Mark Haddon is probably best known for his bestseller The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which won 17 literary prizes and was made into an acclaimed stage play. I’m a Haddon fan. But I didn’t love this novel. Haddon’s recent works re-imagine myths and legends and turn them into contemporary stories. In this novel Darius and the yacht, the Porpoise, become Pericles, the prince of Tyre.
Description: The novel opens with a terrifying plane crash. I started reading this novel the week that Kobe Bryant’s plane went down and it was eerie. Then there is one violent moment after another as we weave between different versions of the Darius character across time. This is not a linear novel, many of the male characters are unlikeable, if not despicable.
The baby who survives the plane crash is raised by her wealthy, overprotective AND incestuous father. Yuck. She eventually starves herself to death. The Darius in this story is a potential suitor and saviour but he’s beaten almost to death by the father and escapes. Or maybe dies and in another universe because Pericles.
Pericles also loses his wife and daughter in a crash — this time it’s a ship. But actually they both survive, unbeknownst to him. There are a few lovely moments in the lives of these women when mythical beings save them, or they save themselves.
Basically this is a novel about shattered families. Asshole men. And women who are beaten down yet survive.
Favourite quote: Marina (daughter of Pericles) escapes her foster family (who were plotting to kill her) and she’s being hunted by soldiers. She’s already escaped her kidnapper / assassin.
She slides swiftly into a profound sleep in which she runs with a band of women across rolling grasslands, over hard, packed sand, through fine columns of leaf-light between trees. They turn into deer and she becomes a deer running with them. Their speed is thrilling, the earth spun to a blur by their hooves. Then they become a thousand arrows falling from the clear sky, into bark, into grass, into fur, into flesh. They are women and deer and arrows and this is no contradiction. They they are the wolves tearing into the flesh of the dying horse and tearing out the slippery liver and kidneys of the man who kidnapped her, and this is both terrifying and absolutely right, the way lightning is terrifying and absolutely right. They snap away the white ribs with their powerful jaws and yank out the lungs and she knows without question that this is precisely how he died.
The Porpoise by Mark haddon
Perfect read for those who like Greek Myths with a contemporary twist. I’d choose The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood over this one though.