Riverhead, October 2010
How to Read the Air is a brilliantly written, literary elegy that holds the reader's close attention from the first paragraph until the end. Mengestu's facility with language is reflected on every page; his ability to astound with a turn of phrase, a metaphor is usual. Yet, in its elegiac exploration of how the bonds between Ethiopian exiles are dissolved by dislocation and turmoil, it is ultimately one of the most depressing stories of the year. The primary characters, for whom the light at the end of the tunnel is an on-rushing train, endure unremitting difficulties of their own making. Or do they? How much of what Mengestu tells the reader is "true" within the context of the novel? It is the interwoven stories within stories that showcase the power of Mengestu's literary vision.
The novel is as an ephemeral story as the air that wafts past us, seen and felt for a moment then gone forever. There is nothing to clutch onto. The stories, such as the ones Jonas Woldemariam tells his students after the death of his father, are concocted as the air comes out of his mouth. Each new recounting of every story grows in complexity and detail. Jonas says, "We think our personalities are solid, definitive bodies... In fact, there is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves." This is the central theme of the novel in which Jonas and Angela have created a fantasy back story for their lives, lives of "imagined memories."
How to Read the Air is a brilliantly written, literary elegy that holds the reader's close attention from the first paragraph until the end. Mengestu's facility with language is reflected on every page; his ability to astound with a turn of phrase, a metaphor is usual. Yet, in its elegiac exploration of how the bonds between Ethiopian exiles are dissolved by dislocation and turmoil, it is ultimately one of the most depressing stories of the year. The primary characters, for whom the light at the end of the tunnel is an on-rushing train, endure unremitting difficulties of their own making. Or do they? How much of what Mengestu tells the reader is "true" within the context of the novel? It is the interwoven stories within stories that showcase the power of Mengestu's literary vision.
The novel is as an ephemeral story as the air that wafts past us, seen and felt for a moment then gone forever. There is nothing to clutch onto. The stories, such as the ones Jonas Woldemariam tells his students after the death of his father, are concocted as the air comes out of his mouth. Each new recounting of every story grows in complexity and detail. Jonas says, "We think our personalities are solid, definitive bodies... In fact, there is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves." This is the central theme of the novel in which Jonas and Angela have created a fantasy back story for their lives, lives of "imagined memories."
Jonas is the omniscient narrator. Knowing nearly nothing of his parents, he reconstructs the story of their belated honeymoon trip from Peoria to Nashville in the late 1970s. Mariam is three months pregnant with Jonas but has not told her abusive husband Josef. So, two stories alternate. Jonas tells his version of that trip and his parents' lives together and apart. Jonas also tells us about his marriage to Angela and its dissolution, but not necessarily its irrevocable failure. Jonas is a lost soul who continually reconstructs an alternate reality. He quotes lines from a William Carlos Williams poem: "When I was younger / It was plain to me / I must make something of myself." Jonas recognizes the truth of this, but is unable to follow through.
The novel's narrative thrust is a series of Chinese boxes. They fit neatly within one another but each occupies its own compartment. Jonas and Angela live in a small box of an apartment. She is boxed into her job as an attorney, he as a part-time teacher and career unemployed person. His parents have compartmentalized lives that barely intersect with one another and even less with Jonas. To trace the metaphor, we learn that Jonas' father escaped from Ethiopia through Sudan by enclosing himself in a literal box. Late in life he even collects used boxes. Each character goes from one form of emptiness to another, always taking a wrong turn in life. Fort Laconte, where Josef and Mariam stop to learn its history, is symbolic for it is little more than an empty shell of unremembered history. There is very little interaction between or among the boxes except through the rich imaginings of Jonas's mind.
Mengestu has said the title draws on Rilke's Duino's Elegies: "Throw the emptiness in your arms out into the space we breathe; maybe the birds will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves." The one true thing, according to Jonas, is that "We do persist, whether we care to or not, with all our flaws and glory." For all its narrative flaws and its oppressively bleak outlook, How to Read the Air has so much glory in its richness of language that it is clearly one of the best novels of the year.
Mengestu has said the title draws on Rilke's Duino's Elegies: "Throw the emptiness in your arms out into the space we breathe; maybe the birds will feel the air thinning as they fly deeper into themselves." The one true thing, according to Jonas, is that "We do persist, whether we care to or not, with all our flaws and glory." For all its narrative flaws and its oppressively bleak outlook, How to Read the Air has so much glory in its richness of language that it is clearly one of the best novels of the year.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
