With Martel’s signature mixture of humor and pathos, these three stories explore the rugged terrain of grief. But they also contain the author’s reflections on the connection between storytelling and faith ... Martel’s writing has never been more charming, a rich mixture of sweetness that’s not cloying and tragedy that’s not melodramatic.
I took away indelible images from High Mountains, enchanting and disturbing at the same time ... As whimsical as Martel's magic realism can be, grief informs every step of the book's three journeys. In the course of the novel we burrow ever further into the heart of an ape, pure and threatening at once, our precursor, ourselves. You must change your life.
...although his writing hums with a vivid populism, his emotional and allegorical tale seems at times almost too safely well done to do justice to the ragged and tortured people whose tragedies it traces.
The High Mountains of Portugal, in Yann Martel’s novel of that name, turn out to be grassy uplands rather than high mountains; and the book turns out to be three stories rather than a novel. The stories, connected ingeniously, vary greatly in tone and quality. The first two display so little of the author’s narrative skill that they may offer more temptation to stop reading than to go on. Liking the last part of the book much better, I could wish that it stood alone.
All of this...might seem like so much pious piffle, but for Martel’s drollery and ingenuity in packing his inventive novel with beguiling ideas ... Though there are no mountains where Martel sets his stories, the elevation is sufficient to make a reader lightheaded and heavy-hearted in The High Mountains of Portugal.
Martel’s discursive, philosophical style is an old-fashioned approach to novel writing. Contemporary novels are usually built out of scenes rather than long, probing conversations or musings, and the characters are propelled forward through clear motivations and connections. Some readers will find The High Mountains of Portugal lacking in these ways, but I found it refreshing, surprising and filled with sparkling moments of humor and insight.
How the novellas are connected is best discovered during the reading, but the final result is a meditation on grieving and faith that makes for Man Booker Prize winner Martel’s most satisfying book since Life of Pi.
Martel's blend of fable, magic realism, road comedy and religious philosophy never coheres. But there's no denying the simple pleasures to be had in The High Mountains of Portugal
Late in 1904, grief-stricken Tomàs travels from Lisbon to the High Mountains of Portugal, only to remark upon his arrival: 'There are no mountains in the High Mountains of Portugal.' In a novel by Yann Martel, whose work has featured a philosophical castaway tiger (Life of Pi) and a Holocaust play starring a stuffed donkey and monkey (Beatrice and Virgil), it's no surprise to discover that something is not what it's supposed to be. Nor will it spoil any of the delights of his new novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, if I tell you that the remarkable, perhaps transformative medieval artifact Tomàs seeks turns out to be an ape on a cross.
The book is crammed with tales explicating Darwinism, the Zen of apes, and the banality of evil. Linguistic economy is no virtue: when someone gets out of a car, the other person 'feels cast off, thrown away, abandoned.' But Martel knows his strengths: passages about the chimpanzee and his owner brim irresistibly with affection and attentiveness.
...what you really want to know is, is it as good as Life of Pi? The answer is not quite. It’s just as ambitious, just as clever, just as existential and spiritual, and also concerns characters facing unutterable loss ... The High Mountains of Portugal is a much more complicated creation, with three stories full of dramatis personae, events and situations, magical realist flourishes, much reliance on surprising twists and recurrences, and frankly, more dry spells in the narrative.
...the conclusions we draw from these philosophically open-ended stories will say as much about us as about the author’s intentions. They are either coyly nebulous or, if you prefer, deliberately deferential to the reader’s biases, particularly with regard to religion and its utility (or uselessness) as solace for the grief-stricken. All of that said, The High Mountains of Portugal can be a rich and rewarding experience for those willing to suspend their natural hunger for narrative momentum, instead idling along with Martel as he spins his magic thread of hope and despair, comedy and pathos.
Martel’s religiosity is a practical an elegant one. There’s much to recommend it on that score. And, who knows? Martel may be right. Ultimately, it may come to pass that the story with God is not only the better story but also the necessary story. Maybe. But I’m still not convinced.
The High Mountains of Portugal feels like Martel’s attempt to create an allegory for sorrow; more often than not, it rings flat because we’re not invested in the characters, nor do we have enough details to care much about them. Much more interesting are Martel’s subtle observations on how humans are able to survive and grow even in times of extreme grief and duress, how sometimes the worst experiences can turn out to be the best.
