municipal annals of the institution—with a tattered leather agenda peeking from his back pocket, indifferent to the industrious marijuana vendors, who, unperturbed, accost you with the question, whistled through their teeth “Smoke? Smoke?”, but always ready to give a blistering ticket for a car parked unknowingly or carelessly in an illegal spot. Or it could be people with somber demeanors—always the same ones!—walking their dogs on the grass, with a resigned air to their daily punishment, so freely accepted. Not to mention the joggers that gallop with a regular stride, sweating in their plastic jogging suits, old or young, almost all of them with a walkman on their ears, breathing in deeply the most polluted air in New York, yet convinced, in spite of that, that they’re ameliorating their health, as if health, like time itself in a way, had become, all of a sudden, something tangible, perfectly quantifiable and, consequently, susceptible to being altered… Or, finally, it could be the hyper-realist anomaly of the landscape: the minuscule Arch of Triumph, mounted upon Fifth Avenue, the most famous street in New York, a dwarf or an aborted child of its richer cousin from Etoile de la Paris, which the Japanese tourists, like stuffed pheasants, photograph from summer to winter, from all angles, so as not to miss its specificity.
Yes, indeed! Bucharest was dying, or was already dead within me, slowly and gradually, I can’t recall exactly which year, month or day since in such cases one no longer knows how many grains make a pile… And all this bazaar (to say bizarre would be too facile), surrounding me, neither friend nor foe, but pure and simple like a fact. All this probably gave time its material consistency, especially crossing the square, every weekday, today being no different from every other day.
Yet time, this unflappable and intangible flow from nothing to nothing, or from nowhere to nowhere, however it was—the beggar, the policeman, the jogger, the derisory Arch of Triumph, perhaps even the empty, abandoned cigarette packs, and the left-over junk food on the ground—it all seemed to me, in the final analysis, an immense embodiment of the urgency with a raised right hand, the pointer finger itself an exclamation point trying to deny access to the impersonally soothing building where I’d spend the next eight hours of the day in the library, in an office, or in classrooms. And the message of this exclamation could have been something like: “Cave! Remember, I go over each detail and each discrepancy of the landscape, but this doesn’t mean anything!” Perhaps not quite as dramatic and rhetorical, but in any case, something similar.
I’m speaking now of the mixed sensations, not even clear to me: someone with more common sense could have easily concluded that, in fact, I was doing nothing more than becoming aware that I was getting old. But it’s one thing to notice that, with the same naiveté—so delectable!—that leads adolescents to see in a thirty year old a “finished man”, and another to approach 50: then, probably, the only chance of avoiding a psychic depression is contemplating time, as if this could somehow save the individual from a personal acceptance of this flow that leads to the ugly words “old age”, ascribing it all to an immanent and incontestable general paradigm.
As mentioned, recently Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, a political thriller and love story, was published in English translation by Outskirts Press. This novel, like the author himself, straddles two worlds. Part of the plot takes place in post-revolutionary Romania, while the other is set in the United States. Far from being an idyllic place of newly gained democratic freedom, the Romania depicted in the novel is filled with practical problems and mutual suspicions. Although the Securitate (or Romanian Secret Police) has been officially abolished, spying still continues as usual: without, however, the same devastating impact as during the communist era. The oppression that used to be the subject of dystopic fiction (such as Orwell‘s 1984) is now better described, by Popa’s novel, in an ironic and cynical vein. In the confusing post-revolutionary political context, the love between Sabrina and Vlad faces many challenges. Yet this is also the plot element that gives the novel a very human touch and captures the readers’ interest and emotions. Several stylistic elements–including love story, philosophical dialogue and political intrigue–all work together to create an irresistible fiction. I’m including below an excerpt of the English translation of Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, which appeared online in Levurelitteraire.com, Numero 2, below:
“Come on, Plato. Let’s go home. Iphigenia’s waiting for you.”
“I can’t right now, woman! Leave me alone. Can’t you see I’m playing backgammon with Homer? And he’s got some luck today. It’s like he stepped in you know what: I clearly mean … or maybe he just didn’t wash his hands after you know what.”
