You don’t have to be a
student of the classics to enjoy the ride. (Review by Margaret von Klemperer, courtesy
of The Witness)
You don’t pick up a book by Yann Martel expecting something
linear or straightforward, and Son of
Nobody is no exception. Martel won the 2001 Booker Prize for Life of Pi, which I have to confess was
not a book I much cared for, but he has made a name for himself as a writer to
follow.
Here his central character is Harlow Donne, a Canadian
scholar of Ancient Greek who, while working towards his PhD is offered a year’s
scholarship to go to Oxford University and study a collection of fragments of
papyri (in fact, Martel is making reference to a genuine collection here). If
he accepts, it would mean leaving his fracturing marriage and his beloved
six-year-old daughter back in Canada while he pursues his dream. So that is
exactly what he does.
Harlow soon claims to have discovered that one of fragments
he has deciphered is part of a lost epic of the Trojan War, covering much the
same ground as Homer’s The Iliad but
from a different angle, and telling a rather different tale.
While Homer tells of the exploits of the elite on both
sides, what Harlow calls The Psoad
deals with the war from the perspective of the common Argive soldier,
specifically one Psoas, described as “the son of nobody”. For someone who is
shuffling torn and scattered papyrus fragments, Harlow manages to construct an
amazingly complete account of the war, and Psoas’s activities during it. And,
like Psoas, Harlow is an ordinary man, not one of the Oxford elite who find his
efforts ridiculous, not to say fantastical.
Son of Nobody is
told through a very unusual way of constructing a work of fiction. Each page is
divided horizontally into two: the top half is The Psoad and the bottom half is Harlow’s footnotes to the epic,
combined with his own story.
When I started the book, I was unsure if this was going to
work – or even be readable. But it is, and The
Psoad is intriguing and very entertaining. Like The Iliad, it is full of battles, gore and lists but it is also a
rip-roaring tale, and in his footnotes, Harlow explains it to his aptly-named
daughter, Helen.
But, as I said, Harlow is also telling his own story, which,
like that of the Trojan war, will be full of tragedy. I found this part of the
novel less compelling than The Psoad.
Harlow is an unappealing character – a failed husband, a failing academic and,
ultimately, absent when his child needs him most. But nonetheless, Son of Nobody has its charms and holds
the reader’s attention. And, of course, it fits into the current renewed
fascination with the works of Homer which is seeing fiction take a look at the
invisible characters of his ancient Greece – women and ordinary nobodies. And
now film is joining in, with The Odyssey
pulling them in at the box office.
You don’t have to be a student of the classics to enjoy the
ride. – Margaret von Klemperer
Published by Canongate: ISBN 978-1-83885-908-4
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