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'Self' - Yann Martel (1996)
Yann Martel is best known for his Booker-winning novel 'Life of Pi', but it is 'Self' that got him started in the literary world. His debut novel, shining gloriously in its high points, focuses on the fluid shaping of identity and aims to show that it is us who defines what we are, not our biology. Not a completely new concept, but explored in an original way - sadly though, the novel falls short as it loses itself in the depths of carnal immoderation.
The unnamed protagonist starts the novel as a young boy in French Canada, marvelling at the thrills of his own excrement (in thoughts verbalised in both English and French). He goes through the usual motions - school, first crushes, first kiss - and then one day wakes up and finds, oh no, that he suddenly has a vagina. Thus begins a change in identity as s/he grapples with his/her new self, falling in and out of relationships, falling in and out of bed. After the last long term boyfriend vanishes, in comes a strange man who violates the narrator and - oh no - back to being a boy.
The unusual metamorphasis of our protagonist lays an interesting ground for a novel, and Martel certainly does well in capturing the many facets of identity. He has a beautiful command of language that paints some astounding pictures, the most vivid and recurring being that of fish swimming in the eyes when one feels love. The sweeping descriptions are almost breathtaking at times, prompting knowing nods when familiar emotions are discussed with such precision.
One of the things that stands out the most is the structure of the novel. It contains only two chapters - one over 300 pages long, one half a page long. Pages are often split in half, written bilingually to show the fragmented nature of Martel's self, and at the climax of the novel, some pages have nothing written on them at all. It is this ingenious sense of structure as telling which sets this work apart from others - Martel recognises that language is not the only way to communicate ideas, and marries it with the unlikely element of space to completely overturn convention.
The failing point of the novel, however, is that it progressively begins not so much to describe self as it describes sex. Whilst it is understandable that coitus and erotic connection forms a vital part of the human experience, it feels at times as though Martel is writing high-end literotica with no real underlying meaning. Sure, he can make it sound dazzlingly ethereal, but when the word 'horny' butts into an up-until-then romantic and starry description it feels like a sharp jab from a used syringe. And when you can't turn a page without seeing the word 'suck' or 'erect' or 'cum', well, you begin to wonder whether or not Martel's veiled ambition was to do Dallas.
'Self' is a novel beautifully written for the most part, using language and proximity as partners to convey the idea of a scattered self. It would do much, much better to lose the excessive sex scenes, which detract from the shining core of the novel - nonetheless, this is a book that takes elements of the everyday into a new dimension and holds truths universally known and shared.