I think it's fair to say that most of us who enjoy Storm's writing do so, in part, because we enjoy a mental challenge. We like being confronted with new concepts, we revel in having our assumptions put through the mincer, we're hungry for text that stays with us for days and gives us plenty to think about.
Anyone reading Daniel Quinn does not do so for his literary style, which is
quite simplistic, but for his ideas. When you pick up a
Daniel Quinn you're in for a serious mental workout. He turns
the basic truths about life you hold dear inside out. He kicks
away your foundations without a second thought. In fact, I think
his stories are all the more powerful and hard-hitting because
of the simplicity of Quinn's literary style.
Quinn is best known for his Ishmael series -- Ishmael, The Story of B and My Ishmael. I'd recommend any of these to any one. In fact I do, often. They are adventures of mind and spirit which challenge us to reconsider everything we've ever been told. People often feel sickened, elated and depressed on reading these works but usually they wind up with a profound sense of relief. It's not every single human in our culture that is wrong, there is nothing wrong with humanity. It's our society and culture that is flawed... well, if you want to know more, go and read them.
So what's After Dachau about? Without giving too much away a brief synopsis would go something like this:
Mallory Hastings, or at least her body, comes out of a coma in a New York hospital after a serious car accident and, immediately all around her know that something is amiss. Although she can both speak and hear, she is deaf and she has no recollection of a person named Mallory Hastings. She does not recognise her family. In fact they terrify her. The only person she makes a connection with is Jason Tull, who, supported by a trust fund, is a re-incarnation expert working for the non-profit making research centre -- We Live Again. It transpires there is another soul inhabiting Mallory Hasting's body. She is Gloria MacArthur, a model and expressionist painter, who is very, very angry.
I'd got this far in the novel and was feeling a bit smug. "Oh well," I thought, "it's obvious -- Gloria must have been an internee in the concentration camp at Dachau." But no, I wasn't even close. I was in for a conceptual and intellectual roller-coaster ride that kept me guessing and got me so interested that I finished the book in a day.
By the end I was quite unsettled and remained so for nearly a week. Quinn had given my certainties and concepts of "how life is" a damned good shaking. He's good at that. He does it a lot. In fact if I'd not known that this was a particular trait of his, around about chapter 17 I'd have put the book down and fled, never to return. It got seriously disconcerting at this point and some fairly major taboos were messed with there.
However, I trusted him to make his point -- and he did. Whilst I don't think After Dachau is the best book Quinn has ever written, it's a cracking good read and an all important wake up call. It rather reminded me of the psychological/thriller/science fictiony type novels that were popular in the 60s and 70s. But then I like having my brain turned inside out.
There are a couple of plot holes, areas where on re-reading I wondered why this question wasn't asked or where I thought, "Never in a thousand years would I get myself in that situation..."
Despite that Quinn makes his point and makes it well, giving fresh meaning to the words spoken years ago by Napoleon, "History is an agreed upon fiction." Most poignant given today's political climate.
About the Author:
Maria Leel lives at Chateau Fengate in England with assorted cats, chickens
and husband. She makes a lot of wine, dabbles in complementary therapies and is
mum to the infamous Steffi the Goat. She has a degree in Ecology but neither she
or anyone else appears to be able to make any use of it, which can make her quite
cross. She can be reached at maria@leel2.freeserve.co.uk.
