Customer Reviews

Kalimantaan: A Novel

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Upon release of her debut novel Kalimantaan in 1998, award-winning short story writer C.S. Godshalk was dubbed 'the memsahib's Conrad' by the Sunday Times.

The novel, indeed reminiscent of Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, is based on the life of James Brooke. During the golden age of British imperialism, this 19th century adventurer carved out a small piece of the East Indies for himself. First founding the settlement of Kuching on the island of Borneo he was later recognized as the 'White Rajah' of Sarawak.

In Kalimantaan (which incidentally means 'Island of raw sago' in the Dayak language) the story is mainly told from the perspective of Amelia, wife of Gideon Barr (the fiction version of James Brooke). After ten years in the wilderness Barr has returned to England to find a bride. The young woman of his choice, Amelia Mumm, accompanies her husband back to Borneo. What follows is the tale of a Victorian woman's experiences in an alien and often frightening environment.

Godshalk is a great stylist, with an astounding command of language. Blending fiction with historical and anthropological facts, she recreates the brooding atmosphere of the island's interior, where these Victorian pioneers were more or less engulfed by the Malay and Dayak culture: mysterious and impenetrable like the forest itself. There is for example a chilling description of a headhunting campaign.

However, although the book depicts a very vivid picture of the situation in Barr's little empire, the plot remains somewhat thin. In this respect it is not always clear how the vast array of characters introduced into the story are supposed to contribute to it. As a result of this multitude of personae the development of their characters leaves something wanting too.

Unfortunately, this is also true for Gideon Barr. It seems as if the author has taken to heart the warning which she lets one of the minor characters in the book give to Barr's cousin and rival, Richard Hogg. In a letter their uncle Jared Heath writes that in the East 'complex souls do not do well' and he himself had 'clung to his two-dimensionality like a raft'.

The most intriguing figure in the book is Richard Hogg, who rules over one of the remoter district's of Barr's realm. He is revered by his tribesmen, who refer to him as 'Tuan Mudah' or heir-apparent, and whom he calls in turn 'my Dyaks'. He is a brooding man, with a dark mindset and as such a 'true denizen of the place'.

The incomplete glossary of Malay and Dayak terms I find somewhat irritating. To add to the flavour the text is spiced up with numerous words from the native languages. However, while some words that might be expected to be more or less commonly known such as adat, imam and kongsi are in the glossary, one looks in vain for angat, langkan, parang and sabut.

Despite these flaws, Kalimantaan is a delightful book. While it may be a bit premature to put the author in the same category of great storytellers such as Kipling, Conrad or Marquez, I look forward to her next one.

This is a fascinating, beautifully written novel, a fictionalised account of the white rajahs of Borneo. It may seem like heavy going at first but, if you stick with it, you'll soon find yourself caught up in the story. The characters spring to vibrant life and you can almost sense the dense, stifling jungle all around them. And, above all, it is a magnificent tale of love.

This rich, reflective novel tells the story of a hard-headed Englishman's establishment of a private raj in Borneo.
Plot summary: In spite of antihero Gideon Barr's misplaced attention to detail, the kingdom survives attacks by pirates, headhunters, cholera and the weather, and even Barr's tragic marriage, only to finally be undone by revolution and misplaced trust.
Details of plot and place are wonderful here, but what really stands out is the characterization and the tensions of the many private and public relationships in this kingdom. More tension: the tropical environment consistently resists "civilization" or even comprehension from its European residents.
Kalimantaan doesn't put characters with modern sensibilities in front of a quaint backdrop; it's a "historical" novel only in the sense that it interrogates history and historiography.

C.S. Godshalk has done for the distant tropics what Patrick O'Brian has done for the Napoleonic Wars. Working with rich historical material and an abundance of exotica, she was woven a dense, intoxicating, multi-layered world. In one book, she's created an adventure story, a love story, a story of heartbreak, betrayal, devotion, passion, and contempt -- and an incredible view of a far-away place, in a vanished time, with characters who are at once alien and entirely understandable. Godshalk moves deftly between Linnaean naturalism, penetrating portraiture, and heartbreaking family insights. Her prose, like her plot, moves from postcard-pretty to bafflingly complex -- abrupt shifts of perspective, time, and narrative kept me fascinated, amused, and always alert. Her tale of Victorian conquest, colonial life, and the eddies and currents of human progress (psychological, emotional, and social) covers half a century and follows the British empire from its apogee to its unseen -- but still apparent -- undoing. It also follows Gideon Barr and his astonishing bride through a complex, flawed, utterly human marriage, blesses them with children and snatches them away, offers them victory seeded with disaster, and proffers pride at the price of self-worth. Through it all -- in only one of many nuanced layers of meaning in this wonderful book -- it offers a redemptory view of love as the ultimate human emotion -- love that echoes across time, distance, distraction, and even death to recapture its object and redeem its subject. Godshalk has echoes (as noted) of O'Brian, but also of Conrad, Naipaul, and a host of others -- and exceeds them all in her intense interior portraits of the characters who people her immense landscape. Thank you, C.S. Godshalk, for the best novel I've read this year. I'll be a devoted fan for life!

