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Son of Nobody<\/p>\n
Martel relates this story of a common man through the eyes of another common man, Harlow Donne, who is working on his PhD in classics at a Saskatchewan university when he is offered a year of study and research at Oxford.<\/p>\n
He leaves behind the repeated arguments and long silences of a slowly fracturing marriage. When his wife, Gail, sees him off at the airport, she whispers in his ear, \u201cDon\u2019t come back.\u201d But Helen, their little daughter, misses him terribly, as he misses her.<\/p>\n
In Oxford, under the cranky tutelage of Professor Cubitt, who refers to Harlow\u2019s home institution as \u201cthe University of the Unpronounceable,\u201d Harlow stumbles onto some fragments that seem to relate the tale of a \u201cson of nobody\u201d during the 10-year siege of Troy.<\/p>\n
Calling it The Psoad, Harlow starts a translation of this epic poem, finding resonances \u2014 both universal and personal \u2014 in the saga of Psoas, a hapless man far from home.<\/p>\n
Martel relays this double story through an experimental form. Each page of Son of Nobody is divided by a black line, with the poem above and Harlow\u2019s scholarly footnotes below.<\/p>\n
The poem initially appears in short bursts, while the footnotes discourse extensively on such scholarly topics as dactylic hexameter, the historic locations of Aegean harbours and the translations of George Chapman, Alexander Pope and Emily Wilson. Harlow discusses parallels between the Homeric epics and the Hebrew Bible and Christian Gospels and speaks of the tricky connections among fact, myth and story. \u201cHistory, however true, needs interpreting, and fiction, however invented, arises from life and reflects it,\u201d he suggests.<\/p>\n
Gradually, the epic account of the siege of Troy becomes more prominent and compelling, with its rolling rhythms, its insistent repetitions, its magisterial lists of men and things. Harlow\u2019s rediscovered poem proposes an entirely different version of the war\u2019s causes, while indicting the leaders of the armies for a litany of lies and false promises to their men.<\/p>\n
Still, as with Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s Pale Fire, also constructed as commentary on a manuscript, one senses that Harlow is becoming an unreliable source (sometimes wonderfully so). The translation becomes freer, to the point where Hades, lord of the underworld, starts boasting about his exercise regimen (squats, planks, pull-ups) and Helen of Troy is referred to as \u201ca hot wife.\u201d<\/p>\n
The footnotes, meanwhile, become more intimate. \u201cIn Greek epic, no one listens and no one gets along. Then there\u2019s hell to pay,\u201d Harlow writes, and one realizes he is talking also of his own situation, especially the growing conflict between his commitment to the timeless life of the mind and his wife\u2019s quotidian practical concerns. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Emma Love photo<\/p>\n Yann Martel\u2019s meditation on our mortal lives, and how they are given shape and meaning through storytelling, is moving.<\/p>\n (By making Gail an executive at a meatpacking plant while Harlow is off pondering the nature of truth in the Bodleian Library, Martel might be weighting this fight a bit unfairly.)<\/p>\n \n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t Eventually, the hints at family problems accumulate, the unanswered phone calls pile up, until Harlow\u2019s work and life converge in in a terrible tragedy, one that seems to exact a terrible cost for literary achievement. <\/p>\n Some readers will find this event moving. Others might find it manipulative and forced.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Son of Nobody functions better as a novel of ideas than an emotional domestic drama. Like his protagonist, Martel doesn\u2019t quite face the ramifications of that failing marriage, but his mediation on our mortal lives and how they are given shape and meaning through storytelling is profound.<\/p>\n Alison Gillmor writes on movies for the Free Press.<\/p>\n Yann Martel launches Son of Nobody on Tuesday, April 14 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers\u2019 Grant Park location, where he\u2019ll be joined in conversation by Free Press literary editor Ben Sigurdson.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Alison Gillmor Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto\u2019s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.<\/p>\n
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