“Stop being such an ass, Plato! You’re only saying that because you’re losing. If you smell anything here it’s not me. It must be Idomeneo’s shad; he’s dried them out like hell and they’re so hard they’re going to break my dentures…”
“Shad always needs dill,” blubbered one of the old man onlookers known as Menny, though his paperwork clearly stated that his name was Menelaus Kakanis.
The roll of the dice drew a cry of joy from Plato while he utterly ignores Iphigenia’s emissary who is standing by the door with her hand to her mouth.
“Aha! There you are! This is the end of you! Briseis, hand me one of Idomeneo’s dry shad. I’ll tenderize it with this pot… too bad I don’t have a bust of Cicero…”
“Well, Cicero is out buying new tires,” Menny tried to intervene but he was quickly stifled as usually happens to those in his position.
“Iphigenia said to come home right away to wash up and get ready for Aristotle, Penelope and Orpheus, not to mention his cross-eyed sister Cassandra, who are coming over tonight. And then we’re all going to go to St. Basil’s Church. Herostratus is coming too, you know, the one who just opened that big grocery near Ditmars.”
“Oh alright, I’m coming. Just let me finish up with this coward. Homer’s coming to church too with Aphrodite and Hecuba. But we have plenty of time, my clothes aren’t even ready. The guys at the cleaners on Hoyt Avenue said five o’clock. Catharsis, you know the place. It’s the best one, doesn’t even compare with those lousy Chinese at French Cleaners.”
“Aha, did you hear that? Catharsis!” said in Romanian a guy with the beginnings of a belly, maybe even a full gut, who spoke while holding a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.
It was bright as day, Colonel Munteanu.
He and his companion had sat at a table in the back, near the bathrooms that smelled strongly of disinfectant, and this combination of chlorine and dried fish was enough to turn your stomach.
“Since when do you understand Greek?” asked his associate. He was much younger, thin, with prominent cheekbones and an unusually conspicuous Adam’s apple, so that the shadow he cast on the wall looked like nothing as much as a cartoon from the Sunday funnies.
“Shut up and listen! Or are you playing the fool? You don’t need to speak Greek to know he said Catharsis: those Greek dry cleaners where that big cheese, your godfather, sended his clothes. Don’t you remember from the file? It seems that he used to bring in his clothes with blood stains every night. He’d pick them up clean in the morning, but the stains always returned in the exact same spots. Totally absurd!”
“It’s not absurd at all! There’s clearly some dough involved, if only we could find its traces… But I don’t think it’s here… Anyway, I was just saying,” whinged the other, code name Lazar. “I’ve seen backgammon before and I don’t really like this Greek food, either. I’ve gotten more used to Chinese, especially since it’s also cheaper!”
“We’re not talking about what you may or may not like!,” chastised a resentful Munteanu. “We have to start somewhere…”
With these words he approached, somewhat shyly, the table of the more or less ancient Greeks who lived in the picturesque neighborhood of Astoria, with all of their glorious history of which, it seemed, they weren’t too much aware. Then, as if he had changed his mind, he returned and prodded his companion, “Listen… my English is, how should I say, kind of passive. I understand, but I can’t really express myself clearly.”
“I see,” answered Lazar, with a touch of irony that did not escape the attention of the older man. “It’s like with those engineers. They look intelligent enough but, when they try to express themselves, just can’t be done!”
He winked jokingly as to erase any misunderstanding, and then went up to the ad-hoc Agora where English wasn’t anything to emulate Shakespeare or Milton. Munteanu, aka the Sphinx, did not appreciate the joke and threw a suspicious look at the young man as he was walking away. He found his apprentice a little too full of himself, especially in front of a superior! “It would not hurt him to be a bit more careful!”
After a short moment of confusion, the steady clicking of the dice resumed.
“Do you speak Romanian?” all of a sudden a man asked the colonel. He had been sitting near the greasy window, so dirty that the man could not have really been looking through it, but rather into himself, lost in God knows what thoughts.
Sure, people come to taverns to socialize, but also to possibly come to terms with themselves. Or maybe just to eavesdrop on others.
