Amaryllis Night and Day
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| Bloomsbury |
Russell Hoban
2001
"The first time Peter Diggs saw Amaryllis she was at a bus stop where the street sign said Balsamic, although there was nothing vinegary about the place. The bus was unthinkably tall, made of yellow, orange and pink rice paper, lit from within like a Japanese lantern."
For those people who skimmed my written attempts at cataloging my unread book pile (The Glass Cabinet and The Darkened Wardrobe respectively), you may recall that this book was the great mystery of the lot. I don't remember buying at all, and my first memory of it is the bewilderment felt when spotting it amongst the ever-growing pile. A brief look at it completely explained why and where I bought it; its smoothly designed cover is covered with gushing plaudits from reputable newspaper reviewers and such, the back-cover blurb depicted a plot that appealed to my sensibilities (we'll get to that), and the inside front cover displayed the familiar sight of an Oxfam Bookshop penciled-in price tag. It would've been weird if I hadn't bought it.
Still though, the actual quality and specific style was somewhat of a mystery, as I'd never even heard of author Russell Hoban. Later research soothed my paranoid literary ego, showing me he's a bit of a cult, arty type who remains too niche to be a Penguin Modern Classics favourite. I tried to approach the fairly-short novel with an open mind, but, inevitably, it took barely any time at all for me to compare and contrast Hoban's writing with more familiar, well-established names to me, for better and for worse.
Amaryllis Night and Day has a fairly straightforward plot, at least to begin with. Narrated in the first-person by artist and lecturer Peter Diggs, Hoban delves into things immediately; in the opening pages Peter has an immensely strange and touching dream starring an alluring mystery woman on a rice paper bus. Then, quite naturally, he meets her in the real world, and discovers that this was no coincidence; Amaryllis (for that is her name), has the mysterious ability to connect with certain other people in the dreamworld, to bring them in to intentionally constructed dreams and visit theirs, and Peter has the same ability. There's no real fantastical or science fiction type of explanation for this, it's high-concept magical realism existing for the sake of the story and style, and the book is much better for this. At its core it's a love-story.
So, what did I and what didn't I like about this book? The answers to both are mostly the same; Amaryllis Night and Day is a very ambitious attempt at creating an ethereal postmodern piece of written art, and all credit must go to the author for his ambition. As a result though, it was completely impossible for me to not compare this book and author with previously-read examples of similarly themed and stylised stories. Hoban smartly keeps the book short, with very short individual chapters that add to the theme; the short and mysterious events and consistently self-analytical narration helps to intentionally blur the lines of the dream world and the real, to great effect. I found myself compelled by the tone and the constant symbolism, and finished the book rather quickly.
The key problems which unfortunately so far prevent me from lauding Russell Hoban's writing in the same way I do for Haruki Murakami and Milan Kundera (the two authors whose names came to mind first when looking at what Hoban hoped to achieve) were his characterisation and the grounding of those characters in the real world. Hoban constantly makes the effort to show how artistic and knowledgeable of art his characters are, filling it with references at every opportunity. Not by nature a bad thing, as Murakami has written in a similar style in books like Kafka on the Shore throughout his career to great success. Unfortunately here it feels unnatural and annoying. As a basis for grounding the characters in some sort of realism it doesn't work, and persists throughout the novel to the extent at where I eventually didn't really care for the fate of the characters, which is a bit of a problem for a love story.
But I really don't want to give this book a bad review because its total sum is enough to dismiss the negatives I found. I would be happy to read another Russell Hoban novel to try and get a fuller grasp of his ambitions, but even if that never happens this novel will still stick out in my memory as a distinctive, quirky attempt at artistic greatness that, while it never fully achieves, Amaryllis Night and Day constantly flirts with.
For those people who skimmed my written attempts at cataloging my unread book pile (The Glass Cabinet and The Darkened Wardrobe respectively), you may recall that this book was the great mystery of the lot. I don't remember buying at all, and my first memory of it is the bewilderment felt when spotting it amongst the ever-growing pile. A brief look at it completely explained why and where I bought it; its smoothly designed cover is covered with gushing plaudits from reputable newspaper reviewers and such, the back-cover blurb depicted a plot that appealed to my sensibilities (we'll get to that), and the inside front cover displayed the familiar sight of an Oxfam Bookshop penciled-in price tag. It would've been weird if I hadn't bought it.
Still though, the actual quality and specific style was somewhat of a mystery, as I'd never even heard of author Russell Hoban. Later research soothed my paranoid literary ego, showing me he's a bit of a cult, arty type who remains too niche to be a Penguin Modern Classics favourite. I tried to approach the fairly-short novel with an open mind, but, inevitably, it took barely any time at all for me to compare and contrast Hoban's writing with more familiar, well-established names to me, for better and for worse.
Amaryllis Night and Day has a fairly straightforward plot, at least to begin with. Narrated in the first-person by artist and lecturer Peter Diggs, Hoban delves into things immediately; in the opening pages Peter has an immensely strange and touching dream starring an alluring mystery woman on a rice paper bus. Then, quite naturally, he meets her in the real world, and discovers that this was no coincidence; Amaryllis (for that is her name), has the mysterious ability to connect with certain other people in the dreamworld, to bring them in to intentionally constructed dreams and visit theirs, and Peter has the same ability. There's no real fantastical or science fiction type of explanation for this, it's high-concept magical realism existing for the sake of the story and style, and the book is much better for this. At its core it's a love-story.
 |
| Russell Hoban, reading this review, |
The key problems which unfortunately so far prevent me from lauding Russell Hoban's writing in the same way I do for Haruki Murakami and Milan Kundera (the two authors whose names came to mind first when looking at what Hoban hoped to achieve) were his characterisation and the grounding of those characters in the real world. Hoban constantly makes the effort to show how artistic and knowledgeable of art his characters are, filling it with references at every opportunity. Not by nature a bad thing, as Murakami has written in a similar style in books like Kafka on the Shore throughout his career to great success. Unfortunately here it feels unnatural and annoying. As a basis for grounding the characters in some sort of realism it doesn't work, and persists throughout the novel to the extent at where I eventually didn't really care for the fate of the characters, which is a bit of a problem for a love story.
But I really don't want to give this book a bad review because its total sum is enough to dismiss the negatives I found. I would be happy to read another Russell Hoban novel to try and get a fuller grasp of his ambitions, but even if that never happens this novel will still stick out in my memory as a distinctive, quirky attempt at artistic greatness that, while it never fully achieves, Amaryllis Night and Day constantly flirts with.
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