A loose retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, set in a hospital and underground railway. Kleinzeit is a copywriter at an advertising agency. When he feels “a clear brilliant flash of pain from A to B” he realises that his hypotenuse is out of whack. It’s become skewed. He loses his job at the advertising agency and is admitted to hospital. There he meets a range of characters suffering all manner of bizarre illnesses. He also meets the head nurse Sister, whom he falls in love with. Russell Hoban’s second novel for adults is a whimsical, playful, often delightful trip through one man's fevered consciousness. Not only do conversations happen with people, but also inanimate objects, God and death itself (personified as a monkey). Kleinzeit often leaves hospital, rides the underground railway, writes poems on yellow paper, sells them to commuters and plays his glockenspiel. He riffs on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and reads from the classical Greek historian, Thucydides. Kleinzeit and Sister in some ways work as stand-ins for Orpheus and Eurydice, the underground railway line a metaphor for the Underground of Greek mythology. What to make of all of this is anyone’s guess. The novel, one could say, conerns itself with the mystery of being, the alienation we feel at times from the world, and the incessant internal voices that can overwhelm. A sympathetic and all-too-human journey through spiritual illness, one that leaves the reader sometimes discombobulated, but oddly elated at the end. Kleinzeit, by Russell Hoban. Penguin Modern Classics. $22.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
|
AuthorNorth Melbourne Books Categories
All
Archives
April 2024
|