A true story of power and adventure in the jungles of Borneo, complete with killer crocodiles, pirates, and blood-thirsty headhunters... But with Godshalk as the author, the story becomes, for good or bad, not an adventure story but something else entirely.

Her prose is certainly lush but it's as if she wrote the book in the delirium of one of the tropical fevers she describes. A particular sight or scent is described in great detail while the action remains blurred.

Godshalk has a love of personal pronouns which only adds to the feeling of being lost in some malarial dream. She'll begin a new scene with a unidentified "he" or "she" and only after many paragraphs or pages does it become clear who she's actually writing about.

Like some other readers, I often found myself rereading passages just trying to determine who the unnamed characters were. Or vainly searching the glossary for the meaning of some undefined native term.

The book is full of rich imagery. But the plot is weak and the characters dreamlike and unsubstantial. I wouldn't recommend it.

Before you begin reading this book, realize it isn't quite a novel; it's more a combination history and novel, but not in the usual "historical novel" sense. It briefly involves many real life characters, jumps from vignette to vignette about them, involves totally different groups of people over a large span of years, and confuses with frequent dangling pronouns which don't clearly refer to one person or another. The other reviewers obviously fall into 2 camps. I believe that the great divide between them is a matter of whether the reader could get over the hurdle presented by the book's basic inaccessibility.

Rather than 3 stars, I would have liked to give it 5 for beauty of imagery, especially for bringing this exotic locale to life, but one star for story. The book has been listed as a New York Notable etc.--several lists. I believe it received these kudos because it presents a new slant on how to present historical fiction, as described above. But characters aren't cohesive and don't come to life in a three-dimensional way. The joy of the read is all setting.

Finding any cohesive tale here is hard work--note that Amazon.com sells a "reader's guide" to Kalimantaan. I don't know what to make of the fact that such an obviously talented writer did not present a cohesive story. Just a failing when writing a first book? Self-conscious writing? Poor editing? I only know I was very eager to start this book, and am bitterly disappointed. To me, the book is the equivalent of a beautiful body without a skeleton.

I'm not sure why I found this book so fascinating, except that it allowed me to enter a world that I might never have known. I didn't like the main character, Barr, or many of the others, except the children, always the children, but that wasn't the point. The juxtaposition of good and evil is beautifully realized as we are slammed from one to the other, feeling the steaming tropical land, seething, forever changing. The author has somehow captured the essence of the duality of man and his prideful attemts to conquer the unconquerable. There were times I wasn't even sure who was speaking, but it didn't matter. Like Barr's European wife, I just followed her lead and drifted through this amazing world. It is a wonderful gift when a writer can offer such a feast to her readers.

I chose to read this book because my son, a missionary in Indonesia, married a Chinese Indonesian Dyak born in Kalimantaan. Although her style is sometimes frustrating, Ms. Godshalk has written a most wonderful book, not just about Kalimantaan, but about inhumanity and greed; about the universality and timelessness of human emotions. I'm saving it for my beautiful grandchild to read.

First, the flaws. Entirely too many characters, most inserted seemingly at random to perform perfunctory actions. Entirely too many untranslated terms. I would suggest to Ms. Godshalk that she either include a glossary of all necessary terms or none at all. The frustrating experience of finding widely known terms translated and more obscure ones not was disheartening.

Despite these flaws, I found Kalimantaan to be a stunning read. Godshalk's language is elegant and lyrical. In the context of the story and its overwhelming sense of place, her florid language could almost be described as economical. Incidentally, I would not have believed this myself until finishing the book.

The story of a Englishman creating a private Raj in Borneo in the latter half of the 19th century, Kalimantaan is bursting with restrained vitality and morbidity. Births, deaths, and violence seem to collect rather than get swept away, leaving an aggregate of emotion that I couldn't help but share.

Not an easy read, but highly rewarding.

Like an earlier reader, I stayed up all night to finish this book. I was transported to a dirty, difficult life in Borneo with death, disease and danger always lurking in the menacing darkness.

But, also like earlier reviewers, I found it difficult to keep track of the story: who "he" or "she" was, what the many native terms meant. There is a sketchy family tree and an abreviated glossary, but neither is adequate.

That said, reading the book with a eye to tracking only Amelia and Gideon's stories is not too hard. Leave the other characters as colorful background, interesting but indistinguishable.