Let Me Go On by Paul Griffiths: Ophelia has more to say

Paul Griffiths – an accomplished librettist, music critic and novelist – has shown himself to be an inventive and versatile writer. In his 2008 novel, Let Me Tell You, he voiced Ophelia telling her own story using only the 481 words written for her in Hamlet. Henningham Family Press is now republishing that work with Griffiths’ new sequel, Let Me Go On, in which he continues the Ophelia narrative, again using the same Oulipian constraint.

The novel opens with Ophelia finding herself in the plain white space of afterlife, following her death in Hamlet – it is a heaven-like whiteness, or perhaps the blank page whiteness of her continuing story yet to be (self) written. Ophelia becomes ‘O’ – a cipher, an entity in search of an identity.

The narrative comprises a journey of encounters, with O in a role of Alice-like innocence, seeking answers in a wonderland of eccentric gatekeepers. Shakespeare spotters will fill their bingo cards as each of these encounters draws on a wider cast of the Bard’s characters – and there are many allusions and clues to delight such a reader – but the novel also works as a stand-alone fable in its own right. There is plenty of life and humour in these exchanges, which are at times reminiscent of George Saunders’ polyphonic Lincoln in the Bardo.

Importantly, Griffiths avoids the novel becoming an elaborate Shakespeare in-joke by bringing real meaning to O’s search. She awakens to the realisation that her past and memories are not her own but belong to the play she has left and the words that were scripted for her. The Denmark she knew was “not the true Denmark. It was more a Denmark of the mind”. This leaves her with profound questions about her identity, or the nature of identity itself: “But what is that ‘I’ now?”

Bowel cancer: ‘I truly know what it means to live and am genuinely loving life’

---

That They May Face the Rising Sun: The best Irish film in a very long time

---

‘When our last embryo failed, the clinic told us there was nothing more they could do for us’

---

Take That in Dublin review: ‘Whose idea was it to have stairs?’ puffs Gary Barlow as the band roll back the years with dazzling show

---

The journey draws O towards an enigmatic presence: the Master, a Shakespeare/God substitute. However, the novel veers from a spiritual or philosophical resolution, instead pirouetting cleverly to implicate the reader in bringing meaning to the tale.

Beautifully published with Let Me Tell You in matching spearmint/peppermint volumes, Let Me Go On is a dazzling, virtuosic short novel that raises subtle philosophical questions about the nature of self and agency.