Thursday 22 July 2010

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One by M.T. Anderson

"A book which arrives from America groaning with rewards and reputation. It deserves to do just as well here." The Guardian

Boston, 1775. Raised by a society of rational philosophers, who call each other by a number, Octavian and his mother - a princess in exile from a faraway land - are the only people in their household assigned names. The boy is dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest classical education but as his regal mother, Cassiopeia, entertains the scholars with her beauty and wit, young Octavian begins to question the purpose behind his guardians' fanatical studies. Only after he dares to open a forbidden door does he learn the hideous nature of their experiments - and his own chilling role in them.

An extract from early in the story might give you a taste of this extraordinary book:

A man in a topiary maze cannot judge of the twistings and turnings, and which avenue might lead him to the heart; while one who stands above, on some pleasant prospect, looking down upon the labyrinth, is reduced to watching the bewildered circumnavigations of the tiny victim through obvious coils -- as the gods, perhaps, looked down on besieged and blood-sprayed Troy from the safety of their couches, and thought mortals weak and foolish while they themselves reclined in comfort, and had only to snap to call Ganymede to their side with nectar decanted.

So I, now, with the vantage of years, am sensible of my foolishness, my blindness, as a child. I cannot think of my blunders without shriveling of the inward parts -- not merely the desiccation attendant on shame, but also the aggravation of remorse that I did not demand more explanation, that I did not sooner take my mother by the hand and--

I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.

I do not know what we may do, to know another better.



'The hallmarks of Anderson’s style are a sharp ear for adolescent voices, a sometimes perverse sense of humor and an interest in the corrosive effects of groupthink on the average human’s ability to behave ethically. His new book has all those qualities, but represents a striking advance in terms of both technique and literary ambition.'  New York Times