The Keep

This is a beautifully written novel with great dialogue, a couple of crazy, likable characters and a slightly convoluted narrative laid out as a story within a story. One story takes place at a castle in Europe where a remodeling project is underway and the other story takes place in a prison where a convict is taking a writing class. And yes, the story the convict is writing is the story of the castle and the people doing the remodeling. If I was a professional critic I might try to tell you the "real meaning" of the novel. In fact, after I finished I read a couple of reviews by professional critics to see their thoughts. I've come to the conclusion that my enjoyment of this novel, as with other novels by Egan, is in the actual reading of the book and my endearment to the main characters of the story.

Egan displays early virtuosity playing with the form and narrative that she will later perfect in Visit and Candy House. But this is great stuff. One can only admire her imagination and performance.

I really enjoyed her last one, "Look at Me." This one is similar, a glamorous-yet-dissolute New Yorker becomes a fish out of water in a story that is more than it seems. This book had all the elements I enjoy, creepy Bulgarian castle, hint of the supernatural, a twist or two but overall I was unmoved. I expected more to be made of the surrounding scenery, I expected the story to be richer but in the end there was no there. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, just that I was not consumed by it. There's a danger in the story-within-a-story technique and I think Egan runs flat up against it here. This technique does not let your lose yourself in the story. If you know someone else is telling it, if there is deliberate authorial intrusion then it doesn't feel all-consuming. Also the two narratives are problematic if one is more interesting than the other. I have an intuition about this book that it was once much longer. It's like seeing a movie and knowing so much was left out and then seeing the director's cut and knowing what the movie was really supposed to be. I feel the ruthless hand of an editor somewhere in here, pushing us on toward action when we could have lingered. Overall however it's a strong book certainly better than much of what else is out there. She's a smart writer who doesn't let her intelligence get in the way of a good story.

Let's start at the end and work back to the beginning. The frame is that the author tweaked a manuscript given to her by Ray, a prisoner and pupil of hers in the prison where she teaches creative writing. Ray might be a murderer and then again he might not be a murderer. His story is about a castle that might be in Germany or in the Czech Republic, or in Austria. The author tells us she is not a creative writing teacher as she is not qualified to teach creative writing and yet she is teaching that subject. She also has a BA degree which she claims she doesn't deserve. So we have a few paradoxes - a teacher who shouldn't be teaching, but does, and a teacher who has a degree but shouldn't have one. Along the way, we find she is (what else?) an abused wife and a drug addict, and probably served time for her addiction problems. She says she knows that she will never be happy again because she will never bump again and bumping is the only real happiness there is, the only true happiness. Too many bumps caused her to lose a child, proving once again that it isn't a good idea to use meth during pregnancy. Bumping not only led to fetal death, but also legal problems and perhaps meth mouth and other health complications. It turns out that Ray's story comes true in minute detail as teacher travels to the castle after Ray's escape from prison. She is looking for him there because she has fallen madly in love with him, though why she is in love is not entirely clear to me. If you figure it out, let me know. Who cares anyway? For who can explain love? Does it really matter? Life and literature are often full of loose ends. Naturally, the castle has underground tunnels, a torture chamber, and an old witch (the baroness) who is anywhere from 16 to 167 years old. Ray has sex with her despite her young or old age. What I like best about this book, is that those principles which are taught in writing schools are thrown out the window (or placed upside down) on almost every page. Point of view shifts, characters fall out of character and then back in, tenses go from historic present to past and back again, sometimes in the same paragraph. The person changes too. Why not? We get third person, then first, then we are addressed directly in the second person as YOU. Thus, Aristotle's unities are dismissed. The context keeps shifting too, but this may be a trick of the china box way of embedding the story with multiple narrators and in different styles and tones. Personal information and authorial asides abound. All of which adds up to one of the most original works of literature to make the contemporary scene. EM Forster complained that the novel needed to be more original, more worthy of its position in the world of art. He was asking, I think, for the kind of imaginative creations that we see in modern art. That's the way I feel too, especially when I see modern art because I realize how constrained by tradition we writers are compared to artists. Writers need to loosen up a lot. Keep and Jennifer Egan are showing us how to do it and how to do it right.

Really well written story within a story, with ghostly overtones. Reads like a 4-dimensional Klein bottle.

Brilliant book, as inspiring and enlightening as it is dark and disturbing.

Die Geschichte hat sich für mich zu Beginn so ungelenk entwickelt, dass ich sechzig bis siebzig Seiten vor Ende daran gedacht habe, das Buch zur Seite zu legen. Dies, nachdem mich Egans Stil noch in einem Buch vorher so begeistert hatte.Glücklicherweise habe ich weiter gelesen, denn kurz darauf hat die Geschichte eine wunderbare Dynamik und Leidenschaft entwickelt, so dass mir die Schönheit und Komplexität dieses literarischen Werkes bewusst geworden sind.Was zur Güte des Buches beiträgt: Eine einfache und doch raffinierte Komposition, drei relevante Ebenen (die Geschichte um die Burg, die Geschichte mit dem Gefängnis, eine sehr persönliche Lebensgeschichte), etwas Surreales, das in der Luft hängt und das man nicht so richtig zu fassen kriegt. Dann Themen, die viele von uns heute berühren und die sehr feinfühlig aufgedeckt werden (die Sucht nach virtueller Vernetzung, diffuse Abhängigkeiten und Ängste, das Zusammenleben mit einer dreizehnjährigen Tochter...). Beeindruckend auch eine Art Abwesenheit von Ego, was sich darin zeigt, dass das anfänglich Ungelenke durchgehalten werden kann. Erst am Ende weiss man, dass es so sein musste. Das Buch bietet teilweise unglaublich starke Szenen, die gar nicht so grossartig daherkommen, die man aber möglicherweise nie mehr vergessen wird. Und wie schon bei anderen Büchern Egans erhält man einen starken Einblick in die Empfindungen der Männer. Es ist ein sehr zeitgenössisches Buch, das gerade dadurch, das es mit dem Burgenthema über Zeitalter zurückreicht, die Gegenwart mit der Vergangenheit verbindet und unser Leben in einen Kontext stellt, was dem Buch Tiefe gibt. Der letzte Teil ist fulminant, grossartig und berührend: Man weiss auf einmal, dass man ein Kunstwerk in den Händen hält.

A captivating book, that manages to transport you entirely into a certain world and then, when you expect it the least, it pulls you out and you wake up in a totally different world. I also loved the way it only gives you enough ifnormation to keep you highly itnerested int he book and does not give out too much untill you read the end.

Looking interesting so far . . .