Ex Libris: More than Meets the Eye

I was supposed to pick up a copy of Graham Joyce’s Requiem at my favorite bookstore, Booktopia, last night but Robert wasn’t in. Next time, I suppose.Normally, I don’t like getting multiple copies but this was one time that I thought I’d break my rule. This book was actually my first entry to Joyce’s writing and I figured getting the shop’s copy-- which had Joyce’s autograph-- was a good way to celebrate his writing. It also helped that my earlier copy was a UK-edition with a lousy cover.
Strangely enough, one thing I like about Joyce’s books is that I can never know what to expect when I read them. For example, Requiem is the story of a husband grief-ridden with the loss of his wife. Deciding to get away from it all, he visits an old friend in Jerusalem and—in the course of discovering what may be a number of never-before-seen Dead Sea scrolls—finds himself haunted by ghosts of his past as well as the city’s. But this doesn’t truly describe what Requiem is all about (which fits most of Joyce’s books I’ve read).

Moreover, I read this while lounging on a beach in Puerto Galera, sitting in an Italian restaurant with sand sifting through my toes and listening to Mediterranean music wailing in the background. Suffice to say, I felt like I was sitting in a Middle-eastern café and the Wailing Wall was just a block away.

Another thing I found while reading Requiem was that it didn’t feel like it outright fantasy; rather this was my first introduction to ‘interstitial.’

This was evident in the next book I read, Smoking Poppy, which I thought was a paean to fathers and their children. In this book, a working-class stiff finds out his daughter has gone missing in Thailand and goes in search for her together with his estranged son (who had gone religious) and his obnoxious drinking buddy. This book with rather sympathetic characters reminded me of a kind of mystical Apocalypse Now.

Likewise, this was one book that touched me so much that I felt like crying afterwards. Later on, I gave a copy to my dad as a birthday gift. Given how it was my dad who introduced me to the joys of reading, that says quite a lot.
Indigo, on the other hand, was even an odder duck of a story. A young man discovers a father he never knew has died. He also finds out about his old man's research into the properties of the color indigo—and the road that ultimately leads to madness. Suffice to say, I thought once again how one must never expect when reading a Joycean novel.
On the other hand, I suffered a misimpression with The Facts of Life: I thought it was centered on a character, a child born out of wedlock to a fey girl. Instead,it's really a British family trying to live their lives during and in the aftermath of World War 2. Fortunately, Joyce had an excellent handle on the characters and his story was exceptionally poignant without being maudlin. The fact that it had ghosts also helped.

Unfortunately, my honeymoon with Joyce came crashing down with the last book I read, his YA book TWOC (a carjacking term meaning to “take without consent”). Though the concept and the opening was interesting (about a boy whose brother had earlier died in a car crash and how he appeared to him), I found the story rather formulaic and managed to predict the ending.

Despite this misstep, I love Joyce's books and consider him one of my favorite authors. I've already mentioned his hard-to-peg stories, his empathic characters, and his strong characterizations. However, Joyce also writes excellent prose to help the story along, embedding in the story and the work-a-day writing a turn of a phrase that would knock you out for a loop.

As another fantasist, Jonathan Carroll, once opined, "Graham Joyce writes the kind of novels we keep hoping to find, but rarely do."

I quite agree.

P.S. This wasn't in the wild but if anyone's interested, I saw Fully-Booked Rockwell has a copy again of M.J. Harrison's Anima (which collects Signs of Life and Course of the Heart).

Enjoy!