Catherine Cole The Grave at Thu Le

The Grave at Thu Le by Catherine Cole - this book has not been released in the UK at present but no doubt negotiations would be underway for its publication here before too long. It came my way via a professional reviewer colleague of mine in Australia who wanted another opinion before lavishing unqualified praise on this work. He thought that a crusty old critic such as I might bring him back to earth.

You see, there are many so called "good" books. Some are well written, some have interesting thematic content, some are good on character and place. By and large, they will pass into obscurity very rapidly. Part of the problem is that everybody wants to be a writer. That is compounded by the fact that publishers are motivated by profit and while the best commissioning editors try to promote artistic innovation, they are often overruled by their masters. Of course, of itself, this is not a new phenomenon. However, the concentration of ownership in the publishing industry increases the likelihood of stasis and mediocrity as far as the future development of novelistic form in concerned. That too, has been said before in similar terms by others. But make no mistake about it, those old, rigid fossils like I who love the novel, who know its history, who venerate its great practitioners worry about the novel and where it is heading.

There is always trepidation and justifiable caution in any describing a newly published work as a masterpiece and even more so when the artist is a newcomer. On the other hand, if one is sure, one should be courageous and call it for what it is. Catherine Cole has written a book that will never be out of print. She has produced something that only someone possessed of genius could do.

I shall not summarise the plot, describe the novel's characters or elaborate any of the usual content of reviews. There will be enough of that elsewhere. What I shall say, is that it is clear that Dr Cole has studied Western novelistic craft in great detail much the way that a modern composer would be familiar with what went before. The purpose of all this is to learn the form and then to expand it. I would say, in particular, that she must have spent a lot of time with Hugo, Flaubert, Pushkin, Turgenev, Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The influences are all there and should be obvious to anyone who is moderately well read.

Her writing flows and flows and flows. Not so much as a single word is out of place or grates on the ear. Her lyricism is quite astonishing and I began to think "who else has done anything like this before in the novel?" I may end up spending some time on this question. At any rate, the music in her words is entirely captivating - it reminds me of the adagio in Schubert's String Quintet with all its transcendent spirituality.

While I advert to music and writing, classical musicians and music critics of ten speak of the particular "sound world" of a work . While there is no directly analogous construct in literary criticism, the Grave at Thu Le creates its own world immediately. There is an instantaneous sense of the simultaneous coexistence of the past, present and future and that they are all in balance. In entrenching this notion of temporal continuum at the outset, Cole manages to overcome any of the usual problems of discontinuity that occur when digressionary narrative styles are employed. Indeed, she seems to skate through the very formidable technical difficulties of the form as though they did not even exist.

There will no doubt be much about Cole's evocation of place. Again she is as good as it gets. Indeed, Hanoi anthropomorphised. Paris and the Limousin emerge with the palpability that one could expect in the visual arts although it is obvious that Hanoi is the leading character.

I have saved the very best till last. I have spent days reflecting on what might be termed the cultural identity of this book. Is it essentially Anglo-centric with a taste of France and Vietnam, is it French with Vietnamese inflections or is it Vietnamese with European references. Since I have never been to Vietnam, I am at something of a disadvantage. I have been to most other Asian countries and have read the works of a number of Asian authors. Given my lack of specific knowledge, what I can say is that the Grave at Thu Le manages to have a cultural identity that is at times tricultural (Anglo centric, French, Asian), bicultural or predominately Asian in focus. This must have been amazingly difficult to do but like everything else about this book, it appears to have been done without toil, with just a flick of the wrist.

Finally, this old fossil is mightily pleased. No one has done anything quite like this book before. Eureka, the novel lives.

Morley. C

Cambridge

UK