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The Third Translation: A Novel by Matt Bondurant

sbtucker, April 23, 2006

For the opposite reasons that I had to toss "The Da Vinci Code" onto the top of my unread pile of poorly written novels, I was happily entranced and engaged by "The Third Translation." In this novel I found all of the things that were missing with Dan Brown's narrative-Bondurant gives you original and human characters, real world sorrow and confusion that one expects in good literature, unsettling and wonderful plot movements, and the confident craft of tension that is seen more often in the works of Chabon and Irving.

Matt Bondurant is a novelist with a long and brilliant career ahead of him-rarely have I picked up a first novel from a new writer and been so impressed with the characters, tension, and craft of the narrative. Unlike the pulp mysteries that "The Third Translation" is compared to, this novel is filled with brave and original characters who challenge us with their particular obsessive behaviors-there is no comparison between the obtuse brilliance of Bondurant's Walter Rothschild and the "Indiana Jones" mimicry of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon. It is a shame that these two novels are even being compared, and it is a disservice to Bondurant's craft that they are mentioned in the same breath. That said, if one enjoys the pressure and tempo of novels like TDVC, I would recommend they take the next step into the realm of literary suspense that Bondurant represents so splendidly.

Bondurant intersperses complicated Egyptology within the constricts of the novel (a difficult task in itself) as the plot runs us through the London underground, the British Museum, Soho, Covent Garden, etc. His adept handling of this monumental task is tempered with the wonderful humor of the novel, not to mention the great pathos he develops for the main characters (not since Ignacious J. Reilly from "A Confederacy of Dunces," have I fallen in love with such an unloveable character). But more than all of these great qualities, this novel is written with great care and great ability-Bondurant mixes the complicated axioms of the scholarly with the equally poignant world of the mad and fetid London club scene. Often, this transition from the sterility of the British Museum to the urine soaked cobbled streets of Soho reminds me of those transitional moments of cytology and whale lore in "Moby Dick."
Beyond all of this, however, TTT is a fun and uproariously wild ride that will make you ache for the feral madness of London. It is human, absurd, wonderful. It is literary, scholarly, intense, and untamed. If you are like me, you will consume this one in a day, then start over in order to discover what you might have missed on the first read. Don't miss the boat, as some reviewers obviously have--this is a great, poignantly written and crafted, new novel.

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Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles by Anthony Swofford

sbtucker, April 23, 2006

Great novel about a difficult war, and if it would have been marketed for what it was (fiction), I would have less of a problem with it. THIS IS NO MEMOIR! Much like James Frey, Swofford has expanded and embellished his story to great extent--there is talk that he was not in a sniper unit, and the whole training portion of the novel is absurd. Beyond that, this novel cribs from my story, "Gymnasium," written in 1996, and published in 1998 in the Mississippi Review. Ultimately, this is the best of the genre, but it is a travesty that it was marketed as a memoir--Swofford and his press should be ashamed of themselves.

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