Will Sargent reviewed Kalimantan by Lucius Shepard
Review of 'Kalimantan' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
Decent novella, set in Borneo. It has many of the elements that hold a Shepard novella together: there's a jungle, drugs that alter or manipulate reality, a steady stream of political / colonialist theory combined with some reflexive loathing at the over-intellectualism involved in the theorizing, a hidden world only accessible through a leap of faith, and a question on whether faith and trust can ever be truly be genuine, or another move in the game of self-interest. It's a story of a low level British pawn shop owner who helps an idealistic American live in the jungle with a pharmacutical researcher, and finds that the American is looking for his approval before he remakes the world in his own image, and a witch who thinks that unchecked idealism and hope can be a greater evil than self-interest.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real …
Decent novella, set in Borneo. It has many of the elements that hold a Shepard novella together: there's a jungle, drugs that alter or manipulate reality, a steady stream of political / colonialist theory combined with some reflexive loathing at the over-intellectualism involved in the theorizing, a hidden world only accessible through a leap of faith, and a question on whether faith and trust can ever be truly be genuine, or another move in the game of self-interest. It's a story of a low level British pawn shop owner who helps an idealistic American live in the jungle with a pharmacutical researcher, and finds that the American is looking for his approval before he remakes the world in his own image, and a witch who thinks that unchecked idealism and hope can be a greater evil than self-interest.
But the language is greater than the story. I have no real hope of reproducing Lucius Shepard's voice -- god knows it's not mine -- but part of me envies his sheer ability to make words read like music, to represent the interplay of skepticism and faith and the internal workings of men as finely as the landscape around them. It's a pleasure to read someone who has "read the text" -- every one of his characters is reading the environment around them and at least somewhat aware of their failings and blind spots.
So yeah. If you've read Viator, if you read Two Trains Running, you know what you're looking at here. If not, it'll be different to almost anything you've ever read.