An Alsatian perceives a disembodied hand and bites it.
Whilst staying in the hospital, Flora – a metallurgist visiting family in Mexico – befriends older German woman Wilhelmina, a collector of zoetropes and magic lanterns.
Thus begins the story of The Shadow of the Object, a strange book made up of short non-chapters (no chapters titles, only gaps in the writing).
Wilhelmina regales her life stories but doesn’t seem very interested in Flora’s. Later on, back in London, Wilhelmina’s son Max picks up these stories – and the friendship with Flora – although they don’t seem to like each other very much. These scenes bring to mind for me an episode of the TV cult classic Firefly called “Objects in Space”: People merely glancing off each other, not really connecting, have somehow become family.
There is also, of course, something very Platonic about it all, casting shadows on the cave wall, never knowing the real object. Flora wonders if her friendship with the German patient was more based on Wilhelmina’s stories. Do we know our friends, or only the reflection of them on the world? Do they know us?
Interesting that this has proved a difficult book to review. I made very few reading notes, and find that I don’t have much to say about anyone. I wonder if this is because of the nature of the story as its own magic lantern show, tableau after tableau, the characters not really interacting with each other even while sitting in the same rooms. All of this is clearly deliberate – I don’t dislike it, I’m just – not gripped by it, I guess? Although I am still mulling it over after reading. A slow-burning lantern.
The magic lantern casts shadows, Wilhelmina casts shadows.
A hundred pages in, I wrote: “I am still looking for the story. So maybe the story isn’t casting a shadow?”
At the end of the day, this book is less a “story” and more its own slideshow, like the shows Wilhelmina, Max and Flora put on. A series of images. During a storm – its own kind of light show – a thunderclap delivers Flora a spider (SCENE); then the outline of a man (SCENE).
And at the end of it all, a blank slide.
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