I got really excited when I first started reading this book because the first part was about a conman. Conmen make for amazing books. They're clever, imaginative, sly, witty and can fit into any role that suits them because it's what they do. Unfortunately as the book went on I had to face the fact that the majority of this novel is probably going to be the conman/narrator Sid Hammet's retelling of the now lost Book of Fish. I suppose I'll have to look elsewhere for a good story with a conman as the protagonist.
Anyways, the beginning of the book was full of the narrator talking about things that we don't know about yet. I always thought that this kind of thing in a novel was more annoying than productive because it involves the reader being confused until the narrator actually starts the story. Sometimes it works but in this case I was just wondering what the heck he was talking about when he talked about Gould and the Madonna and miracles. Once the narrator actually started the story things went pretty smoothly and it was somewhat interesting. We learn about this wierd book, that everyone who knows anything thinks that it is not a reliable historical document and is at best an old work of fiction. We learn that this book has some sort of weird power over the narrator.
The narrator seems to have a thing for stories and what they do. I find it a little ironic that while he is telling these made up stories to tourists to make them feel safe, at the same time he wants very badly for this story within the Book of Fish to not be fake. He spends several pages talking about how all his fake antique merchandise is just a way to make rich naive tourists feel safe about the world because of these stories that aren't true. But when he is faced with a similar story he does the same thing as the tourists and believes in it despite the fact that it is probably a work of fiction.
Still trying to figure out what happened at the end of this reading section with the Conga being all weird and eye-glazing-overy. What was up with that?
i had the same reaction when first reading this story. the beginning was very confusing and i often couldnt make anything out of what i had just read. the fact that he is lying to the tourists by selling them junk under the guise of antiques makes me feel that he could be a conman. when he claims that he is a painter and is exposed as a fraud after failing to paint a good portrait of the captain seems to strenghten this idea of him possibly being a conman,but then it seems like he actually became good over time so there may have been some validity to his claim after all. i noticed how story telling seems to play a key role in this novel just like it did in the true history of the kelly gang. i didnt make the connection to the fact that the narrator is telling the tourists false stories, yet he himself seems to be convinced in the validity of the book of fish even though several experts has told him that the book was a fake.
ReplyDeleteI think this book has a potential to be good, as it seems like the narrator is going to retell the story of Gould's life in prison. It could also go in the opposite direction and turn out to be really boring.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the narrator makes not of and also uses to his advantage, the power of fiction. The quote that comes to mind is found on page 32: "...I am taken of the strong fancy that for me alone William Buelow Gould was born; that he mad his life for me and this Book of Fish for him; that our destiny was always one?" In this quote, the narrator is talking about how emersed he had become in Gould's Book of Fish. By describing the reader and the character in a novel as one, the narrator shows gives us a glimpse of the power of fiction.