A review by klaws500
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel

4.25

Yann Martel's The High Mountains of Portugal is made up of 3 vaguely connected stories that take place over the course of almost 80 years. The main connection between the stories is found in their themes. They are all deeply concerned with religiosity, grief, and our evolutionary connection to chimpanzees. We are not fallen angels, but risen apes. In each of the stories the main character has lost his wife. In the first story, Homeless, the man also lost his son and father all in the same week. He begins walking backwards everywhere as an objection, he literally turns his back on God. And he goes in search of an artifact that mocks God, a depiction of Christ on the cross, but Christ has the features of an ape. When he finds what he seeks he realizes he doesn't actually want it anymore. The second story, Homeward, centers another widow. A doctor who's deeply religious wife visits him in the form of a ghost to talk about the allegorical nature of Jesus, and how the same allegories can be found in the writing of Agatha Christie. The man then performs an autopsy and finds, among other surreal things, a chimp cradling a bear cub inside the body. In the third story, Home, our last widower leaves his old life on a whim and moves to his ancestral home in The High Mountains of Portugal with a chimp named Odo who he bought from a run down research facility. I think that taken together the stories progress in the same way that one progresses through the stages of grief. The first man was young, in his 20s, and he was working through denial, and, especially, anger. The second man, middle aged, was tackling bargaining and depression. The last man, older, started in depression, but ultimately found acceptance. Interestingly the men's interest in religiosity started very strong and literal in the first man, became tempered and allegorical in the second, and the final man wasn't concerned with religion at all. Similarly, In the first story the idea that people are risen apes is presented as blasphemous, the second story takes our animal nature as a simple fact while also questioning the idea of blasphemy at all. And the third story has a man who spends the last season of his life trying and somewhat succeeding in strengthening his connection to the natural world and its rythyms. This man dies content. I loved this book very much, although it is slow paced and took quite a while for me to get really into. The writing is superb and luscious. Perfect usage of magical realism to tell an important and philosophical story. It reminded me of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho in that way. The faint but unmistakable overlay of surrealism across the whole composition is what really elevated it to me, imbuing the book with an invitation to make it your own.