“Yeah I do speak Romanian? Isn’t that clear? So what? It’s none of your business!” growled Colonel Munteanu who would have preferred that his young apprentice hurried up and talked to those Greeks about Catharsis.
“Well it may not be a big deal,” said the dirty window watcher, “but anyway, if you want any information about… how should I put it… the Romanian community here, you’d do best to ask me.”
The guy was somehow “clean-cut”, he didn’t look like a beggar, and the colonel signaled to Blossom, alias Lazar, as if to say “Hold on a second! Let’s see what this guy has to say.” So the latter gave up any attempt to speak about the Iliad, the Odyssey and any other epic that might have grown in the tavern, and came back to the table.
“Pour, Blossom!” the colonel said gesturing toward a bottle and the young man immediately obliged pouring out two full glasses of ouzo for his table mates, but only a drop for himself, because he could not stand this perfumed liquor with oily texture.
Silence fell over the room again so that the only sound was the jangling of the dice, a background possibly replacing the typical chorus of ancient Greek tragedy. Everything was as ridiculous and derivative as the illuminatiliving in this small community in Astoria, Queens.
The man who had joined them at the table was massive, with a bald spot that threatened to spread shortly from his forehead to the rest of his head which still spotted some remnants of stringy, greasy hair that had resisted the miraculous cures promised by all sorts of shampoos and conditioners. However, below this, there were a pair of lively eyes; he wasn’t stupid by any means, and was not intimidated by the colonel’s authoritarian bearing.
“Now it’s your turn to pour, you know what I mean! And you’d better tell us everything exactly as it happened if you want to get out of here alive,” declared the colonel harshly, despite his apprentice’s generous gaze meant to convey something along the lines of: “Why don’t you just leave him alone? Maybe he’s just some poor fool who knows nothing of our business. What if he speaks Romanian, does that mean we have to harass him? We’d be better off going after the big wigs.”
“First of all, I’d like to introduce myself,” said the man. “I am, together with my associates, in charge of everything that happens in Romanian business here… I hope you understand what I mean: a deal, some legal matter, or when someone needs to keep their mouth shut…”
And here he made a deft gesture with his hand miming the path of a zipper that starts at the left-most corner of one’s mouth and ends over the tightly closed lips of the right-most corner.
“As for other things,” he added, “like, for example, the Greek dry cleaners, Catharsis, I’m still the right person to ask. They are the best, if that’s what you’re interested in, by the way. When I gave my hat to those morons at French Cleaners, the place it is run by the Chinese you know, they shrunk it so bad that I can’t wear it anymore. My associates had to bid on e-bay to try to get me a similar one… But if you really want to talk about all these we should probably go to Melon Head’s pub. It’s the only place around here with real food. Plus I’m getting special treatment…
“Yes, yes!” ventured code name Lazar. “Let’s go there!”
In the meantime, Munteanu’s mood had been growing worse. The source of his anger was, on one hand, the arrogance of his young subordinate who had begun to give himself airs and to make decisions without even consulting him; and on the other hand, the fact that they were about to leave behind informants that could turn out to be essential to this whole mess that the guys in Bucharest had handed him. Just imagine: people who disappear in dreams, send their clothes to cleaners that make it so that the blood stains reappear the next day. Or, even worse, the task to follow an individual who had run to the other side with the institution’s money. What’s more to be said, he was simply tired and… overwhelmed by the situation!
II
Once closed the trunk of the giant Chrysler that she hated so much (and whose disappearance after their vacation, or rather their stop in Los Angeles, she had every reason to look forward to!), Meg sat down in the passenger seat, buckled her seatbelt, and, even before Bob started the car, opened the book she was holding on her knees. Throwing the car in reverse, Bob could not help but grumble, “I see, I’m going to be doing all the driving for days on end, but you could at least help me navigate until we get out of the city.”
