Destiny Book

This complex and intriguing novel opens with an Englishman learning that his only son has committed suicide in Italy. His first emotion is not grief, but rather relief as he realises that he will at last be able to leave his wife to whom he has been bonded by their son's schizophrenia. As they travel back to Italy the narrator describes how his flamboyant wife, who both appals and delights him, lapses into "miserable and uncooperative mutism" as punishment. Tim Park's protagonist is a fifty-something, disillusioned political journalist who is trying to write a book on Italian national character in order to predict the behaviour of the inhabitants of his adopted country, especially his wife's. "You cannot marry a woman in one language and think in another", he muses, convinced that what he once found vehement and exciting about her, and indeed Italy, has been revealed as shallow and distasteful. If he can discover how national character determines choice, then he will be able to act differently and leave. Mistaken for German in Italy and American in England, the Englishman articulates beautifully the dilemma of living in another tongue, seeing it as a "faulty contact" which inhibits true understanding. "The language is national destiny", he decides and so he and his wife are destined to confound one another.Destiny is a highly astute study of the inappropriate behaviour that accompanies grief as well as a blistering account of a marriage of peers, of the failings of commitment and monogamy and of the endless loss and retrieval of love. The fractured, claustrophobic narration perfectly suits the narrator's ugly confusion and sublime lucidity as he evades then shoulders responsibility for his mistakes. An intelligent, enthralling novel about the meaning of identity and our maddeningly conflicted motivations. -- Cherry SmythRead More