Natural Novel (Eastern European Literature) [Paperback]

I've read this book several times and each time I found something new, new view on happening in the novel and new view on life, and interesting questions which arrise from the novel, and the answers, too. It is almost unpossible to narrate about this novel, it has to be readed! And each reading, as already said, is a new one, fresh, and this novel brings freshness in literary world. This Bulgarian author is definitely unique and his novel is worth reading. Once again, redaing several times!

On the face of it, this novel should not have been as enjoyable as it was - it is very experimental in form and content, with a fractured structure and a number of digressions as varied as a history of toilets and the possibility of literature by flies (even a Fly Bible). These musings are loosely connected to a central (although never clearly defined) concept that Gospodinov has of a 'natural novel': "My immodest desire is to mold a novel of beginnings, a novel that keeps starting, promising something, reaching page 17 and then starting again".

Gospodinov does not achieve that aim in this work for, despite the various digressions, there is a clear sub-narrative here of a writer whose life has been shattered by the discovery that his wife is pregnant with his best friend's baby, and their subsequent divorce. This narrative is driven forward through a series of touching, at times heartbreaking, vignettes charting his various stages of disbelief, anger, despair and resignation. It is interesting that the shattered nature of the main protagonist's life is reflected fittingly in the shattered structure of the novel itself.

For me, the book works better here, in the narrative of the main character, than it does in its postmodernist musings on the nature of language and literature; although these are interesting enough. And the narrative contains enough descriptions of everyday life in Sofia to make this a worthwhile stopping point on my journey. I was particuarly struck by the description of the recent economic hardships of the country in the 1990s: "I remember an elderly woman asking for half a lemon at the market. Others searched around the empty stalls at night for a potato that might have been accidentally dropped. More and more well-dressed people overcame their shame and reached into the garbage cans".

What really struck me was the style of writing here: an engaging, at times brutally honest, and direct style which - whilst the author namechecks Salinger - for me was more reminiscent of Charles Bukowski or Hubert Selby Jnr; both of whom were expert at depicting the self-destructive anti-hero's knowing descent into social exclusion. That is not to say that this novel is derivative however, it is highly original and deserves and wider readership than it will inevitably get in the West. Nor is it a depressing read - indeed there are some moments of great humour (a favourite of mine is Chapter 22, entitled "A List of Pleasures in the 1980s". The chapter simply consists of the line: "...I can't remember any pleasures".)

To sum up then, an entertaining tragi-comic work with some fascinating glimpses of Bulgarian life, interspersed with some interesting semiotic asides.