I sat on the Picadilly Line with Will Self's liver on my lap...
This novel was kindly sent to me by the publisher several weeks ago, and I started reading it at once. The only reason it's taken me so long to get around to reviewing it is that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do it justice. If I describe it as a postmodern extravaganza -- and surely someone somewhere has called it just that -- regular visitors here (if any there be) will see at once that it's not the sort of thing I usually read and review. But let's have a go anyway.
First of all, the title. I did not know what quiddity meant, and had to look it up, though if I hadn't bothered I'd have eventually found a definition some way into the novel. Here's what the OED has to say about it:
- 1 the inherent nature or essence of someone or something. 2 a distinctive feature; a peculiarity:his quirks and quiddities
Quite honestly, though, this is really only scratching the surface of the comic, multi-faceted, multi-narrated, metafictional, confusing and delightful plot. Five different narrators voice the novel's five parts -- or rather four, as Richard, who narrates Part One, returns in Part Three in the form of a diary he is writing in a Liverpool tower block, while he also writes a novel, watched avidly by numerous members of the general public. Sylvie narrates Part Two, after her own death. Part Four is narrated by Mia, and takes place in 2049, after the death of Will Self, who, we learn, finally managed to win the Booker Prize in his 80s. And Part Five is narrated by Sam Mills. But what Sam Mills is this, and how much relationship is there with the 'real' Sam Mills? Well, for a start, the Sam Mills who has put her name on the title page is female, and the Sam Mills in the novel is male. But the very name of the novelist hints at some kind of gender confusion, and there's reason to believe that it may not in fact be the real writer's real name. And, as Sam Mills wrote recently in a Guardian article,
In symmetry with Will, I suffer from sex dysmorphia; I habitually feel like an angry young man trapped in the body of a female …
Be that as it may, there does seem to be some autobiographical material in this section -- it is undoubtedly true, for example, that Sam Mills was, or is, a writer of young adult novels, a couple of which I've reviewed on here, and almost certainly this novel did take nine years to write and was turned down by several publishers. As for the letter purportedly written by Sam to Will Self, and the account of his reply -- well, who knows. And does it matter? I don't think so. In fact I know it doesn't. For this is a novel partly -- or largely? -- about writing, about words, about identity and its confusions.
And would you like this novel? You'd have to be prepared to let go of a great many preconceptions about how stories are meant to be told, and of the need to come out at the other end with some kind of satisfying conclusion or closure. There's lots and lots of sex, though not of the gratuitous variety -- it is, believe it or not, integral to the plot. The only thing I can think of that the novel resembles a little is a film called Being John Malkovitch, so if you ever saw that and liked it, you'd perhaps like this too. Anyway, I'm in no doubt that this is a novel of real brilliance. The Daily Mail, my least favorite newspaper of all time, wrote of 'glimpses of genius', and for once it's hard to disagree with them. Oh -- and as for that opening quote about the liver -- well, you'll just have to read the novel to see what that's all about.