Two-thirds of the way through Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, a shift occurs, a shift in both plot and tone. As I mentioned last week, the novel’s protagonist Aoyama, asks her Taiwanese interpreter, Chi-chan, to accompany her to Japan where they will live together and Chi-chan can pursue her interest in translation. However, Chi-chan refuses and says that Aoyama has a “blind spot.” The two women continue to travel through Taiwan but, looking back from the vantage point of when she’s writing the story (of course, as we’ve noted, that’s a fiction), Aoyama realizes there’s been a change in their relationship, a return to more formality and less intimacy. Then, after warning Aoyama about continuing to ignore her blind spot, Chi-chan says: “’If you really cannot change your attitude toward me, I will have to resign my post.” … “’Chi-chan!’ ‘Please lower your voice.’ We were in public; I didn’t care. ‘No matter what you say, nothing will change the fact that I see you as my best friend. You are the only person in the whole world—in all of heaven and on all of the earth—who has regarded me and the so-called monster in my stomach seriously.’ (This is a reference to Aoyama’s appetite for food). The winter daylight, filtered through the cafeteria’s glass windows, shone a halo around Chi-chan’s body… ‘That’s why I can’t bear that you have to settle for a lesser life here on the Island. What can you do after marrying a man like that? If you can’t work as a translator on the island, then why don’t we go to the mainland?’” This is the point at which Chi-chan resigns her position, saying that Aoyama can instead be assisted by her original interpreter, a man, and that she, Chi-chan, will return to her family home, the whereabouts unknown to Aoyama. Aoyama is stunned. “I had enraged her. But how?” Aoyama does indeed have to use the help of a different interpreter, Mr. Mishima, whom she doesn’t like. However, Chi-chan returns, and the two women share marvelous meals. Ultimately though, Chi-chan refers back to the mise en abyme I mentioned last time regarding the two girls at the school, the Japanese (mainlander), Ozawa-san, and the Taiwanese, Tan-san, who were in love with each other but also in conflict. Chi-chan says; “’Ozawa-san shielded Tan-san from falling flowers and from blinding sunlight—she acted like a knight in shining armor, but did Tan-san wish for this? In a girl’s school where Mainlanders are the majority, it is likely that such special treatment only makes Tan-san’s situation more difficult, yet Ozawa-san may not have realized this at all. I believe Tan-san’s resistance was an act of protest against Ozawa-san’s misguided treatment.’ …’You are noble, considerate and kind, Aoyama-san—you are willing to go above and beyond on my behalf. But it is precisely because you would never let me sleep in the servant’s room, because you are outraged when someone looks down on me for my status, that I have no idea how to make you understand. How do I explain myself so that I don’t seem like an unreasonable child who covets your equal treatment yet paradoxically defies your kindness? The truth is that I am the same as Tan-san. The truth is that gentle Aoyama-san never once asked me: Do you want this protection?’” Chi-chan explains that the problem is that Aoyama thinks she offers true friendship but is blind to how she patronizes Chi-chan, and this prevents them from being equals and true friends. Chi-chan leaves for good. Among other things, this is a strong statement about, well, colonialism. Aoyama, a Japanese woman (called the mainland in the book) views Chi-chan as a downtrodden “lessor” person, a diamond in the rough, who needs Aoyama’s help and protection in order to blossom. Aoyama believes she has found someone who stands out from the crowd of Taiwanese, someone who, with a little help and affection, can overcome her humble origins and shine. She makes an implicit assumption that the Taiwanese are inferior to the Japanese even though Aoyama resists the Japanese expansionist policies and is made angry by their expression. Chi-chan senses this condescension and calls it out even though the two women genuinely care for each other. She doesn’t want the “protection” which implies a one-down relationship. So is the story “really” about this racism? I don’t think so, best B. The story touches on any kind of prejudice—against women, against gay women; it shows the injustice of any situation where people are judged not for who they are themselves but for their outer characteristics. And it’s all set in an intricate narrative framework. More about this next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

In Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, the story continues in a somewhat playful tone through the middle section of the book. The narrator. Aoyama, describes a chaste infatuation with her interpreter/companion, Chi-chan, who remains inscrutable. Around page 174, after learning that Chi-chan faces an unhappy arranged marriage with an older man who will expect her to do nothing more than produce sons, Aoyama asks her to come to Japan with her, where they will live together, and Chi-chan can pursue her desire to be a translator. There is no overt evidence of Aoyama hoping for romantic involvement, but plenty of eroticism. But Chi-chan refuses. Here, Aoyama remarks on something she has noted throughout the story so far, that Chi-chan seems to wear a Noh mask, meaning she is impossible to read. “Noh masks (noh-men or omote) are carved wooden masks worn in traditional Japanese Noh theater, originating in the 14th century. They represent demons, spirits, women, and gods, crafted from Japanese cypress and painted with natural pigments.” Aoyama becomes angry, deciding that Chi-chan has led her on, flirted with her, encouraged a one-sided intimacy. Chi-chan has played a role; she is not whom she seems to be, which, of course, is a central theme of the story. Here is a scene with the two women, beginning with Aoyama: “’Are you aware of your mask?’ ‘My…mask?’ ‘Can you deny that you’re wearing a mask right now? You’ve hidden your true feelings from me since the day we met.’” Aoyama believes Chi-chan’s coldness is because Aoyama gave her a luxurious kimono—a traditional Japanese garment. By giving such an expensive gift, Aoyama believes she offended Chi-chan. Chi-chan replies: “’Liking or disliking kimonos isn’t the crux of the problem…you have a blind spot that you cannot possibly be aware of.’” Chi-chan continues: “’I believe that it is most ideal for us to maintain a strictly professional relationship.’” This statement leads to a separation between the two women. Chi-chan disappears, leaving Aoyama no way to contact her and a sense that she does indeed have a blind spot that she cannot see. Let’s re-focus on how the story is told. There are few traditional flashbacks in Taiwan Travelogue; the text stays anchored in the story’s present, although as we have noted, the introductions and afterwords playfully jump all over time (mostly ahead). In the story itself, time moves essentially in one direction—forward. The story could certainly bear digressions into the past that would contextualize the characters’ behavior, however, this is not presented. Our friend the implied author has made a choice here, one that helps to define the book’s style. Primarily, there are dramatic scenes with a helping of dramatic summary, often in imperfect tense. There are also the expository sections on cuisine. What do I mean here? Let’s look at an example. “After we returned to Taichu, there was no more talk of Noh masks or of friendship. The clock seemed to have rewound to my early days on the island, with Chi-chan angelically preparing nutritious and delicious lunches and dinners for me on my writing days…A rainy season was upon us, much like when I first got here; but this was wintry rain…” ‘Kay, this is dramatic summary. We are not shown moment to moment what the narrator describes; time is collapsed and there’s a sense that the events described occur and re-occur from day to day. Here is an example of the “travelogue” -like descriptions of cuisine. “Back when sukiyaki was first introduced in the Meiji era, it was known simply as beef hotpot. There were originally different ways of making the dish in Kamigata and Edo, but these eventually merged in the Taisho era.” (And these passages are usually footnoted, which contributes to the verisimilitude). Here is a dramatic scene: “’If shuto means ‘alcohol robbery,’ then perhaps we ought to call sukiyaki ‘rice robbery,’ I said. Chi-chan laughed. ‘Is that why you made three whole cups of rice?’ ‘I would have made four, but I wanted to save some room for the meat.’ … In the ensuing silence, I saw that the clock had not turned back after all. The Chi-chan who had heartily enjoyed the Yanagawa pot with me would not have been silent now.” (This inner reflection is a comment on the change in the women’s relationship). ‘Will you not ask me what we’ll eat in the spring?’ I asked. This scene begins slowly, with the discussion of food but drama arises when Aoyama asks Ch-chan about the spring, bringing up the question of whether they’ll be together in the future (they won’t). The point is that these frequently occurring passages consist of quoted speech, with some “beats” and some inner thoughts of the narrator. (a beat is an action that a speaker of dialogue makes, a description of what they were doing as they spoke—Chi-chan laughed). One of the primary injunctions fiction writers are given is to “show, not tell.” The reader should be asked to make meaning of a story, not have it explained to her/him. However, a story devoid of any telling or exposition would be quite challenging to understand, so a balance is needed. In the above scene, we the readers are shown Chi-chan uttering a question about how many cups of rice Aoyama made. This question could be construed several ways but the beat “Chi-chan laughed” provides us with helpful context and explanation of how her question fit into the scene (she’s teasing). Ms. Yang generally does a fine job as she weaves in considerable culinary and tourist exposition to the dramatic scenes. And this relates handily to the theme of Aoyama being a tourist who loves to eat as well as the idea that things are not what they seem to be. Let’s stop here and continue next time with a discussion of the climax—Aoyama’s realization—and its aftermath. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

I want to say a big thank you to those posting five-star reviews on Amazon for my books, The Hour of Parade and The Puppet's Tattered Clothes. Your kind remarks are appreciated. I am currently revising The Hour of Parade and hope to re-publish it. Thanks again. (I am smiling inwardly. At you.).

The middle part of Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue shows a slow escalation of the themes introduced during and after the book’s inciting incident. Aoyama is increasingly attracted to O-san, and vice versa—seemingly, although this is put into question later. After all, it’s all presented through Aoyama’s perspective. And there’s a strong sense of Aoyama being outraged by the racism shown to the Taiwanese by the Japanese, although, again, this is later re-contextualized. There is a strong presence of the implied author, more so than in other books. Just for a fun review, the implied author refers “to the textual, reconstructed "persona" or "second self" of the writer, distinct from the actual, flesh-and-blood author. It is the version of the author inferred by the reader based on the style, ideology, and tone of the work.” Ideology in this book refers to beliefs expressed about the insensitivity of certain people from Japan who look down on the Taiwanese and wish to dominate their country—beliefs that are shown in a negative light. The style and tone of Taiwan Travelogue is realist; the book seems very much like the chronicle of a “real” person, Aoyama, who narrates her adventures on the island of Taiwan in 1938. However, below the surface, we discern that this is all “magic” and of clever design, the work of the entity who wrote the book. Isn’t this Ms. Yang? you ask. The concept of the implied author involves the idea that the real Ms. Yang is capable of writing other books (she actually has) and that these other books may vary in style, ideology, and tone. Taiwan Travelogue is a particular novel, a one of a kind creation by an entity who goes to elaborate lengths to disguise the fictional nature of the work, creating introductions and afterwards, peppering the text with many footnotes that add to the illusion that the text is a sort of memoir or travelogue based on “real” events instead of being a contemporary novel. The footnotes are often credited to the book’s translator, Lin King, sometimes to the author, Yang Shuang-Zi, and sometimes even to the narrator, Aoyama. Lin King may indeed be another implied author who shapes the translated narrative and provides extensive commentary on the text, with notes on food, historical and natural sites, and poetry. I believe she is a “real” flesh and blood human. The first footnote occurs on page 1 and is credited to Yang Shunag-zi, described as the “Mandarin Chinese translator of the 2020 edition.” ‘Kay. This is intentionally misleading. Ms. Yang is the real author, not someone who translated an already existing text. Subsequently, she and the English translator, Lin King, take turns adding footnotes which continue to support the fiction that the book was actually written in 1954 and that it refers to real events in 1938. These footnotes, unusual in a work of fiction, provide a false sense that the novel is a memoir. On page 75, we actually have a footnote from the narrator, Aoyama, who explains some details of Taiwanese cuisine. This, I must remind everyone, is a footnote by a fictional character. “What’s going on here” indeed. Mid-way through, we have our old friend a mise en abyme. Aoyama and Chi-Chan visit a girl’s school and are introduced to two young students, Ozawa Reiko, a Japanese girl, and Tan Tshiok-bi, (sparrow), a Taiwanese, as they stand outside beneath a flowering bougainvillea tree. “One of the girls, who had the build of a star athlete, raised a hand to brush the fallen petals off the shoulder of the shorter, slighter girl.” This physical description is quite similar to the description of Aoyama and Chi-chan, and