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saroz162 's review for:
The Mouse and His Child
by David Small, Russell Hoban
Russell Hoban is one of those authors I probably haven't given enough of a chance. I've read one book of his I really loved (Amaryllis Night and Day), one I did not get on with at all (The Medusa Frequency), and bits and pieces of a third which, while very, very interesting, would feel more like an intellectual exercise than an entertainment no matter who was writing it (Riddley Walker). Over all of them looms the shadow of The Mouse and His Child, an existentialist children's fantasy that I first encountered as an unforgettably dark and uncompromising cartoon before rediscovering it as an even darker and more uncompromising novel.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's pretty clear to me, at this point, that Hoban must have been an exceptionally smart man, and possessed of an exceptional mind to be able to think up even that handful of stories which - regardless of whether I liked them or not - are all pretty startlingly varied and original pieces of writing. Based on that one fact, you'd think it would be clear that I should read more of his work. Yet as I sat re-reading The Mouse and His Child, it occurred to me that there is an increasingly clear separation in my mind between great writers and great storytellers. For a long time, I've thought that there are many great storytellers - L. Frank Baum, for instance, being a wonderful example within the children's literature genre - who are not particularly great writers. They don't write overly memorable prose and may even have a tin ear for dialogue, but their sheer ability to carry you along in a story renders them able to tell you, sometimes, roughly the same story again and again and again, and you never get bored. Now I'm starting to think that the opposite can be true: there are great writers in the world, commanders of language, theme and style, who are - confoundingly - so smart or so full of a need to communicate an idea that it gets in the way of telling an entertaining story. I say this, specifically, because all the way through The Mouse and His Child I admired Hoban's actual writing. He has a really ingenious way of putting across a fairly sideways point of view in a deceptively straightforward way. There are some incredibly vivid images in the story, both terrifying and beautiful, and the questions Hoban asks of the reader are vivid enough to have stuck with me more than twenty years. There's just one problem.
I did not enjoy reading this book. I really, really did not enjoy reading this book.
A large part of that, admittedly, is the tone. This is, for a large portion of its proceedings, a very grim children's story. It is about suffering, pain, loss of family, pursuit, torture, and sudden death. Perhaps more importantly, the quest for individual identity - "self-winding" - that serves as the book's focus is so startlingly different from other children's literature, so reflective and melancholy, as to actually be haunting. This is heavy, heady stuff. You can tell - palpably - that it is written by someone who fought in war. Sometimes, it just feels relentless.
Some of the novel's eccentricities, though, come off like the favored children of a first-time novelist, and those can just become annoying. I can't for the life of me figure out, for instance, why Hoban stops the story dead for a prolonged satire of Waiting for Godot, or why the Muskrat's peculiar "much-and-little" algebraic equations (cog plus key equals winding!) are drummed quite so hard into the dialogue of the second half of the book. The Last Visible Dog symbolism, while certainly effective, also feels incredibly heavy-handed, especially in the undersea sequence. It's all there to support the existentialist theme - in fact, it's impossible to understand these elements any other way - but in an already very depressing story, that uncomfortable feeling that you are being lectured at by someone who desperately wants you to understand his message is just about enough to make me put the book down and walk away. And I did. Several times.
So where does that leave me with The Mouse and His Child? I'm really not sure. I respect it, and more, I find myself respecting Hoban for his unique vision. I find it a nearly impossible book to recommend, though. Unlike many readers, I wouldn't call it "magical." That's too light, too pleasant, too sweet. I would call it a very original work that also happens to be overwhelmingly sad and wistful. Hoban's world is not a world I want to revisit, probably ever again. I already know it's a world I can't forget.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's pretty clear to me, at this point, that Hoban must have been an exceptionally smart man, and possessed of an exceptional mind to be able to think up even that handful of stories which - regardless of whether I liked them or not - are all pretty startlingly varied and original pieces of writing. Based on that one fact, you'd think it would be clear that I should read more of his work. Yet as I sat re-reading The Mouse and His Child, it occurred to me that there is an increasingly clear separation in my mind between great writers and great storytellers. For a long time, I've thought that there are many great storytellers - L. Frank Baum, for instance, being a wonderful example within the children's literature genre - who are not particularly great writers. They don't write overly memorable prose and may even have a tin ear for dialogue, but their sheer ability to carry you along in a story renders them able to tell you, sometimes, roughly the same story again and again and again, and you never get bored. Now I'm starting to think that the opposite can be true: there are great writers in the world, commanders of language, theme and style, who are - confoundingly - so smart or so full of a need to communicate an idea that it gets in the way of telling an entertaining story. I say this, specifically, because all the way through The Mouse and His Child I admired Hoban's actual writing. He has a really ingenious way of putting across a fairly sideways point of view in a deceptively straightforward way. There are some incredibly vivid images in the story, both terrifying and beautiful, and the questions Hoban asks of the reader are vivid enough to have stuck with me more than twenty years. There's just one problem.
I did not enjoy reading this book. I really, really did not enjoy reading this book.
A large part of that, admittedly, is the tone. This is, for a large portion of its proceedings, a very grim children's story. It is about suffering, pain, loss of family, pursuit, torture, and sudden death. Perhaps more importantly, the quest for individual identity - "self-winding" - that serves as the book's focus is so startlingly different from other children's literature, so reflective and melancholy, as to actually be haunting. This is heavy, heady stuff. You can tell - palpably - that it is written by someone who fought in war. Sometimes, it just feels relentless.
Some of the novel's eccentricities, though, come off like the favored children of a first-time novelist, and those can just become annoying. I can't for the life of me figure out, for instance, why Hoban stops the story dead for a prolonged satire of Waiting for Godot, or why the Muskrat's peculiar "much-and-little" algebraic equations (cog plus key equals winding!) are drummed quite so hard into the dialogue of the second half of the book. The Last Visible Dog symbolism, while certainly effective, also feels incredibly heavy-handed, especially in the undersea sequence. It's all there to support the existentialist theme - in fact, it's impossible to understand these elements any other way - but in an already very depressing story, that uncomfortable feeling that you are being lectured at by someone who desperately wants you to understand his message is just about enough to make me put the book down and walk away. And I did. Several times.
So where does that leave me with The Mouse and His Child? I'm really not sure. I respect it, and more, I find myself respecting Hoban for his unique vision. I find it a nearly impossible book to recommend, though. Unlike many readers, I wouldn't call it "magical." That's too light, too pleasant, too sweet. I would call it a very original work that also happens to be overwhelmingly sad and wistful. Hoban's world is not a world I want to revisit, probably ever again. I already know it's a world I can't forget.