For Isabel

Starred review from July 31, 2017
Private obsessions; personal regrets eroded but not transformed by time, like pebbles smoothed down by the current of the river; incongruous fantasies and the inadequacy of reality.” These are the stated inspiration behind Tabucchi’s novel, which takes the form of a journey whose structure resembles that of Dante’s Hell: a man claiming to be a journalist named Tadeus is searching in Lisbon for an old classmate named Isabel, who became involved with the Communists and disappeared during Portugal’s authoritarian regime. What follows is a Rashomon-like series of interviews with Isabel’s friends and coconspirators, who recall her as passionate and doomed to suicide: there’s her doting nanny Beatriz Teixeira, the sultry guitarist Tecs, an old Creole calling himself Uncle Tom, and photographer Tiago, who may have helped Isabel escape prison shortly before her death. Or is Isabel really dead? As Tadeus ventures into the final circles of the mystery, his subjects become even more mercurial: a cave-dwelling mystic, a poet known as The Ghost Who Walks, a holy man from India living in the Swiss Alps, and finally, in the ninth circle, a mad violinist who might be the devil himself. The fractured narrative that emerges from the testimony of these eyewitnesses makes the novel more than the story of a missing girl; it is history recalled as though in a dream, hovering briefly, through the combination of Tabucchi’s elegiac prose and Harris’s lucid translation, over life and death.

July 1, 2017
One man's search for a missing woman grows less factual and more metaphysical.This slim novel by the Italian novelist Tabucchi (1943-2012; Tristano Dies, 2015, etc.), first published a year after his death, is subtitled "A Mandala," which suggests its structure: one man is journeying through concentric circles of evidence to uncover deeper ideas about truth. At the outset (or, rather, outer circles), it's a straightforward detective story: a man, Tadeus, is searching for Isabel, an activist who was apprehended and beaten by police for protesting Portugal's authoritarian regime. Tadeus' interest in her is initially unclear, and his provenance is unusual (he claims to hail from the star Sirius), but no matter: the story is mainly narrated by others who knew her, from a college friend to her nanny to a musician friend to members of a loose resistance group called The Organization that sheltered her after her escape from jail. Asked why he's performing this search, Tadeus responds, "to reach consciousness," and in its latter pages the novella echoes that more ascetic motivation, untethering itself from matters of politics and relationships to dwell on ghosts, spirits, and the urge to be one with the universe. ("The important thing is to search, and not if you find something or you don't," one interlocutor tells Tadeus.) In that regard, the book is something of an inheritor to the works of Hermann Hesse (who's referenced in the novel), another Western author who was interested in Eastern spiritual practices. The book's brevity means Tabucchi can do little more than sketch out these themes, but there's a satisfying richness to the whole, and translator Harris gracefully navigates the narrator's tonal shift from gumshoe to spiritual seeker, making the story lyrical and surprising while avoiding airiness. An unusually structured but engaging jaunt into the ineffable.

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September 1, 2017

In this posthumous work, award-winning Italian writer Tabucchi (Tristano Dies) really does construct a mandala for Isabel, who dominates the narrative through her absence. Deceased Polish writer Tadeus Slowacki has come to Lisbon, Portugal, from the Dog Star to discover how Isabel died--reputedly in prison 30 years ago during Salazar's regime, but the facts are hazy. Called circles, the chapters wind tighter and tighter in mandala-like fashion as Tadeus's hunt reaches resolution. Tadeus interviews people who knew Isabel, from a school friend and a priest to her nanny, a musician friend, her guard in prison, the former head of the underground Communist organization to which she belonged, and even an animist poet who communicates with the dead. Each story leads to the next, and readers will be caught up in the narrative's urgency as Tadeus moves toward solving the mystery of the illusive Isabel. VERDICT Tabucchi's language is spare and lyrical, his narrative lush in history and character, and the novel ends on a quietly peaceful note that seems a fitting farewell to the author himself. For literary readers who like a mystical touch.

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