Caracole (Vintage International)

This so called "world" is almost incomprehensible. The characters have no characterization, the plot no direction, the story unreadable. I couldn't get beyond the first chapter. And even that was a chore.

Of Edmund White's novels, Caracole may be the most accessible to the reading public at large. It has a clear and impressive plot and a set of characters as arresting as Dickens'. But as in every White novel, the words and the images they create are foremost.The author deserves the reader's closest attention. White is the consummate master of language. Much of the imagery is exotic, dreamlike and even nightmarish. Every sense is evoked with startling specificity. You need no cyber-gadgets to experience virtual reality if you absorb this book and let it unfold in your imagination.White commands the broad range of moods, shifting them with disturbing abruptness or lingering within one to delve into its deepest recesses. Most strikingly conveyed are the wonders, terrors, mysteries and curiosities of youth, the overpowering initiations of body and mind that shatter the realm of childhood. White invents a vocabulary for the inarticulate that is all the more powerful for its metaphorical exactness.Unlike White's other novels, Caracole is not a first-person narrative. By using the omniscient third person, White is able to probe deeper into the interiors of his characters. This device also allows him more scope for apt epigrammatic observations, particularly about youth, middle age and the relations across that divide.Those who appreciate the power of the word should experience Caracole and indeed all of White's novels.