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Incest at its best >> The Ventriloquist's Tale is trashy, fun and cheap
by JULIET WATERS
Come to think of it, there's something a bit arrogant about Barnes's sanction. There's an implication in it that contemporary writers were the first to overdo incest stories when, in fact, they've been done since the beginning of storytelling. Take, for example, an Aztec myth based on a solar eclipse that took place July 16, 789 AD. It's the story of how the pagan god Quetzalcoatl was exiled from the land currently known as Mexico for having sex with his sister. As a result of his banishment he had to rise into the sky and start a second career as the evening star. Sounds original. But according to Claude Levi-Strauss, this myth can be traced throughout folklore from the southern tip of Brazil to the Bering Strait. So there you go. You can't do stories about incest to death. Particularly because it is probably one of the only enduring cross-cultural taboos and, as such, will always be a rich source of literature. You can only do stories of incest badly, or well. And Melville's tale definitely falls into the latter. She deserves the rave reviews she got for this, her first novel, when it first came out in hardcover a couple of years ago, including the semi-jaded one from Salman Rushdie who called the young British novelist "one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in years." Now that it's out in paperback, it meets my criteria for summer reading: trashy, fun and cheap, but intelligent enough that you still feel somewhat enriched by it. Not only is Melville's book all of these things, but there's an added unexpected bonus near the end: a chapter that takes place in Montreal. Granted, Montreal is a metaphor for hell. But the heroine, who is exiled here because of an affair with her brother, develops a fondness for it nonetheless. "Oh Montreal, Montreal," she laments, "what was she to do there?" Then, thinking of her homeland in Guyana, she remembers something her mother said: "Hot and bitter or cold and sweet. Everything in the world is divided up like that." Montreal falls into the second category (obviously not set during the nurses strike). But long before we end up in Montreal, The Ventriloquist's Tale introduces us to a sleazy, seductive and mesmerizing narrator, who teases us with a razor-sharp wit, who claims to be descended from a group of stones in Ecuador and who taunts the modern reader with statements like: "Why am I not the hero, you ask. Because these days you all have forgotten to make heroes. Your heroes and heroines are slaves to time. They don't excite wonder and amazement. They don't even attempt to astonish, enchant or amuse. They've forgotten how to be playful and have no appetite for adventure. Sub-zero heroes. A puny bunch. Embedded in history or worse psychology--that wrinkle in the the field of knowledge that hopefully will soon be ironed out, leaving us in our proper place between the monkeys and the stars." Sadly, to conform to modern tastes, the Ventriloquist disappears after the introduction, fading into the background to become a barely perceptible omniscient narrator. But, while our "standard" narrator is not as charming as the one we lose, he is less distracting and still a consummate storyteller who cleverly weaves an eclectic tale that is about as close to magic realism as one gets without being magic realism. Which is good because, in the summer, who needs to be confused by women who turn into birds? What we need are more books like this. Books that are dark, funny and grounded in reality. Think of this one as magic realism for dummies.
The Ventriloquist's Tale by Pauline Melville, Bloomsbury, pb, 357pp, $14.95
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Right off the bat, Pauline Melville gets two points for opening The Ventriloquist's Tale with one of Julian Barnes's commandments from Flaubert's Parrot: "There shall be no more novels about incest. No, not even ones in very bad taste." Then she gets another few points for writing one anyway. One that isn't exactly in bad taste, but is corrupt enough to qualify her book as a great summer read.