The ring, unremarkable in itself, lay in the palm of Gwen’s hand.
As the fifth (or, more accurately, the third) volume in André Alexis’ “Quincunx Series” (more on this later), Ring can be considered as it relates to the entire project, or simply on its own. As the “Romance” in the quincunx, this wouldn’t be my favourite genre that Alexis employs to explore his recurring themes, so as a standalone volume, I did find this to be mostly unremarkable. There are several romantic relationships that play out in a nearly Shakespearean profusion of subplots, and for the first hundred pages, not much of importance really happens. But then the titular ring makes its appearance, fate and gods and magic come into play, and the whole becomes rather more interesting. I don’t know if this would really be a satisfying read on its own, but taken as a part of the whole, this was a satisfying read for me. Even though the five books in this series don’t quite add up to an integrated narrative, by design, I did enjoy the callbacks from the others — from places (Barrow) to characters (Tancred Palmieri and Professor Bruno) to someone playing Beethoven’s Pastoral — and as always, I liked when the action moved through familiar small town Ontario, from Brantford to Hespeler to Strathroy. For synergistic reasons, for its place at the heart of the quincunx, I’m rounding up to four stars, but can’t say that I “love” Ring separate from the overall project.
Gwen had taken her friend’s point: it did feel, even to her, as if she were waiting for something. In fact, she’d had that very feeling as if something were on her horizon: an encounter, a discovery, an event. And it was in this mood that, two days after the fundraiser, she texted Olivier Mallay.
Gwenhwyfar Lloyd — a twenty-eight-year-old small town girl who now lives in Toronto — attends a gala at the Gardiner Museum and meets two alluring men: The handsome and charming Olivier Mallay and his friend, the aloof and intriguing Tancred Palmieri. As it’s Olivier who asks for Gwen’s number, it’s him she starts to casually date, but the more time she spends in the company of the mysterious Tancred, the more Gwen begins to realise where her affections are truly drawn. When Gwen goes back home to Bright’s Grove for a visit and her mother recognises that Gwen has fallen in love for the first time, family secrets are revealed that reframe everything Gwen thought she knew about life, love, and reality itself (the publisher’s blurb gets specific about this, but I went in cold and think others should as well). This may sound a little soap opera-ish — and the melodrama, intrigue, and infidelities of the subplots add to that feeling — but as Alexis apparently took his inspiration from reading Harlequin Romances, this is all intentional. This is also a book of deeper ideas, with characters who routinely discuss philosophy, poetry, music, and art. At a dinner party, two characters talk about seeing Holbein’s Ambassadors in London in real life:
Everyone talks about the anamorphic skull, but I love the parquet the men are standing on. The design on it is in the form of a quincunx. Holbein copied it from the floor of Westminster Abbey, where Henry VIII had just married Anne Boleyn. The whole painting’s so suggestive!
So, to the quincunx! On his publisher’s website, Alexis explains:
A quincunx is an arrangement of plants or objects with one element at each of four corners of an imagined square and one in the centre. In his difficult but fascinating essay “The Garden of Cyrus,” the Jacobean essayist Thomas Browne makes a case for the mystical power and significance of this arrangement. For instance, quoting from biblical and classical sources, Browne suggests that the vegetation in the garden of Eden would have been planted in this shape. Whether or not God – if God exists – had a quincunx in mind when He created the gardens in Eden, my quincunx is inspired by – and grateful for – Thomas Browne’s essay. So, the five novels in my “quincunx” can be thought of as “plants” rooted in the imagination: my imagination, principally, but also the cultural imagination, as each novel represents a distinct genre of novel, a different kind of “plant.”
Alexis has written before that his initial inspiration was to retell Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema through the lens of several different literary genres. The five genres that Alexis uses to explore his themes of God, Chance, Power, Love, Hate, and Place are the pastoral (Pastoral), the apologue (Fifteen Dogs), the romance (Ring), the quest narrative (The Hidden Keys), and the ghost story (Days by Moonlight). And although Ring was released fifth, it is listed as the third in the series because it, and specifically its halfway point – a long poem entitled “Ring” that tells a story about the goddess Aphrodite and her loyal companion (a half cyclops dog with human consciousness named Margos) and her search for romance – is the central point between all of the books, as explained in this review in The Toronto Star:
There are elements of all five of the novels within the poem. Which brings us back to the sacred geometry of the quincunx: the midpoint of the third book is the very centre of the pattern, and the poem centres the sequence as a whole. It’s not a matter of introducing the thematic elements, nor of summarizing them. Instead, it connects all five novels together in one form: it is the poem that finalizes the quincunx.
In a way, I found that Alexis often sacrificed narrative satisfaction for the sake of his overarching project, and while I may not totally agree with the reviewer in The Star when he gushes that Alexis’ quincunx sequence is “one of the boldest, most audacious, and most satisfying achievements in recent literary memory”, there’s no denying that Alexis has striven for and achieved something really unique here. And I also can’t deny that there were many moments over the five books that I absolutely loved. I unreservedly recommend reading the entire series.
Well, Professor Bruno was saying, to live poetically is to live in uncertainty, to hesitate between the word and the thing. That’s how poetry and love are related! Because love comes from uncertainty, too. In fact, love is uncertainty’s greatest gift! Always remember that Gift is the German word for poison!