this gesture of the larger girl brushing fallen petals off the slighter girl’s shoulder is congruent with the way that Aoyama wishes to protect Chi-chan. That night, they sleep in one of the girl’s dormitories, near a bathroom which is rumored to be haunted or enchanted by spirits. “There are tales about a mythical dimension in the lavatory,” Tan Tsiok tells them with a mischievous smile. Of course, this is all Aoyama and Chichan need to hear. In the middle of the night, they go to the bathroom and hear voices. They discover a photo lying on the floor of a very thin and boyish young woman. Things are mysterious and shadowy, but it develops that two girls have been using the bathroom as a romantic rendezvous, as it is a safe place others are afraid to go to at night. This is a mis en abyme indeed, best B, one that presents Aoyama’s desire of the way things should be between she and Chi-chan. ‘Kay. We’ve brought things up to a point where the novel changes significantly in a sort of climax—a drawn out one. Let’s stop there and pick up next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

Last time, in a first discussion of Yang Shuang-zi’s novel Taiwan Travelogue , I mentioned that the book’s form conveys information about and is congruent with, the story. It was only a day later that a man came up to me on the street, tears in his eyes, and said, “But what did you mean by that?” Alarmed by random encounters, I hurried away, but ever since, his question has nagged me, and I will attempt to explain. In a story about things not being what they seem, the novel’s introduction is not what it seems to be. It is supposedly written by a Japanese man who possesses a copy of what he describes as the first edition of a book published in 1954 and who provides this to a translator who renders the book into English and publishes it in 2024. None of this is true; it is fiction. There is no Japanese man, the real author of Taiwan Travelogue , Yang Shuang-zi, wrote all of the above; Taiwan Travelogue  wasn’t written till 2020. So the form or structure of the novel communicates information about the content. It is not the random work of typesetters, best B. If we then approach Taiwan Travelogue  as a novel disguised as a sort of memoir, with some sleight-of-hand regarding the introduction (and the afterwards, which we haven’t got to), we should be able to apply concepts about the structure of fiction to it, i.e., how it begins, an inciting incident, progressive complications leading to a climax, leading to an ending showing the consequences of this climax, featuring some transformation of the protagonist. As I said above, in fiction, there are no coincidences (to echo Don Juan, which is always good to do). Let’s begin. Last time, I presented the beginning of the purported novel itself, and it’s worth doing so again. “Hold on. What’s going on here?” I couldn’t help but voice the thought out loud. For, in the moment, I seemed to have been transported back into the midst of Shokyokusai Tenkatsu’s Magic Troupe. I’d crossed paths with Tenkatsu’s troupe long ago, before I’d started high school. They had been on tour, and on the day they arrived in Nagasaki, my Aunt Kikuko and I happened upon the opening parade.” The narrator then describes the long-ago magician’s parade. Then: “And here I was, decades later, on the outpost island of Taiwan, reliving this old reverie. It was May, in the thirteenth year of Showa (1938), yet the sights and sounds coursing before me were just like those of Tenkatsu’s Magic Troupe.” Then, the narrator describes seeing the market area which has evoked a long-ago memory of a magic troupe parade. ‘Kay.   So the novel itself begins with a description of the narrator having an experience in which memory takes her into the past, and she is surprised by this. The past links with the present; two separate realms collide, provoking shock and confusion. (and wonder, I think). The present is disguised as the past and vice versa, providing a neat continuation of the novel’s theme. If we subscribe to the theory that a story’s beginning should resonate at the story’s end, we should expect this theme to re-surface at the end. We’ll see. After the beginning, we have a section of the story that establishes the characters and provides a sort of steady state for them to exist in prior to the inciting incident. The protagonist, Aoyama Chizuko, is a native Japanese woman, a famous author, who has traveled to Taiwan by ship to write a series of articles or dispatches on the island. The year is 1938; Aoyama’s age is never specified, but she refers to herself as in her forties. She describes how publishers in Japan wanted to send her to Taiwan out of a wish to promote imperialist ideas in Japan. As I mentioned last time, Japan controlled Taiwan in the 1930s and saw at as a central part of its expansion into the southern Pacific. Aoyama is reluctanct to be used as an instrument of Japanese imperialism, and this establishes an important aspect of her character—her rebelliousness. However, she needs money. “The Government-General of Taiwan had always been fond of bringing Mainlander authors to Taiwan, and thus…sent a joint invitation naming Taichu town hall (Taichu is Japanese for the Taiwanese city of Taichung) as my official host. Even without the lectureship compensation, their offer to cover transportation, housing, and dining immediately dispelled all of my financial woes.” She describes sailing to Taichu and going to a market area where she encounters some difficulty because of not speaking the language. There, for the first time, she meets the woman who becomes her interpreter and companion. The woman says: “’I beg your pardon—would you like any assistance?’ I followed this flawless Japanese to its source: the face of a petite young woman who came up to around my jaw. Silken cheeks like an infant’s—and two dimples that punctuated them when she smiled.” Aoyama is clearly smitten with the young woman, but the woman withdraws without saying her name. However, serendipity arranges another meeting; she is O-san, a native Taiwanese who will be Aoyama’s interpreter. This, I think, is the story’s precipitating incident. “The sudden swelling in my chest made me choke on a lungful of air.” Aoyama is persistently upbeat and self-deprecating. There are many scenes where she is gently corrected by O-san after making farcical blunders. Aoyama is fascinated by food, and a strong feature of the book is the in-depth description of Taiwanese cuisine. I believe all these features make up her pre-transformation state. Aoyama is not entirely reliable as a narrator—not because she intentionally misleads the reader but because she is naïve and un-curious. She presents her story in very surface fashion, and we the readers must attend more to the implied author’s work in order to get the story’s meaning. She endlessly describes the charms of O-san but doesn’t reflect on (or at least isn’t shown as reflecting on) the deeper implications—that she is attracted to another woman. Perhaps what is being shown is that her sexuality has been determined long ago and is unsurprising to her. Or it could be that she is spectacularly unaware. Or, it could be that she is an unreliable narrator who “sugar-coats” the story. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

