The Book of Chameleons
The book of chameleons was one of the most bizarre books that we have read this term. It was a quickish read but was extremely confusing and I still don’t think I really understand the full extent of the novel. The story centres around an albino man living in Angola named Felix Ventura. Felix is a master of creating new identities, and along with being a bookseller, he forges alternate false histories for anyone with means to access his services. In the time of the novel Angola has recently had an escalation of the civil war and people want to be on the right side of history with status. Felix invents whole genealogies and and pasts, providing his clients with documents and photographs to obtain some level of status in the post-war nation. The story is narrated by Eulalio, a gecko who lives in Felix’s house. Throughout the text, the author treats Felix like a real person, personifying interactions with him and thinking and dreaming about life together. Through reading the lecture, Eulalio is intended to be perceived as a real-life reincarnation of Jorge Borges, a famous Argentine author.
The first client that Felix sees is a strange man with no name, who requests that Felix create an entirely new identity and past for him. Ever-skillful, Felix creates the identity of “Jose Bachmann”, complete with genealogy and extensive detail. José is obsessed with his identity and begins to unravel, travelling around and finding evidence that the identity is real, bringing Felix a painting allegedly signed by his “mother”. Felix even begins to believe that Bachmann is a real identity, wondering if he had somehow gained the power to turn fiction into reality. We later discover that Jose is actually Pedro Gouveia, an operative of the communist MPLA in Angola who was involved in a failed coup a few years prior. Gouveia faked evidence for Bachmann’s existence to ensure that everyone truly believed his identity. Another of Felix’s clients, dos Reis, turns out to have been a war criminal and tortured Gouveia’s family and killed his wife. In the chaos that follows Angela (Felix’s long lost daughter) shoots dos Reis, granting revenge to Felix and herself. As you can see, there’s a lot going on and this part of the book was extremely confusing.
Was Pedro Gouveia actually a real identity, or is Gouveia simply in a state of psychosis? Is Gouveia actually Bachmann pretending to be Gouveia? After all, this a novel narrated by a gecko who is the reincarnation of a famous author, so it seems fitting to question everything about it. It seems fitting that Felix’s business is brought tumbling down in such a way, showing that as much as you try you can only live in imagination for so long before reality sets in. To leave you with a discussion question: What aspects of the novel did you consider to be real?
This is very short (less than 300 words), and doesn't engage much with the text beyond the first few pages... Do you think you could expand on what takes place over the course of the novel as a whole?
ReplyDeleteHello! I actually chose the book to read because of its description in the website, which said it was narrated by a gecko - that intrigued me a lot! So I would definitely say it added to my enjoyment as it’s a fresh narrative style that I have not seen since Kafka’s Metamorphosis (animal narrators might be my new favorite thing). Nonetheless, I was surprised after noticing that the book was called ‘The book of Chameleons’ not geckos, and that chameleons and geckos are different animals after watching the lecture.. I blame my carelessness.
ReplyDeleteHi Glen,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your blog post. To answer your question I think that finding out the narrator was a gecko definitely surprised me, but I don't think it took away from the story at all. I think making the narrator a gecko, something still physical but not omnipotent allows for the gecko to be a watcher but little more than that. As the author wished to give Borges another life through the gecko, I think this element added another layer to the book.
Hi, I think that added to my liking of the novel because personally I love fiction books. Thinking about talking to an animal is literally my dream and the gecko was honestly such a relatable character.
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