A Stanger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

Samatar’s writing is sensual and mesmerizing. Her language evokes a believable world.

Her descriptions ground the reader in the world she has created. You can smell the spices in the market in Bain and taste the soil in Tyom. You can almost see "the clarity of light [that] can stop the heart." There are nods to other literary works, including the Hebrew Bible.

The book requires slower reading and more careful attention than I usually give to novels from the “new books” shelf at the library. I had to adjust my “listening” and be more attentive to the story, as if I were getting to know a person. As Jissavet suggests, a vallon is jut--a book is a person, a soul or at least a soul's physical manifestation.

While Samatar's world building shows the influence of Ursula K. LeGuin and other writers, she doesn't plagiarize; the story is her own creation. Her references to superstitions, books, historical events, old sayings, and even games give a sense of a complete world. With the exception of a brief mention of a few tarot images, I cannot tease out and identify the real world places and times that Samatar used to create aspects of her world; her creation is that complex.

After reading an Ursula K. LeGuin book, I usually say, “I loved it, but wonder if I really understood it.” I have to say the same thing about A Stranger in Olondria. It is clearly about language and books, but there are several other themes. One may be about how people respond to the fact of death and the gift of life. (What of the beloved survives?) Another theme may be illicit love. The story is also about clashing beliefs and world views, class and social hierarchy. It may also be about recognizing that people are more important than books or beliefs, an understanding that Jevick has in varying degrees throughout the novel.

The narrator, Jevick, is raised in an unsophisticated, island community. His family and the island are described in sensual, appreciative detail. After Jevick’s father, a pepper merchant, returns from cosmopolitan Olondria with a tutor, the boy is introduced into the wizardry of words and begins a love affair with books.

After Jevick's father dies, he eagerly assumes responsibility for his father’s business and immediately travels to Olondria. He is more interested in the life of the city and the books in its shops than in his business transactions. As I read about his explorations, the fragrances of the city of Bain rose from the page and his casual references to names, streets, books, and beliefs gave me a sense of a larger culture.

Both Jevick and the reader barely notice that there is a religious conflict in Olondria between a group that reveres people who can communicate with the dead-- whom they call angels-- and followers of the Stone who oppose "speaking with angels." After attending a festival that the followers of the Stone are trying to abolish, Jevick begins to be haunted by the spirit of Jissavet, a girl he met on the journey to Olondria. She had been traveling to a holy city hoping to be healed of kyitna, a terminal disease. After they parted, she died but her body was not cremated, so her spirit is trapped in the physical realm and she haunts Jevick.

The haunting is devastating and he is unable to hide what is happening to him. The followers of the Stone arrest him and try to cure him of what they consider a mental illness (which he wants to be cured of), while the followers of the goddess Avalei hope to use him as an oracle.

The followers of the Stone are unable to help him. After the priestess of Avalei promises to obtain Jissavet's body so he can cremate it and be free of the haunting, he agrees to communicate their questions to his "angel."

As the story progresses, Jevick quickly grows from a young bookworm into an adult human being with real feelings, an ability to enter into relationship, and an appreciation for life and love. His focus moves from books and art to people and relationships. I was surprised but grateful when Jevick cared more for a friend’s life than for his own desperate goal to free himself of the ghost haunting him. He learns that a book isn’t interchangeable with a person or a place. A book may be a kind of “external soul,” but people are more than the words in a book (and sadly, some people, like his brother, may be unreadable).

Jevick cared only for books and resisted a more personal interaction with the "angel." However, she demands that he write her life story. Eventually, he listens to her story and writes her anadnedet. During the many chapters detailing Jissavet's life, Jevick falls in love with her even though she was, and still is, selfish and unlovable.

Once free of the haunting, Jevick realizes the importance of people, but is distressed to learn that the followers of Avalei want to abolish books. He asserts that one should not have to choose between “cold parchment or living flesh.” He leaves Olondria.

When he returns to his friends and family on the island, "this glimpse of their new lives, so full of grace and generosity, affected me like the sight of a beautiful painting, like one of those dark and melancholy paintings of Olondria in which only a tiny corner is laden with light." He cannot fully participate in that life. He becomes a teacher of writing and storytelling, but he seeks something more than words.

I suspect that a significant part of the book’s message lies in the meeting between Jevick and his former tutor, Lunre, near the end of the story, but I'm not sure what that meaning is! Are letters he gives Lunre an anadnedet of Lunre's beloved? Are the two men embarrassed because Lunre had created a new and very different life for himself? Are they embarassed that Lunre didn't teach him that which is most important? They have each lost their native land, but Lunre has found a way to become part of his new community, while Jevick is somehow isolated even in his role of teacher. If you read the book, please let me know what you think of this chapter!

It’s interesting that the name of Jevick’s home, Tinimavet, contains the Hebrew word ‘mavet’ which means ‘death.’ The names of both his home and his angel contain the local word for "island." (Perhaps this is a reference to the saying, "No man is an island.")

Is this book about death or about learning to live in passionate and respectful relationship with others? Is it a metaphor for the a struggle between different world views, such as between the ba'alot ov and the Deuteronomists? What is the core message of this book? Please read it and tell me!

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I can't resist! Here are two quotes from the book. **Beware!** They are SPOILERS.