This week, a new and very interesting book, dear friends, Yang Shuang-zi’s 2020 novel, Taiwan Travelogue. Originally published in Taiwan,   this book has been short-listed for the 2026 International Booker Prize and was translated to English by Lin King in 2024. What the heck is very interesting about this novel? you say. Well, on the surface, it appears to be a reprint of an old travel book about a Japanese woman visiting Taiwan in the late 1930s. The publisher has taken pains to encourage this idea with the book’s cover design and layout. The cover of the English edition I’m reading quotes the first page of the purported “travelogue” which begins, “Hold on. What’s going on here?” The quoted text presents the narrator describing a parade of magicians she once saw, and this description of magic and sleight-of-hand is a wry commentary on the whole book. The text itself has a generous sampling of descriptions of Taiwanese cuisine and shows the protagonist/narrator, and her companion visiting numerous tourist sites—features common to many tourist guides, or travelogues. However, below the surface, we have a novel. By way of background—which does help in one’s enjoyment—" From 1895 to 1945, Japan  colonized Taiwan, transforming it into a "model colony" to support its imperial expansion . While implementing strict, often brutal, authoritarian rule and cultural assimilation (Japanization), Japan concurrently built extensive infrastructure—railways, sanitation, and education systems—that modernized the island's economy, particularly in agriculture and industry.”    Japan was forced to give up Taiwan after WWII, and currently, Taiwan is a sovereign nation (China is not pleased). Today, let’s consider the book’s introduction that seems to be separate from the story. In fact, I began reading the book by skipping this section, thinking I’d get at it later, that it was exactly what it purports to be, an introduction written by someone else. It’s entitled, Introduction to Taiwan Travelogue , New Mandarin Chinese Edition, 2020. Then we have, A Truncated Dream, A Foreign Splendorland and the author’s name, Hiyoshi Sagako. (I wonder if this name has some meaning in Japanese culture—or Taiwanese). “My affiliation with this new translation of Taiwan Travelogue  began in 2015, when I heard via word of mouth that Ms. Yang Jo-hui, a translator, was seeking a copy of the first Mandarin translation, published in 1977. I found this an unusual quest, considering that the book had been out of print in Taiwan for many years…” ‘Kay, what’s going on here? (To echo the text’s first line). On the publication page, we’re told simply that Ms. Yang wrote the book in 2020, so how could it now be said to have been written much earlier, in 1954? The writer claims that in 1938, a Japanese woman, Aoyama Chizoku, a famous novelist, was asked by the Japanese government to travel to Taiwan and write a series of dispatches describing the island. She did so amid the build-up to WWII, publishing the dispatches first as a travelogue. Then in 1954, she published a novel based on her experiences. A nice story, but—you guessed it—a fiction. The novel, Taiwan Travelogue , was indeed written by Yan Shuang-zi in 2020, and the translation is now nominated for a Booker Prize. Why do these literary acrobatics? you ask. The concept of time travel comes to mind, as well as the work of magicians. As does that old idea of a text’s implied author. The introduction continues with a summary of one of the main themes of the book, that Taiwanese—including those born of Japanese families living on the island—were looked down on by people in Japan as inferior and, in the case of ethnic Japanese inhabitants, not “really” Japanese. Here we have another theme—authenticity vs. inauthenticity. Fiction vs. non-fiction. Ms. Aoyama’s being invited to Taiwan to write a Travelogue is characterized as an attempt by the Japanese government to further their expansionist ambitions (think Pearl Harbor). In a very curious passage, the authenticity of Ms. Aoyama’s interpreter, Ms. Wang Chien-ho, is questioned: “I will admit that, back when I first read Aoyama-sensei’s serialized essays, I had assumed that Ms. Wang must have been a fictional character…I therefore deduced that Ms. Wang must have been a clever metaphor, a vessel through which Aoyama could imply her true views under the veil of patriotic writing.” This passage of course is based on the fictional idea that Ms. Aoyama is a “real” person, instead of a fictional character. The introduction continues: “Today, there is no longer any doubt that Ms. Wang was very real indeed; those who attended Ms. Aoyama’s lectured testified to seeing Ms. Wang at her side. But while Aoyama’s motives for publishing the book were rooted in her relationship with the real Ms. Wang, she ultimately chose to present the work as fiction, and the novel’s very premise rests on the fictionality of Ms. Wang as a character. For better or worse, Ms. Wang has  become a metaphor—one without which the novel Taiwan Travelogue  cannot stand as a work of literature.” ‘Kay. Once again, on the surface, this seems quite plausible, but when you consider that Taiwan Travelogue is a work of fiction published in 2020, the introduction becomes a hall of mirrors. Ms. Yang is real/not real. The book is fiction/not fiction. Why does the novel’s very premise rest on the fictionality of Ms. Wang? The author (implied author) is saying that the character of Ms. Wang is symbolic of the racism and oppression that Japanese people inflicted on the Taiwanese. The introduction then comments on the insertion of a key chapter after the first publication of the novel. We’ll get into that later. As a preliminary step toward making sense of this story, let’s say that it’s form—here, the introduction—conveys a lot of information. Let’s stop there and continue next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-Zi #AlanBray

This just in— The Wax Child  did not make the cut for the International Booker Prize short list. Oh, oh, the wax child isn’t going to like that. The Wax Child  by Olga Ravn is a story set in historic time—early 17 th  century Denmark. However, there is no statement of this in the beginning of the text. Of course, due to a phenomenon we have previously noted, the reader who comes to this book no doubt has some preconceptions that may include the story’s historic setting. Indeed, the Amazon page for the book leads off by saying, “In seventeenth-century Denmark…” thereby providing information that Ms. Ravn herself provides at the book's end in a sort of author’s notes section. In the New Directions edition of the book (the only English translation I’m aware of) the cover gives no clue as to the time of the story, (it does foretell the storie's end) nor does the back. But the inner sleeve does; in fact it appears to be the source for the Amazon page write up. However, Amazon does not categorize The Wax Child  as an historic novel. It marks it as Literature, Genre Fiction, Horror, and Occult and Supernatural. These distinctions are important, as someone searching Amazon for let’s