Umbrella

December 24, 2012
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Self’s sweeping experimental new novel (after Walking to Hollywood) creaks under the weight of chaotic complexity. At its core lies a fractured matrix only partially resembling a coherent story. For more than 50 years, octogenarian Audrey Death aka De’Ath, Deeth, Deerth has languished in North London’s Friern Mental Hospital, suffering from encephalitis lethargica—a brain-damaging sleeping sickness she contracted in 1918 that renders patients either “whirled into a twisted immobility, or else unwound spastic, hypotonic.” In 1971, whiz-bang psychiatrist Zachary Busner attempts to revive her and other “enkies” by plying them with L-Dopa (an anti-Parkinson’s drug). A fleeting reawakening reveals jarring glimpses into Audrey’s past (a hardscrabble childhood in Edwardian England; a job at a WWI munitions factory; a raunchy love affair with a married man), with alternating flashbacks to the lives of her brothers Stan (a gunner in the war) and Bert (a puffed-up civil servant), and jumps forward to Busner in 2010 reminiscing about his past (a failed marriage; adultery; his mixed career). Lacking chapter breaks, paragraph separations (mostly), and hopping between these four characters’ stream-of-consciousness points of view, the already puzzling tome can be difficult to follow, let alone grasp. But with snippets of dialects, stylistic flourishes, and inventive phrases loose with meaning, for those who grab hold and hang on, the experience falls just shy of brilliant. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency.

November 1, 2012
Brainy and outlandish, though still in the mainstream of modernist fiction, this book captures a number of eccentric voices and sends the reader running to the dictionary. The epigraph to the novel is, fittingly, from Joyce's Ulysses: "A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella," and Self offers us an account of Audrey Death and her two brothers, Albert and Stanley. Originally Audrey De'Ath, her name transmutes to Deerth and then to Dearth, a prime example of Self's--dare I say self-consciously?--Joycean word play. By whatever name, Audrey was born in 1890, came of age in the Edwardian era, involved herself in the suffragette movement, worked for a while in an umbrella shop, became ill with encephalitis lethargica (aka "sleeping sickness") toward the end of World War I and was institutionalized in 1922 at a mental hospital in north London. Now it's 1971, and Dr. Zachary Busner, a recurring character in Self's novels and stories, tries to treat her--and other sufferers from the illness--to bring them out of their catatonia. Self plunges the reader into the twisted conscious minds of both Audrey and Zach, a feat that's in equal parts exhilarating and bewildering. Consider the following description of a pianist Audrey had heard in her past: "Ooh, yairs, isn't it luvverly, such fine mahoggerny--while the fellow's knees rose and fell as he trod in the melody, Doo-d'doo, doo d'doo, doo d'dooo, doo d'dooo, triplets of notes going up and down." The novel disdains such literary conventions as chapters and just plunges us into the inner worlds of its characters. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this novel is uncompromising and relentless in the demands it makes upon the reader, yet there's a lyrical, rhapsodic element that continually pulls one into and through the narrative.

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September 1, 2012

Cutting-edge psychiatrist Zachary Busner is concerned about some of the patients at a 1970s London mental hospital--in particular, Audrey Dearth, who was born in the slums in 1890 and unfolds her life story in alternate passages--but efforts to reach them don't end well. Just long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2012
This demanding but rewarding latest effort from Self takes place in an English mental hospital in 1971 and, through a longtime and nearly catatonic patient there, in the WWI era of her youth. The shifting perspectives are those of psychiatrist Zachary Busner, a recurring character in Self's fictionwho may remind the reader (perhaps too much) of the Oliver Sacks of Awakenings or of R. D. Laingand patient Audrey Dearth (or De'ath, or Death). Newly arrived at the facility, Busner rejects the facile diagnosis of mental illness that generations of professionals have attached to patients, including Dearth, whose physical symptoms he believes may be manifestations of a treatable medical condition rather than psychiatric in origin. The misdiagnoses of his predecessors have had profound consequences; Dearth has been institutionalized for a half-century. As she responds to medication, it becomes clear that she has been conscious and aware much of that time, and, now again articulate, she reveals a horrific family drama dating back to The Great War. Joycean in its rhythm and style, Umbrella lacks chapter breaks, and its paragraphs frequently run to several pages. This is not an easy read, but it is a major and unforgettable one. The English edition was short-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, and, with it, the prolific maverick Self may have written his best book yet and may gain well-merited recognition.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)