The Harlequin and the Train by Paul Tremblay
My rating: 4/5 cats
The damage we’re capable of always surprises.
this quote comes towards the end of this slightly-longer-than-a-novella piece, and it’s as perfect an encapsulating statement as any.
“damage” is one of my favorite themes in my leisure reading. i love reading about survival in unforgiving landscapes, books whose focus is on stoic, downtrodden individuals, and those that explore how much of a person can be pared away and still struggle on; what is, ultimately, essential to, well life, i guess.
this one isn’t at all like the steinbeckian scenarios i have described above, but it is definitely about damage, and about how much of life is chance and how much is choice. lines are blurred all over the place here – it is a surreal romp through a recognizable world, but one that has been slightly shifted to include a coterie of people who go one step beyond accident-rubberneckers, and are more like accident-consumers, who are drawn to staged accidents involving life-sized harlequin dolls stuffed with blood and meat, left on train tracks or in the middle of the road, which meat and blood explode upon impact and then – nom nom nom.
that’s the cinematic part, but there is another story here, about a man who feels like a coward – who wasn’t able to do something very important once, and whose life has been affected by this decision ever since. and how choice and chance will come back into his life to test him once more.
it’s nasty brutish and short, but also haunting and occasionally beautiful. i mean, as beautiful as anything covered in blood can be.
my only regret is that i read this on my old-school glowlight nook, and i was not able to yellow-highlight the parts that the book specifically asked me to yellow-highlight. so, i am not really sure what obeying those instructions would have added to my appreciation of the story – i tried to keep track in my head of which words were somewhat-lighter than the other words, but i couldn’t find any secret meaning to them. dammit.
paul – tell me what i missed, yeah?