say, novels in the Horror category, would come upon The Wax Child  and might therefore buy it. I must say, I think these categories are terribly misleading and could lead to rage and despondency. Even refunds. I like that there’s no statement up front explaining the time period. The reader is left to discover this in an open way. In any case, The Wax Child  is a story that occurs in historic time but doesn’t make a fuss about it. In the text, how is this communicated to the reader? In the second paragraph, we do have the wax child saying, “There were carriages and horses and soldiers.” This might cue the attentive reader that we are in a pre-gasoline engine world. Maybe. There is mention of the “town’s religious processions.” Could be dated. Then, the wax child mentions lying for a long time in the earth and seeing, “steam locomotives, the smallest particle split and exploded.” ‘Kay, again, the attentive reader might note these references are to modern times and/or references to the passage of great amounts of time. What is not mentioned is as important as what is. The characters in the story do not use cell phones or computers. They do not drive cars or go grocery shopping at Whole Foods. It is not till page sixteen that the King of Denmark, Christian IV, is named as a contemporary in the story, and to the student of history, this places the story in time. Christian IV was king of Denmark and Norway from 1588 to 1648. A long reign, no? All right, you say, but aren’t there less explicit cues in the text about time? The language that the wax child uses, the style of its speech carries meaning, letting the reader know this is not a contemporary story. Again, here’s the first paragraph: “I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm. They have given me hair and fingernail parings from the person who is to suffer. I was born by my mistress for forty weeks under her right arm as if I was a proper child and my wax was softened by her warmth. After this time, she took me to a pastor; it was night, the church was dark and still, and he christened me, the wax child. I was an instrument. This was at Nakkebolle Manor, in southern Funen. My wax mouth cannot be opened.” This does not have a contemporary feel. There are no contractions—although this could be due to translation, but I don’t think so. Actually, the use of contractions has been around for a long time—certainly before the 1600s. However, their lack tends to give speech a formal and archaic tone. The use of the word “mistress” is anachronistic and refers more to earlier centuries when people relied on hierarchical distinctions to carry meaning. As mentioned, it is at the end of the book that Olga Raven directly addresses the reader about the time of the story in a section entitled: Note. Here the author explains she drew on Nordic folklore as well as letters and court documents to write the novel. She states clearly that the events in the story really occurred between 1596 and 1621. Then comes an acknowledgments section where the author thanks various people for their help. So, is The Wax Child  a novel or not? At the end, we learn that the events really happened but of course, much of the text consists of the testimony of the wax child who is apparently the creation of the author. It is, as I’ve said, a literary device to tell a tale in a creative way. There is no need to create a “real” human witness and justify how she/he could be omnipresent. So, a fiction based on an account of real events and people. The way the story is punctuated is in story fashion, with a beginning, middle and end. A precipitating event—Christenze’s being exposed to the community as a witch—leads to progressive complications that conclude in her tragic death. The book asks a question: will Christenze be spared death as sentence for her behavior? The question could be answered yes, no, or I don’t know, but it is no. Is this because Ms. Ravn was trying to stick close to a real story? I don’t know, my friends, I don’t know. She did stick to it in fine fashion. Till next time. #TheWaxChil #OlgaRavn #AlanBray

Last time, I proposed discussing the effect of utilizing an inanimate narrator in Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child . Here goes: This is not the first story to have an inanimate narrator. Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red features narration by the color red; a fig tree does the job in Elif Shafak's  The Island of Missing Trees . (‘Kay, a tree is alive, but you get the idea). Indeed, we could say that many novels feature an omniscient narrator with no identifying information provided about this entity—it is a voice which seems to be human, but is not identified as to gender, age, or ethnicity. A famous example: Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina : “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Who is speaking here? Is it the author, Leo Tolstoy? To some extent yes, but it’s a particular version of Tolstoy, an omniscient narrator who is not just a gifted Russian aristocrat of the late nineteenth-century. Is there a difference between this kind of narrator and the wax child? There is a fascinating passage in the story that clearly shows the inanimate narrator speaking: “But then I’ve already told you, I am not a child, only something that looks like one. Something that longs to be one. I’m an internal event…condemned to anticipation.” An intriguing comment, no? “I’m an internal event.” Who is speaking here, or writing? A narrator entity who, as we discussed last time, has human thoughts and feelings but who now says of itself, I’m an internal event. Is this the real human author writing? Disclosing that her narrative tool is an expression of herself? Using a narrational sleight-of-hand to express something as the author of a book? Again, on one level, the answer is yes. No one but the human author of The Wax Child  is responsible for its content, just as no one but Tolstoy is responsible for Anna Karenina . Ms. Ravn created the text. What is expressed? What if the wax child were a fictional representation of an adult Norwegian woman named Olga Ravn? A woman who made no pretense of distance from the characters? —because that’s what we’re talking about here, best B. Despite the wax child’s never commenting on it, the narrational device of having an inanimate, omniscient narrator creates distance between the author and the story/characters. And that distance contributes mightily to a particular mood in the writing—mysterious, oracular, eerie at times. There is irony here, my friends. As we read, we are asked to believe that this doll of wax “talks” to us, and because of the magical rules of fiction, we accept this impossibility. I doubt if anyone who takes the time to read this book goes along, thinking “Oh, well, this voice is really Ms. Ravn. How clever.” No, we accept this “rule” of the story, that a wax doll is the narrator, and it is outside of time and space. There is irony; however, the doll is not ironic. It claims no awareness of being a character in a book. It sticks to a rather self-absorbed script, relating the tragic events of the story but never expressing any personal emotion about them. The wax child lacks awareness. “I talk all the time but no one listens.” One of the ways this is expressed is that the fact that the story occurs in historical time—early seventeenth-century—is not made explicit by the narrator, which gives the effect of the narrator just assuming the reader knows. We’ll delve into this next time. The structure of the book, with the wax child as narrator and Christenze as protagonist, creates a nice tension in that the wax child knows Christenze’s fate; Christenze remains stubbornly in denial about it. The omniscient narrator cannot warn the protagonist of the danger that approaches because as it tells we the readers again and again, it has no mouth. But more seriously, the wax child is distinct from Christenze and the other characters. It witnesses the events of the story; by the rules of the novel, it cannot alter them. ‘Kay. Let’s wrap up today and continue next time. Till then. #TheWaxDoll #OlgaRavn #AlanBray

