Salamander by Thomas Wharton

Friday, February 01, 2008

Challenge
Canadian Book Challenge: Alberta
Nicholas Flood is a printer who creates fantastic and beautiful works of art. He is commissioned by Count Ostrovy to live at his castle to create a one-of-a kind book to join the Count's burgeoning library of rare and exotic books. Flood's book is to have no beginning or end, a fitting addition to the castle where the walls and bookshelves move like clockwork, and the entire dungeon is devoted to the machinery that keeps the whole place in a constant state of flux. Flood falls in love with the Count's daughter, they are discovered, Flood is imprisoned for ten years and the Countess disappears. This is just half of the story. The remainder deals with Flood's travels around the world with his strange companions in search of the ingredients to complete his life's work, and to find the Countess. Along the way he meets a wide array of fascinating characters who each has a story to tell.
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This book is part fantasy, part history, part romance, and just plain weird. I usually don't like odd books, but I really enjoyed this one once I got used to Wharton's style of writing and the breaks and flows of the story (quite like the constantly moving castle). Those who enjoy a book that you can puzzle over, will love this one. And if you are like me and just want to enjoy the story, you can do that as well. Wharton writes wonderfully and there are some great quotes about books:
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Someday books would even spill into this valley and the people down there would scoop them up out of curiosity and drink, and learn the taste of knowledge, which always left one thirsty for more.
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Within every book there lies concealed a book of nothing. Don't you sense it when you read a page brimming with words? The vast gulf of emptiness beneath the frail net of letters. The ghostliness of the letters themselves. Giving a semblance of life to things and people who are really nothing. Nothing at all. No, it was the reading that mattered, I eventually understood, not whether the pages were blank or printed. The Mohammedans say that an hour of reading is one stolen from Paradise.
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My father liked to say that by multiplying the number of books in the world we multiply the number of readers. And with each new reader the ranks of the book-burners thin out a little more.
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Sometimes you wish to escape to another part of the book. You stop reading and riffle the pages, catching sight of the story as it races ahead, not above the world but through it, through forests and complications, the chaos of intentions and cities. As you near the last few pages you are hurtling through the book at an increasing speed, until all is a blur of restlessness, and then suddenly your thumb loses its grip and you sail out of the story and back into yourself. The book is once again a fragile vessel of cloth and paper. You have gone everywhere and nowhere.
Rating: 4.25
Posted by Framed at 7:23 PM

8 comments:
Court said...
That certainly sounds like an interesting book. I think I'm going to have to add it to my TBR list.
2/02/2008 6:39 AM
Cassie said...
Oooh that sounds good. I might have to borrow this one.
2/02/2008 1:35 PM
Terri B. said...
This sounds very interesting. I hadn't heard of it until I read your review.
2/02/2008 3:47 PM
Terri B. said...
This sounds very interesting. I hadn't heard of it until I read your review.
2/02/2008 3:47 PM
Teddy Rose said...
You have peaked my interest with this unusal sounding book. On to my TBR it goes.TeddySo Many Precious Books, So Little Time http://teddyrose.blogspot.com/
2/02/2008 9:40 PM
gautami tripathy said...
I am having a hard time finding boks for the Canadian Challenge.I will see if I can get it somehow.
2/03/2008 12:13 AM
Framed said...
Cassie, I will bring it out on Thurs.Gautami, I found it on Amazon from a used book seller.
2/03/2008 11:07 AM
Booklogged said...
Hey, maybe this one will get you in the mood for Jasper Fforde?! Sounds like one I would enjoy.