Meg gave him an amused look. Bob’s personality tics no longer bothered her nor made her suspicious as they had when the two were first married. She understood that his inability to take control during their intimate moments had nothing to do with an overwhelming wish to show her, right then, some important paper they had received from the bank; or with a sudden migraine that sent him running to the bathroom where he tarried long enough for her to fall asleep. No! It was a physiological problem, a pretty ordinary one for a couple their age. Sensitive and understanding, she always gave him the impression that everything was alright, that he himself controlled the situation, as, in his mind, it had to be for things to be truly alright. It should be said, however, that Bob too was an active participant in this game, often feigning distress or misunderstandings, as if to test her, to prove to himself that she had figured out what was going on and had no objections. This unspoken agreement, a delicate chess game that kept everything in balance, made their life together not only bearable, but downright happyto the extent that this word can be applied to those who are married.
“Oh honey, I’m sorry not to be more helpful. But knowing you’re such a good driver, I thought my inability to read those maps would only irritate you further more!” She was lying shamelessly, of course. We know how carefully she planned every detail of the trip – and please note that we didn’t even mention it at the time so that we won’t bore the reader – not only every stop and hotel, but also every road and exit that would save them the most time and gas. Despite all of these, she lied graciously and suddenly they found themselves in a shared good mood: he would grumble and drive; she would continue her reading uninterrupted. What could be a better omen for a long trip than such a beginning?
“Ok, Ok,” replied Bob satisfied. “It doesn’t matter now anyway, I’ve already merged onto the Maddox Turnpike. But I’m very curious what book has caught your attention so much that last night you fell asleep with the light on.”
Meg had begun reading the book the day before the trip, but she had not realized that she fell asleep reading the night before.
“It’s a book,” she answered, “recommended as summer reading by the company that sent me the tourist information. I don’t know how interesting you’d find it… the beginning is pretty boring and it doesn’t have anything to do with the title. But what can you do, that’s how literature is nowadays.”
“Got it!” snorted Bob. “Really Meg, this is so typical of you, and probably that’s why I love you so much. You take everything so seriously, like you didn’t know that everything is just a trick to make you buy things.”
But before Bob had a chance to really get going on with the critique of government manipulation, the IRS, and everything else, Meg cut him off: “I think it’s a very good book, but don’t ask me why.”
“That sounds a little ominous,” murmured Bob, sticking his left hand out the window, middle finger upraised, in the direction of the blue Chevy he had just passed.
Meg did not want to leave him completely in the dark, nor did she want him to think that she was talking nonsense.
“I mean that it’s strange. It’s a translation and the action is multilayered. I’m just a few pages into it, but I’m sure it will go on like this. It’s the author’s style…”
“Or the translator’s,” answered Bob sharply. “What’s left of the author’s style when you’re talking about a translation?”
This threw Meg off a bit. She suddenly became suspicious. What did Bob know about books? But she stopped frowning and rephrased the question. Did she really know everything about Bob? “Yeah, maybe that’s it! It seems that the translation is very good, that’s probably why the book is so easy to read…”
“And from whence came this author to enlighten us with his multilayered book?” asked Bob his voice dripping with irony.
“The cover says he’s Romanian, but I didn’t want to read too much. You know how it is. The blurb gives away the whole story and there’s no joy left in reading the book.”
“Oh that’s just what we needed,” exhaled Bob. “For Romanians to come and teach us!”
“It’s not about teaching,” answered Meg, “it’s just a novel, something made up. But maybe not completely…”
“I bet it was translated from the Russian,” posited Bob.
“You think?” exclaimed a puzzled Meg. “I would have thought that they spoke Hungarian over there. I remember reading something in The New York Times Magazine…”
“Nonsense! This Romania used to be part of the Soviet Union,” replied Bob completely sure of himself. “There was some big scandal with their KGB about ten years ago, I remember well… It’s translated from Russian, I’m sure. Check it out! It’s gotta say somewhere in there.”
“Probably,” acknowledged Meg, but was unable to completely stifle a stray thought of how much Bob knew about geography and geopolitics. “Ah, here it is!” she went on. “Oh well. It says right here that it was translated from Romanian!” And all of a sudden she grew much less worried about her familiarity with Bob’s knowledge. “It’s obvious! Since the author is Romanian, of course the book was also written in Romanian!”