“No one listens to a thing I say. Although I speak all the time.” So says the unnamed, inanimate narrator of Olga Ravn’s The Wax Child . Who hears it then? Someone—more on this later. What we know about this narrator is that it was created by Christenze Crucknow, who carried this wax effigy beneath her right arm as if it was a real human infant in utero. Why, you ask, would someone do this, making an effigy and treating it in this manner?   “Wax effigies in witchcraft are figures representing individuals used in ritual magic to influence them through sympathetic magic. Historically, these dolls—often called poppets—were crafted from wax to cause harm, such as wasting away, by burning or pricking them, but they were also used for healing or protection rituals.”  In The Wax Child , it seems a lot of the witchcraft that Christenze performs has to do with fertility and childbirth. She offers spells and herbal treatments, and we can infer that the Wax Child is a part of these treatments. Sympathetic magic refers to “ a form of ritualistic magic based on the belief that objects or actions can influence target individuals or events through symbolic, mystical connections . Working on the principle that "like produces like," it uses symbols—such as dolls, items belonging to a person, or art—to create, heal, or harm from a distance.” So we can imagine Christenze trying to help someone undergoing a difficult childbirth by performing a ritual involving the Wax Child. There’s no direct mention of this in the story, it's one of the things left out that the reader must imagine.   However the Child says: “Whenever a woman nearby to me was about to give birth, I would lie in the ground and feel almost exalted, as if the arrival of every child was a chance for me to find a place in the world, for my soul to dart into one of those newborn infants, my mouth to open and expel its very fist cry.” Well, this doesn’t seem entirely wholesome. In fact, the Wax Child comes across as rather parasitic and almost bratty, coveting living beings and the way they are cared for. We are told that Christenze attempts to help a woman name Anne Bille, who delivers many babies, only to have them die within days. Christenze is unable to help her and Anne is shown jealously denouncing Christenze as a witch—the first legal problem she has.   This is the inciting event of the story. Christenze is “outed” as a witch, as are her friends and associates. The King of Denmark learns of this and dispatches his lieutenants to eradicate the outbreak of witchery. They arrest and torture the women into confession, and they are, one by one, executed. Christenze, as a noblewoman, believes her life will be spared. She appeals to the King, as they are both aristocrats, but he nonetheless condemns her. This sad tale is, as Ms. Ravn, reveals at the end, based on real events. Ms. Ravn chose to tell the story in a particular way, injecting an unusual narrator in the form of the Wax Child. Here’s a passage from the very end: The narrator writes of her creator, her mistress, Christenze: “…the Beheaded Virgin, is what she later would call herself—after death, of course—her head, separated from her body, told me so from within the flames, when they tossed both it and the body, headless, into the fire. Farewell my child, the lips sighed on seeing me on the arm of another in front of the bonfire…” Indeed, this is the end of the book. Well, almost. The whole story is told from the Wax Child’s position in time and space, and she is deathless and can effortlessly travel great distances and see into other characters’ heads—even beyond their deaths. Here is the end of the story, after Christenza is killed: “Had I eyes that could weep; I would have wept. But I am only a doll, a doll of wax. I cannot move my hands. My wax mouth cannot be opened. And yet I speak…To the dead I mean nothing. I meant little to them when they were alive. To my mistress I was only an instrument. Made for strength, made for harm. I am so stupid. Every evening I tell the same story, and I speak to the soil.” The wax child is the storyteller, telling the story while buried in the soil, a kind of not-so-mute witness outside of time and place. But someone is hearing the wax child’s words and putting them into a book, and this doesn’t have to do with the story but how it’s told. In other words, it’s perfectly fine to just enjoy this fine story—the eerie voice of the Wax Child, the tragic persecution of the basically harmless witches by those in power—without fussing about the implications of having an inanimate narrator who behaves like a child.   Let’s stop here, and next time we’ll have something for the fussers. Till then. #TheWaxChild #OlgaRavn #AlanBray

This week, a new story, Olga Ravn’s 2025 novel, The Wax Child . This book, translated to English from Danish by Matin Aitken, has been nominated for an International Booker Prize. It begins: “I am a child shaped in beeswax. I am made like a doll the size of a human forearm. They have given me hair and nail parings from the person who is to suffer. I was born by my mistress for forty weeks under her right arm as if I was a proper child, and my wax was softened by her warmth. After this time, she took me to a pastor; it was night, the church was dark and still, and he christened me, the wax child. I was an instrument. This was at Nakkebolle Manor, in southern Funen. My wax mouth cannot be opened.” ‘Kay. This is a story about several women who lived in 17 th  century Denmark, although there are initially few references to this so that the story seems untethered to a specific time and place. Unless you’re already familiar with where these places are, you have to look up Funen and Nakkebolle. It is written in present tense and first person, the narrator, the wax child, tells stories about the humans, although as the novel develops, there’s a kind of polyphonic effect as the humans’ speech is shown. We have immediately identified two critical features of this novel, it’s occurrence in historic time, and the fact that the narrator isn’t alive. It’s not dead either, it’s made of wax. We’ll need to examine both of these in depth. