Seven Types of Ambiguity (7ToA) by Elliot Perlman is one type of awesome! No, wait, let me start over. No doubt about it: Seven Types of Ambiguity kicks butt! Still not right. Seven Kinds of Ambiguity rocks! - in a relatively straightforward manner. I’ll work on it.
One of the blurbs on the cover says that 7ToA is a psychological thriller. I suppose that’s a good assessment, but I’m generally not a psych-thriller kind of guy. The book tells the story of an obsessive lover, a crime, and its aftermath. It begins with the following line:
He nearly called you again last night. Can you imagine that, after all this time? He can.
Spooky. The novel is broken up into seven parts - each told from the point of view of a different person. Each part tells a piece of the story, with the initial chapters presenting one cliffhanger after another. Each part picks up where the last left off, and the reader (at least this one) remains unsure where it will all lead until the final pages. I won’t give too much of the plot away, because going in cold, as I did, is the best way to experience this book.
The book gets its name from a landmark book of poetry criticism written by William Empson. That book enumerated the ambiguities in poetry that open the best works to different interpretations. The obsessive lover guy (OLG) is obsessed with the book, and the parallel is drawn to the ambiguities that can exist in the types of relationships between people. That seemed a bit contrived, but OK.
There is a stretch that seems out of place in the book though. The OLG, in the middle of everything, takes time out to rail against postmodernism (deconstructionism in particular) being the downfall of university literature departments. I should mention that the OLG is portrayed as a misunderstood literary genius. I should also mention that the author is Australian and the book takes place Down Under as well. This is interesting, because the real life Australian PM wants to legislate against the postmodern school of teaching literature. Apparently, this is a national obsession. If any of that last bit of discussion makes you crabby, you can skip a few pages is what I’m saying.
The author impressed the hell out of me by being able to write convincingly in seven different narrative voices. I felt as if I got to know seven different people intimately while making my way through the book. The story itself is surprisingly suspenseful, given that the answers to questions of guilt/innocence are known relatively early in the story - and are in many ways irrelevant to the story. The suspense instead comes from the decisions that people will make that will transform their lives forever in one way or another. That’s powerful stuff. If you like your lover’s star-crossed and your moral dilemmas murky, this book is for you.
A wild tangent: The author of this book is an attorney - so that makes back to back books that I’ve read by attorneys. The last was by a non-practicing Irish attorney. Perlman is a practicing Australian attorney. Huh.