Based on the pretty strong recommendations of Maud Newton, I read The Insult by Rupert Thomson this weekend. (The astute TD&OC fan will note that I've had prior success with a Maud Newton recommendation in A.L. Kennedy's Paradise.) Being a slow reader, the kind of person who can be easily distracted from the pages in front of me by sudden motions or the mere existence of atmosphere in the room around me, the fact that I read the entire book in a two-day span (okay, fine: minus the first fifty pages or so, which I'd read sometime earlier this week) is a pretty good indication to me that I liked it. A lot.
Now, the fun thing about this book, is that it gives rise to really interesting conversation material. The other night (after I'd read the first several pages and before I read the rest of the book) my girlfriend played that song A Perfect Circle (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) did, the one about the nurse. It's a really strange song.
"I'm reading a novel right now," I said, "that had a strange scene with a nurse in it."
My girlfriend, and my friend Chris, who are both used to me talking, looked at me. Taking this as encouragement to continue, I said, "Yeah, it was weird. There's this guy who gets shot. And he goes blind. But he can see at night. And so his nurse comes in and strips in front of him. But she doesn't know he can see at night. And then he gets off on it. And the nurse smiles at him. And..."
The expressions on my girlfriend's face and Chris's face were changing, though I couldn't quite say how. "It, uh, it was really cool, though," I said. "I mean, it makes sense in context...I mean, it made me want to stay up all night, reading the book, you know?"
And then other things happened. The point here being: if you read this book, you'll get to say weird things, just like me, and who wouldn't want to say weird things just like I do, all the time? Granted I usually don't need a stunningly bizarre literary mystery thriller semisurreal noir Kafkaesque black comedy WTF genre novel written in evocative yet simply-played prose to prompt me to do so, but sometimes I get lazy and like to let something else inspire me to say stuff about, you know, nurses.
See, this isn't a normal book. It's not a book you exactly classify. And it's not necessarily a book you exactly read, either; it's more a book that you let wash through you, that you ride it out enjoying the view all the time wondering where the hell you're going. At times it can seem slow. And I can almost guarantee that when you start to feel like things are about to go too slow, you're just about to hit a wall, and smash through it, and when you wipe the blood from your face and can open your eyes again, you'll find out that the direction on the far side of the rubble is a new one. You're going somewhere else even as you're covered the in the dust of everything you've gone through so far. The book anticipates you, see; every time I think we're about to fall into a trap of the book's own creation, the book trips the wire with a long pole and guides you around it, towards other dangers.
It's all so very oddly compelling. Maud Newton said it more succinctly: "Rupert Thomson writes nightmares." Then there's The Grumpy Old Bookman's take on the book: "I found his work to be curiously unsettling. It made me nervous." I guess if you're looking for a short and to the point quote from me on this book, you can use this: "I've read The Insult. And now I want to read the rest of his books." Has a nice ring to it, no?
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