TITLE: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards
AUTHOR: Kristopher Jansma
GENRE: General Fiction
PUBLISHED: January 14, 2014
RATING: ★★★★ 1/2
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon.com
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism
Description: An inventive and witty debut about a young man’s quest to become a writer and the misadventures in life and love that take him around the globe. From as early as he can remember, the hopelessly unreliable—yet hopelessly earnest—narrator of this ambitious debut novel has wanted to become a writer.
From the jazz clubs of Manhattan to the villages of Sri Lanka, Kristopher Jansma’s irresistible narrator will be inspired and haunted by the success of his greatest friend and rival in writing, the eccentric and brilliantly talented Julian McGann, and endlessly enamored with Julian’s enchanting friend, Evelyn, the green-eyed girl who got away. After the trio has a disastrous falling out, desperate to tell the truth in his writing and to figure out who he really is, Jansma’s narrator finds himself caught in a never-ending web of lies.
Review: Amazing book. Right away, I was impressed with the title and the cover art. These are the reader's first impressions of a novel, and in this case, both the title and cover art are both meaningful and artfully chosen. The first sentence intrigues the reader as well:
"If you believe that you are the author of this book, please contact Haslett & grouse publishers (New York, New York) at your first convenience"
This is a carnival fun house of a novel - full of allegories, convoluted interbedded, nested stories, an Unnamed Narrator, and many references to other works. The book is divided into two sections - What Was Lost and What Was Found. The first five stories ("What Was Lost") highlight the hope, promise, and angst of youth, the second five ("What Was Found") display the sad slide downhill for the Unnamed Narrator. You see, in the first five stories, The Unnamed Narrator is young and full of promise, but in the last five stories, he is a failed writer, who assumes his more successful friend's identity, to teach at a second rate university. This is only one of many lies The Unnamed Narrator tells in the course of the novel. Whether the Unnamed Narrator is capable of detecting the difference between truth and fiction is one of the book's central questions.
The Unnamed Narrator moves from his teaching job to ghostwriting term papers to writing the unauthorized biography of his successful friend, all the while making faltering steps to write meaningful fiction of his own. His friend (Julian/Jeffrey) has disappeared after producing a single novel, a work of genius that is both popular and critically acclaimed. As he explores his friend's life, the narrator begins to wonder whether he is his friend's alter ego (or vice versa). This was my main frustration with the novel. Each time the author introduced new characters, plot, setting, I began to know and love each character, only to be betrayed by the Unreliable Narrator, until I grew distrustful and it was hard to care about the characters and know whether or not I should believe them.
Still confused as to what the book is about? Well, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is about fiction, writing fiction, living fiction, loving fiction. It's about fiction becoming more real to you than anything else. It's the message that to be an excellent writer, you have to be a tad unhinged. It's the message that writers are inherently jealous and competitive with each other. The characters were always sneaking around reading everyone else's first drafts and revisions. It's about how fiction writers cannot interact with people in daily life without taking notes, writing stuff down, looking for motivation and ideas for new stories. Everyone is a potential character in an author's potential book, just waiting to be written. This book was about the need to produce a work that will be recognized and will stand after the author has died.
“And for this imperfect immortality, what prices have been paid? How many livers, lungs, and veins? Shredded, polluted, shot? How many children deserted, family secrets betrayed, sordid trysts laid out for strangers to see? How many wives and husbands shoved to the side? How many ovens scorched with our hair? Gun barrels slid between our lips? Bathtubs slowly reddened by our blood and twisting drowned that drowned us? How many flawed pages burned in disgust and reduced to ashes? How many flawless moments observed from just a slight distance so that, later, we might reduce them to words? All with an unspoken prayer that these hard-won truths might outlast the brief years of our lives.”?
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, although confusing to the reader, is a unique book and unlike anything I've ever read before. 4.5 stars.