The Porpoise

The Porpoise – Mark Haddon
Based on Shakespeare’s Pericles? What I read on the web, anyway.

“Their safety—her safety, Rudy’s safety—is more important than any other consideration, but there is some caveman part of his brain which is profoundly averse to being seen as less than competent, by anyone, let alone by a woman, and least of all by a woman he finds this attractive.” Page 12.

Not to give away too much? He loses his head a few pages later. Why I didn’t get, and covered in my previous attempt at scholarship on Shakespeare’s Pericles, the idea that it was a crowd pleaser until the last hundred years or so. Not sure I understand that.
The novel works on three different time lines, so far, the setting for the play, a modern setting, and then unglued in space and time, a world of fantasy.
I was intrigued because I poked around Shakespeare’s Pericles and made not much sense of it. After digesting the book, a little, I’m thinking it was an adventuresome novel with multiple timelines trying to tie up the loose ends left in Shakespeare’s play.
Part of it is eloquent word-smithing, that kind of material the I can admire, but I tend to shy away from as it gets too deep, too convoluted, too quickly.
The myth and metaphor, the myth didn’t escape me, but the metaphor, maybe I just didn’t quite understand it all. Not that it wasn’t an enjoyable read, but some it struck me as too much.
Still, an admirable novel.

“How came you in these parts? Where were you bred?”

• — Pericles Act 5, Scene 1

The Porpoise

The Porpoise – Mark Haddon