“Didn’t I tell you!” answered Bob triumphantly.
“No,” Meg said dryly. “You were just explaining how it was translated from the Russian.”
“But I told you that Romania used to be part of the Soviet Union, that’s why I thought it was Russian. Of course, after the Berlin Wall fell, all those little countries that were held together by the KGB started reusing their own languages…”
Meg wanted to mention something about the fact that all those countries did not go off in their own direction after the fall of the Berlin Wall, but only several years later, and Romania was not even among them. But she decided not to insist. “Anyway, I like this book! I don’t care if it’s translated from Russian, Hungarian, or Romanian. I’ll read about that afterwards!”
Hearing her say afterwards in that tone, Bob’s eyes shot open and he almost lost control of the steering wheel, a move that frightened Meg. She reminded herself she should stand to be a little more careful not to let herself get so riled up with these conversations because you never know where they’ll lead…
“After I finish the novel, I mean,” she clarified ready to resume her reading.
“Hmm… Ok,” muttered Bob. “And what did you say was the title of this very special book?”
Meg ignored the sarcasm in his question. “I Haven’t said yet! In translation it’s Sabrina and Other Good Suspicions, but I don’t think the title is very important. So far there haven’t even been any characters named Sabrina, just a couple of Romanian spies and (you’ll be shocked when I tell you!) a couple just like us that are getting ready to go on vacation. But I think I’m going to skip over the sections about them.”
Turning towards Walhalla Circle, Bob added, “Sounds like some great summer reading! Not that American literature is any better, but at least it has clear titles: Tom Sawyer is a story about Tom Sawyer. Sabrina: that’s a name that could come from anywhere! And to make it worse, she doesn’t even come up in the beginning of the book…”
Meg totally ignored the rest of the diatribe, returning to her book and picking up exactly where she had left off.
As a native Romanian who is also a novelist, I’m very intrigued–and, frankly, somewhat baffled–by America’s obsession with vampires and the Dracula legend. It seems like vampire novels and movies are growing in popularity, even as they’re being spoofed by yet other vampire novels and movies! From what I can see, this trend doesn’t seem as popular in Europe. This leads me to wonder: what are some of the reasons behind America’s obsession with vampires? I came up with five main reasons:
1. Exoticism. The setting of the original Dracula legend is a country whose history and traditions are foreign to most American readers, who find Romania distant and exotic. By way of contrast, to most Europeans, Romania is relatively familiar. It’s a place plagued by its devastating totalitarian history (first the rule of the Iron Guard, then its lengthy communist period). It’s a place struggling to emerge from its dark past, faced with enormous economic and political challenges. To the French, at least, it’s also a place known for immigrants from both sides of the social spectrum: the gypsy exodus, which is often linked to pick-pocketing and a nomadic lifestyle, and some of the most intriguing European intellectuals and artists. But when you say that you’re from Romania to most Americans, the first thing they’ll think of is not Eugene Ionesco or Mircea Eliade, but of Dracula. Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler (the ruler of Wallachia between 1456 and 1462) captivates readers with his notorious inhumanity. He’s infamous for the sadistic punishments he imposed upon his Turkish ennemies as well as upon anyone who violated his laws. Legend has it that he’d enjoy his supper watching prisoners being impaled before his eyes.
2. Which leads me to my second reason: the lure of evil. Vampires–these liminal beings between dark spirit and bad human–represent the powers of evil, over which we have limited control. Evil seduces us, only to later destroy us. The vampire bite is closely associated with unbridled sexuality. Vampires, like social predators, suck the vitality or life blood of healthy human beings before moving on to the next victim. But then, I wondered, why don’t we read about them in their human form, such as the Scott Petersons of this world? Why do we prefer to view and read about them as our Others?
