The Book: The unnamed main character is a Curator whose job it is to select and place objects in display rooms in museums and old buildings to bring the past to life for the public. The novel is divided into three parts. In the first part we learn about the Curator’s job and about the commission the Curator has received to update rooms in an old palace. The Curator forms a relationship with the archivist whose papers the Curator needs to study to learn about the people who lived in this palace. In the second part, the story shifts back in time to tell the story of the King whose story and time period the Curator has chosen to portray. It is an ambiguous story of a man who never wanted to be King. In the third part the story shifts back to the present in which the Curator is required to give a talk to the public before the display rooms open.
The Author: Rebecca Perry
Genre: Literary Fiction
Length: 331 pp. (e-reader, ipad mini)
One good thing: I found the first part of this novel fascinating. This is a job I never thought about and it was interesting to read about how the Curator entered this profession and about daily life in that job. How a curator makes decisions about, and finds, the objects needed to bring a scene to life is something I may think about whenever I am in a museum.
One not-so-great thing: If you aren’t into reading about the minutiae of historical tableau you might find yourself skimming. I don’t mind it too much but did find myself skimming especially at the end.
Four Doorways: Story; Characters; Setting; Language****
Rebecca Perry is a poet so it is probably no surprise that I find the strongest part of this novel to be her use of language. It is a beautiful book to read on the sentence level and since it is very short it is a delightful way to spend an afternoon. On that basis I can recommend this novel.
But after I was finished it all melted away except a bit of the first section. I didn’t find myself thinking about it. In some ways, this novel is more of a meditation than a story but I did not find myself meditating on the themes. Poets are not necessarily known for specificity but Perry can be very specific, creating lists of objects. I never really, however, had a true sense of place. It was like she created a painting with hints of color here and there and even though it showed with great specificity the items in a room, the room did not come alive for me.
Ironically, the Curator believes that putting specific details into the rooms she populates can give you a sense of the person who lived in that room but all of the details in the novel didn’t flesh out the characters for me. And even when Perry is writing in the head of a character, or reporting what a character said, there is a certain vagueness. This is intentional. Part of the point she is making in this book is that no one can really know another person, no one can really know what is happening in the same building and no one can really know what the past was really like. Sometimes details are preserved for us but we can never have a full picture. The problem for me was that I didn’t really care about the characters. There is a bit of a mystery about the King but I found it easy to simply accept that the mystery would not be solved for me because I understand that we never completely know history.
These are not new ideas for a novelist to explore and I wasn’t particularly interested in them. The most interesting thought for me in the novel is her description of how the Curator and the archivist each had a moment in their lives where “the world rotated a degree” when they encountered something that allowed each to enter into another world. She describes it as creating a thread tethering the Curator to what lay beyond. This is the moment when each chose their profession. I would have liked more of that. I was interested in learning more about the Curator and the archivist and not particularly interested in the King.
Some people are calling this novel historical fiction but from what I can tell all the history in the novel is fiction. It isn’t clear what country the story is set in or even what specific years (although the King's story is certainly medieval). Also, while I didn’t go back to check every line, I don’t think the gender of the Curator (or the archivist) are ever specified. I found myself thinking of the Curator as a "she" because the author is a woman but I think the Curator could just as easily have been a man.
This is a first novel for Perry. I’ll be interested to see where she goes from here. As I said, on a sentence level this is a beautiful novel. It isn't long and is certainly worth spending time on. This novel is on the Booker Prize shortlist.
****"It seems to me that all works of fiction and narrative nonfiction are broadly made up of four experiential elements: story, character, setting, and language. I call these “doorways,” because when we open a book, read the first few pages, and choose to go on, we enter the world of that book. And I’ve come to believe we can help readers better choose their next book by looking at the proportion of these four elements." Nancy Pearl on the Four Doorways.
