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New in paperback. As a bookseller here at Kepler's, I had the privilege of reading an advance reader's copy of this extremely inventive, ambitious, yet tightly packed and highly entertaining novel. The Mayor's Tongue is, on the surface, two parallel stories: one about a young, recent graduate, Eugene, obsessed with the work of the famous, though presumed dead, writer Constance Eakins. Eugene relocates to the very un-Manhattan, Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood (all the while his estranged father believing he's in Miami) where, while working at a moving company, he befriends co-worker Alvaro - a Dominican laborer who speaks a Cibaeno dialect no one comprehends. Alvaro pleads with Eugene - using the appropriate physical gestures and facial expressions, of course - to translate a novel he is writing. Their relationship leads to all sorts of interesting adventures both stateside and abroad in Italy. While overseas, searching for his missing love "Alice", Eugene also seeks out the elusive Eakins, now rumored alive as the "Mayor" of a strange, remote village atop Carso, Italy. The parallel story concerns a lifelong friendship between Mr. Schmitz and the widower Rutherford, a relationship disrupted in their twilight years when the laid-off and income-less Rutherford relocates to, yes, Italy, assuming a position as a restaurant critic. Their relationship continues in epistolary fashion, as Schmitz writes of his wife's progressive illness while Rutherford responds with what appears increasing, mental madness. The Mayor's Tongue explores (perhaps even comments on) the themes and concerns of the "Post-modern" writer: narrative structure; literary obsession; certainly language (whether the lack of it in Alvaro's case or the loss of it in Rutherford's - indeed the correspondence between the newly-widowed Schmitz and the ill expatriate Rutherford culminates in one of the most hilarious, yet somehow poignant cries for help I've ever read). The novel also explores translation; identity (Eugene's Alice goes by an assortment of monikers (Alicia, Agata, Sonia); and even author "ego" (witness the "Mayor"!) Yet, it is the novel's stories, the seamlessly magical interweaving of reality with fantasy, the deadpan hilarity, and the physically fantastic, yet all too human characters, that make the book such a brisk, highly entertaining read; one that is mind-bendingly original and ultimately satisfying - a "Mobius strip of a novel" as Colum McCann aptly puts it. As a reader, The Mayor's Tongue left me (perhaps the character Eugene as well) sincerely wondering "How'd "Nat" do that?! Terry M. |
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