An
Obvious Enchantment
by
Tucker Malarkey
(Random House, 404 pages, $23.95)
Tucker Malarkey
will read from her novel at Powell's City of Books, 1005
W Burnside St., at 7:30 pm Tuesday, Sept. 19. Free.
Malarkey is the senior editor at Tin House, the
literary magazine based in Portland and New York City.
"The tyranny of the present was its lack of interest in
the past." Portland author Tucker Malarkey's first novel
is a fascinating tale of a young American woman, Ingrid,
who finds herself stranded on an East African island that
is quickly losing its identity in the face of globalization.
But in the fashion of Henry James, Malarkey's heroine is
transformed by immersion in a foreign culture, away from
the confining push and noise of America. Also like James,
Malarkey uses her American protagonist as a one-way mirror,
a means to view the often bizarre and conflicted nature
of our own culture through its reflection in another (as
Ingrid is an anthropologist, the observations are particularly
astute). Yet even with these Jamesian touches, Malarkey's
An Obvious Enchantment (the phrase comes from the
Koran) has a mysterious quest for a maverick professor at
its heart, which reminds readers of Joseph Conrad's darker
journey into Africa.
Ingrid's life as an anthropologist was molded by her mentor,
Professor Templeton, a Brit who fled his native land for
an academic base in America's Midwest. But Templeton's thoughts
on his new home are clear. "You have been born into the
youngest, the least wise, the most precocious country on
earth," he lectures Ingrid. Her only salvation is to steep
herself "in a place that values the absurdities and fundamental
mystery of human beings." He suggests that Ingrid start
with the beginning: Egypt. And so Ingrid finds herself on
the trail of the woman-pharaoh Hatshepsut along the Nile.
Templeton, too, returns to Africa, though he's exploring
the Swahili regions on the coast of the Indian Ocean. Ingrid
receives strange, rambling letters from Templeton hinting
that he's discovered an unknown African king who was the
first to bring Islam to the shores of Africa 300 years before
conventional history places its arrival. Intrigued by her
mentor's obsession with his theory, Ingrid sets out to find
Templeton and to share in his discoveries. But arriving
on the island of Pelat, she immediately falls into a traumatized
culture in the throes of change. Not only that, but Templeton
has mysteriously vanished, though letters from him continue
to pop up warning Ingrid to stay clear. Heedless of his
cautions, Ingrid pursues her professor into the island's
interior.
The culture that Malarkey creates on the island is one
she's very familiar with, as she lived in such a transitional
spot in Africa for two years. "The conflicts I witnessed
on the island where I lived were sad and compelling," Malarkey
told WW. "It was a marvelous hybrid culture where
Islam incorporated shamans, ghosts and spells, but Western
influence was unraveling the society's fabric before my
eyes." On the fictional Pelat, Ingrid witnesses the pollution
of the island's traditions that pours from a luxury hotel
on the island's head. The nightly bacchanals of the privileged
Europeans living there--the white mischief--have infected
the locals with cravings for alcohol, loveless sex and material
possessions. The situation has become so hopeless for the
cultural traditionalists that they've moved to the other
side of the island to be rid of the Western taint. But the
first hotel has become such a success that a British developer
has begun to build a rival exactly where the traditionalists
have escaped to. Conflict seems inevitable between the two
forces, and Templeton may well be leading the traditionalists'
resistance.
Malarkey cleverly reveals the insidiousness of the Western
corruption of native cultures, down to the hotel management
effacing their native staff's identity by forbidding them
to go by their own names--Ali, Abdul, etc.--and "rechristening"
them with names like Jackson and Hamilton. She casts a cold
eye on the hotel habitués, who seem to live in a
perpetual liquor-breathed fog, insensitive to the damage
their presence is causing, and skillfully pits their preoccupation
with the future or lack of one against the native insistence
on honoring the past and living in the present.
Structurally, Malarkey's book resembles a good mystery.
Ingrid's hunt for Templeton becomes detective work, tracing
lines from his letters to the Koran to explain some of her
hiding mentor's behavior. Stylistically, Malarkey's keen
eye for detail is matched by her lyrical language: "She
thought about how academics lost sight of themselves and
saw only their subject, how this liberated them from their
own scrutiny. It was an inadvertent act of self-generosity;
allowing one's self to be, uninterrupted by observation."
"Ingrid's African quest is more structured than mine was,"
says Malarkey, "but it taught me lessons about myself that
I couldn't have learned in America."
The life of the expatriate who sojourns throughout the
world looking for truth is often hard and always lonely.
Ingrid's passage brings clarity and purpose to her life.
For Malarkey, the experience has produced an impressive
first novel.
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