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I don't know whether animal characters in novels are a fashionable thing, or whether I just have a particular yen for them, but I reviewed three last year – Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, which is told entirely from the viewpoint of sheep, The Sage of Waterloo by Leona Francombe, which is narrated by a rabbit, and Fishbowl by Bradley Somer, in which one of the minor characters is a goldfish called Ian. So it seemed logical to add this novel, which deals among other things with the story of Archie the talking alpaca.
There are ways and ways of using animal characters: they can be anything from their real selves to thinly disguised humans. Ian the goldfish is a sort of Greek chorus to the main action, while the sheep and rabbits in the first two novels mentioned are both trying, with different degrees of success, to be real sheep and rabbits. This novel is different, in that, as soon becomes clear, Archie's alpaca nature is barely skin deep. He and the other alpacas on the island somewhere in the Western Isles where this novel is set are very clearly representations of marginalised humans – immigrants perhaps, or Travellers, or any other kind of outsider you can think of. I suppose the advantage of the alpaca image is that it can stand for all outsiders at once.
We do not, therefore, have to ask ourselves how it is that Archie can talk to his human friends, or do various things for which hooves are not naturally adapted, particularly since he is not the only aspect of "the island" which is at right angles to reality. If a small island has an annual literary festival with serious sponsorship, huge prizes and an audience of 20,000, we are clearly in the realms of fantasy, or magic realism, and nothing else ought to surprise us, not even the festival's unusual climax.
It is the festival, or rather the short story competition at its centre, that is the pivot of the novel, and the scene where all the competitors read out their stories to the audience was, for me, where the book really came alive. I love the technique of interpolating short stories into novels, and it's a bonus when there is actually a discernible reason for it (like a musical where people have a valid excuse for singing).
One of the book's themes, in fact, is how everyone has a "story", though some are better worth listening to than others. (I'm not sure I was actually intended to end up thinking that last, because the narrator is constantly admonishing himself and us to see the potential in everyone and not be judgmental, but there it is.) A novel about a literary festival, about the telling of stories, whose first chapter heading is "If On A Summer's Night An Alpaca", is inevitably to some degree a novel about writing itself, and this is where I sometimes find it difficult to gauge the tone. It's clear enough what he is about when satirising the corruption and pretension endemic to the festival and indeed the literary world in general. We've all met the literary celebs who are so unutterably pleased with themselves, or as the narrator's neighbour puts it, "they're awfy guid tae themselves, so they are". And we have listened to the reader wittering on with a long intro and finally saying, like Summer Kelly, "So maybe I should just, like, read the story" – yeah, maybe…. There's no doubt this literary aspect of the satire will resonate with many readers who are also writers.
. But at other times it is harder to gauge exactly where the writer is standing in relation to the material. When he names a café "The Nightingale With Toothache", is he being determinedly quirky, or satirising the determinedly quirky style of writing? When the narrator says "When cycling I like to mindfully inhale the fresh air", are we meant to grin at that fashionable, affected "mindfully", or take it seriously? And Mr Hibiki, a sort of Japanese Mr Miyagi, except that his talents lie in the culinary rather than the martial arts, is so much the stock Eastern Sage With The Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything, that one would think he must be satirically meant.
But I can see how the whole thing might be read, if not quite dead straight, at least less satirically. In fact, the reviews I have read seem very divided on this issue. Myself I don't think we are ever meant to be quite sure where the writer stands in relation to his first-person but interestingly unnamed narrator. Certainly the book's other theme, which is intolerance toward difference, does not easily lend itself to a satirical reading, and maybe it is the constant interplay between these two themes that leaves readers unsure whether they should be laughing or not at any particular moment. The front-cover blurb asserts that the book will "split your sides and break your heart". Well, it didn't do either of those to me, but then I don't think it meant to. I think it's a novel constantly aware of being a fiction. The one review I really disagreed with was the one that called it "too contrived". It is indeed contrivance, skilful artifice, like any made-up world, and therein lies a great deal of its interest.
There are ways and ways of using animal characters: they can be anything from their real selves to thinly disguised humans. Ian the goldfish is a sort of Greek chorus to the main action, while the sheep and rabbits in the first two novels mentioned are both trying, with different degrees of success, to be real sheep and rabbits. This novel is different, in that, as soon becomes clear, Archie's alpaca nature is barely skin deep. He and the other alpacas on the island somewhere in the Western Isles where this novel is set are very clearly representations of marginalised humans – immigrants perhaps, or Travellers, or any other kind of outsider you can think of. I suppose the advantage of the alpaca image is that it can stand for all outsiders at once.
We do not, therefore, have to ask ourselves how it is that Archie can talk to his human friends, or do various things for which hooves are not naturally adapted, particularly since he is not the only aspect of "the island" which is at right angles to reality. If a small island has an annual literary festival with serious sponsorship, huge prizes and an audience of 20,000, we are clearly in the realms of fantasy, or magic realism, and nothing else ought to surprise us, not even the festival's unusual climax.
It is the festival, or rather the short story competition at its centre, that is the pivot of the novel, and the scene where all the competitors read out their stories to the audience was, for me, where the book really came alive. I love the technique of interpolating short stories into novels, and it's a bonus when there is actually a discernible reason for it (like a musical where people have a valid excuse for singing).
One of the book's themes, in fact, is how everyone has a "story", though some are better worth listening to than others. (I'm not sure I was actually intended to end up thinking that last, because the narrator is constantly admonishing himself and us to see the potential in everyone and not be judgmental, but there it is.) A novel about a literary festival, about the telling of stories, whose first chapter heading is "If On A Summer's Night An Alpaca", is inevitably to some degree a novel about writing itself, and this is where I sometimes find it difficult to gauge the tone. It's clear enough what he is about when satirising the corruption and pretension endemic to the festival and indeed the literary world in general. We've all met the literary celebs who are so unutterably pleased with themselves, or as the narrator's neighbour puts it, "they're awfy guid tae themselves, so they are". And we have listened to the reader wittering on with a long intro and finally saying, like Summer Kelly, "So maybe I should just, like, read the story" – yeah, maybe…. There's no doubt this literary aspect of the satire will resonate with many readers who are also writers.
. But at other times it is harder to gauge exactly where the writer is standing in relation to the material. When he names a café "The Nightingale With Toothache", is he being determinedly quirky, or satirising the determinedly quirky style of writing? When the narrator says "When cycling I like to mindfully inhale the fresh air", are we meant to grin at that fashionable, affected "mindfully", or take it seriously? And Mr Hibiki, a sort of Japanese Mr Miyagi, except that his talents lie in the culinary rather than the martial arts, is so much the stock Eastern Sage With The Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything, that one would think he must be satirically meant.
But I can see how the whole thing might be read, if not quite dead straight, at least less satirically. In fact, the reviews I have read seem very divided on this issue. Myself I don't think we are ever meant to be quite sure where the writer stands in relation to his first-person but interestingly unnamed narrator. Certainly the book's other theme, which is intolerance toward difference, does not easily lend itself to a satirical reading, and maybe it is the constant interplay between these two themes that leaves readers unsure whether they should be laughing or not at any particular moment. The front-cover blurb asserts that the book will "split your sides and break your heart". Well, it didn't do either of those to me, but then I don't think it meant to. I think it's a novel constantly aware of being a fiction. The one review I really disagreed with was the one that called it "too contrived". It is indeed contrivance, skilful artifice, like any made-up world, and therein lies a great deal of its interest.
