Like many of the early novelists from the period in which Octavian Nothing is set, Anderson eschews a traditional narrative. Its scope is massive - expounding the murkiness in the birth of the United States, a narrative picaresque in which an unsympathetic-by-circumstance character wins around the reader, a thematic background of sophisticated and imponderable philosophical, scientific and moral questions. Oh, my gosh, this is a fabulous, fabulous book. As the Wars of Independence loom ever closer - we are treated to a first hand description of the Battle of Bunker Hill and a second hand one of the Boston Tea Party, both fabulous - and the Novanglians find their patrons less generous, Octavian comes to understand the horrific extent to which bias and greed skew the actions of his interlocutors. His benefactors simply wish to ascertain on which side of the Cartesian dualist divide black people lie. He is even required to defecate into a golden dish, so that his faeces might be weighed.Įventually, Octavian discovers the truth - he and his mother are slaves, and his privileged lifestyle is no more than another of the Novanglian experiments. Everything he does is noted - right down to how much he eats. He learns Latin and Greek and provides virtuoso performances on the violin. Yet he is dressed in silks and satins and educated by the finest minds of the day. His lessons are demanding and the smallest failure is harshly punished. Octavian is by turn pampered and disciplined.
The upper social echelons of Boston are full of men competing for her exotic attentions.
Octavian's mother is pampered and worshipped as a princess of African birth.
Octavian and his mother reside with a group of rationalist scientists and philosophers. It's 1775, and Octavian is living a curiously privileged yet circumscribed life in Boston at the Novanglian College of Lucidity. Stylistically difficult, the book may prove too much of a challenge for some readers. A seemingly unsympathetic hero digs his way remorselessly under the reader's skin. Summary: Imaginative, intelligent, difficult and disturbing, this Swiftian story of slavery and revolution is a stunning achievement.
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