What do you do when your mother-in-law calls, asking about
the whereabouts of your husband, when you’ve been separated from him for six
months? Our nameless first-person
narrator is in this awkward position, but, rather than own up to the fact that
she and her husband are no longer living together, she agrees to travel to
Greece to track him down. He is
purportedly doing research for a book on mourning in a small village known for
having professional weepers. Ironically,
our narrator tells us that he has never had to mourn anyone in his life. Everything about this book screams, “What is
going on here?” We soon learn that the
husband is quite the ladies’ man who has apparently trifled with the affections
of a woman who works in his hotel; his mother’s comment on her son’s
infidelities is shocking and hilarious, but the rest of the book’s tone is
quite somber. I loved the tantalizing
plot and the beautiful writing, but the punctuation drove me bananas. Sentences are strung together with commas for
reasons I don’t understand. Perhaps they
lend the narrator’s voice a sort of breathlessness, but that quality doesn’t
really meld with her calm, reserved demeanor.
The ending is not particularly satisfying and gives law enforcement in
Greece a black eye, but I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, particularly the
manner in which the narrator draws conclusions about conversations in a
language she does not understand, primarily from body language and tone of
voice. The fact that the narrator is a
literary translator speaks volumes, as she strives to convey in her work an
author’s intention as far as how we feel about the characters. The author of this book does just the
opposite. She give us the freedom to
judge the characters by their actions, in the eyes of the narrator, who does
not really try to sway our opinion.
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