(some spoiling awaits)Mother of God. I don’t believe I’ve ever before had a reading experience like the one I've just had with The Blood Oranges. For the first three quarters of the book, I, having never read John Hawkes before, struggled to believe that it was the author's intention to portray the protagonist Cyril as a douche bag and his three companions as lessor degrees of annoying. In this struggle, I largely failed, which gave way to a new struggle, emerging to run concurrently: to not only finish the book but to do so without letting my imagination race before the text in anticipation of a scathing 2 star review. So here are two couples stumbling through the oft cited idyllic/lyric atmosphere of this book – a Mediterranean island profuse with pastoral villas, funeral cypresses, lemon groves, ancient ruins, sea, sun, flowers, wine, seafood, etcetera, etcetera - a whole lot of stone and sun and foliage to luxuriate in. And that's just what these two couples do, playing day and night, perhaps quite like anyone who could afford such leisure in lieu of working for sustenance. So of course as they are flirting with each other, pretending they know what they are doing, they are also flirting with some disaster seemingly to be correlated to their eager foray across the boundaries of monogamy. All well and good.The problem is that throughout this lengthy stretch of the book, the reader new to Hawkes, never has much reason to believe that they are securely in capable hands. Cyril, our narrator, seemingly cannot speak of his own leg without telling us how thick it is (every single time) or mention his chest without adding that it is broad and tan and smells of lemon juice. His wife Fiona speaks in five word (at least one of which is "baby") sentences, seemingly intent to rival the frequency that her husband praises himself. The other couple, Hugh and Catherine, are merely different combinations of meek, reluctant, spineless, normal - nothing too offensive except for the fact that they will allow the whims of such an annoying pair to instruct their existence. And yet, slowly the narrative yields a moderately redeeming state of intrigue. 'Fine then,' I say, '3 stars; let's wrap this up.' And a mostly forgettable 3 stars it would be, if not for the last three pages in which Mr. Hawkes hammers the reader home with full brunt of his capability, pivoting the entire insight of the book in one sentence:'Only a half dozen or so crude sketches of innocence joining the thick wall to the vaulted darkness, small panels of hazy paint invisible except when, once a day and thanks to some cosmic situation and the faulty construction of the squat church, the sun at last becomes a thin blade that slips beneath each of my brief glimpses of the Virgin and for a moment illuminates the three hooded attendants and their rigid and yet somehow submissive charge.'This is a bolt of lightening, illuminating as it is condemning. We are given to the unknowable force operating behind the scenes of this nightmare. We understand that of our foursome, one was always the sacrificial lamb and the other three were always the coaxing ushers bringing him to ritual slaughter. As if there was a crudely sketched god hungry for such a death. We understand that - annoying, narcissistic, negligent, meek, idealistic - whatever these people are, they are human; they are beings looking for meaning. They are learning like children – playing like they know until they do. And so, in this way, they are both innocent and eager not to be. In a certain light it is the endless mystery in the complicity between the sex drive and the death drive. It begs the questions of free will and reality. The 'Blood Oranges' is the hunger for sugar that inevitably draws the blood. The 'faulty construction of the squat church' is the skewed order we attain from our play. And with the myths of this skewed order we somehow join the 'thick wall' of it to the unknowable 'vaulted darkness.'So at last, I can neither get over the transgressions stippling and stifling the beginning and majority of the book nor the brilliance its final pages sharply lend it. But I imagine, despite the allocation of their size, I'll sooner forget the former than the latter. Some day I might just change my rating to 5 stars. The silver lining is the ability to reap the lion's share of the brilliance of this book by having only to reread the final 3 pages - although, if it was my style to do only this, I would never have gotten close to reading those pages in the first place.
