I was often in mind of the Cirque du Soleil while reading Nikolski, written by Nicolas Dickner, as Quebecois as the creator of the Cirque. Is it a cultural quirk of those from La Belle Province to up the artistic value of their efforts by building rigid but invisible frameworks for their creations -- whether highly trained contortionists or precisely crafted phrases -- to leap and tumble from? What seems to work for the Cirque du Soleil fell slightly flat for me in this book.
There is a wealth of clever wordplay (and I can only trust that the translator of this book was faithful to the feel of the original).
She piles the books on the table, puts on her glasses as though she were putting on a diving suit, and plunges into her reading.
When Noah shows up, fifteen minutes later, all that can be seen of the girl are the air bubbles frothing at the surface.
And there were some obscure word choices. I loved that the cop's eyes were described as selachian (shark-like), but question the usefulness of words I don't know and don't think I'll need going forward like: metonymy ( a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept) or fascicles (a bundle or a cluster). I do like to be challenged with vocabulary, but I am left wondering with some of the language in Nikolski if the translator was too literal, or if this the exact flavour the author intended.
The plot was potentially intriguing: Three young people, unknowingly related to each other, are drawn to Montreal where they cross paths and fortunes over a period of ten years. But, as it turns out, their paths and fates remain separate, and the idea of there being significance in their meetings is brushed off:
And that is exactly the trouble with inexplicable events. You inevitably end up interpreting them in terms of predestination, or magical realism, or government plots.
And so, just as I accepted the warning to not interpret greater meaning, it dawned on me that the structure of Nikolski mirrors that of the mysterious "Three-Headed Book", a unicum, that keeps poking its head above the surface:
"A unicum. A book of which there is only a single known copy in the entire world…It's made up of fragments of three books. The first third is a study on treasure hunting. The second comes from a historical treatise on the pirates of the Caribbean. The final third is taken from a biography of Alexander Selkirk, who was shipwrecked on a Pacific island…The bookbinder salvaged the wreckage of three books and sewed them together. It's a piece of craftsmanship, not a mass-printed object."
Aha, I thought. So Noah is the treasure hunter, Joyce is the pirate, and the unnamed narrator is the one shipwrecked, having never set foot off the island of Montreal. The author is signalling that there is more craftsmanship on display here than I may be aware of. I have arrived at the thrilling climax of the novel, of the circus, what death defying coup de grace will leave me dazzled and amazed? The missing map? How intriguing!
I stand there open-mouthed, contemplating the implications of this strange puzzle. Here is a discovery that clouds the issue rather than clarifying it.
Nothing is perfect.
I smile, shrug my shoulders and, after taping the map of the Caribbean into place, return the Three-Headed Book to the clearance box.
Oh, right. I'm not to suppose there's more meaning beyond the page. So is it art, or just a little weird? Nikloski is certainly well-crafted and precise, there's an air of the experimental about it, but it seemed to lack heart, and in the end, I may smile but, like the narrator, I also shrug my shoulders and contemplate the clearance box.