From page 265:
Those years, the years she lay in the doorway: every one of them hurts me, and every hour has an individual pain. Lost hours, irretrievable, hours that I would have taken up and treasured and which were scattered abroad in the mud. Hours in which she lay alone and deserted by her friends. But had I been one of her friends, had I eaten those stolen fish in the fields, had I been blessed, like them, with that inconceivable good fortune—nothing could have parted me from her. Not the kyitna, not that hair with the color of poisonous berries, which I would weave into ropes to bind me close to her side, not the hatred of all the world, not the danger of sickness, contamination, which I would have welcomed with tears of joy. Yes, I would have clasped that hair, that waist, and inhaled her frightened breath in the hope that the curse would swell to make room for me, that we might be together, safe, removed from everyone else in the honor and preference which death had shown for us. To be, like her, an aristocrat of death, who would bury us under his scarlet blossoms. To suffer, like her, from torrid fevers. To clutch her hand as I struggled for life, to hear her words of comfort gathering the transparent coolness beyond the stars.

From page 274:
Tears poured down my face. The flames were eating their way to the heart of the box. What was left there, Jissavet, my love. Your broken, delicate bones. Fragile fingers, ankles like cowrie shells. And a ball of hair, perhaps that ball of flame which burst up suddenly like a star, with a coarse, tragic, appalling odor. Other odors were there, despoiling the freshness of the day: something like resin, spices, a tainted revolting sweetness. I covered my eyes with my hands and sobbed, sitting on the ground, one hand pressed on that sad collection of volumes spotted with ink like blood. She’s going, I thought in panic. And she was. She lifted away from my heart, tearing it as she vaulted into the sky. Her foot snagged in my veins, ripping away, floating free. She was climbing that dark and trembling ladder of smoke. “Jissavet!” I cried. I snatched up the books and held them to my chest, unable to burn them now, gazing up at the sky. There, where the smoke was fading. Where the sky was the purest, most tranquil blue. Where she had gone alone, no jut to take her hand. Lighter than snow or ashes. Where she had entered at last the eternal door, leaving me inconsolable in the silence.

Midnight Transitions

These two quotes and the commentary that follows them come from Jill Hammer’s The Jewish Book of Days. They speak to me of being inspired to tell your story even when doing so is painful, when darkness and cold obscure the end of the tale.

In the twelfth year of our exile, on the fifth day of the tenth month, a fugitive came to me from Jerusalem and reported: “The city has fallen.” Now the hand of the Lord had come upon me the evening before the fugitive arrived, and the divine opened my mouth before he came to me in the morning… and I was no longer speechless. – Ezekiel 33:21-22

A harp hung above King David’s bed, and when midnight came, a north wind would blow upon the harp and it would play by itself. David would arise and study Torah until dawn. – Babylonian Talmud, berakhot 3b

On the 5th of Tevet, in the heart of winter, Ezekiel, a priest and prophet in exile, learns Jerusalem has fallen. The Babylonian Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 18b) regards the 5th of Tevet as a fast day. Yet in the dark night before the bad news arrives, Ezekiel receives a revelation. In the morning, he is able to speak.

The story is somewhat reminiscent of the tale of King David’s harp. The north wind, symbol of winter and mystery, comes at midnight, the darkest moment of the night, and plays a song for David. At an hour when most sleep, David rises to study. He too is not without words, in spite of the darkness around him. The harp brings him inspiration.

Winter is often a time of telling stories. Ezekiel, when faced with the most devastating event of his generation, responds by beginning to speak. David, in the darkness of night, finds words to express wisdom and song. Both tale-tellers teach us how to find words at this season.

The Fours

The fours of the minor arcana are some of my favorite cards in Joanna Powell Colbert’s Gaian Tarot. They feel like home, in the best sense of the word. Each of these cards shows a container, a safe, nourishing place in which you can grow and express yourself. The fours are earthy cards.

The Four of Air shows a robin’s nest holding four, blue eggs. The nest is a work of art, but it is also hidden. The eggs are safe from predators and the baby birds will be safe until they are strong enough to fly.

In the Four of Fire, four pillar candles and twelve smaller candles delineate a sacred space. Inside the circle, a woman performs a ritual. Abundance flows from the silvery sphere of the moon behind her shoulder—her circle cannot contain it all. She represents our desire to experience more, our desire to make our lives purposeful and meaningful. Can her sacred space become a doorway?

The Four of Water depicts the well at Glastonbury. A woman gazes into it, surrounded by a short, circular wall. This card is mysterious. What does the well contain?

The Four of Earth is a cornucopia. From the opening in a tree trunk, where a squirrel has stored acorns, the seeds of new life pour out extravagantly. In the foreground of the image, there is a blessing cairn, holding and expressing gratitude.

These cards also represent a pause in which we can experience the Force and Source of Life that is behind all that we know, a moment to feel the abundance available to us. Two colors predominate, one cool and one warm, representing the relationship between contemplation and action.

Related to the fours of the minor arcana is the fourth card of the major arcana, The Builder. He creates structures in which to live, places from which we can interact with the world. He represents responsibility and empowerment. What have you created with your life?

Another major arcana card is related to the fours; it is Death. We can embrace our fears and fly across the sparkling water or we can rot here with our decaying boat.

While we remain in our “containers,” we are constricted. A tree can only grow so large in a ten gallon, terra cotta pot. Sometimes, we need to step outside the boundaries we have crafted.

Is it time to build, to be nourished, or to fly? What is the state of the container that you’ve placed your life in?

The card I pulled to answer these questions for myself was the Ten of Fire. It is time to burn this container to the ground, let the smoke clear, and see what’s is out there.

Once you have built something—something that takes all your passion and will—it becomes more precious to you than your own happiness. You don’t realize that, while you are building it. That you are creating a martyrdom—something which, later, will make you suffer. (A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar)