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Remarkable Insights to Human Drives and Emotions Highlighted
by the Exotic Settings, November 27, 2006 Marion Bloem looks
at the human condition through the eyes of several generations
of a family - almost all women - reminiscing in the first
person. Each reminiscence comes as a pithy vignette - mostly
as direct speech. This device keeps the pace moving swiftly.
To identify the speaker, the author has provided a family
tree at the beginning of the book. The reader, by triangulation
(as it were) from the relatives referred to, works out who
is talking.
The highly colored, sharply-observed scenes move between
Java and the Netherlands, and between Dutch and "Indo's" (mixed
race Dutch/Indonesians). The publisher's write-up suggests
that the accent of the book is on the crisis of identity
experienced by Indo's. However, what comes through more powerfully
is that, whatever their origins or wherever they live, Indo's
have the same day-to-day worries, passions, frustrations,
delights and preoccupations as everyone else.
The Cockatoo's Lie, by focusing on context, emotions and
family ways is a remarkable Odyssey laying bare the intricate
network of strings and pulleys manipulating the family's
lives down through the generations, culminating in that of
the narrator. We see how her extended family (in particular)
mold her beliefs, attitudes, taboos and complexes. Her mother
indoctrinates her with an austere "Jiminy Cricket" conscience
against which she rebels. Male readers will be amazed by
the revelations of female emotional processes and how they
result in meta-behavior. One example will suffice: the narrator's
mother frequently slaps and chastises her as a child. Years
later the mother repents and explains to her now adult daughter
that: "every slap I gave you was actually meant for
your father." But on the way the family members give
homilies that still resonate today: "The man must be
older, bigger, richer, so that as a woman you can lean on
him, not the other way around, because then everything will
go wrong."; and: "...you shouldn't want to be better
in everything than your husband, because then you'll lose
your respect for him, and he will feel inferior."
In fact, the title of the book refers metaphorically to
the Indo narrator's discovery of her own physical attractiveness,
the development of her healthily vigorous sexuality and the
top-to-toe tingling of physical desire which she dubs "the
ribbon".
She has a series of red-blooded adventures, mostly with
the tacit (if hardly credible) acceptance of her anthropologist
husband who studies the Trobriand Islanders near Papua New
Guinea. He uncovered one of their legends concerning a cockatoo
and a clitoris. The clitoris: "would risk everything
for a single sensation that seemed more important than food" to
the point where it starved to death. This notion is the principle
leitmotif for the narrator's struggles with her Jiminy Cricket
to break out of the limits she has set herself. She oversteps
one limit by clandestinely having an extended love affair
with her husband's friend. She felt that this was one instance
in which she had betrayed her husband - the one man she truly
loved. In the end she learns that she: "prefers the
reveling in desire to the moment at which that desire is
fulfilled."
All these: aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmothers, grandfathers,
first loves, cockatoo, ribbon and Jiminy Cricket are just
some of the factors in a rich patchwork of influences shaping
the narrator's own humanity. It is a profound, intelligent
and clever book that, with each reading, reveals increasing
depths and subtlety of interwoven detail.
As a qualified translator myself, no commentary is complete
without mentioning Wanda Boeke's superb translation from
the Dutch. The book reads not only as though it had been
written in English, but as though it had been thought in
English. I have just one minor quibble: the occasional (not,
mercifully, systematic) lapse into the use of "I" where "me" is
called for. For me (sic), crippled phrases like: "The
grass taller than I ..." and: "... a woman two
years older than I..." suck down my attention like Rorschach
blots. The morbid fascination of them makes me (sic) lose
track of the story. But that's just me (sic): - read the
book and enjoy!
From: Geoff Bond "Geoff" (Cyprus)
amazon.com (2006)
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