The Porpoise

Triggered beyond reading more... book in bin
Rich pedophile.

I somehow didn't notice when I picked up The Porpoise, that it is based on the ancient story of Antiochus, who “fell in love with” his daughter as a substitute for his dead wife. When I realized that was what I was reading, I very nearly stopped. I did not want to read about male adventures based on the suffering of a female rape victim. I kept reading, though, and found that the male adventure was far from happy-go-lucky, and in fact carried a lot of its own suffering. No one gets through this story unscathed. Is that a recommendation? I don't know.

The Porpoise is a labyrinth of stories, winding inwards and outwards in time, with three different (but intimately related) narratives. The outermost part of the story is set in modern times. The infant Angelica survives the plane crash that kills her mother Maja, and is raised, and subsequently abused by her fabulously wealthy father Phillipe. A would be rescuer/suitor, Darius, shows up, is nearly killed by Phillipe, and has to go on the run...when he morphs into Pericles. The story continues with the adventures of Pericles of Tyre, with brief breaks to an encounter between William Shakespeare and George Wilkins, the (putative) writers of the play, Pericles. The struggle between Angelica and her father makes brief appearances throughout. Finally, the labyrinthine story winds back outward to end with Angelica.

The structure of the story is confusing. What do these three narratives have to do with each other? Why does the author intermingle them instead of telling each one straight through? Where am I in relation to what I read a few pages before? I can't say that all my questions were answered, but I was satisfied with the resolution of the problems.

Also, there's a bibliography of sources. As a librarian, I appreciate that.

I grew tired of this pretty quickly. The back-and-forth between myth, fantasy, and “reality” was tedious. It felt overly indulgent and chaotic; as if Haddon was trying to explore as much as possible in this fictional realm, which had been adapted from a Shakespeare play, which had been adapted from a Greek myth. So fiction within fiction within fiction. And the result. A mess. My biggest disappointment was in all the characters. If there had been one character that felt more than a blank slate, a caricature, then perhaps I could have enjoyed this more. But out of the many, many characters introduced, their thoughts were so scattered, their “deep” and profound emotions felt fake and overly explained, nothing about them felt true. It's feel like Haddon was trying to write something “different”. I can't help but feel what I've just read was more of a writing exercise, an experiment, than a complete work of fiction in its own right.