John Coleman Wood
Another
e-book read for Early Reviewers. I had a small gap in the reading of
this and, unusually, found that what i had read had not remained with
me sufficiently for me to pick up the book and
continue; i had to go back to the beginning and start again. I only
mention this because it is relevant to my review in that i, normally
an involved reader, am able to follow several books at once (recently it
was a dozen i had going), without confusing them, but this time i was
not able to. I am not sure i can put my finger on the reason that i
was confused, though a couple of ideas to come to mind, intimately linked with the book and my review.
First of
all, the plot is not told in chronological order but jumps back and
forth through time from the present, the book's opening, to several
different points in the past. Also, intermixed in the plot are
snippets from an anthropologist's notes or writings; the implication
is that they are those of the main character, a never named American
studying in East Africa, though i think they could well be actual
notes made by Wood in the course of his studies.
Another reason for
my confusion, and this lasted far longer than my original start and
restart, indeed, even after having finished the thing i still have
less than complete clarity, is the names and personalities, such as
they are, of the African characters. Wood's protagonist (awkward to
refer to him this way, but he is nameless throughout) seems less
interested in them as people than as objects of study and, as he is
our reference point, our point of view, we are given almost nothing
to distinguish them one from another. In fact, the anthropologist’s
wife (also nameless, “she” and “her”) is also less a real
character than a memory or image of one ~ perhaps this is intentional
as, in the present she is dead. Ultimately, this particular issue
for me revolves around a lack of distinctive character in the novel
and, as i tend to prefer character-driven writing, that is something
of a weakness.
Usually if a particular book ~ or sometimes it's all
of an author's works ~ is less character-driven it will be more
plot-oriented; in this case, however, i don't find that compensation.
The plot in The Names of Things is thin, almost as though nothing
happens, just the recording of a journey walked through some of the
land of the tribe studied, along with the memories inherent. I don't
really understand Wood's meaning or purpose behind the book; since there
really is not much of a plot, as i mentioned, nor do the characters
present anything new or compelling to me, certainly not the two North
Americans, while the Africans are hard to distinguish though as a
group perhaps new, why was the book written?
In a sense, it seems as though the sole purpose
to the novel is to present what the life of an anthropologist is
like; this would make it more autobiographical than anything else,
which may i suppose explain the namelessness of the North Americans.
At any rate, despite the several negative points i have made, i did
not not enjoy the book so much as find it necessary to reclassify it
in my mind. It clearly does not fit into my categorisation as
“Novel, good”, yet it is not clearly a book to throw away; i am
not sure exactly how to categorise it. Nor am i sure whether it is a
success by my criterion; all i can say it that another book by John
Coleman Wood would be much more likely to be picked up and read by me
if it is non-fiction rather than fiction. That makes this an awkward
review, i'm afraid, of what is, in a number of ways, an awkward book.
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