September 2006    

Kensington Gardens Author: Rodrigo Fresan Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux $25.00 Cloth (370 p.) ISBN: 9780374181017 B&T         YBP Reviewed by Sarah Buck, Continuations Bibliographer This is a haphazard story about the life of James Matthew Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, and the broken life of the strung-out narrator who's an effect of the 1960s. I feel ashamed reviewing a novel that's a translation, since writers work with words and not just stories. The only way to sense an author's style is through his words: their sounds and color, and placement in sentences. However, a good story ought to shine through the words, too. Dostoyevsky is beautiful in translation, just like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Other writers need a talented translator to really capture the magic of their stories, like Sigrid Undset and Tiina Nunnally. If I've missed the mark in my review of Fresan's book, it is possible that what I am missing has been lost in translation, but this is, after all, the American version of the book that I'm reviewing. The book is an intellectual piecing together of thoughts on death and the death of wonderful things, like childhood and the 1960s. Its style is overly descriptive and pedantic; it reads like the author has attempted to include every last detail of his research in his writing. It has a scholarly, yet journalistic style, and even though the story is tediously told, it is a good one. There is, however, no direction to the book; it's only loosely held together by the theme of death and the end of things. Even though the book has a difficult style, it contains many cerebral gems, like this one: "Barrie thinks about the subtle vibration of everything around us the first time we read a sentence we'll never forget." Wonderful. Perfect. I know the feeling. This book is written for those who are interested in literary history and far-out pseudo-philosophical musings, flavored with the nonsense of the 1960s. It has a choppy style, fragmented like shards of a broken glass. All the pieces are there, but strewn all over the place, not placed where they should be. I like that the narrator's voice is objective, and asserts authority only to make cynical observations on social history, which are rather insightful. In one rant, the narrator pontificates that the mission of the 1960s failed: the drug induced goal of entering a flowery nirvana never came to pass, and instead it entered the era of bell-bottoms and "hideous music." This is an especially refreshing insight because too many folks who write about the '60s are stuck in the '60s, unable to break away from their parochial visions of the world. The book's style is less like a novel and more like a series of writing exercises. It reads as if this was practice for what is going to become a coherent book. Interestingly, in the post-script, the author reveals that the first draft of the book was destroyed by a computer virus, and that he re-wrote it completely. I do wonder what the original was like . . . There is a great variety of voices that the narrator uses: in one portion, he pretends that he is Barrie's family dog. He spans all sorts of histories and concepts, from explicating Lennon's "Imagine" as nihilism, to women's universal ability to "come out of an affair as if emerging from a long bath," to explaining the ways of the Mods and the Rockers, reducing the Mods to vintage metrosexuals. On page 155 the narrator begins a ten-page-long sentence. Later in the book, the narrator begins every sentence with "I read that x" and "I read that y" and "I read that z" ad nauseum. In an important scene, the narrative voice recalls awakening in a drug-induced haze (which his parents put him in for recreational purposes) after being abandoned in Kensington Gardens for seven days. He is treated by a doctor who says his words were like ". . . a single, extremely long sentence, horizontal, stretching on and dragging itself out for miles." This remark captures the feel of the entire book. Reading this book feels like the author gave you his own pill. And to any potential reader who may feel that there is glamour in reading a book that makes one feel like he's been given a pill, be warned that it is not glamorous: it is instead uncomfortable and laborious. There are a few bright passages, and for that the book is recommended. Otherwise, the book's style is clunky and like a bad trip, uncomfortable. Some might argue that the author here is genius for employing a style that reflects the theme of discomfort, but the book is really about death. It's about the desire to never grow up, and the futility of that desire, and the uncomfortable reality that is life. There are pleasant and humorous moments in the book, just as even the most monotonous professor can produce great laughter in a lecture hall, but the laughter is relief from the discomfort of the lecture, and the students are not laughing so much at the joke as they are at the Prof. I am fond of G.K. Chesterton, and on page 305 there is a scene where he, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells are being filmed by Barrie as they are capering in cowboy costumes. This is a most excellent piece of writing. The narrator is fond of Chesterton, too, and for that I enjoy the book. The narrative voice is that of an intellectual, a bibliophile, a purist. Reading this book is like sitting at the feet of a burnt-out know-it-all: kind of interesting, but also bothersome. 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