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a story where the narrator isn’t a real person. Of course, since narrators are made up in fiction, this is a provocative idea. In this sense, no narrator is real. But the Wax Child is explicitly an image of a human child (is that different from a made-up narrator, made in the image of a human?) Oh, stop it! My point is that there is immediate irony here. The narrator isn’t alive; it is a sort of “mouthpiece” for the author—the implied author, not Ms. Ravn. It is a strong voice in the story, (not the only one though) and the irony is that this is the essential situation of fiction. It’s made-up. Even more provocatively, things start off with this object saying, “I am a child,” and that “the person who is to suffer” contributes nail parings and hair to it. This “child” reports being carried by her “mistress” for forty weeks and then christened at night by a “pastor” as the Wax Child. What’s going on here? We the reader might begin to wonder if these are references to witchcraft. (Bell rings). We have a winner! So, we might conclude that this is a story about witchery, a story with a supernatural bent that involves an object as narrator. Is that what’s going on? This begs the question: what is witchcraft? “Witchcraft involves the use of magic, spells, and rituals to influence, harm, or heal, often utilizing nature-based, pagan, or, in some historical contexts, demonic, beliefs . Modern practitioners often focus on manifestation, spirituality, and nature…Historically, it was defined by persecution and accusations of pacts with the devil.”  Yes, best B, this is a story about witchcraft that uses an inanimate object as narrator, an object that communicates with the reader and that has thoughts and feelings. How can this be? Literally, who is speaking? “I know the humans well, though they don’t know me. I am an image, in the absence of a child. I have this bottomless shaft-like longing for the woman who made me…There were carriages, horses, and soldiers. There was marjoram and thyme and rose hip. There were ships that journeyed far across the sea to lay claim to territory. There were ships filled with living bodies in the darkness of their holds…And through the towns religious processions went, and chorused wonderful song. The year passed, and the years passed. And I was a wax child. I did not age. I lay in the ground and did not age.” ‘Kay, so the Wax Child is an omniscient narrator who “sees’ far beyond Denmark, and far beyond the 17 th century. I have no problem with that. At heart, The Wax Child  is a story about a group of women in 17 th  century Denmark who were witches—they weren’t just accused of being witches, they really were, although this tradition of witchcraft arose out of women healing and solving problems with herbs and spells. And they are gradually discovered by the authorities (all men) and tortured into confession and then condemned and executed. There is some tension over whether the women will actually be killed, as they have trouble believing the authorities will go this far. (Tension which I just destroyed by giving away the ending). There is a meaning within the story of gender conflict, of men believing that women are easily led astray by the Devil. The King of Denmark himself gets involved, believing that this “outbreak” of witches in “his” kingdom, must be rooted out and destroyed. He appears several times, “seen” by the wax child, who reports on his movements and finally shows him in an extended scene at the story’s end. An important theme in the story is about women having babies or not having them. Christenze, who may be seen as the protagonist, is not married and has no children, but fashions wax in the shape of a child which becomes (somewhat) alive. What makes the story distinctive is the gorgeous prose, the poetic style, and the narrator being an inanimate object. Another feature which sets The Wax Child  apart from other stories about women being persecuted as witches is that these ladies really are witches in contrast to a text like The Crucible , where the emphasis is on persecution. By the way, a great cover to this edition, no? Please check out the image above. Next time, we’ll delve deeper. Till then. @TheWaxChild @OlgaRavn @AlanBray

When we left off looking at the fourth story in David Szalay’s All That Man Is,  the protagonist, Balazs, a twenty-eight-year-old Hungarian man on business in London, has just experienced a somewhat enchanted afternoon with Emma, the object of his erotic longing. Emma, who has always seemed unapproachable and distant, shows Balazs a new side, expressing curiosity and affection toward him, which he finds stunning. Her questions force him to confront his lonely and meaningless existence. But Emma must get ready for a night’s work, and the two return to the hotel suite they share with Gabor, Emma’s husband and manager, forestalling further intimacy. What happens next was foreshadowed in an earlier scene. Emma sends a distress signal to Balazs and Gabor who are waiting outside the hotel where she is working. They hurry in. The first time this happened, Gabor handled the conflict with Emma’s client(s), while Balazs was only a hulking presence. This time, they burst into the hotel room to find that Emma has locked herself in the bathroom and a naked man is standing by the bed. Gabor goes to talk to Emma, while Balazs stays with the man. “…the man says, ‘You think I hurt her? I didn’t hurt her,’ he tells Balazs’ impassive face. “I just told her she’s a slut, which she is. That’s what I told her, and that’s what she is. Hey gorilla, you fucking ape! I’m talking to Whoosh   There is a noise like a dog enjoying a knuckle of gristle as the nose breaks and fills with blood.”   ‘Kay. Balazs has socked the guy. Please note the use of punctuation and line spacing. “I’m talking to” ends just like that with no emdash or close quote. And then “Whoosh” on the next line, also without punctuation. And then a line space and then the description of the effect of the punch. Other writers might have done it more conventionally. I think Mr. Szalay tries to convey Balazs’ experience here. He doesn’t think; he reacts physically to a guy who is being verbally abusive both to him and to Emma, whom we know Balazs has had a significant encounter with earlier in the day. Indeed, after Gabor and Emma emerge from the bathroom, and express shock at the now bleeding man, Balazs flees the room, feeling a surfeit of adrenaline. He can hardly believe what he’s done, knowing that Gabor and Emma do not approve. He doesn’t believe the man will go to the police but considers just flying home to Hungary. But his passport is in the hotel room. I think at this point, we the readers are rooting for Balazs despite his turn to violence. Emma’s client does seem like an unpleasant sort. But Gabor and Zoli, who have been arranging Emma’s work, are very angry. Zoli wants to have Balazs’ legs broken. They return Emma’s fee to the client, hoping this will mollify him. But Balazs cares only about Emma’s reaction. Gabor tells Balazs she’s angry. “’Is she?’ Balazs says, surprised. ‘Yeah.’” Balazs encounters her coming out of the bathroom. “’Look, I’m sorry,’ he said. Still without looking at him, she nodded. ‘Okay.’ And that was it—he stood aside, and she went past into the damp reek of the bathroom.”   