Songs From The Other Side of The Wall

Reviewed by Patrick McAllaster, November 15, 2009
Songs From The Other Side of The Wall, Dan Holloway, Cracked Egg

A collection of notes and essays which serve to explicate the preceding text in Dan Holloway’s Songs From The Other Side of The Wall, does just that but also notes the author is a fan of Haruki Murakami and modeled Songs after Norwegian Wood, and sought to place his own imprint on the renowned text’s form. Said note seems to act as apologia for perhaps cribbing Murakami. Two notes: the first is that the form employed which could best be described as a bildungsroman framed by the novel’s present is not exclusively the domain of Murakami; and, that for any similarities, Holloway improves on the form as rendered by Murakami in Norwegian Wood.

Such revelation will surely rile Murakami’s devoted legions but Norwegian Wood, for all its qualities is often the scene of too-easy resolutions and characters that are not particularly unique and perhaps even implausible. With relatively minor changes one could easily swap the characters, the setting, and more yet still accomplish the same; this though is part of the point I suppose. Still, Norwegian Wood suffers from rather bland story elements. Holloway’s accomplishment is in rendering a world in exquisite detail and still conveying the universal via the personal.

The novel starts with the protagonist, Szandrine Curtesz, readying for New Year’s celebrations with her current girlfriend at which point the novel shifts back one year. It was then that a girl (Claire) with whom Szandi is quite smitten is trampled in a riot as Romania readies not only for New Year’s but EU membership. Claire’s death is not only captured (of course) on video, but is soon rendered viral and beamed round the world for total strangers to impart their own opinions, subsume her narrative with theirs. (The similarity to the Nada tragedy earlier this year imbues the scene with chilling allegorical context.) Szandi is initially dismayed watching ownership of Claire’s story wrested from her until she realizes this is a young woman she knew precious little about and had only met, nay, seen! one time. At that point Szandi opts to not only learn the story of Claire, but to also rectify her fractured narrative and by extension her Europe’s; that is, establishing her future, to do so she must reconcile her absentee and Western mother who lives in Britain, and her ailing and Eastern father, tucked away on a listing vineyard, Szant Gabor.

With his ideas set, characters established, and narrative in thrust, Holloway leads Szandi through a quest in which she strives to achieve much for herself and others and where he improves on the form by providing such exquisite detail though at the risk of veering into limiting specificity. The meals the characters cook and consume are not only rich and hearty but are described in mouthwatering detail. The booze consumed is just the same, and, Holloway goes so far as to provide the reader elaborate specifics detailing the history of the vineyard, the land on which the fruit grows, and even the winemaking process. Even still, we are made privy the actual words exchanged in the political chat rooms Szandi frequents, the songs she composes for the rock band she fronts, and the letters and diary snippets she receives are reproduced in full as well. There are more examples though these are the prime examples in an elaborately realized and potently tactile world. At no point is the reader left wanting for verisimilitude.

Such detail proves necessary in any instance where the author attempts something so ambitious as having the main character serve as avatar for many European citizens in that she is of mixed descent, multi-lingual, politically inclined, and rather uncertain about his or her place in an ever changing and always restless continent, though generally desirous to see unification. Not only is Szandi attempting to reconcile these competing influences on the personal level, she represents the larger European inclination towards unity for a historically fractured continent. Holloway, in taking on such a heady task, must revel in detail, for resorting to broad generalities limits his ability to convey the fractious world of the character.

There is more—not only does Holloway render a fully realized and particular world, he also employs a host of storytelling devices. There is a talking bull statue, a clairvoyant fashion mogul, portentous letters and communiqués that verge on dues-ex-machina, go-for-broke analogies, et al; though, for any fabulist leanings the novel remains sufficiently tethered to the ground.

Reviewing a novel steeped in twisty plot machinations is tough but I will say that Szandi does achieve maturation by novel’s end. The order she thinks she has achieved is capsized by a troubling revelation, and so, when faced with the option to go along or again reset her personal sphere, we see Szandi ostensibly choose the latter and we last see her venturing into the night, into the West, alone, opting to reconcile desires of her choosing.