Customer Reviews

In a Strange Room

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In a Strange Room is a curious book to describe. It could well be described as both a novel or three stories/novellas. The narrator is the same throughout the stories, and they're heavily connected through theme. None of the other characters or events transcend their sections, but it still felt like a novel to me. Regardless of its structural semantics, it's ultimately the tale of a South African man who travels the world (Africa, Europe and India) forming bonds with his fellow wanderers.

Galgut's writing captured me from the beginning of this novel. When he writes dialogue, he doesn't use quotation marks. Instead, he adds a blank line in between each speaker. He doesn't use question marks either, which brings a poignancy and nuance to many of the conversational statements that can work as both questions and statements. Using quotation marks and question marks yields fewer meanings, but Galgut avoids them and creates a concise prose with the beautiful vagueness of poetry. He often uses commas to string together multiple sentences. His commandeering of punctuation was as mesmerizing as the musings of his characters:

"Myth always has some fact in it. And what is the face here. I don't know, this place exists, for a long time people thoughts it didn't, that's a fact to start with."

Galgut seems to play with the reader too. The narrator jumps between first-person and third-person and offers glimpses of the future. Initially, I couldn't tell if the narrator was the main character. Galgut revealed it by jumping between first and third-person narrative within the same sentence, a trick he used several times. This switching alters the story in its own way as well. The reader and the narrator feel closer to the story at some times than others. Galgut's prose seems simple and straightforward, but he packs a remarkable amount of punch into it. Some statements even extend beyond double entendres: "This seems to mean one thing, but may mean another."

As much as I enjoyed Galgut's use of language and beautiful characterizations of people, the musings of a frequent traveler shined for me the most:

"He watches, but what he sees isn't real to him. Too much travelling and placelessness have put him outside everything, so that history happens elsewhere, it has nothing to do with him. He is only passing through. Maybe horror is felt more easily from home. This is both a redemption and an affliction, he doesn't carry any abstract moral burdens but their absence is represented for him by the succession of flyblown and featureless rooms he sleeps in, night after night, always changing but somehow always the same room."

"Something in him has changed, he can't seem to connect properly with the world. He feels this not as a failure of the world but as a massive failing in himself, he would like to change it but doesn't know how. In his clearest moments he thinks that he has lost the ability to love, people or places or things, most of all the person and place and thing that he is. Without love nothing has value, nothing can be made to matter very much. In this state travel isn't celebration but a kind of mourning, a way of dissipating yourself. He moves around from one place to another, not driven by curiosity but by the bored anguish of staying still."

Traveling and the modern nomadic lifestyle are themes that resonate strongly with me. I'm one who is fascinated by the stories of those anonymous faces who pass by me and wonders if their presence is relevant to my life and vice versa. Galgut has a much more poetic take on those whose paths cross ours: "Or perhaps he wants to see it like this, it's only human, after all, to look for a hint of destiny where love or longing is concerned."

Part of my appreciation of this book was seeing world travel through eyes so different than mine and reading it filtered through a character I don't think I would like to travel with. It was a curious dichotomy. I was fascinated by this actions and ideas, but I had no desire to actually engage in a conversation with this fictional character. Ultimately, I found myself raving intellectually more than emotionally about this book. I loved Galgut's writing, and I liked the story, but there was an emotional connection missing for me. I happen to believe that is Galgut's intent to illustrate the narrator's lack of emotional connection with people and places. Even this idea of intention makes me appreciate the writing more. For me to fully, emotionally engage as a reader, I need a connection. I'm a nomadic traveler who finds connections to people and places everywhere. I wander for joy.

Although it read like a novel to me, I was far more engaged during the first two sections. I was not terribly enchanted with the third section, which has me pondering if the order of these fractured stories matters. The journey of reading a novel is sometimes difficult as one who chronicles her thoughts on books. I find myself writing reviews in my head while I read, but I also often find my mind changing as the book goes on. Ultimately, my disaffection with the third section didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the book as a whole, but it did somewhat underwhelm.

