Dreadful Nonsense

Another flattering review, this time from one of the Sunday broadsheets. After waiting for months for the book to come to the attention of the wider world, I am now hoping that the hype will end soon. Eoin can no longer cope, and is now living in the shed at the bottom of my garden, having reached breaking point when he found a journalist hiding underneath his bed, hoping to hear some of the poetry he is rumoured to recite in his sleep. I myself am coping well enough, keeping busy waking badgers from hibernation and training them to do my bidding. The New York Times is expected to print a review in tomorrow's paper, which should be quite interesting. Only time will tell whether The Inadvertent Twin will test the patience of the US art world, which is notoriously childish.

Reviews
Changing the Face of Children's Literature
The Inadvertent Twin" by Eoin and Sharon

In the aftermath of 9/11, no medium is free from the demand for a response. Children's literature has been slow to address the darkening horizons of modernity, characteristically cowering in the shadows of tired franchises and empty fantasies. It's hardly surprising that the answer, when it comes, comes from such a dark and sinister corner.

Discredited children's writer Sharon has ended her 2-year silence to give us The Inadvertent Twin. There was an unforgettable outcry surrounding her last publication - which was removed from shelves just hours after its release upon the discovery that fragments of fibre glass had been inserted by the author (and unbeknownst to reputable publishers Scholastic) in order that children would appreciate the sensations of eponymous heroine The Girl With A Skin Complaint. Her next work would be strikingly challenged to placate those still baying for her blood, while keeping on side the few fans who maintain that her genius is simply misunderstood.

Sharon's choice of collaborator is quite devastating - a youthful ex-everythingoholic from Dublin, Eoin has in fact produced nothing of worth in his short artistic career, although the rumour some years ago that he had secreted scandalous photos of certain artistic luminaries in some of his more banal pieces, saw his entire locus being bought up in a frenzy that astonished the art world in the heady months of June and July 2001. What can we expect from such a curious team? Darkness certainly, bleakness even. A willingness to engage with the taboo, since both have fallen irrevocably into the mire of the unacceptable, and surely society is unwilling to ever accept them back within its inner circle. Cultural literacy, and indeed indifference have also characterised the previous work of both collaborators. And of course, one would expect the pages to seethe with the reported sexual tension of the two writers.

Readers will be surprised by what greets them. Ostensibly a mild fairy story with a trace of knowing sarcasm, The Inadvertent Twin almost entirely fails to shock. This rather, is a likeable and warm piece about an elf caught in a quest to discover her name. This reviewer was surprised to find herself won over by the guileless charms of the little elf and her beloved cat, and the warm cynicism of the elf's romantic ideals. But this is a book that breathes insidiously in the reader's mind long after the back cover is folded over. The elf's quest for her identity is doomed from the start, because in our new world order, identity is the ultimate double-edged sword. It facilitates our self-realisation, all the while tightening the noose of inevitable mutual-obliteration about our ethnically-defined necks. The forest of the tale bubbles with tension between scarcely-sketched characters, each failing to understand its own purpose or motivation. The book is peopled by confused ciphers, uttering 20th century wisdoms that are hollow and misunderstood. There is no agency in this story, only blind adherence to an inevitable narrative that nobody (least of all the reader) can perceive. The tragic downfall of our postmodern heroine will devastate children, but is this really a children's book?

The great triumph of The Inadvertent Twin is in its layout. 20 pages of exquisitely designed text are followed by 20 pages of illustration, also a collaboration between Sharon and Eoin. No necessary connection is made between the two, and in the gap between what we imagine while reading the story, and what we see afterwards, exists the tale's real power. The illustrations are brutal, dark and terrifying. The medium is not confirmed anywhere on the publication (certainly not on the review copy anyway), but I would be very surprised if that maroon was achieved without the use of human blood. As to the vicious evil of the cat's face (a pastiche of the faces of Osama Bin Laden and Pope John Paul); the superimposed blind eyes in the faces of all the figures, and the background pastiche of a forest in which the trees are composed of famine victims... This book won't sell, of course it won't. It won't accomplish any success on the Christmas market. But it is art. Oh yes, it is unquestionably art.

Carol Ballantine is professor emeritus of linguistic determinism post-End Of Humanity in the William Walters University of North Cavan. She writes for TV and radio, and has a regular column with this publication.

This entry was posted on 01 December 2002 at 3:00 pm. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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