3. Mediated evil. Human evil is inescapable. It’s everywhere around us. We read about it in the pages of history books and we see it on the news: ranging from the haunting memories of the Holocaust, to the Stalinist purges, to the latest serial killers on T.V. Because we’re exposed on a daily basis to the inhumanity of social predators, we’re not as intrigued by them as we are by their un-human counterparts, the vampires. Familiarity breeds not contempt, but boredom. At the same time, evil in its human form makes people very uncomfortable. We don’t want to imagine that social predators could enter our neighborhoods, our houses and our lives, to harm us or our loved ones. Vampires, these liminal beings between human and demon, give a more bearable expression to the evil we know, in the back of our minds, exists in the world and can reach into the intimacy of our lives. They enable us to contemplate evil while holding it at arm’s length.
4. The widespread appeal of genre fiction. Compared to most Europeans, Americans have very little leisure time. Europeans get weeks, if not months, of vacation a year. Your average American gets only about two to three weeks. Although the distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is not cut-and-dry, I’d say that genre fiction places emphasis upon a fast-moving, interesting plot, while literary fiction privileges psychologically nuanced characterizations and a unique style. Most vampire novels, though well-written, place most emphasis on plot. They’re perfect for readers who have little time and want to delve immediately into the action rather than being distracted by stylistic experiments or bogged down by a long-winded, Proustian style. Of course, there are some vampire novels that harmonously blend several genres, to offer readers the best of all worlds. I’m thinking of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, which combines a beautiful style, historical erudition about the Dracula legend and a fast-paced, intriguing story.
5. Education. My teenage daughter reminded me yesterday that she and her friends read the Twilight series in fifth grade. This was their first exposure to narrative fiction that both adults and young adults enjoy reading. In Europe, on the other hand, the curriculum places emphasis (from a very young age) upon the literary canon. I remember being exposed to Tolstoy, Baudelaire and Flaubert early on, as opposed to reading either in school or for school the latest popular novels. While American students do sample the literary canon as well, that usually starts later–in high school–and even then, they’re exposed mostly to the Anglo-American tradition. But, unlike most European students, they discover the pleasure of reading by delving into popular contemporary fiction right away. This sticks with them and most likely shapes their literary taste later in life as well.
All this to say that I suspect that our obsession with vampires in the U.S. is not a fluke. There are real reasons why vampire thrillers became so popular here and why they’re probably not going to disappear from sight anytime soon. Having experienced evil first hand, however, I prefer to depict it as it is: all-too-human even in its worst inhumanity. When I was a little girl and complained to my parents about being afraid of monsters in my room, they told me that the only thing I should fear is evil human beings. Monsters, like vampires, don’t exist and can’t harm us. But it seems that some human beings are capable of immense evil, limited only by the worst of their desires and imaginations. It’s this real, human, evil that I wrote about, both in my novel about totalitarian Romania, Velvet Totalitarianism (2009) and in my second novel, The Seducer, about a sociopathic predator. Sometimes, the monsters we imagine in fiction pale by comparison to the evil created by the monsters in our lives.
During the nineteenth century, novelists like Flaubert and Tolstoy viewed literature as interlinked with education. In their minds, literature was not reducible to its educational value. Novels, however, represented one of the most moving and creative means of doing both things at once: entertaining and instructing the general public. The great masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature, Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, show what happens when women lose their sense of self and boundaries and get involved with dangerous men. My new novel perpetuates this literary tradition for our times. The Seducer shows what happens to two women who get involved with a social predator. The modern seducer, however, is no harmless and frivolous player, like Madame Bovary‘s Rodolphe. He’s a vicious psychopathic sex addict posing as Mr. Right.
There’s no better time for reading educational fiction, intended to simultaneously enlighten and entertain you, than in the days following the new year. This is the time when most of us do some soul searching, to see how we can improve ourselves and better our lives. During these days, advertisers deluge us with new products–diet aids, exercise equipment, beauty supplies and how to books–all intended to show us that their products will help us lead a better and healthier life.
Most of the time, however, these self-help tools are like band aids for the soul. They may help us marginally improve ourselves if we already lead good lives, with loving partners and have a healthy self esteem. But no beauty treatment, exercise equipment or diet formula can change an inherently bad relationship, heal a partner suffering from a personality disorder, or give you a sense of worth. Self respect must come from within: from a healthy attitude towards yourself and others. Consequently, if you’ve spent months or even years struggling in a toxic relationship with a disordered partner, the best thing you can do for yourself this new year is face reality and leave the toxic relationship. This will not be possible, however, unless you learn how to respect yourself.
