WHEN is a novel not a novel? Perhaps when it is a book of ideas which has little or no regard for characterisation, narrative technique or the manipulation of language for aesthetic effect. Jostein Gaarder is really a philosopher, not a novelist, and he is chiefly concerned with metaphysics, not aesthetics. A literary masterpiece combines excellence of form with substance, but if one must choose the child of a lesser god, which is preferable - a beautifully crafted work with nothing to say, or a poorly written piece that conveys wisdom and insight?
Gaarder has chosen the novel form as a vehicle for presenting and elucidating ontological questions. A sentence from his book sums up his theme - and intention. "It was a mystery to me how people on earth could simply roam around the world without asking questions, over and over again, about who they were and where they came from.
Gaarder is a secondary school philosophy teacher, and his intended audience would appear to be the young, as he writes in a pedagogical and often pedantic manner, yet his work is hugely successful with all ages. He is reminiscent of Herman Hesse, though lacking his writing skills. Gaarder's popularity no doubt rests in his subject matter. Like Hesse, he is writing in a liminal era of ideological fragmentation and confusion. Using philosophy as a guide, he attempts to make sense of our place in the world, and he does this with childlike and engaging enthusiasm. Alas, that naivety includes a careless use of literary structures, i.e., thin plots, thinner characters, and mediocre prose. Gaarder is obviously more interested in what he has to say than how he says it.
A twelve-year-old boy and his father travel from Norway to Athens to find the boy's mother, who ran away when he was four. The boy's father has a propensity for drink, cigarettes and philosophical: reflection. Question: how often can Dad stop the car to smoke a cigarette and deliver a lecture?
Answer: an interminable number of times. The story finally picks up when the boy is given a tiny - book which contains a fairy tale. Herein lies the true heart of the work and its most compelling aspect - an ingenious if sometimes overwrought experiment with metafiction.
As in Sophie's World - though here it is a more developed theme - Gaarder uses metafiction as a metaphor for the human condition. Created matter becomes conscious of its reality and kills its creator. The story within the story tells of Frode, who has populated a magical island with the products of his imagination derived from playing cards. Tension builds up as these characters come to an awareness of their situation, even as the story itself begins to impinge upon the life of the boy who is reading it. Traditional boundaries collapse as fantasy blends into reality, the-dreamer becomes the dream and the observer an essential part of the observation. Influenced by Jungian psychology and quantum physics, modern speculative fiction has played with these themes before. By threading metaphysical philosophy through them in an accessible manner, Gaarder has come up with a winning combination.
This second book of his lacks the gravity and textural density which the potted history of Western philosophy gave to Sophie's World. As a narrative, however, it is superior, with a more complex and lyrical story-line and characters who have begun to transcend the role of author's mouthpiece. One can't be sure if Gaarder's style is developing, since the copyright notices imply that this book was written first. If he does master the form of creative writing, he will indeed be a modern day Lewis Carroll.