From A to X: A Story in Letters - LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2008: Some Letters Recuperated by John Berger
Product Details | Similar Products | Customer Reviews | Author: John Berger List Price: £12.99 Our Price: £11.99 You Save: £1.00 (8%) Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours  |
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 | Product Details: Hardcover 224 pages Release Date: 11 August 2008 Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1844672883 Rating:   Sales Rank: 11809 | | Look for similar books by subject:
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| | Customer Reviews: Beautiful and angry, but there's too much left unsaid in these letters (30 August 2008)I loved this book, the writing was exquisite, but I needed so much more from it that ultimately it disappointed slightly. A'ida and Xavier are lovers, but X is imprisoned on terrorist charges. Their story is teased out through some of A's letters to X in jail which were found in his cell when the new prison was built. He never replies, but sometimes writes on the back of the letters. They live in an unnamed country where A'ida is a pharmacist. She writes about everyday life, her friends, neighbours and customers. There are always hints of troubles and oppression in the background and it is implied that she is also an activist. She is desperate to be married to X, but the authorities won't allow it so visiting X in prison is an unattainable goal for her - she eventually has to be content with fantasising about him. Xavier's writing is not about A, but is often angry thoughts about the authorities in the outside world that he is prisoner in. The reader is left to fill in the gaps which gives great poignancy to the texts, but I was left hungry to find out what happened to them:- what X was imprisoned for, what A's role was in their struggle, and myriad other questions. Just a few answers would have satisfied, but with the exception of a brief scene-setting introduction, the author is deliberate in his intention of letting these letters speak for themselves. A Great Author (23 August 2008)Beauty, Clarity and Power. A great author and a wonderful read. READ IT. A little jewel of a book (17 August 2008)From A to X is a little jewel of a book. Its form is as much a thing of beauty as its contents. John Berger has created a series of letters from A'ida to Xavier - a life sentence prisoner in an unnamed hot country, apparently accused of terrorism. The letters are undated and bound into three non-chronological bundles. And on the back of some letters, Xavier has written his own text. At first, the reader is totally disorientated. Berger's introduction makes it seem as though there is some elaborate game being played, and the early temptation is to discover the rules. The first letters in the book contain mid numbingly trivial thoughts, and this makes the reader wonder whether there is some code at play - perhaps reading initial letters or every third word. If there is a code, it's a good `un. But as the lack of narrative thread; lack of code; lack of connection between A'ida's letters and Xavier's responses all starts to become apparent, so too does the beauty of each individual letter; each vignette become apparent. There are big themes at play - love; loneliness; separation; frustration; confinement; time. We see A'ida's hope for a marriage; hope for a family turn into hope simply for an opportunity to be together again. The time frame of the letters is not revealed - although the odd letter does drop a hint - but it is obviously a great many years. A'ida grows old before our eyes - presumably so to does Xavier. Their fire to change the world mellows into a much more personal fire of frustrated love. And the vignettes are quite lovely - crafted in beautiful and often understated language. Some are reminiscences of A'ida's former life with Xavier and these have a dreamlike quality. Others are scenes from A'ida's recent life and hint at secret messages in amongst the humdrum detail. And some seem to be purely written from the heart by a woman who is afraid to build a new life for herself whilst her love languishes in jail. Berger deliberately sets the book in an unknowable country. Names are drawn from various languages. Perhaps the prison is in the Middle East, perhaps in North Africa, at one point perhaps even in Brazil. But a specific setting would have distracted from the novel. The absence of a location lets the narrative, such as it is, focus narrowly on the town itself with hints (and more than hints) of army oppression, focus on Xavier in his cell, and dream of the wide world. There is an urge, when reading the letters, to tear the pages from the book and re-order them - perhaps to offer a more satisfying, more comfortable read. But one scene, in which A'ida persuades the owner of the pharmacy in which she works to re-order the medicines might offer some insight. A'ida asked that the medicines be ordered according to curative properties rather than by name. Perhaps Xavier ordered his letters with something similar in mind. That's a puzzle. The intensity of the read builds and builds. It is compelling, yet unknowable. This little enigma of a novel deserves its place on the Booker longlist - and I'd hope to see it go much further. | |
