Heroes Not Zombies

I read a lot of non-fiction. Something to do with my being insatiably curious. I often post about the non-fiction books I read, both as reviews which you might like to read, and to share what I learned or what thoughts they provoked for me. But what about fiction? I’ve decided I don’t read nearly enough fiction. So, I’m not going to have any days this year without a novel, or collection of short stories, on the go. I typically read several books at the same time so this shouldn’t mean I won’t be reading any non-fiction for a while.

One of the novels I’ve just read is “The Night Train to Lisbon”, by Pascal Mercier (ISBN 978-1-84354-712-9). If you google it, you’ll find a wide range of extremely divergent reviews. Some people loved it and some found it boring. On the front cover, Isabel Allende says it’s “a treat for the mind”. I agree with her. For me, this book was a treat.

The novel tells the story of a classicist who lives in Bern and who one day encounters a Portuguese woman on a bridge. The encounter is brief but it makes a huge impression on him so when he stumbles across an old Portuguese language book in a second hand bookshop, he just has to buy it. The book he buys is by a Portuguese author named Amadeu de Prado and is a collection of his reflections on his life and his self. Gregorius, the classicist does something impulsive for the first time in his life and walks out of the lecture theatre at work and takes a train to Lisbon, determined to learn Portuguese and find out all he can about Prado.

The two intertwined themes of the book are what hooked me. The first is how we can get to know someone through their text. Throughout the novel are scattered Gregorius’ translations of passages from Prado’s book. You could just skim through the novel reading only these italicised passages and be both inspired and stimulated to reflect on your own life and on how you’ve become who you are. But the other theme is equally fascinating, and it’s how a person is revealed through the stories told by others. Although Prado himself is long since deceased, Gregorius meets up with as many of the people who knew him as he can. They all tell stories of what they remember about Prado and each story reveals something else which helps to Gregorius to understand who Prado was and how he became that person. This is such an interesting truth……how different people have different views, different insights, memories and impressions of one person….and how it’s the collection of these diverse stories which ultimately reveals the reality of that person.

I was also hooked by more personal issues and memories. Like Prado, I’m a doctor who thinks and who writes about his thoughts. Like Gregorius I’m fascinated by books, by language and by stories. I’ve only visited Lisbon a few times but one afternoon particularly stands out in my memory. My trips to Lisbon were to participate in teaching sessions for Portuguese doctors, and on one visit I had a free afternoon while one of my colleagues took the class. An old professor of archeology looked after me for the afternoon. He took me wandering around Lisbon’s old town showing me how the history of the city was revealed in its architecture and its archeological uncoverings. I spoke no Portuguese and he spoke no English. Like all Portuguese of his generation, his second language was French (just as Gregorius discovers in the novel), and my second language too (poor as it is!) is French. So we spent the whole afternoon together, a Portuguese man and a Scot, exploring Lisbon in French! The novel brought those memories flooding back.

The most enjoyable books are like that I think. There is something about them which can be appreciated by many readers and there’s something about them which resonates personally, or connects with the reader’s own experience or memories.