The novel's chapters are broken up into portions told, through a third-person omniscient point of view, from the perspective of each of the novel's characters. These personalities, grotesques in the same sense as the characters from most of the other novels in my study, are propelled by a fear of loneliness--not necessarily a want of human company, for they all seem to have suffered at the hands of others, but a fear of the alternative. Much of the novel is spent fleshing out their inner lives, as they move from one desperate situation to another, never seeming to be able to simply stop running and find some kind of stability, of happiness. All their attempts crumble in the end, and their friends, once made, are lost to time, forgetfulness, or regret. Still, they keep striving. On paper, this novel looks like it's right up my alley. However, over the course of the story, several important no-nos (in my personal school of fiction) are committed.
Swan thankfully has lived in her characters' minds and managed to express it in words. Not only is her style simple and economical, it leans toward an individual rhythm for each of the characters' perspectives. Here is a sample of Curran the dwarf's mind:
Despite all the time taken to familiarize us with the characters, at least one is curiously left out--Amazing Grace. For a character who does so much to affect the outcome of the novel, and more importantly is in the minds of the other characters, Grace seems to have no personality, and in fact never "narrates" her own portion of the novel. We only see her dancing act, done with highly trained animals, which we see nothing of in the rest of the novel, and are shown the others' instincts towards her, though barely. It's in the nature of a novel that some characters will be less fleshed out than others, even that some characters may need to be kept from the reader's intimate knowledge, but in this case it feels like cheating, or simply omission. The few times she does say something, it seems incongruous with what little we know of her. She seems to be little more than the sex object she is portrayed as. The "kid" who travels with her, likewise starts out unknown, and never "narrates," but we do get to know some of his personality through the eyes of Billy Bigelow, the carnival's jack-of-all-trades and magician, whom the kid follows as a stray feral cat might.
Billy, the brightest and most normal of the bunch, only seems a grotesque because of his choice of staying with the carnival despite his aptitude for getting along in life. He doesn't seem maladjusted, having no freakishness, except perhaps for his taste in friends. Indeed, his penchant for creating illusion leads him to one of the more apt observations of the book:
"And where's the nickel? In my pocket, in my sleeve? It's all a trick--to deceive the eye. The whole secret of illusion. And the whole universe is in on the act. Every deed that was ever done and everything you've ever seen. And here we are, one little flash between remember this and hold onto that" (76).
Alta, wife of Dusty, the carnival's leader, realizes too late that she has loved Billy for some time. Though it doesn't seem impossible, it comes out of the blue. When a revelation such as this comes along late in a book, the reader should be given new insight into the story's previous events; a new piece of information should cast things in a new light, but learning of Alta's love doesn't, it only confuses--there had been no hint, however obscure. Whenever this happens it always casts a shadow over my opinion of the preceding portions of the novel, making the narrator(s) appear mischievous, cheating. Evidence was withheld unfairly.
The characters scatter at the end of the book. Though I don't see anything wrong with this, it didn't seem to hold much meaning or move me in any way. I'm sure Swan means there to be an end for each character, but whatever it is simply did not get communicated to me, and this is why I wonder if it's my own reading preferences that are behind this lack of resolution. Is there some other taste being catered to here? I seem to be able to glean more from the early parts of the book and from the blurbs on the jacket than from the last few chapters, and that hasn't been the case for any of my other readings. I don't know that the "flaws" in writing style I've picked on are enough to confuse me such; I'll simply have to revisit this later and see if perhaps I'd simply been ornery this week. In any case, the characters' loneliness is present in the novel, but hardly seems to be a driving force, and little hope seems to be offered. I'll have to try some of Swan's short stories, they may be more focused...
Afterthought: The setting for this novel is in a "mysterious" Southwest desert region populated primarily by Vegas-style scumbags, who take advantage of the Carnival for the Gods. Much of what goes on in the novel has to do with gambling, porn, freak-shows, con-artists, prostitution, alcoholism, rape, white slavery, drug addiction, cults, and so on. This has probably contributed to, if not caused directly, the distaste I'm feeling for this novel.
All contents, except where otherwise noted, are copyright Andrew Lee Hunn.