You will know whether you like this book or not within about 5 pages. I read it because it's on the Man Booker longlist, and I'm glad I persevered, though it is way outside my comfort zone. It's a stripped-down narrative told in first- and third-person (and sometimes even second), often within the same sentence: "he" becomes "I" and can occasionally even be the all-encompassing "you." And this main character is named Damon, like the author.

If you can get past that, it actually pays off. We follow Damon, a South African from Capetown, through 3 widely-spaced journeys -- Greece, Africa, and India -- and get the impression that the time between these journeys is also spent traveling, continuously pulling up stakes, putting things in storage, bunking with friends, etc. You just have to put aside thoughts of how this man manages to make a living (trust fund?), what inspired him to travel in the first place, whether or not he's ever had a romantic relationship, and how he manages to have friends everywhere despite demonstrating real problems making human connections. In fact, this last issue you can't put aside. It's probably the heart of the entire novel, though I notice that other reviewers have focused on other issues.

In the first of the 3 sections, he becomes the traveling companion of a ghastly German named Reiner. There are vague sexual overtones to initiate the relationship, but these quickly give way to Reiner's competitive and controlling nature, which eventually drive the narrator to part company with him on a remote mountain in Africa. In the second section, he teams up with a group of 3 Europeans (one Frenchman and a set of Swiss twins) and again has intimations of a connection with Jerome, one of the twins, which leads him to agonize over visiting them and renewing the connection. And in the third section, he undertakes a foolhardy trip to India with a psychotic friend just out of a mental clinic who has no intention of taking her meds, restricting her intake of alcohol and drugs, or otherwise making life bearable for her traveling companion. Hilarity does NOT ensue.

That's the bare-bones outline. But even though Damon is always traveling, anyone looking for local color or even the sense of the process of crossing borders and living on the road will be disappointed. The heart of the novel lies elsewhere, in the absence of Damon's sense of self. (Ah! A reason for those constantly shifting pronouns!) He knows he can't make the connections he wants to, or that, having made them, he can't follow through or keep the intimacy of the moment for any length of time at all. You wonder if he's traveling to find this ability, or to avoid having to deal with the built-in intimacy of routine. The people he DOES make contact with are either repellent (Reiner), unable to communicate (Jerome, whose English is weak and whose nature is shy), or deeply disturbed in ways that make spending any length of time together almost unbearable (Anna, off her meds). He stymies himself at every turn, and ends up -- where?

This novel is thought-provoking and has, despite its playing around with form and narrative a bit, an air of honesty, as if events couldn't have happened any other way. For these reasons alone, it's refreshing and worth reading.

"In a Strange Room," by the South African writer Damon Galgut, appears on this year's (2010) Man Booker long list and is a very interesting novel--actually three novellas, each chronicling a journey and each also chronicling a failed human relationship. The narrator, who leaves his home in Capetown to wander from place to place for reasons he can scarcely articulate, usually speaks in the third person, but at times the novel shifts to first person as he moves out of each story to reflect on its meaning. Has experience made the first person speaker wiser or happier? It is impossible to say.

Each story is quite different. The first, set in Greece and Lesotho, involves the narrator's attraction to a self-contained German man who is seemingly able to live happily without forming deep ties with others. The second, set in Africa and in Europe, is about a longing between the narrator and another man, neither of whom can articulate his feelings. The third, set mostly in India, examines the relationship between the narrator and a female friend whose mental illness reconfigures their relationship.

The narration in this novel is spare; there is just enough detail to establish a setting. Galgut also uses only a comma (instead of a semi-colon) to link together related clauses, and the effect is almost like a stutter. It helps to establish the traveler's inability to articulate his deepest feelings and thoughts to others; he is able only to commit them to paper and ink. With the reader (also a kind of traveler), the narrator establishes the sympathy and connection that he cannot find in his travels in life.

M. Feldman

Damon Galgut is frequently compared to JM Coetzee. There are definitely a lot of surface similarities. Galgut is South African like Coetzee. In a Strange Room is 180 pages long which is a typical Coetzee length. Galgut's main character is named Damon and aspects of the novel appear to be autobiographical. In Summertime Coetzee's main character was John Coetzee. Galgut's character is a bit of an odd outsider as Coetzze's characters often are. The prose is very direct as is Coetzee's. Much of the dialogue is in the manin character's mind which again is like Coetzee.

