Imagining an Armenia of Yesterday

[HOB]

Imagining an Armenia of Yesterday

By Francine Prose

New York Times Service

One shudders to think what "Gilgamesh" might have become in the hands of a less original writer than Joan London. The scope of this Australian author's first novel is such that it might have tempted a lesser talent to produce one of those bloated doorstops that move publishers to use adjectives like "panoramic" and inspire readers to persevere through the boring parts by guessing how many evenings the television mini-series will require. To get a sense of what "Gilgamesh" is like, imagine one of those Outback bodice-rippers put on a strict diet, pared down to essentials, purged of the excess water weight of set pieces involving eroticized sheep-shearing and adorable kangaroos, and transformed into something streamlined, strong and remarkably lovely.

"Gilgamesh," which was a finalist for several prizes in Australia, takes us from the end of World War I to the 1950s, from London to Australia to Armenia and Syria and back to Australia again. Along the way, we meet an impressively huge and skillfully drawn cast of characters, including a secret agent, an alcoholic hotelier, an interfering midwife, an elderly poet, a cult of grasping born-again Christians, a pedophilic sailor, a brilliant and horribly crippled concert singer, a lecherous doctor and a half-mad farm wife. And all of this is neatly compressed -- without seeming rushed -- into a spare volume of just over 250 pages.

The novel begins at the end of World War I in a British convalescent hospital, "a gloomy country house requisitioned for the duration, where the soldiers, patched-up, jumpy, bitter, tottered and prowled like ancient temperamental guests." Frank Clark, an Australian soldier, has recovered from a leg wound but suffers from a case of insomnia that may not augur well for the future. At the hospital, he meets a woman named Ada, who -- like many fictional and cinematic angels of mercy -- has volunteered to entertain unfortunate blokes like Frank and has discovered herself to be insufficiently angelic.

Ada feels little enthusiasm for her ministrations. "She was supposed to chat and join in singsongs and pour tea.... [but] she lacked the sense of charity that lit the faces of the other young women." Any sentient reader could have warned Frank about Ada, but her obvious instability convinces him that she's the girl he wants. They marry, live briefly with Ada's Russian sister-in-law (who is a subplot in herself), then move to the Australian outback to manage a small farm. And the ensuing disaster is worse than anyone could have predicted.

By now, we're happily prepared to spend more time with Frank and Ada, but the couple, like most parents, turn out to be merely minor players in the drama of their children's lives. Frank dies, and Ada retreats into a helpless sweet-natured lunacy, with occasional lucid spells. Their older daughter, Frances, already shows signs of the humorless fanaticism that will dominate her adult self -- until she finds her true calling, running a farm with another woman. Edith, the younger daughter, emerges as the book's heroine. Intelligent, observant, resourceful and gifted with a rich inner life, she is compelling enough to hold her own in this paradoxically stripped-down, densely populated epic.

One morning, walking barefoot to work, Edith encounters two mysterious strangers who, she is amazed to learn, are headed for her home. The two men -- Edith's cousin, Leopold, and his handsome Armenian friend, Aram -- having finished with their work at an archaeological dig in Iraq, are determined to see a bit more of the world. Along the way, they've dropped in on the "antipodean branch" of Leopold's family. From the minute they arrive, Edith's life is irrevocably changed. Lying awake at night, "her eyes wide open, she felt she could rattle the cutlery in the drawer, make the water jump from the jug, like a witch in a fairy tale. She could almost think it was this force that caused the men to sigh and groan and turn in their sleep."

All of this happens before we're 40 pages into the novel. Yet, in a way that seems highly unusual for a book that's so fast paced and thickly plotted, the narrative frequently proceeds by indirection, which may be partly why "Gilgamesh" strikes us as so unpredictable, unhurried and fully fleshed out. We learn that Edith and Aram have become lovers only when Leopold overhears them returning home together, late at night. After the two men depart, we intuit that Edith is pregnant with Aram's child when she experiences a sudden craving for tobacco.

Scorned and rejected by the community around her, Edith grows increasingly desperate and isolated. After her son, Jim, is born, she decides that despite the gathering threat of another world war she will travel to Armenia to find Aram. And so, like the hero of the Gilgamesh saga, the ancient Middle Eastern epic that has a totemic significance for both Leopold and Aram, Edith descends into hell after losing a loved one. Among the book's considerable achievements is the way that Edith's extraordinary plan -- and the extreme measures she undertakes to realize it -- are made both credible and convincing.

The first part of her journey involves a voyage from Australia to London on a nightmarish freighter that recalls the pirate ship in Richard Hughes' "High Wind in Jamaica" (1929). Indeed, though nothing here seems stale or familiar, there are frequent echoes of other writers. London's rendering of her character's innermost thoughts evokes Katherine Mansfield, while her uncompromising but sympathetic view of human nature and adult sexuality brings to mind Alice Munro. Edith's trip on the Orient Express feels like something out of Graham Greene -- if Greene had added to his repertory the precisely observed details of what it's like to travel with a very small child.

As she prepares to leave home, Edith entertains a seductive fantasy about her lover's homeland: "Armenia had become a landscape superimposed over the hills. ... The spire of the Anglican church on the outskirts of Torville was very Armenian, because as you saw it from the bus it seemed to promise something ancient and spiritual. ... The delicate morning light was Armenian." But her fairy-tale Armenia must be rebuilt on the model of a grim Soviet Union. Grateful for the refuge she and baby Jim find among an unlikely circle of neighbors and protectors, Edith comes to a full stop in the cold, windy city of Yerevan, where she waits out the war and watches for some sign that Aram is nearby.

The plot offers still more surprises and reverses, until at last Edith returns home. By now, Jim has grown into a young man with a point of view that is sufficiently strong and interesting to assume a large part of the burden of storytelling as the novel nears its conclusion.

"Gilgamesh" is by no means perfect. Several of the characters veer perilously toward cliche. Three-quarters of the way through the book, loose ends are tied up and mysteries solved within a couple of pages I had to reread several times and still wasn't sure I understood.

Yet it hardly seemed to matter, because one of the most unusual things about this intricately plotted novel is that you don't read it for the plot, exactly. Instead -- or, perhaps, in addition -- you keep pausing to note London's telling insights, the skill with which she shows us how the complexities of the world are focused and transformed by the prism of an individual consciousness. And then there are her descriptions of everything from an opulent train compartment ("Embroidered cloths looped across the walls and a parrot pretended to be asleep in a hanging cage") to Jim's harrowing birth: "From a long way off she saw something skinned and soapy held up like a rabbit, getting spanked for being her child."

Reading "Gilgamesh" is like watching a magician who can do many things rapidly, expertly and all at once. It's impossible not to admire the novel's proficiency and its author's promise.

Francine Prose's most recent books are "After" (2003) and "Sicilian Odyssey" (2003).

"Gilgamesh: A Novel." By Joan London. Grove Press. 272 pages. $23.