I'm Happy after buyingThis The Messiah Stockholm Cynthia Ozick
Ozick creates a wonderful piece of literature here. She writes a work of terrific narration, with extraordinary language as is her specialty, yet it has a very different feel to it than most of her work. It has a spiritual feel, where she does not give us the same level of clarity and conciseness of description. Instead, she rather allows events to unfold almost by chance. The style is reminiscent of that of Philip Roth and in fact, it was interesting to find on the dedication page the simple words, "To Philip Roth."
Ozick's protagonist, Lars, is a book reviewer for a Stockholm newspaper. He has a penchant for old European literature, particularly Czech, Polish and Serbo-Croatian authors. He lives in a spiritual world of existentialism and extremis of the human condition. Yet, the obsession if you will, is much more, because Lars, an orphan, has decided or convinced himself that he is the son of a famous and dead Polish author.
The plot and concepts swirl around the reader as Lars seeks to find a lost manuscript and any other information that he can about the author. Lars is a creature of the night. He does not like the hustle and bustle of the office during daytime hours. He is a completely private person, and keeps his secret very close to his vest, except for his disclosure to the proprietor of a small but esoteric book shop. With her, he tells all. And she is fully drawn into it. At least, that is what it clearly seems to Lars.
But Lars is too personally caught up in his own thing to really detect the deceit. Lars is blinded by a vision of what he believes is his own father's eye, which comes to him in dreams. So he continues to work with the lady at the bookstore to get all that he can about his `father.' Until, one day a person shows up, with the lost manuscript, claiming to be the daughter of the famous Polish author. At some point in that occurrence, Lars realizes, his confidence has been preyed on by others.
Lars' reviews do not carry a lot of stock with the public. The old and gone literature that he tries constantly to "resurrect" is of little interest to the Stockholm public. Yet Lars is fixated on all that is written around and about the time of his father's existence. In the end, Lars finds prominence and success, by giving up his obsession and writing well received reviews of current Swedish and American authors. All of a sudden he has his own cubicle. Then Lars gets a newspaper column on Tuesday as well as Monday. And finally, he has totally conformed to the daytime world of the wild "stewpot" that constitutes the daylight work world. But still, Lars is left with the questions of his past. These are never fully resolved.
The book is recommended to all lovers of great current literature. The writing is phenomenal. And the story is highly interesting and engaging.
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