French Huguenot Anastasia believes working in one of Sinai’s mirror factories will allow her to trap the imaginary Arctic fox which lives in her womb.
Whilst Jack escapes from London to Sinai to avoid being conscripted to fight in the trenches with strange imaginings that do little to alleviate his feelings of cowardice. Jack is captivated by Anastasia, seized with a fierce desire to possess her from the first second, and nothing can diminish his obsessive urge to be noticed by her, not even her obvious disgust in the face of his crude advances.
Their journeys twist together like a fugue, filled with phantasmagorical delays, as they both fail to accomplish what they set out to do. Unable to escape the consequences of their false beliefs, relentlessly they approach the brink, and eventual schizophrenia, on a quest for moral truths.
This book is a revelatory, hallucinatory account of the growing insanity of two young people who happen to be in the same place at the same time.
M Laszlo lives as a recluse in Bath, Ohio. Rumour holds that he derived his pseudonym from the Victor Laszlo character in the classic film Casablanca. M Laszlo’s works are written in strict form but contain a great deal of symbolism and/or objective correlative. This is because each work is intended to illustrate the eternal or Socratic truths that make up the human experience.
My thoughts: There is a trippy, dream-like quality to this book, which reflects the way Jack and Anastasia’s minds weave their reality around their imaginings. Anastasia is mourning her mother, her loneliness and grief bringing a childhood phantom – the Arctic fox spirit she believes lives inside her – back. Jack has been sent away by his father to escape conscription. It is 1917, and the First World War rages across Europe.
In Sinai, Egypt, both troubled young people meet amidst a clash of cultures and religions, reeling from the strangeness of the time and place. Jack composes music in his head, strange discordant pieces that reflect his loose grip on reality. Anastasia seeks relief from the cruel fox within her, desperate to force it out and away from her.
As they travel and attempt to work out their troubling mental health crises, they cross paths with others and each other but can not help one another as they can not truly help themselves. A strange journey into the desert and to England, seeking always answers to soothe their troubled minds.
Not always the easiest book to read and hard to place yourself in the shoes of the protagonists in a time before mental illness and grief were better understood (though it’s still not perfect), this odyssey that Jack and Anastasia undertake is moving and tragic, the help they both seek is not within reach.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 