This book is not, as you might expect, about sex. It is about hedonism, and self indulgence - it is about a man who can deny himself nothing, who indeed sees no reason to; a smug, self-satisfied and very complacent man, a man who weighs up the chances of getting his domestic servant into bed, even as he works patiently at seducing the wife of his friend and neighbour. A man who enjoys himself, all day, every day; a man unrattled even by tragedy and death, a man who who feels no doubt, no guilt, and no shame. He is an oddly neutral character - you cannot like him, he is so conceited, and so selfish, but you cannot condemn him, either. He is simply as he is, as he must be, and contemptible as his behaviour is, joining him on his adventures is infinitely pleasurable as we experience the world through the medium of his senses. The writing is richly, langurously sensual, the novel textured through and through with colours, smells, sensations, shadows, and light - the descriptions of 'Illyria' read like one of those Rough Guide travel books, to the point where one aches to go there, to be there, amongst the villas and the lemons and vines and peasants and fishing boats and sunsets. Beautifully written, infinitely strange.
Do You like book The Blood Oranges (1972)?
Ambivalence. Hawkes' is at once a highly distinctive lyrical voice, and then so clearly derivative of Nabokov as to seem nearly truckling. In his later novel, The Frog, he seems to have shaken off enough of that influence, or predilection, so that his voice sings through more clearly. I enjoyed The Frog much more. The narrator of Oranges is utterly lacking in Humbert-like charm -- he's just detestable. I don't see how Hawkes could stand to spend so much time with him, and it's a tall order to ask a reader for this kind of indulgence; slim and slippery narrative on top of a slimy narrative voice. Gutsy stuff, but the concoction needs some leavening, see The Frog, in the humble opinion of this reader.
—Adam Gori
I finished this book over a week ago, mostly in an effort to write a review that would give it the justice it deserves, but I feel that time might have been spent it in vain. This is a strange, lyrical book – an idyll, really - that takes place on a Mediterranean island named “Illyria.” The name is obviously meant to evoke Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” and its paradisiacal setting, but Hawkes plants something haunting and evil here that never lets the reader get too comfortable. The plot is as unencumbered with passé concerns like pacing or character development as its characters are fascinated by their own sexual lives. Fiona is married to Cyril, and Catherine is married to Hugh. The novel traces the whole range of their interactions, from mundane conversations, but mostly is concerned with their complicated sexual entanglements. Everything is told through flashbacks, and opens with Cyril trying to console Catherine for some reason the reader has yet to ascertain. Hawkes bounces back and forth in time, telling how the two couples met (Fiona and Cyril look on as Catherine and Hugh are rescued from a bus that has fallen into a nearby waterway) to the whittling away of endless hours on the beach with Hugh and Catherine’s children in the background. Most of the action, such as it is, revolves around the eventual untangling of the formerly monogamous relationships of the two couples. Catherine initially stammers and hedges in her attraction toward Cyril, but Fiona is more open-minded and adventurous with Hugh. Hugh, on the other hand, tends to be slightly more cautious, and on several occasions voices his reservations to Cyril, only to be reassured that Fiona is perfectly okay with the arrangement. This is pretty much how things proceed, playing footsy in the sand, the sly unbuckling of a bikini strap in the white Greek sands. But Hugh eventually finds it to be too much, realizes that he’s gone too far, and proceeds to take matters into his own hands. Aside from the children that Hugh and Catherine have, none of the characters are bothered by anything approaching responsibility or are interrupted by growth or self-afflatus. It seemed like a big exercise is omphaloskepsis. But for those interested in something truly off the beaten narrative path, this is worth looking at. While the singular obsession of the characters seemed unrealistic, there is at least a rhythmic lyricism to the prose that makes it a unique reading experience.
—John David
I rate this book four stars for writing style and two stars for content, hence the final rating. Hawkes prose is beautiful to the ear, and I'm glad to have had it pass through mine. However, the subject of two spouse-swapping couples struck me as very bob-ted-carol-alice me-generation narcissism. I did like the setting. I was actually on the Greek islands in 1970 when this book was written, so I'm sure then I would have gone gaga over the book and its theme. But it has that seventies aura which gets in the way of the wonderful writing. Had he picked something with more depth, this could have been a masterpiece like Zorba.
—Thomas Armstrong