While there are similarities, I think Galgut's writing is not derivative. In A Strange Room is a very powerful short novel divided into three parts.

Damon is a traveller. He is uncomfortable being in one place and is on the road for many months of the year. He seems to be searching but he is not sure what he's searching for.

In the first chapter, he meets a German traveller on the road. They have limited sexual relations but mostly end up being hiking companions as the trek through Lesotho. Damon lives in his own mind and as they travel. The German is the dominant decision maker and subtly exerts this control. Damon is frustrated and angered by this. They drift between comradery and contempt.

The second chapter deals with Damon's obsession with a young Swiss man as he is travelling through Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. There is a relationship and Damon spends time in Switzerland with the young man's family but ultimately their love/attraction is never fully spoken of nor acted upon.

The third chapter deals with Damon travelling in India with a very mentally unstable friend who continues to make bad choices, hovers on the verge of suicide and consistently makes his life hellish.

All of the chapters are starkly told through the eyes of the constant traveller who is more comfortable on the road than anywhere else. Damon is uncomfortable and much of the novel is uncomfortable.

I think this is a great piece of writing that I found to be very compelling. I highly recommend it. Of the six novels I've read that are on the 2010 Man Booker Prize Long List, this is definitely my favorite.

In South African writer Damon Galgut's latest novel, which is shortlisted for this year's prestigious Man Booker Prize, the narrator (also named Damon) describes three different journeys he took as a younger man, one where he filled the role of the follower, one the lover, and one the guardian. Although each trip is distinct, involving different locations (Greece, Africa, and India), travel companions, and challenges, certain themes resurface throughout Damon's wanderings, including his unceasing drive to keep moving and his inability to form lasting relationships. Damon's changing character--which ranges from a powerless follower to an assertive protector, depending on the varying circumstances he confronts--suggests that a large part of human identity derives from external influences rather than from an inherent inner quality. Locating a solid core within this impermanence is what compels Damon to undertake his quests and what creates this novel's momentum.

Throughout Damon's travels, Galgut's sensual prose captures the essence of the traveler's changing landscapes and moods while maintaining an elegant simplicity that shades the three stories with allegorical overtones. Frequent switches between first and third person narration create interesting tension between the older narrator and his younger, traveling self. Overall, In a Strange Room is a beautiful and haunting meditation on loneliness and the unending drive to discover a deeper meaning of life.

As I read this book I was consistently reminded of other great existential writers: Camus, Beckett, Kafka, Tennessee Williams, Faulkner... The central character, Damon, is quite simply "passing through" life. For the entire novel--is it really a novel or three short stories?--he travels. "Life becomes a series of tiny threatening details, he feels no connection with anything around him, he's constantly afraid of dying...he is never moving forward to the next place,...never going towards something, but always away..." (page 28)

Damon--sometimes referring to himself in third person (he) and sometimes in first (I), even in the same sentence--meets and befriends in the first story the German who dresses all in black, Reiner. They travel together, Reiner claiming to be a philosopher and won't reveal that much about himself. He is almost the stereotype of the German: obsessive. He walks through South Africa with earplugs, wishing not to connect with human suffering: he "has no interest in what is happening around him." So why, the narrator asks, does his companion travel? Apparently just to keep moving, that Camus-type of character.

Then there is the strangeness of narration with the combination of third and first person. Sometimes the third person "he" could be either the narrator or Reiner. Let's say it makes for interesting reading and by that I do not mean difficult. In fact I found myself enjoying this novel more and more as I allowed myself to "go with the flow." On the back cover, from "The Financial Times," this: "...the intermingling of first and third person narratives tugs the reader between insight and displacement." So true. But often, for me, it is not so much insight as it is a sense of humans unable to connect. Not at all. Damon cannot connect with Reiner. And then in "The Lovers" he cannot with Jerome. And again not with Anna in the last story.

