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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Mobius Strip Narrative, February 11, 2009
If you like fiction in which stories are nested within each other, tumbling and turning inside and out like a narrative mobius strip -- well, this is the book for you. But if you're someone who prefers realism, a classic three-act narrative arc, characters with depth, and all the trappings of "normal" fiction -- well, you're probably not going to like this.
The book's almost pointless framing device occurs when a young man in a New York-like metropolis of indefinite period sees a young woman knocked down by a taxi. He takes her to the hospital, where she lies in a coma, and the doctors tell the young man he must keep her mind occupied for 18 hours by talking to her. Thus, he starts spinning a tale, although it rather quickly becomes questionable as to whether he's telling stories, or stories are telling him.
It's all rather clever and tricksy in a McSweenysesque manner: the young man is a "pamphleteer" and the stories introduce the reader to all manner oddities, such as the tallest building in the city (which is actually subterranean and may actually be a foxes den), an inn with a fiddle-playing dog, a mind-reading companion of remarkable acuity, a girl who is born with the ability to draw a line straighter than any device known to man, the world's luckiest gambler, and so on. Just to give a taste, this is the kind of book where a man's job comes with authority that is "unlimited and nonexistent." If you find that kind of phrase compelling, you might well enjoy the book.
It's an interesting world, but one so topsy-turvey that you can't really try and make sense of it, you just need to let the writing wash over you. There are lots of nice turns of phrase, and the author clearly has style to burn. The question is whether or not it adds up to anything by the end. And with a book like this, there are sure to be a set of readers who find the experience magical, and another set who find it rather empty. I'm somewhere in the middle --I enjoyed some of the style, but it didn't end up sparking much of anything in me, despite its evident interest in themes of identity, passage, and vocation. But it's certainly worth trying if you like contemporary experimental fiction (for example, Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves) or the work fabulists like Calvino or Borges.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bizarre, exciting, entrancing, November 10, 2009
Not so much a book as a series of little poems seamlessly woven together into a novel. Although the characters are consistent, you will often find that everything else is subject to question. Imagine the strange world of Willy Wonka, and then turn it on it's head, make it 10 times weirder, and give it literary credibility. This book will make your strangest, most incoherent dream seem as rote as 8th grade history class.
If you like a nice solid story with everything wrapped up and packaged then please spare yourself the agony of this book.
If you enjoy stream of consciousness, and don't mind walking dogs, and stories that shift location in mid-paragraph, then you will likely enjoy this book.
Easily one of the most engaging and fascinating reads in a long, long, time.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Weaving threads into webs., March 20, 2009
Jesse Ball's second novel with Vintage may confuse and frustrate some. I daresay this is of no import to Mr. Ball, though I could be mistaken. Indeed, there is a care for both the characters and the reader in this book, accompanied by an understanding that not all may find the book as engaging or enjoyable as others.
I'll spare you a recounting of events and names found within in favor of attempting to convey the experience of reading The Way Through Doors. As with his previous book, this one makes reality seem blurry. In fact, it is handily placed out of reach as if to say, "you need not be concerned with this, dear reader. Please join me for the experiences and playfulness I hope to share with you." In this sense reading any work by Ball requires a sort of trust and submission to the story. Obviously, only through the reader's agency to engage the text in the first place does the book take on life, but one's expectations should be checked upon opening the book; any preconceptions should be vanquished. Why such hyperbole? Because the thread of this book may not even end up being a thread! It may end up a web, and if the reader struggles or resists it may entrap and cause discomfort. If the reader relaxes into it, the web serves nicely as a hammock of sorts, though dozing off is strictly prohibited; one must pay full attention to the swirls of characters and events moving throughout the web. Some of these swirls are more brightly-colored than others, though any number of these will make an imprint on your psyche and linger as pleasant images in the mind's eye.
There is a playful nature to Ball's writing, though you may find it manifesting as glee in one example, and shortly after it may emerge very dire and obfuscated, like reveling in the macabre. Others have noted his work does not follow many conventions of the novel. There have been writers who discarded these conventions in disgust and furrowed their brows to create a sort of reaction to the novel. Not so Jesse Ball: in this regard he comes off as playing with the conventions, folding and re-folding them into forms--whether paper airplane, origami crane or something never before seen--which please him.
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