Gabor says Balazs’ services will no longer be needed, and Gabor and Emma leave for her next night’s work. Balazs goes for a walk and decides to eat at a restaurant he’s been to before. “…the girl at the chicken place. She was always there, serving the customers, but he hadn’t really noticed her until tonight. The little smile she gave him when she took his order, it occurred to him, as he sat down to wait for his food, was not the first. Part of the lace edge of her bra showed in the V-shaped neckline of her T-shirt, where a little gold cross lay on the skin. He watched her dealing with the next customer, her earnest manner, her hand tightly gripping the pen with which she wrote the orders down. He wondered what she thought about things. Though she was not smiling now, she had a nice face.” And so this story ends. Is the final scene merely showing Balazs with his muscles and male gaze leering at a young woman? Not merely, Best B. I think it’s showing Balazs changed by his encounter with Emma. He considers the waitress as another human instead of as an object—admittedly one who wears a lacy bra. He wonders what she thinks about things—her existence, her work. Ultimately, he notices her face, that glowing, mobile locus of another person’s reality. Balazs is perhaps the lease introspective of the men shown in this collection. He is no Tony who broods about the end of existence. He is no Simon, who ponders identity. And he is not Karel, who thinks deeply about life and impending fatherhood. Balazs is a physical being who reacts without the intervention of much thought. But Emma’s attention and gentle probing (which maybe was more her raising questions about herself) transform him into, at least briefly, a more reflective person. What is the meaning of life for Balazs? He’s never considered it but becomes aware that there are other people in the world, real people who merit his attention. Finally, why title this post Martin Buber in London , you ask. Pretentious display of my knowledge? Come on, it’s fun. Austrian born Martin Buber was a famous philosopher. One of his important ideas was that the premise of existence is encounter with another person. His concept of “I-Thou” relationships has to do with two people in mutual, holistic experience of one another—not as objects, but in authentic existence. I believe this is where Balazs and the waitress wind up. And they’re in London. Who knows what happens next? Thanks to David Szalay for writing such a fine book. Till next time. #AllThatManIs #DavidSzalay #AlanBray

We left off last time in our consideration of David Szalay’s fourth story in the collection All That Man Is,  with the protagonist, Balazs, realizing, perhaps belatedly, that the object of his erotic obsession, Emma, is a high-class prostitute. Moreover, he is employed by her husband, Gabor, to provide security for her during a working trip to London. “It is awkward, especially that first night.” This describes Balazs’ experience sitting most of the night in a car with Gabor, waiting for Emma to finish working. ‘Kay. Once the guys retrieve a sleepy Emma, they all go back to the hotel. Balazs handles (no pun intended) his feelings by masturbating in the shower while thinking in erotic terms about Emma. There is really nothing else in the story about his feelings concerning the situation; it is up to the reader to infer them. And this is in keeping with Balazs’ character; he is not an introspective man. The following day, Gabor engages Balasz in conversation—Gabor apparently is introspective. “‘Sometimes I wonder about my attitude to women,’ Gabor says… ‘what would you do in my position?’ … ‘What d’you mean?’ ‘If you and Emma were…whatever,’ Gabor says impatiently. ‘Would you let her do this?’ ‘Would I let her?’ … Balazs is having trouble imagining, with any emotional specificity, the situation Gabor wants him to—a situation in which he and Emma were…whatever. Sex is all he is able to imagine and that of an impossibly lubricious kind. ‘Don’t know,’ he says.” Please note, first of all, the use of the word “lubricious.” This is the narrator’s voice as lubricious is not a word Balazs would use. Second, this is a fine characterization of a character who is male, late twenties, not terribly articulate, and not driven by any career plan. He is horny, best B. After an incident where Balazs is called upon to set limits with one of Emma’s clients, (foreshadowing), he encounters her the next day. Gabor is away. In the context of Balazs waking up on the couch and seeing Emma, we have. “She looks at him, sitting there, up to his waist in the sleeping bag, his tattooed biceps and toaster-like pecs, his small pale eyes obscurely imploring.” An interesting passage, no? It would seem to be from Emma’s perspective, when she has never had one before, always being an object. I don’t know, my friends, this could also be from the narrator’s perspective, but it is a bit jarring. Why? you ask. Because texts teach us to read them by establishing rules of who the protagonist is, which characters enjoy a perspective. If you suddenly break one of these conventions, it’s a shock that needs to be reconciled. Emma has been presented as aloof and unattainable thus far, in this passage, we have evidence of her consciousness checking Balazs out. She is not who we thought she was. The two of them decide to go out for coffee. “They are in the habit of speaking to each other now, up to a point. Still, it feels extremely intimate to pass through the downstairs hall together, to leave the house, and walk down the street.” After coffee, they decide rather clumsily to go to Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks. Balazs suggests this because he thinks Emma would like it. She seems to agree because she thinks he wants to go. She has returned in the story to being an admired object, a “black box,” if you will, mysterious to Balazs. The entrance line is long at the Waxworks, and they decide to go to a park. Emma asks Balazs a series of questions about himself, indicating some interest in him. Finally she says: “…Are you in a relationship?” He says no, and they go to have a drink together. Well, Emma has again emerged from the black box; she surprises Balazs and she surprises us with her interest. Once at the pub, Emma says, “Do you know why I like you? …You don’t judge people.” This flirtation goes on, but finally Emma says she has to return to the apartment to prepare for the night’s work. Balazs is disappointed as he would like to continue being alone with her, but they set off. So far, then, we have a story in which the protagonist, Balazs, seems to be presented with the strong possibility of achieving his goal—bedding the beautiful Emma. Much to his surprise, she seems to be interested in him and is much friendlier than he’d previously experienced. Her questions make him confront his identity or lack there of. Balazs is, I think, on the edge of realizing he is missing something in life. He is late twenties and drifting. I think we the readers get a sense of the story being about two misfits who are lonely and find each other. Let’s stop here and find out what happens next time. Till then. #AllThatanIs #DavidSzalay #AlanBray