What I’m reading
To Leave with the Reindeer
by Olivia Rosenthal, translated by Sophie Lewis
This beautiful book switches between a narrative written in the second person – by the same person – and a first-person narrative from the perspective of a changing cast of people who work with animals – zookeepers, scientists, butchers.
The second person narrative follows the career of the unnamed “you” as she progresses through her childhood and girlhood, and later as she leaves home, marries, divorces, and becomes herself.
The changing cast of people who work with animals is full of fascinating, encyclopedic tidbits about animals – wolves kept in captivity, wolf behavior (Wolf is the enemy of the wolf). Or, concerning bovines, that females taste better than males. And so on.
The story of the girl, interrupted as it is with the animal kingdom sections, kept me reading both carefully and quickly as I sought parallels between animal life and human life. Between living in the wild, living in captivity – and being human. (It begs the question: are we humans domesticated animals? Or: do we live in captivity? And: what is our wild?)
The contrast between first and second person narratives is stark and striking in terms of content, of course: the second-person narrative being about a human girl growing into womanhood, while the first-person narrative is full of facts about wolves and cattle. But the contrast is also striking in terms of narrative effect. Juxtaposed with and inlaid between longer paragraphs written in the first-person, the story about the girl/woman written in the distancing second person is acutely personal, whereas the first-person narratives are clinical.
From a writerly standpoint, I very much appreciate and admire how Rosenthal, with her crisp language and subtle observations, managed to transform what could have ended up looking like a hollow, artificial construct into a dense piece of beauty and meaning.
Last but not least: the quality and clarity of Sophie Lewis’s English translation makes the book a delight to read.
