Self - Yann Martel

Vintage Canada, 1996.

Three Stars

It’s been awhile since I’ve read Life of Pi, but from what I remember, this novel is completely different. Self is self-consciously postmodern, and seems almost like a series of experiments in writing that were thrown together into a novel. There is some absolutely beautiful descriptive language – such as the recurring metaphor of love as fish swimming in our eyes – and these passages are much more enjoyable than the novel as a whole. I re-read certain sections, savouring the words, but overall the story fell flat for me.

The issue of gender is obviously an important one in Self. Martel is able to convincingly get inside the child’s mind, and the narrator’s early sexual confusion – he thinks that each person has their own gender, and we are made to fit with only one other, whether boy or girl – reminds us that gender doesn’t matter to children. However, I found it problematic that he does not differentiate between physical sex and one’s identifying gender. The narrator physically changes into a woman, but his/her world view was still very masculine in my opinion, so much so that I kept forgetting about the gender change completely.

The change in gender seemed like an unnecessary construct within the novel; the plot could have stood alone with it. Alternatively, much more could have been done with the change. I do think the way it was handled – no one seems all that shocked that this young boy is now physically a woman – was ahead of its time. Self was published almost twenty years ago, and issues of gender and identification are much more accepted now than they were then. As the narrator tells us, “Gender in matters of love struck me as of no greater consequence than flavours in ice cream.” (p. 60)

Parts of the novel read almost like a writing journal, where Martel is using the narrator to explore his own unusable story ideas. Fortunately, I found some of these ideas quite enjoyable to read on their own. Overall, the language and ideas were strong enough to save this novel from its other weaknesses of plot and character.