My thoughts are rancorous, ruinous. They throng through me like a shoal of sharp, silver sprat whenever the outer noises aren’t loud or plenty enough to keep them at bay, to keep them out of the bay, the bay of my brain.Right from the beginning of Spill Simmer Falter Wither, I knew that I had picked up something special: I love Irish storytelling, and with immediately gorgeous, lyrical language, I was prepared to be swept away by this book's imaginative writing style; I love doggies, so the apparent plotline of a damaged man rescuing a damaged hound was of particular interest to me; and I love having my heartstrings tugged, so the anticipation of having this damaged hound rescue the damaged man in return had me catching my breath throughout, waiting for that moment of emotional catharsis. But ultimately, I had no idea what I was in for – this isn't another Marley and Me or Lily and the Octopus – and author Sara Baume accomplished a bit of magic by appearing to write one kind of story, while actually saying so much more. I never did cry, but I'm left utterly gobsmacked and perfectly satisfied.
The setup: A misshapen, social misfit sees a notice for a deathrow dog in a jumble-shop window, and immediately drives out to the shelter to grant him an eleventh hour reprieve. He brings the dog back to his flat, begins to tell him all the stories of his life, and when there's an incident involving a Shih Tzu, a halo-haired child, and a beachside dog attack, the man and his canine companion hit the road, visiting all the inland Irish villages that the man had heard of and never before visited. Throughout it all, the man talks and talks, using the second person voice (as all the stories are aimed at the dog), and eventually reveals a history stranger and sadder than could have been anticipated.
Right from the beginning, the man seems to warn the reader that there are going to be puzzles to be solved in his storytelling; that there's much he's not going to just come out and tell us:
I'm fifty-seven. Too old for starting over, too young for giving up. And my name is the same word as for sun beams, as for winged and boneless sharks. But I'm far too solemn and inelegant to be named for either, and besides, my name is just another strange sound sent from the mouths of men to confuse you, to distract from your vocabulary of commands.Ah, okay, we can call the man “Ray” from now on. And since my edition of this book has graph paper on the background of the cover, and on the background of the four sections taken from the title (which echo the four seasons of the year), the following felt of particular importance for understanding Ray:
Sometimes, when I was a boy, my father tore sheets of paper from his graphed pad and gave them to me to draw pictures. But instead of trying to replicate items and aspects of my world, I turned the sheet onto its blank side and re-drew the patterns of the graph, meticulously. Hundreds of teeny-tiny squares, without picking up a ruler. Every now and again I'd make an attempt at forms, but curves and shadings always straightened and slimmed and led me back inexorably to the grid. It made some kind of sense to me then. It helped to hold the smog at bay. I don't know what happened to those drawings. I think my father threw them all away.And that's what you need to know about Ray: not only is he physically repulsive, but due to parental neglect and abuse as a child – he was never sent to school, was left alone for stretches, rarely even spoken to – his mind doesn't quite work right, either. Unable to imaginatively sketch out forms, even his storytelling sticks to the patterns of a grid, and although it seems like he's holding information back, when all is said and done, anything that might seem like a surprise in the end was telegraphed to us right from the beginning. The technique behind the writing – slowly revealing the way Ray is and the reasons for it – is simply masterful. I loved that when the literal-minded Ray rescued a one-eyed dog, he named him One Eye and had a tag engraved with his name as ONEEYE, so that it looked like the name of an African prince. And I loved the way Ray sees beauty and dignity in every act of this ungainly pooch:
Gossamer ribbons swing from your beard and when they hit the kitchen tiles they form a viscous puddle of drool. There's something resplendent about the way you sit in your viscous drool, and it suits you. Resplendence suits you.Because a neighbour lady taught Ray to read when he was little, he long amused himself with the books in his father's collection; which seem to be an assortment of nonfiction history and science writing. On their frequent walks along beaches and in fields, Ray is able to name for One Eye all the flora and fauna, and there's something kind of Spectrumy about how specific Ray is in this naming:
He is running, running, running. And it’s like no kind of running he’s ever run before. He’s the surge that burst the dam and he’s pouring down the hillslope, channelling through the grass to the width of his widest part. He’s tripping into hoof-rucks. He’s slapping groundsel stems down dead. Dandelions and chickweed, nettles and dock.I selected that last quote because it includes that thrice-stated verb, and to me that's the only misstep in the book. Used frequently, this thrice-stating device kept jarring me, and although it was certainly poetical and adds to the overall lyricism of the writing, I feel like I've seen it used too often in books lately and it came off as unoriginal in an otherwise totally original story.
I loved this book at the level of its beautiful sentences, and I loved it for what it eventually revealed itself to be. It turned out to be nothing like I was expecting to read, yet in the end I didn't feel tricked but illuminated; and what a fine bit of magic 'twas.
