By Lars Bukdahl. Translated by W. Glyn Jones

I would be seriously disappointed if I were not simply amazed on starting to read a new book by Pablo Llambías – and in particular being surprised at whatever this project is that he is engaged on this time, on what literary basis and with what artistic objective. And fortunately his brand-new novel Rasende ('Furious') is not a disappointment in this respect. From the very first page I am enormously surprised not only by the project and its (fictional) status and (generic) character, but also quite fundamentally by who is speaking at all and in what universe, realistic and/or fantastic. See if you yourself can’t join me in surprise at the sudden opening of the novel, which runs like this:

"- Stop that now!
… and there's dinner again … and Pepe is scolding … as usual … Alex … and Alex … You know very well that you mustn't do that. What do you think we have doors for?
… yes, what do we have doors for … Alex apparently doesn’t know … Pepe will say it in just a moment … and yes, Alex knows it… he does that to provoke… and Pepe is so quick-tempered … maybe Alex likes it when he gets mad …
“- Sit down, and stop doing that! The doors are there for us to use, not for anything else at all. Sit."

We come into the picture in media res while the family is bickering at the dinner table and apparently have privileged access not least to the frisky internal monologue of one of the family members, but for exactly what is Alex being grumbled at by Pepe? If you don’t use the doors, then what do you use – that you are not allowed to use – when you want to enter a room? Another suspicious element is Pepe’s formulation that "The doors are are there for us to use, not for anything else at all", that is to say not for going through from one room to another, or what?

With surprise and with some reluctance we realise that one of our most widely admired young prose writers has written something so far removed in a distant and worthless genre landscape as a GHOST STORY. But yes, they really are ghosts - as becomes ever more obvious – Pepe, the father, Alex the younger brother and Patricia the older sister and narrator, all live in a ghostly Denmark where they all agree to pretend that they are not ghosts. That is the reason why they are not to go through the wall when they want to go in and have a meal, but must use the doors, which are there to be used and not for anything else.

As can be sensed from her sarcastic tone, the teenage ghost Patricia is far from accepting this dissimulation. She is in fact “furious”, and it is this fury, this classic, youthful indignation at the denial of (un)reality that carries and governs the novel:

Time and time again, Patricia breaks the rules, takes her father by the arm and goes into the lion’s cage in the Zoo in order to defy the grown-ups and to stimulate her younger brother. A kind of plot is created when the young people’s rebellion escalates into an out-and-out bank robbery, as a result of which Patricia and Alex end up in prison. In contrast to his sister, Alex is not prepared simply to walk out through the prison walls. Patricia agrees to be normalised in a hospital on condition that Alex is freed, but deep down inside she refuses to be cowed. On the other hand Alex certainly is cowed, to an increasingly self-invalidating extent. And now I think I must not reveal more about an anti-thriller of a frayed ghost story, the conclusion of which, as is the tradition with Llambias’ books, is – fortunately – at least as mystifying as the beginning.

Llambias used to prefer operating with narrators who in their warm irony and ability to see through and analyse things were purely and simply alter ego’s: highly flexible ghostly Pablo’s. The only real exception was significantly enough the first person plural narrator in the sci-fi dystopia A.P.O.L.L.O.N. from 2000. But then in the novel De elskendes bjerg ('The Lovers’ Mountain') from 2006, about a woman hunting for her father and her identity, all seven non-Pablovian narrators were suddenly on the go, which paradoxically enough liberated a good deal of passion, not least fury and indignation, in what used to be a cool narrative approach. It is this path that 'Furious' continues in Patricia’s crackling, seething novel monologue, with the volume control necessarily turned up to 11! It is not only all the concrete disavowals and suppressions of her ghostly reality over which she works up a fury, but the hypocrisy of the grown-ups as such towards their surroundings and towards themselves, and both Llambias and the novel reflect 100% solidarity with Patricia. The reader is not to believe with Pepe that he can merely dismiss the fury as a teenager whim: that kind of repressive tolerance is also precisely lampooned:

"… Pepe is satisfied with having provoked his teenager … fathers do that sort of thing with teenagers … especially female teenagers … who says I’m a girl at all … who says that I’m not really a boy … it is, Pepe would say, a typical identity crisis … Pepe loves teenagers’ identity crises … Pepe possesses irony and humour … that’s something he likes to tell himself … he takes the teenagers’ changes of mood with a touch of humour – that’s the only thing to do, is his self-satisfied comment … he likes to get at these changes in mood … then he feels more alive … metaphorically speaking … then he thinks that I feel more alive … metaphorically speaking … then it makes it easier to bear … he says …"

Reality as construction has remained a central theme throughout Pablo Llambias’ oeuvre, and over recent years, for instance in 'The Lovers’ Mountain', the emphasis has been on the fictive aspect of national and ethnic identities. However, in 'Furious' we are right down at the supporting strata of the foundation because we are right at the centre of the web of conventions. Just as earlier the novel about the muddle-headed character, Den dag vi blev frie ('The Day We Became Free') from 1998, in which reality and its details imperceptibly begin to degenerate: one morning, the forks in the kitchen drawer have only two prongs! But never has the deconstructive mission been felt and sounded so alarmingly acute:

"… can’t I talk to you … no, Pepe, I can’t … my language isn’t your language … the postcard language I refuse to use … tiny lumps of shit that I don’t want to place on my tongue … as though it were a goat’s backside …lumpety-lump, and then we’ve said something about the latest film in the cinema … clackety-clack, then we made that point as well … plump-plump-plump, and so on and so on and so on…"

'Furious' is at one and the same time Llambias’s quirkiest and most deeply felt book, a vital ghost manifesto:
Ghost, know thyself, and go through the wall to the dinner table now!

EXTRACT

-Stop that now!
…and there’s dinner again…and Pepe is scolding…as usual…Alex…and Alex…
-You know very well that you mustn’t do that!  What do you think we have doors for?

Read extract

Download Danish Literary Magazine Spring 08 as PDF