Tonguecat: A Novel [Hardcover]

Peter Verhelst (Author), Sherry Marx (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2003

A Visionary Novel By a Leading New International Writer

Tonguecat tells the story of a city’s decline into chaos and violence upon the arrival of Prometheus, the titan who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. In the Netherlands, the novel has been described as “a cross between Jorge Luis Borges’s mystical labyrinth and William Gibson’s futuristic sprawl” (The Rights Report).

As the novel opens, Prometheus abandons a mythical, primeval world ruled by violence for a cold, earthly city that is perpetually in renewal—a caricature of the city in which we live.

Once descended, Ulrike, an orphaned girl whose body produces music, guides Prometheus though the slums of the city. Prometheus finds himself in a counterculture of squatters, junkies, and storytelling whores—called tonguecats. The fire of resistance is smoldering all through the city; although the court continues to function, opposition to the monarchy mounts, and the king leaves his palace in search of human warmth.

Peter Verhelst’s story, together with the city, bursts apart at the seams. Tonguecat is a visionary novel—and a tour de force of imaginative and surreal writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Just over 40, Belgian novelist and critic Verhelst edits a literary magazine and won two top prizes in the Netherlands for this phantasmagoric novel, his first to be translated into English and published in the U.S. Like Carla Harryman's post-apocalyptic, sexually supercharged Gardner of Stars, Ben Marcus's much gentler Notable American Women: A Novel or Alice Notley's recent excoriations of the present, this book turns on explorations of gender as refracted through social hierarchies that have collapsed into haphazard, "warmth"-seeking violence, fueled by rumor, desperation and inarticulate despair. Each of its eight chapters is narrated by, and named for, a different character (excluding a short poetic epilogue). The book opens with "Strawberry Mouth" during the year Zero, when, instead of a global warming-based inferno, the country freezes, the king orders the word "winter" to be banned and the young male narrator's family members die one by one, leaving him to survive on the street: "us, eat, survive." Religion fails. The king evaporates in orgiastic communion with the "Girl-with-Red-Hair." That's just the first 20 pages, but Verhelst goes on to confront possible pasts and futures from multiple perspectives. "Wallwoman" is confronted by the dead, who leave just as quickly "to gorge on my stories." "Fleshcrown" begins his narrative: "I'm the king, I'm not the king," and may or may not be a murderous, deluded soldier. "Firehair" wryly describes court life during one of her eight other lives. Verhelst produces a disorienting allegorical charge out of the dissonance between the fairy tale-like evocations of the court and what king and subjects actually practice: war, sexual mayhem and random death. But readers will have to be predisposed to recognize the actual present-where war, sexual brutality and random death figure prominently for many-in the subterranean nightmare described here.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Dutch

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First American Edition first Printing edition (August 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374278431
• ISBN-13: 978-0374278434
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #720,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and original; a new direction in fiction, February 22, 2004

By 

J. N. Mohlman (Barrington, RI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tonguecat: A Novel (Hardcover)

There are some novels that take such a different path from what a reader is used to that they are absorbed more than read. In other words, they cannot be truly appreciated until they are completed, because their ultimate purpose is hidden from the reader by original forms and language. "Tonguecat" is undeniably one of those novels. Peter Verhelst has created a world that is disturbingly familiar to our own, and yet populated by constructs that for all their apparent normalcy are vastly different from anything in our experience.

Set in what I would assume to be the relatively near future, Tonguecat occurs in an unnamed kingdom where the world has frozen over in a rapid ice age. As such, all life begins to revolve around warmth, as a practical matter, but also as an ideology or philosophy. Crime revolves around seeking warmth, and as the cold bleaches the world of hope, dreams become the preferred currency.

Thus, the setting is relatively simply described, but the plot is far more difficult. First, Verhelst has chosen to tell his story from multiple points of view. Much like Mitchell's "Ghostwritten", each section stands on its own, but the ultimate purpose, or overarching narrative thread, isn't revealed until the final chapters. Verhelst plays with themes of free will, truth and desire, and comments on our own world where perception is frequently treated as reality, even when it stands starkly at odds with the truth.

Beyond this unusual narrative arrangement, Verhelst toys with mythology and religion, to the point where I would argue that he has invented a new creation myth, or perhaps more accurately, a re-creation myth. There are literal references to Greek mythology in the form of Prometheus and the Titans, which is interesting in and of itself because unlike the relatively ordered life of the Greek gods, the titans were primeval beings, existing in a maelstrom of chaos and violence. This essence is revisited countless times as the kingdom comes unhinged in ever greater and less justifiable acts of violence which rather explicitly echo places like Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia. On top of this mythological element, there are references to the Judeo-Christian tradition of varying levels of obliqueness. From rather explicit references to the lives of the saints to strong echoes to the story of Noah, there is an element of religiosity which infuses "Tonguecat".

The characters are a fascinating blend of the high and the low; from the young king to a peasant boy who has lost his family, each has a part to play in this odd tapestry, but only one has even a rough appreciation of what is actually happening, and even then his grasp is tenuous. As such, this is a novel that will have as many interpretations as readings. To a degree, this is something of a problem as the sometimes random motivations of the characters can bog down the reader's progress as one struggles to keep up with the rather jarring shifts in narrative flow. However, this problem is ultimately surpassed by Verhelst's adventurous style and commitment to his concept, which I found myself admiring even as I was sometimes frustrated by it.

While not an easy read, "Tonguecat" has the potential to become an "important" book in the evolution of 21st century fiction. A compelling fusion of Swanwick and Bradbury, it contains all of the former's deliberate, challenging weirdness while remaining steeped in the latter's disturbing familiarity. When combined with an original narrative form and an almost psychedelic use of language, Verhelst has produced a novel that is both fascinating and original.

Jake Mohlman

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outragously original, August 22, 2003

By 

amy (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tonguecat: A Novel (Hardcover)

Reading Tonguecat is one of the most intense and bewildering experiences in my 'reading life'. I still don't fully comprehend the book, but I'm bewitched by the stunning language, the power of the images and the tenderness AND cruelty of the events.
In some way or another, this book tells a lot about terrorism and power, but also about human strength. I loved this book.