The Physics of Sorrow

April 20, 2015
Gospodinov's (Natural Novel) quixotic novel is part family saga, part meditation on Greek myths, and part personal history of growing up in Communist Bulgaria. Despite the challenges posed by this mix of styles and material, it's occasionally moving and points toward a book that might have been. The narrator is a Bulgarian writer who considers himself a collector of storiesâliterally, as he will often pay strangers for interesting anecdotes. He claims that as a child he could slip into others' experiences, and so when he begins to relate stories of his grandfather's youth and soldiering during WWII, he sometimes presents them in the first person. These affecting but confusing scenes are interspersed with images from the story of the Minotaur and its labyrinth. The narrator feels great sympathy toward this misunderstood "monster," and these passages are some of the best. However, the novel rambles across characters, eras, and stories; by the final quarter, the already thin pretense of a central narrative is completely set aside, and the narrator strings together a random assortment of tales and observations he's collected on his travels. Some of these stories sparkle, but the impression is of padding, and the effect is exhausting. The overall sense imparted by Gospodinov's experimental style isn't so much of having read a novel, as of having been presented with a measured amount of writing. Some of it is very fine, but too much is undisciplined and confusing.

June 1, 2015

As the protagonist states at the end of this book, "The past, sorrow, literature--only these three weightless whales interest me." In a narrative that only seems to leap about, he makes the Minotaur of ancient Greek literature emblematic of his and Bulgaria's sorrowful past. It says a lot about both that his Minotaur is no fearsome beast but a frightened creature in a dark and friendless place. From a grandfather's near abandonment as a child to "An Official History of the 1980s" to scientific experiments and the relentless sifting of the Minotaur myth (with Scheherazade thrown in to amplify the many side stories), Bulgarian novelist Gospodinov (Natural Novel) follows a thread through many caverns to a final conclusion: "We was." VERDICT Not for those who like a light read but an intriguing way to feel the weight of history and a hard coming of age.

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