Self

"Pedantic"

"<i>Self</i> has good characterization and fluid writing, but nothing to hold it all together. The descriptions are vibrant but not thought-provoking. I enjoyed the use of the novel as a format to adumbrate imaginary stories and novels (those "written" by the narrator) which would never work as actual books, a technique also found in Slaughterhouse Five and the stories of Jorge Luis Borges. In <i>Self</i>, Martel uses various experimental postmodernistic techniques (such as starting Chapter Two on the last page, splitting the internal monologues into two columns in two voices, and segmenting the narrative into lists and plays) seemingly without any reason behind their use. Including several blank pages at the end of the book comes across paradoxically as being simultaneously unorthodox and clichéd, unorthodox because I've never seen another book do it (aside from one or two blank pages needed to bind the book properly), clichéd because it's just the physical representation of the overused concept that future life is like the blank pages of a book. The book as a whole has no sense of cohesion or purpose, no soul."