Far South [Paperback]

Where to start...? Well, I've never come across a concept like this one before.
There's a novel (with a comic strip section), an interactive website with photographs, videos, readings...

The author, we're told, is the voice of an artistic collective, 'The Far South Project'.

The novel is set in contemporary Argentina. For the most part, the narrative is the testimony from the casebook of Juan Manuel Perez, a private investigator hired to find the recently disappeared theatre director Gerardo Fischer. There are some witness depositions interspersed here, too, one of which is in a comic strip style.

The prose style is tight and direct, which I really liked, with the Sierras of Argentina vividly realised - from the dry thunder over distant mountains to the scorch of midday sun driving along dusty tracks. There's a bizarre and intriguing cast of characters weaving their way through a gripping story. When I'd finished it left me pondering many things...

Early on in the novel you come across web links to TFSP; I dipped in and out of the website, listening to excerpts and viewing some of the videos. They really bring another dimension to the reading, and now that I've finished the novel I find myself exploring the online content more and more...

An innovative, intelligent, exciting experience. Highly recommended.

"Far South" is a highly unusual book. It's published as "crime fiction'" but this is really only part of the story. It's also a collection of creative endeavors that combines narrative with web-based content. We are told that "David Enrique Spellman is the voice for the Far South Project. The Far South Collective is a loosely affiliated group of artists, writers, actors, filmmakers musicians and dancers. He works in close collaboration with Esko Tikanmäki Portogales, a Uruguayan web designer". While I applaud its ambition in trying to add something more creative to the novel concept, I have slightly more mixed views about the success of this.

The story concerns a creative community in Argentina whose charismatic and mysterious director, Gerardo Fischer, one day disappears without a trace just days before a new show is about to be put on. Worried for his safety some members of the collective contact Juan Manuel Pérez, a former cop who has helped with a previous violent attack on the group by local hoodlums. Pérez has been forced to leave the police after exposing local corruption and is now working as a private detective. Despite the anticipated danger of coming face to face with the underbelly of crime, Pérez agrees to take on the case, not least due to the attractiveness of almost all the females he meets at the collective. The book itself consists of extracts from Pérez's casebook interspersed with a few witness depositions. There's also a 30 page diary/story that is in comic book form.

As a crime story it works reasonably well although most of what Pérez uncovers pertains more to the murky political past of Argentina and specifically the harbouring of World War Two German army personnel and suggestions of potential links to more recent anti-Semitic global activities. Global conflicts play a large part in what appears to be a play on the creative theatre and the theatre of war. This means that there is not much tension in terms of the plot to find what happened to Fischer and it becomes less about the crime and more about Pérez discovering his own past. If you are looking for a deeply plotted crime story, this may not be for you.

The comic book section is presumably there to give the artists in the collective a stab. It's nicely done but doesn't really add a great deal to the story.

Which leads me onto the web-based content. The novel has a few web site links and QR codes (those bar code things that lead you to a web site). At first I was intrigued but also found this a little irritating as I often don't read where I have access to the computer (albeit that you can get the content on a lot of mobile phones too - or alternatively buy the Kindle version I guess - but then you'd miss out on the colour). I diligently checked out the content but while these were by and large nicely done, it didn't add anything to the story. You can happily ignore it all and not miss out on any plot or clues. In a kind of tacit acknowledgment of this, the instance of these QR codes fades after the first quarter of the book anyway. I liked the idea and the content was fine, but it doesn't really add to the reader's experience. The film sections are all very arty and mysterious so it's not as if you are being shown the characters themselves - which would arguably have been an interesting use of this device. As for the promotional questions of "can you help?" - well, the answer is "no - you cannot be of any help to the success or failure to find the missing man". It implies far more interaction than there is.

I don't want this to sound too negative though. I did enjoy the book and the story, and I like the idea of a more creative and innovative approach. It's just that for me it didn't quite deliver what it could have done. Interesting? Very much so. Successful? Perhaps not so much.

I was entranced by this experiment in form and content created by David Enrique Spellman, the voice for the Far South Project. I won't repeat the plot here but it deals with disappearance and the ensuing search for the lost. The work blurs the lines between actuality and misinformation, between reportage and creativity, between fact and fiction. As a book you e-read or hold in your hand it is substantial and engaging enough with its blend of time-shift, graphic novel interludes, reports, data and dialogue. What marks it out as something greater is the way it spins off into web site, film, theatre production and performance with genuine opportunities offered for others to engage. If you've seen the missing Gerardo Fischer, a Uruguayan theatre director, then you can send you witness deposition in, real or not.

The issue with much experimental work, and in particular twentieth century experimental work, is that the chosen form inevitably dominates the content and the reader is not considered at all. That's not the case here. Spellman (inevitably not his real name) has written a book you want to read. More strength to him.