| june - july 2007 Issue 12 |
All work copyright the
respective owner.
Nothing may be
reproduced without
consent.
respective owner.
Nothing may be
reproduced without
consent.
BOOK REVIEW
A Thousand and One Nights by Lara Tupper
by Anne Cammon
Set in the fitful, impermanent, yet eerily consistent environs of cruise ship bars and hotel
lounges, Lara Tupper’s debut novel, A Thousand and One Nights tells the story of Karla
and Jack, a girlfriend/boyfriend performing duo who take their generic brand of popular
songs – one may dub it “Karaoke Pro” – to the Caribbean Islands, then to the Middle and
Far East. Like Scheherazade recounting her thousand Arabian nights with a kind of
psychological hindsight, Tupper’s heroine takes a long, hard look at the fictions she has
created to survive.
A Thousand and One Nights by Lara Tupper
by Anne Cammon
Set in the fitful, impermanent, yet eerily consistent environs of cruise ship bars and hotel
lounges, Lara Tupper’s debut novel, A Thousand and One Nights tells the story of Karla
and Jack, a girlfriend/boyfriend performing duo who take their generic brand of popular
songs – one may dub it “Karaoke Pro” – to the Caribbean Islands, then to the Middle and
Far East. Like Scheherazade recounting her thousand Arabian nights with a kind of
psychological hindsight, Tupper’s heroine takes a long, hard look at the fictions she has
created to survive.
The book opens as Karla embarks on her adventure in the overseas entertainment industry. She meets Jack on her
first cruise and, after a brief romance, agrees to pair up with him as a duo – despite her own doubts. However, Jack
and Karla’s too-easy pact to join together is quickly fraught with minor deceptions as the couple’s talent for concealing
their emotions onstage backfires in their relationship.
“And just like that, it was sucked away from Karla – the sun and the geckos and that neat pizza place in Oranjestad –
and there they were, moving on to something unknown. On the plane, Jack slept and Karla was glad, though she kept
holding his hand. She wondered if, away from loud and animated people, they’d have less to say. But a
complimentary Baileys on ice arrived, and this thought was postponed.”
A subtle but powerful shift takes place as Karla incrementally explores her environment in Shanghai – where the
couple eventually lands a 9-month gig – and by extension, her reason for being there. She visits museums, takes
Mandarin, and befriends a series of teenage girls whose lackadaisical perspective on life is on par with her own.
While there is something decidedly hollow in these exchanges, they demonstrate how lonely and escapist her life with
Jack has become.
Eventually, she wades into the murky waters of her relationship with Jack, and the quiet, halting rhythm of truth and
postponement, that will define the major arc of the story, begins. In this second half of the novel, both her attempts to
escape and her moments of introspection reveal not only the truth about her relationship with Jack, but also, ultimately,
what it is she dreads so much about her life at home.
While Tupper’s novel does not fit neatly into any particular literary lineage, one may see a line of continuity from A
Thousand and One Nights to Lost in Translation. Evocative in its relationship to pop, it depicts the current international
configuration that places an arbitrary value on Western culture abroad with stinging insight and a twist of nostalgia.
Those familiar with "Candle In the Wind," or "My Heart Will Go On", and who remember the big news of the times when
those songs became popular – the death of Princess Diana and the release of the film Titanic – may feel moved, at
times, to request a song.
Tupper’s language is almost tonal in its simple, unfettered communication of her characters’ conditions and in her
portrayal of their limits as human beings. Each shade of feeling or prick of insight is presented, bare and unashamed;
the reader is free to observe them with the sense that the information is unfiltered, colored only by the most delicate
emotions of the narrator. In A Thousand and One Nights, Tupper presents a steady and detailed observation of a
woman struggling to confront her own illusions. Readers can buy A Thousand and One Nights, published by Harcourt,
2007, for USD $13 or CAD $16.95.
Anne Cammon runs a radio show at WKCR FM NY in New York.
first cruise and, after a brief romance, agrees to pair up with him as a duo – despite her own doubts. However, Jack
and Karla’s too-easy pact to join together is quickly fraught with minor deceptions as the couple’s talent for concealing
their emotions onstage backfires in their relationship.
“And just like that, it was sucked away from Karla – the sun and the geckos and that neat pizza place in Oranjestad –
and there they were, moving on to something unknown. On the plane, Jack slept and Karla was glad, though she kept
holding his hand. She wondered if, away from loud and animated people, they’d have less to say. But a
complimentary Baileys on ice arrived, and this thought was postponed.”
A subtle but powerful shift takes place as Karla incrementally explores her environment in Shanghai – where the
couple eventually lands a 9-month gig – and by extension, her reason for being there. She visits museums, takes
Mandarin, and befriends a series of teenage girls whose lackadaisical perspective on life is on par with her own.
While there is something decidedly hollow in these exchanges, they demonstrate how lonely and escapist her life with
Jack has become.
Eventually, she wades into the murky waters of her relationship with Jack, and the quiet, halting rhythm of truth and
postponement, that will define the major arc of the story, begins. In this second half of the novel, both her attempts to
escape and her moments of introspection reveal not only the truth about her relationship with Jack, but also, ultimately,
what it is she dreads so much about her life at home.
While Tupper’s novel does not fit neatly into any particular literary lineage, one may see a line of continuity from A
Thousand and One Nights to Lost in Translation. Evocative in its relationship to pop, it depicts the current international
configuration that places an arbitrary value on Western culture abroad with stinging insight and a twist of nostalgia.
Those familiar with "Candle In the Wind," or "My Heart Will Go On", and who remember the big news of the times when
those songs became popular – the death of Princess Diana and the release of the film Titanic – may feel moved, at
times, to request a song.
Tupper’s language is almost tonal in its simple, unfettered communication of her characters’ conditions and in her
portrayal of their limits as human beings. Each shade of feeling or prick of insight is presented, bare and unashamed;
the reader is free to observe them with the sense that the information is unfiltered, colored only by the most delicate
emotions of the narrator. In A Thousand and One Nights, Tupper presents a steady and detailed observation of a
woman struggling to confront her own illusions. Readers can buy A Thousand and One Nights, published by Harcourt,
2007, for USD $13 or CAD $16.95.
Anne Cammon runs a radio show at WKCR FM NY in New York.