Thursday, September 13, 2012

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This masterful book is a wonderful work of art. Set in Paris in 1931, the story revolves around a 12-year-old orphan boy called Hugo Cabret, who lives in a busy railway station. After the death of his father, the boy is taken to the train station by his uncle where he works as a clock keeper. (Hugo’s mother, who is never mentioned, is assumed dead).

After his uncle disappears, little Hugo continues to live in the railway station where he maintains the station's clocks. What truly inspires him, however, is his almost obsessive work in fixing an automaton that his father, who was a fixer of clocks, discovered before his death. In order to repair the mechanical robot, Hugo steals mechanical pieces from a toy store inside the railway station, which is manned by a man named Georges.

The ensuing story is a masterpiece of children’s literature. With 158 pictures and 26,159 words, Brian Selznick reveals George’s cinematic secret, the magic inside the automaton, the incredible story of young Hugo, and the friendship that develops between the boy and Isabelle, the friendly girl who lives with her godfather Georges and his wife. The combination of illustrations and written text is an aesthetic delight, which is like nothing I have ever read before. If I had to use a metaphor, I would say that this book is a literary sculpture, in which the story is told through text and images.

In a publicity letter, Selznick writes that the book is a, “531 page novel in words and pictures. Unlike most novels though, the images inside don’t just illustrate the story, they help tell it. … [T]his is not exactly a novel, and it’s not quite a picture book, and it’s not really a graphic novel, or a flip book, or a movie, but a combination of all these things.”

This book was so captivating that I read it in a single sitting. The illustrations are beautiful, the story magical, the writing masterful and the combination of pictures-and-text a true work of art.

5 out of 5 stars

Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker

This is a brilliant novel. The book revolves around an unnamed 22-year-old Cambridge graduate student in French literature, who is writing a thesis on the work of Paul Michel, a fictitious homosexual French novelist. In the beginning, our narrator is not interested in Michel the man, but only in his written work, which first emerged in the 1960s. However, after his girlfriend tells him that Michel has been held for years in a mental institution after being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he decides to go to France to meet the author of the books he is studying.

Once in France, the narrator meets Michel and falls in love with him. After pleading with the hospital to release the famous author, the two men embark on a road trip that changes both of their lives. Hiding in the background, meanwhile, is the ghost of French philosopher Michel Foucault, and his mysterious relationship with Paul Michel.

The central theme of this book is the relationship between author and reader. Some hold the view that this relationship should be limited to the printed page, and that the life of a writer outside the confines of their work is not important. In this excellent novel, however, Duncker turns this proposition on its head, by presenting a vivid portrait of the novelist Paul Michel, while keeping anonymous the name of the “reader”, presented in the form of the young Cambridge student.

In the hands of a less talented writer, this book could have been incredibly pretentious. In the skillful hands of Duncker, however, questions of love, human relations, the role of literature, and the symbiotic interaction between author and audience are presented in a captivating and thought provoking way.

A great book that should be read by anyone who loves literature.

5 out of 5 stars