In my new novel, The Seducer, I illustrate how a lack of adequate self esteem and insecurities can lead some women directly into the arms of social predators. These dangerous men know how to flatter them initially, only to later gradually isolate them from others, play upon their insecurities and gnaw at their self-esteem. The insidious process of eroding one’s sense of self and boundaries is most obvious in the interaction between Michael, a sociopathic sex addict, and Karen, his loving partner who can’t escape their toxic relationship no matter how much he mistreats her. And mistreat her he does: he cheats on her with dozens of women; lies to her; plays catch and release games by breaking up with her and then feigning love and contrition to get back into her life; makes her feel insecure about her body image leading her to bulimia and food addiction; encourages her to feel unattractive by unfavorably comparing her to other women and undermining her self-worth. For many of you who are–or have been–involved with bad men, this story will sound very familiar, as fiction will reflect your real life.
The Seducer also shows how even women who have high self esteem, like the main character, Ana, can fall into the trap set by psychopathic seducers. Such men flatter you, reflect your dreams and pose as your soul mates. Only once you fall into their clutches do they show their true colors and start eroding your boundaries and self image. You can witness for yourself the whole process of psychopathic seduction in The Seducer, previewed on Neatorama’s Bitlit.
The main thing that can save you from a psychopath–or from any other manipulative person who wants to take over your life–is cultivating a healthy self-esteem. This may seem like a truism. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of common sense that many know but fewer actually practice. Any therapist will tell you that he or she stays in business largely because of people’s unrealistic perception of themselves. Character distortions not only damage our self-confidence, but also taint our relationships. They make us excessively vain, or needy, or inflexible, or too willing to bend over backwards just to please others. More seriously, character disorders, such as psychopathy and malignant narcissism, are unfixable in adults.
Fortunately, however, most people don’t suffer from such constitutive emotional and moral deficiencies. More commonly, we suffer from distorted perceptions of ourselves. This puts us at risk of falling into the clutches of controlling individuals. To find your compass you need to look within, as the Greeks wisely advised. Ultimately, nobody else can save you. You can save yourself by living well, which depends upon knowing your worth–neither underestimating nor overestimating it–and pursuing with a mostly internally driven self-confidence the path you want to take in life.
As a novelist and literary critic, I believe that this lesson can be learned as much from literature as from life. Novels can touch you on both an intellectual and an emotional level. I’m hoping that my modern cautionary tale, The Seducer, will introduce you to a fictional world that mirrors and magnifies the psychological reality within you to help you see more clearly–and surmount–the real challenges you face in life.
Advance Praise for my new novel about psychopathic seduction, The Seducer:
Like the best, most delicious novels, Claudia Moscovici’s psychological thriller, The Seducer, grips you in its opening pages and holds you in its addictive clutches straight through to its dramatic, remarkable conclusion. This is a fascinating novel, on every page of which Moscovici’s intimate understanding of the psychology of psychopaths and their victims gleams with a laser’s concentrated brilliance. The result is a narrative that builds with a patient, yet propulsive, force; a narrative whose intensity and suspense, in tandem, leave the reader eager to know, at every step of the way, what happens next? I encourage the reader to start this novel with a full set of nails, because it’s a nail biter in the most literal sense.
Steve Becker, MSW, LCSW LoveFraud.com feature columnist, Expert/Consultant on Narcissism and Psychopathy
What is love in this seductive new novel? Hypnotic attraction or deadly trap? A dream come true or a world filled with obsessions in the absence of genuine feelings? The Seducer probes the chilling depths of alienation and selfishness as the heroine, Ana, is caught in the spider’s web of her narcissistic lover, Michael. No magic, just cruelty. Claudia Moscovici wrote a powerful novel about an unfortunate reality many women face: the unraveling of their romantic dreams as love turns into a cold and calculated game of chess.
