Customer Reviews

The Server

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As some one quite interested in the complex relationship between individuals and organisations/systems, and the intriguing matter of our sense of identity, this book absorbed me for a week or so on holiday this summer. I chose it on the strength of the blurb before I'd realised that the author, Tim Parks is the same man who wrote 'A Season With Verona' (cracking good read about the relationship between a football fan, his adoptive Italian team, and much else besides, and where territory and identify are again the powerful themes.) In 'The Server' not a lot happens, and yet so much is going on. Things felt, intimated, groundswells of feeling and yearning: for submission, for rebellion, and for release. A book for those who enjoy the territory of human experience rather than complex plot, and who value the posing of questions above the supply of answers.

A very honest account of spiritual life experienced by a character who was comically and sadly unsuited to its rigours. I'd be interested to know if Parks chose the character for this reason. I subscribe to the view that you don't have to like characters in fiction but I confess to wanting to hit this one at many points in my reading - perhaps the intended response. Sex oozed out of every corner of this book, which amused and entertained me. It also portrayed buddhism as beautiful, but at the same time, as irritating as its main character made it in her description. All in all,the novel held me completely. I wanted to stop reading but couldn't. Well done, Parks, especially for including so much about buddhism without betraying the novel form. V.clever.

Drawing on his own experience of transcendental meditation, Tim Parks transports us into the mind of Beth, impulsive, provocative, sensuous twenty-something former singer in a pop band who has spent the past nine months in the incongruous role of server cooking, cleaning and setting a good example for a group of meditators on a ten day Buddhist retreat.

It is a strict regime: segregation of the sexes, no talking or touching, hours of exerting the "strong determination" to sit motionless in painful poses, focusing on breathing with the daily brainwashing from recordings made by the guru Dasgupta, "who preaches against self-regard in a self-regarding way". There is a consistent tone of scepticism, a flippancy, which may upset strong advocates of meditation. Despite this, Parks conveys a clear and strong sense of the process of meditation.

Although she used to have no trouble losing herself in music, and wishes ardently to change herself through meditation, Beth's thoughts keep slipping back to speculating about the other inmates, whom she cannot resist winding up and leading astray on occasion, or brooding on her clearly troubled past life. Some recent trauma has driven her to the retreat, and Parks skilfully drips out the facts to hold our attention.

Sometimes I found this book too contrived, too much of a master class in creative writing by an expert published author, rather than a sincere examination of human dilemmas. The detailed descriptions of the routines at the retreat are sometimes tedious, although this may have been the author's intention. Since he builds up a strong sense of tension, moving towards an anticipated dramatic, perhaps shocking and unpredictable ending, I was a little disappointed by the final chapters which have a kind of banality, making the experience in the retreat seem lightweight.

However, it is an original, well-constructed story and in the midst of the wry, jokey humour, there are some convincing characters and many telling observations on life and relationships.