It takes a measure of bravery to read a book. You can never be sure what you are going to encounter. Even if it’s a rereading, you won’t be reading the same book…that is, if it’s a good book.
Reading a book takes a bravery of the mind. That’s a different kind of courage than physical courage. That’s why anti-intellectuals hate books so, and hate reading. They may have physical courage in some cases, but are afraid for their brains. Protect your brain! Don’t read anything! You might be affected….infected! Sigh…
When I started The Absolutist by John Boyne I had little idea of what I was getting myself into. That’s partly by the writer’s intention.
It’s as if there has already been a story before JB has started his story. You need to know that earlier story to understand what’s happening in the now of the novel. You are missing important information. But you may not even sense that something you need to know is missing.
When you sense that something’s not quite right with the narrative arc, like you are on a bridge that you suddenly realize may tip over to one side, this induces a feeling of vertigo. Then you want to read more to regain your balance.
Boyne supplies the missing information in flashbacks and he is very skilled in parsing them out. There is also a different order of magnitude contrasting the front-story from the flashbacks. The story out front is conventional and reassures the reader. My comfort zone was expansive in the opening pages of the novel. But the backstory is hellish and slow-dripped into the text. In the end the pipe ruptures and, in a gush of significance, you are engulfed. Doesn’t that sound like fun?
The Absolutist starts with an experience I bet we’ve all had. You arrive in a town and encounter a difficulty with the reservation at your hotel. In this case, we are in early 20th century Norwich. Tristan Sadler is a young man who works for a publisher in London. He’s about 21 when the story opens but will be an older man facing catastrophe by the time of the story’s ending. He’s in Norwich on personal business. We are not told what it is right away.
His room is not quite ready because of some unpleasantness with the previous lodger. The landlady Mrs. Cantwell and her son David don’t want to say what the problem was. But it did involve the police. I assumed that the previous lodger may have died in the room but I was wrong. (Now I’m playing JB’s game, not telling you.) Tristan has to bide his time in town for a while. The maid needs a couple more hours to disinfect the room.
Meanwhile Tristan has to fend off the young aspirational entrepreneur David, the landlady’s son, who wants to talk about the Great War which he idealizes. Tristan, at 21, is a veteran of the trenches. He enlisted at the age of 17, lying about his age.
It turns out that Tristan’s mission in Norwich, the town where he grew up, has to do with the war. His closest wartime buddy, Will Bancroft, was killed in circumstances that are murky and seem not entirely honorable. Tristan has the letters Will received from his sister, Marian. He wants to return her letters to her.
He hasn’t read them, of course. Information is usually veiled in The Absolutist before it is disclosed. It’s a story where even the paragraphs can seem to be veiled off from one another. As you progress through the novel, the veils are ever so slowly and delicately removed, as if you were unwrapping bandages off a patient with painful injuries.
The first encounter between Marian and Tristan in a tea shop is one of the highlights of the story. There’s an amazing flashback. Tristan is seated at a table waiting for Marian. They have never met each other but Marian knows from his letters that Tristan was Will’s best friend.
Tristan, nervous, has dropped the table napkins on the floor. He bends down to retrieve them. As he glances back up he sees Marian’s face and is startled by it. We are not told why. JB immediately flashes back to Tristan and Will in the war. That’s before Tristan and Marian have said a word to each other. That was awesome!
The depictions of the brutality of training and the worse brutality of trench warfare are as graphic as possible. It’s true that Alan Hollinghurst in his major novel, The Stranger’s Son, also covers some of the same historical material. But John Boyne shoves your face into it.
As the two guys are thrown together and pulled apart by this war as hell scenario, they cling to their friendship to each other as all but two of the 20 infantrymen from their barracks are wiped out, one by one. That’s an attrition rate of 90%. John Boyne makes you an eyewitness for every heart-of-darkness, lice and muck-filled moment of it.
At least one of the pair is morally destroyed by the most conflicted and intense gay relationship that I can recall reading about. Whether they are both morally destroyed, both at fault as their relationship implodes under fire, is a question that you will have to investigate for yourself. The conflict in the trenches and the conflict between Will and Tristan seem to parallel each other.
The Absolutist by John Boyne releases in July from the magnificent Other Press. It is also a suitable read for World War I history buffs.
Yes, I am being arch in that last remark. But you cannot be so unless what you are saying is true.
