Twentieth Century Man by Michael Joyce
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book reminded me of Joseph O’Connor’s “Ghost Light.”
You’re faced with an unreliable narrator in both, someone who’s been marginalized by society by their age and sheer bloody-mindedness of continuing to exist, possibly long after they have.
Joyce forces this shriveled old professor, Cy, with all his warts and naked gooseflesh onto center stage, which is a very uncomfortable place for him to be as he attempts to reconcile just what it was he saw in the woods: was it the dead body of his assistant’s lover? Or was he hallucinating, an old man driven mad by his sometimes cruel aide?
Moreso than Ghost Light you — and the book points out at the second person perspective, which I’m normally not a big fan of, but it works, in this case — are dropped in the same muddle as the narrator. This makes the book a bit thicker read than Mr. O’Connor’s, it’s a little tougher to get into, but the effort is well worth it.
The bit players in the drama round out the book. The caretaker of the cabin in which the narrator takes refuge, the local policeman who stops by to check on things and rough it up with the caretaker, Cy’s daughter, the sadistic assistant Cy is saddled with for his language work at the university, the dead/not-dead boyfriend, the shade of Cy’s departed wife, who sailed off into the sunrise some time ago and continues to haunt his days.
It’s a beautiful book about aging, loss, with a slow simmering mystery on the back burner the whole time. It’s not quite the fact-paced thriller whodunit, it’s more of a thoughtful examination of a life. Worth the read.