The Cabalist sci-fi novel
I was
browsing through a second-hand bookshop in the nearby city of Trieste, which is just up
the coats from Venice, and I found a sci-fi book set in my adopted
home town. It's a book called TheCabalist
by Amanda Prantera.
The
Italian version I picked up has a lovely cover by FrancoBrambilla, an Italian
illustrator who does a lot of sci-fi. The lovely cover was a big
factor in me picking up this book, and is much better than any of the
covers of the UK editions I have seen. It suggests Cthulhu and
threat, and you can see the modern boats on the Venice canal, telling
us that this is not a historical novel.
By the
way, if you think you are ever likely to read this book, be warned,
this blog post is really quite spoilery.
It's
spoilery because I'm reading the book in Italian, like I said, so
I've looked up a bunch of reviews and recaps of the story, to help me
understand some of the more difficult passages that I'm reading.
The LA
Times, for example, wrote a review of TheCabalist,
and they say, in a nutshell, that the hero, Joseph Kestler, thinks he
knows the solution to the age-old question of what the cosmos is
really about. He is a Venetian magician and, through the power of
words, he has discovered he can manipulate raindrops, locusts and
even a puppy.
From
other reviews, and from the part I've already read, I've also learned
that he is terminally ill and wants to secure a worthy successor to
carry on his work after he dies. Kestler works desperately to
complete his cabalistic project as well as to devise a plan to ensure
its preservation for future generations. All the while, he is aware
of a small and obnoxious neighbor, a malevolent child demon called
the Catcher (or Catfisher), who lures cats to their deaths. This
character's presence proves surprisingly relevant to the work,
apparently.
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I have written, and am still writing a sci-fi series called Dark Galaxy that starts with Galaxy Dog, go buy it from Amazon.
The
author, on her website, says that
the critics were generous to the book. She thinks there is a terrific
story hidden within it but it is buried under too much wuffle. The
author's website is the first time I've encountered the word, wuffle, but apparently it
does exist.
I'm
just a little way into it, twenty or thirty pages, but I am already
enjoying it. There has been a very beautiful description of Venice,
for example. I can't find the English text of the book online, but I
did find the function to search the text on Google
Books.
I used it to make a couple of snapshots to give an idea of this nice
description of Venice, but there are a couple of pages of it, and the
three snapshots here really just give an idea.
I'm not
looking forward to reading about the Catcher. The idea of killing
cats is very disturbing, and it reminds me of Kafka on theShore by Haruki
Murakami. Some
delightful images of a stage version of the book can be found on JC-NYC.
In that book, Nakata, a kindhearted old man, who had a strange
accident while on an elementary school outing to pick mushrooms, can
sense otherworldly events – such as raining fish – and has a
special power to communicate with animals, which allows him to earn
extra money by finding people’s lost cats. His love of cats leads
him to murder a cat-killer who calls himself Johnnie Walker and
dresses like the Scotch whisky mascot, among other surreal
adventures. I read the book quite a while ago, and I vividly remember
the cat killer, when a lot of the rest of the work has faded from my
memory.
Anyway,
I haven't gotten to the cat killing yet, and I'm looking forward to
reading this book about my adopted home town. It will take some time,
of course, because I'm also spending a lot of time writing. Find a
link to one of my books, Galaxy Dog, below.
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