AN UNUSUAL BUT REWARDING LITTLE GEM : "NATURAL NOVEL"

Ok, it is time, yet again, to update the “literary” side of my blog. Now, I read this interesting little number a while back. Now, I love reading but since I have a 9 to 5 job to hold down it has become a bit of drag for me. Not because I enjoy it any less but because I am tired when I get back from the office and cannot for the life of me concentrate on reading anything. Natural Novel proved an exception to this rule however. Once I got into it, no matter what I did I could NOT put it down. Which was slightly bizarre, because I started it almost by accident and had no great illusions as to whether I would like it or not… Now, Natural Novel is a very VERY “modern”. It has a storyline sure, it has a beginning a middle and an ending too. Well… After a fashion.

Natural Novel is the story of a man whose life has just fallen apart. Our narrator tells of his failed marriage and his wife, who, he has just found out, is pregnant by another man. He then goes off on a tangent. Several tangents. The book is presented in chapters, the longest of them two or three pages long and they can be best described (in fact I saw the description in another review on the internet) as a series of vignettes. Each one may or may not be related to the initial topic or indeed the “vignette” that came before it. The story emerges, disappears, changes direction. Oh it develops and ends all right but in the true “modern” style the line is as far from linear as you can possibly imagine.

Now, you might think this would make a book almost impossible to read. I only started reading it because it was part of some volunteer work I was doing a while back – and had the exact same prediction. What I hadn’t factored in however, was Gospodinov’s talent. Each snippet, each vignette is a masterpiece in its own right, and besides, the style of the book dictates that one is perpetually left with the nagging curiosity as to “what comes next”. Plus, like I said the “main” story itself does actually advance you’re just never quite sure when it will start doing it. Plus, I have to say, it gives a VERY accurate picture of post communist life in Bulgaria. (I seem to have forgotten to mention this but the author of the book is Bulgarian) In fact, one of the main aims of the book seems to be the description of life. Personally, I liked the fact that we are almost in the mind of the distraught narrator – we rollercoaster along with him as his mind rambles and he jumps from one topic to another. I personally finished it in a matter of days and found it both fascinating and humorous. I also feel lucky in my discovery of Gospodinov. I strongly recommend you step into his world…