[REVIEW] The Deserters by Mathias Énard; translated by Charlotte Mandell

 

"Mathematics was the other name for hope"

I must premise this entire review with a simple disclaimer: by no means I would have picked The Deserters by Mathias Énard in a bookstore. A lot of my critique might be due to the simple and bare fact, that this is not my taste. However, enjoying literature is also to jump at times outside of the comfort zone, and I am glad I did so, although this is not amongst my favorite books of all time.

I also have to admit pure ignorance on Mathias Énard, never had I heard of this author, but I am glad to have found his writing! What a lovely, poetic prose without being overly pretentious! I will definitely give a try to other works of his in the future.

My ignorance defined and served on a silver platter. Let us get into the novel.

"The Deserters" requires patience, although only a couple of hundreds pages long. The best way I can describe the reading experience, would be watching patiently a master painter defined a gorgeous scenery. Breathtaking, beautiful, satisfying at the end, but rather frustrating and confusing at times.

The novel composes itself of two main narrative moments: on the one hand we follow Irina, attending a scientific conference in honor of her deceased father, on a cruise in Berlin, and a nameless soldier, escaping from an undefined war. 

Irina is the daughter of two incredible people: Paul Heudeber, an East German mathematician, who survived Buchenwald after his arrest in the Netherlands, and a life-long communist and anti-fascist, and Maja, a charming communist fighter and activist. Through her memory, we get to be intimate with the story of her parents. A love that goes beyond betrayal, pain and even history itself. We see sketched out the life of a man that was never fully able to move on from the darkness in his past, whose hope was shattered together with the fall of the Wall, but that continued his existence, supported by his beloved partner and daughter. And next to him, the adventurous and impulsive Maja, his life partner. Maja is charming, brilliant, the Sun of every room, and deeply different from Paul. And yet mysteriously adoring of this gentle academic, who refuses to live his apartment in East Germany. Two humans so fundamentally opposite and yet continuously attracted to each other, until the end.

In her narration, Irina comes to terms with these complex characters, delves into the secrets that kept her family together for so long, but also reflects on modernity, on the events that have defined the current century, such as the Twin Towers or the war in Ukraine.

At the beginning I found difficult understanding Irina's narration. Her point of view, as per literary fiction tradition, begins in medias res. While normally, I would have no issue with this expedient, as it is more of cliché than a confusing and experimental choice, this time I found most of the first 100 pages very confusing and hard to follow, thus to enjoy. 

Naturally, I could have spared myself this difficulty by simply reading the blurb. But I do not believe blurbs should be a mandatory preliminary read to get into a books, and I actually really enjoy diving into a book completely blind. 

In the midst of this family drama, we are introduced to an aching soldier. His feet are in pain, he is escaping as fast as he can from an unclear war. I believe the area is supposed to be a Mediterranean country, however it is certainly not Énard's goal to specifically pin point any geographical area nor historical period. War, in the author's world, changes very little across the years and places: the atrocities experienced by the unknown solider is likely the same horror that Paul Heudeber saw in Buchenwald, and this message is carried across strongly through the juxtaposition of the two stories. What I appreciated the most about this part was the unfiltered honesty of the characters thoughts, and how multiple conflicting realities are shown to be existing within the same human: war can be exciting, can be an occasion for finding glory and purpose, while also being horrendous, dirty and terrifying.

But what truly kept me engaged in this novel, was the writing style. I am a huge fan of flux of consciousness, and I adored the lack of punctuation and structure in the soldier's point of view. Although of course, tough to decipher at first, especially when multiple characters are present in on the page simultaneously it really pushed a feeling of bareness and honesty, that I believe a more complex and fluttery prose would have not managed to convey. I believe this was a wonderful example of how poetry can be achieved with simple words and concreteness, and I look forward to reading more from this wonderful writer!

Although with a really slow beginning, that left quite cold at times, when reached a bit over the half of the novel I simply could not put it down anymore.

I find the message and the ambition compelling and overall a worth and notable attempt to make the reader reflect on the connection between past and present, mathematics and history.

⭐⭐⭐ stars!