Some fiction is disappointing and leaves you wishing the author had never intruded on your mind. But some is disappointing in a way that makes you wish you'd read a different book by the same person; The Polygots is disappointing in this more optimistic way. Gerhardie starts out strong, with a fabulously weird narrator, nice social observation, and charming comedy. Then precisely nothing happens. There are events (particularly the uncle's death), and the book has an arc (Captain Georges Hamlet Alexander Diabologh arrives in Russified China, lives there for some time, goes back to England with his family) but it's hard to see any intellectual or emotional development in the characters, the narrative, or, for me at least, the reader. Now, that's a real shame, because on a less high-falutin' level, this is an exciting novel. It's hovers somewhere between Evelyn Waugh, Tolstoy and Rene Leys. But a Waugh-length novel with little plot can't really contain a Tolstoyan cast, so many of the incidents are uninteresting. Captain GHAD's voice is by far the best part of the book: self-obsessed, ignorant, charmless, incompetent and immature, he replicates much of his second namesake's silliness, but is also quite wise in an 'out of the mouths of babes' kind of way. When he fades into the background and becomes a mere reporter of his family's discussions, the book bogs down fast. So I'll keep an eye out for second hand Gerhardie, and recommend you do the same. Though it's disappointing, even this one is worth reading.
No ha sido el tiempo demasiado justo con este escritor -medio británico, medio ruso-, capaz de retratar como muy pocos saben hacer las imposibles circunvoluciones del alma humana. Sin embargo, gracias a la oportuna labor de rescate emprendida por la editorial Impedimenta, hoy día podemos disfrutar como es debido de una novela que cuenta con todos los ingredientes necesarios para haberse convertido en un gran clásico universal. Ambientada en los convulsos años tras el final de la Primera Guerra Mundial, Los políglotas sigue los pasos de una peculiar familia belga que asiste desde los confines del extremo Oriente a su propia y demencial decadencia. Narrada con inteligencia, abundantes dosis de humor e ironía, buen gusto y un estilo sencillamente delicioso, Los políglotas es una novela atractiva, profunda, vibrante e ingeniosa, una obra que se mueve constantemente entre la comedia y el drama sin que el lector pueda llegar a intuir cuál de los caras de la moneda se mostrará en la siguiente página.