Essentially what we have is the contemporary nomad we all know, at least those of us who occasionally fly. People come and go, seemingly without any real purpose except, of course, the purposes they invent as giving meaning. To get away, to be apart from what they left only to find themselves in more meaninglessness. I think of Robert Frost's often misread poem, "The Road Not Taken": it makes no difference what road anyone takes, does it? And how would we know which is the better road anyway?

This is a novel in which physical intimacy seems relegated only to prostitution. The German rejects the narrator. Jerome does as well. And Anna is totally impossible. "The story of Jerome is one he's lived through before, it is the story of what never happened, the story of traveling a long way while standing still." This sentence from the novel summarizes, for me, the theme: "A journey is a jesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made."

I disagree with one reviewer: I think the last story, "The Guardian," is very profound. In this one Damon becomes the enabler of Anna, the psychotic who wishes not to live. And while in India, when she become hospitalized, three complete strangers to Damon help him through the horrors of what they all experience. Anna is in a way like Blanche DuBois: "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." In fact Anna is very much like Tennessee Williams' famous character.

Beware: there are no question marks in this book. And sentences are often connected by commas, not semi-colons or periods. But it works! It is a wonderful novel. Or is it a novel at all since the author is Damon and the central character is? Is it memoir?

I was in a bookstore in Alameda feeling adventurous. Sorta. I looked on a table with Booker nominees and such. Read the backs and flaps of a few. Picked this one. And LOVED it. Fast read, a travel book that transports you. Finished it in 3 sittings. Take a chance, read it!

Galgut's not wordy, and although he somehow fuses the third-person and first-person in this narrative, it doesn't feel "experimental." The book rather weighs just the right amount. Each word is precise, a whole sentiment or sense. There's a real soul in this book.

It's short--207 pages--and it sticks with you. It feels too real, too honest to be fiction; I've never had such difficulty separating the author from the book before (in a GOOD way). Absolutely beautiful. Lyrical in its reality--it feels stripped of artifice. Absolutely exquisite.

I don't think I've read anything in this style before. (I've read a review linking him to Coetzee--not at ALL in my opinion; to my mind, Coetzee is cold and harsh where Galgut is vulnerable, honest and...not cold.) Those readers who have traveled in far-flung parts of the world will sense that Galgut must truly have traveled too--there are wells of truth in his portrayal of travel and of aloneness and of the random connectedness of strangers on the road. That said, I don't think you need to be a traveler to fall for him and to feel the honesty in this work. It's just exquisite, painful and true and beautiful.

I can't think you'll regret this journey with Galgut. I know after this book I'll be making as many journeys with him (this book and others) as life will let me.

senstive, painful , deep and lonley. left me with heavy heart with a dull aching pain.. but love the pain..damon is sooooooooo lovely..he doesnt know how lovely he is..he's a softie but tough on himself...

Damon Galgut's "In A Strange Room (IASR)" is simply fabulous - strange, stark, spare and a rare thing of beauty. It stands head and shoulders above last year's other shortlisted titles for the Booker prize and should have won it.

The protagonist's desperate solitude and stifling inarticulacy in his physical and emotional dealings with the world is mirrored in the terse language employed by Galgut throughout. The author's frequent switches from first to third person narrative and almost arbitrarily back again may unsettle some readers but it underscores the wordless loneliness of the protagonist as if he needs to be feel objectified before he can acknowledge his own existence. His painfully troubled soul remains unexplained, though it shouldn't surprise if his uncertain sexuality is at the root of it.

IASR is like a book version of a road movie, a document of a traveler's sojourn to nowhere. Yet only in his aimless abandon and his strange encounters does he get to taste the full essence, from the bitter to the sweet side, of humanity, from bad tempered selfishness to the ugliness of cultural chauvinism, but also the inexplicable kindness of strangers. The beauty of these stories lie in the realization that we get to see the world more clearly when we are alone and going nowhere. The borderless metaphor resonates all the more against the protagonist's geographical crisscrossing of three continents.

IASR is a real gem of a novel. There is so much emotion and feeling beneath the economy of the prose. Clearly, less is more.