Carmen Firan, author of Words and Flesh
The Seducer offers a thrilling look at the most dangerous men out there, that every woman is warned about and many encounter: the psychopathic predator. We’ve seen these men featured in the news for their gruesome crimes. But few would expect them to be the charming, debonair, romantic seducers that love stories are made of. When the heroine of the novel, Ana, met Michael, she was in for the roller-coaster ride of her life. In her exciting second novel, The Seducer, Claudia Moscovici depicts with talent and psychological accuracy the spellbinding power of these charming yet dangerous Don Juans.
D. R. Popa, author of Lady V and Other Stories (Spuyten Duyvil, 2007)
Claudia Moscovici’s new psychological thriller, The Seducer, reminds us of classics like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, but with a contemporary twist. The new seducer is a psychopath, a dangerous predator without genuine emotion. And yet, we remain fascinated as he charms two women: one of them utterly dependent, the other seduced but autonomous. The reader’s outrage toward the reprehensible Michael may feel neutralized by the author’s meticulous studies of the psychopath in action and by what I call “ethical irony,” an often hidden moral perspective. Moscovici’s epic of betrayal and self-deception draws the reader into the convoluted mind of sexual predators and their victims. The narrative is bold, vivid and lucid.
Wally Lamb’s second novel, I know this much is true, sets the bar very high for contemporary psychological fiction. Today’s readers have little patience with this genre. The best-known authors of psychological fiction, Henry James and Marcel Proust, have become relegated to the pages of literary history. Sure, we regard them as giants in the literary canon. But from that to actually having the patience to read them… Few contemporary readers take the time to appreciate all the nuances of James’ minute descriptions of gestures, gazes, hidden undercurrents and how each movement reflects the depth of human feelings and desires. Yet fewer take the time to follow all of Proust’s minute analyses of human motivations and page-long, tortuous sentences.
In his first two novels, Wally Lamb makes this now arcane genre palatable to contemporary readers. “I know this Much is True” traces the lives of two twin brothers: the narrator, Dominick Birdsey, an English teacher who has suffered through a troubled family life, an abusive stepfather, a failing marriage, a pathological relationship with his younger girlfriend (and her lover), and, above all, the burden and duty of taking care of Thomas, his fraternal twin who develops paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 19.
This novel is a psychological tour-de-force, both in its vivid characterizations (even Dominick’s sleazy friend and foil, Leo, is completely believable) and in its detailed descriptions of mental illness and how it affects both the individual who suffers from it and those who care about him. To describe mental illness in a way mainstream readers have the patience to read is no easy task. Lamb does a masterful job of giving us a multidimensional picture of paranoid schizophrenia both from within Thomas’ deteriorating mental state and from without. He describes not also Thomas’s suffering but also Dominick’s struggles to save him from the illness that overtakes his life and protect him from the reactions of others. By showing us a before and after schizophrenia picture of Thomas, we can relate to him as a human being and follow the painful challenges he and his family face in dealing with his mental illness. Finally, Lamb’s style–accessible yet sophisticated–renders the lost genre of “psychological fiction” what it really should be: mainstream literature of the highest caliber.
The first time I read Elliot Perlman’s Seven Types of Ambiguity I was very impressed by the fact that the same story could be recounted by several different narrators without a dull moment, cover to cover. This novel gives new meaning to the concept of “repetition with a difference.” Perlman was also very effective in the art of subtlety: showing how a relatively insignificant event could assume enormous proportions, affecting the lives of the main characters. Seven Types of Ambiguity is, above all, a psychological thriller. It tells the story of Simon’s obsessive love for his former college girlfriend, Anna, who left him ten years earlier. But the novel’s strength in creating dramatic tension out of a relatively small psychological event also turned out to be a stumbling block the second time I read it. Because, ultimately, Simon was not a compelling character. In fact, none of the main characters were. This novel is an absolute masterpiece in layering its narration in concentric circles around a main event through radically different points of view with distinct personalities and voices. Yet, in my estimation, Seven Types of Ambiguity wasn’t as strong in creating three-dimensional characters. For a novel built upon psychological suspense and the strength of its characterizations, this is a weakness that can’t be completely overlooked.
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