Customer Reviews

From A to X: A Story in Letters

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This is a "novel" in the form of a discontinuous, out-of-order series of letters from A'ida, an activist, to her imprisoned lover Xavier. The letters are arranged, as the book's conceit is explained in a brief introduction by Berger (who has "found" or "been given" them), as they have been found in Xavier's cell after he departed, in a few bundles. They are interspersed with little fragments of writing by Xavier -- the only words of his we read, as his replies to A'ida are not printed -- which are mostly political reflections, sometimes quoted from figures like Eduardo Galeano and Subcomandante Marcos, and which in the main sound suspiciously like interjections from Berger himself, though this is not at all obtrusive or disruptive to the reader's experience. The letters from A'ida retell little incidents of life and political resistance, from a neighbor's jelly-making to her work at a pharmacy to a night of protest, ringed by occupiers' tanks. While the setting is deliberately fictionalized and the place names are drawn from ancient Assyria, there are still some details that make it seem likely the characters are Palestinians; but their experience is meant to be an allegory of activist life anywhere rather than a depiction of a specific place or a single historical moment. (Xavier's situation clearly evokes that of Nazim Hikmet or Antonio Gramsci, for instance.)

Though there are a few incidents, for the most part there is little plot, little development in the situation of either character over the course of the book, and the letters are out of chronological order in any case; what is important is the tone created in A'ida's lamenting her lover's absence and summoning his memory, the particular, carefully structured feeling of long but hopefully not interminable absence evoked by the book. As a result of this, the book can feel a bit monotonous -- literally, in that it has only one tone and little variation (we might wish for a joke to break the pathos, or a real narrative line); but this is not a fault so much as a choice, and the choice to stay in one emotional register undeniably has a great cumulative power over the course of this relatively short book, written in common language and about common experience.

"To tell the truth? Words tortured until they give themselves up to their polar opposites [...] Solution: the evening language of the poor. With this some truths can be told and held."

This is one of Xavier's interjections, but it is also an apt statement of the goal of Berger's writing. His late fiction has often been concerned with recuperating the love stories of common people, poor people, and gently transposing these love stories into a political register; To the Wedding was a particular and concrete version of this, Lilac and Flag (the last volume of his great trilogy Into Their Labours) was a more general and allegorized one. This book seems a sequel of sorts to Lilac and Flag, an attempt to build something more hopeful on those characters' desperation and to help build a mood which is not tragic out of their sad existence. Though this is not Berger's greatest work, in this regard it is a great and worthy success.

Berger is a marvel. He is a fearless artist armed with penetrating vision and magificent command of his craft. I have been reading his work since the mid-sixties and wonder always how it is that he never, ever gets stale.

There are many things to love about From A to X, such as its economy. Telling the story through letters and notes delivered a feel of intimacy I found quite gripping, especially so because it was delivered in the voice of the woman. It is a novel of political passion delivered in a quiet voice. I hope you read it.

John Berger's epistolary novel (one of his most celebrated in years, and longlisted for the Man-Booker Prize) shows us the letters of a pharmacist, A'ida, to her lover Xavier imprisoned in a nameless country for alleged terrorism. Berger's leftist politics are fully on display here--A'ida and Xavier are romantic lovers of freedom in the old Marxist sense, and the stack of letters we are given from A'ida to her love have notes scribbled on them by Xavier often quoting from or mentioning nostalgically great historical figures from the Left and attacking corporate multinationals for oppressing the masses and raping the planet. A'ida's work is to present to Xavier the quotidian life he is missing penned up in his prison, although the novel also seems to partake of a possible code language (often suggested by the gesturing hands A'ida draws for him in her letters) that may explain the novel's hopeful final image.

Berger's work is undeniably innovative and clever, and his playing with letters (both of the postal system and of the alphabet) is genuinely imaginative. The novel largely eschews much of a plot which lends it a kind of lyric immediacy but also makes it seem a bit of a chore to get through; things are not helped by his tendency to sentimentalize A'ida's and Xavier's relationship or their politics. (We are led to believe they are wholly and unproblematically on the side of the angels.) It's difficult even to have a political novel divorced from any kind of context whatsoever. Since we don't know where A'ida's town is, we can't know what government she and Xavier are really protesting, or what they realistically propose in its stead. This seems more like a noble failed novelistic experiment than anything else.

Please see the full review at [...]. Here's a portion: "Every night I put you together--bone by delicate bone."
A nosy person by nature, reading through a whole trunk full of someone else's letters is my idea of a great way to spend a rainy Sunday. Secrets revealed, implications made, the flourished handwriting of an author with time to spend on his words, the quick jags of someone in a hurry. And, of course, with the art of the handwritten letter slipping away from us, the pressed and wrinkled paper stirs up a kind of excitement, as if one were unearthing artifacts. But my passion for other people's mail has never translated to epistolary novels for me. The toggle between two speakers, the ping-pong tedium of the structure, has often disappointed and bored me. Until now.
John Berger's A to X is marked by the passion and fury of war, the agony of imprisonment and separation, and the despair of dusty towns wiped out by battles between Western helicopters and homegrown insurgents. A'ida (the "A" of the title) writes her lover Xavier letters, which he hides away in his cell. A'ida's letters to Xavier, sent and unsent, stitch together to create a story that is deep, compelling, and mysterious.

From A to X is composed of A'ida's letters to her lover Xavier in prison alongside his brief notes scribbled on the backs of the pages. Although this book is classified as a novel, it's really a tone piece. There's no plot, and the few details given that hint at the story's location are contradictory. Clearly, Berger wanted to tell the story of two lovers existing outside of a particular place or time. It's the story of oppression, separation, and continuing hope in the face of it all.

A'ida's voice is sweetly poetic as she describes her days to Xavier in her letters, always focusing on the small events and details of daily life. In one letter, she describes watching a couple dance in a cafe:
"The accordionist standing, head almost touching the beams, a few people sitting at tables and in the centre, a couple about to dance--or, perhaps, to dance again for a third or fifth time. She couldn't have been more than seventeen. She stepped out alone, holding her arms a little apart from her body, waiting. Not for her partner who was watching her, bemused. Not for the accordionist who had begun playing. Not for another couple to join her. She was waiting to be carried away by the forces inside her. She was waiting for those forces to emerge. Calmly, her heels a little off the ground, her face open, wrists turned with their palms up, as if to see whether it was yet raining. When she felt the first drop, she would move. The drops came! She circled twice making more than twenty steps and her partner, in a leather jacket and jeans, joined her."

The unique structure of this "novel" is interesting, but the complete lack of any grounding details results in a story that feels insubstantial, like a collection of random musings rather than a cohesive whole.

Ah, such beauty, such clarity, and much power. Which is why I have 1st editions of all Berger's books. Read From A to X with wonder!