The Invention Of Morel Paperback – 31 August 2003

After years of hunting for this all time classic finally a superb edition from NYRB Books. Prologue by the master, Jorge Luis Borges.

Finished it in one go but couldn’t make full sense of the ending. But it’s a science fiction book, give it a read if that genre appeals you.

A very strange novella, and one where in retrospect I think the reader actually benefits from having read spoilers as to what's going on, otherwise it all seems too weird and Kafka-esque for words for the first half. Our narrator, an unnamed Venezuelan, on the run from jail or death, has fled to an uninhabited island in the Ellice Archipelago.This is a strange and horrible island: there's a museum, chapel and swimming pool. There's awful and unpredictable tides, and unidentifiable machines in the basement. The narrator comments on how hard the trees are; how he thinks he can't see the skylight and has to go and check it's still there (later on you see where this was leading.) One day he finds a large group of people have arrived and taken over the museum, although he never saw a ship. In terror of discovery at first, he soon falls for gypsy-like Faustine.....The preface describes this as an adventure story, which you eventually find it is. It would undoubtedly be worth a second read, once you've understood the idea behind it.Quite a clever idea, but can't say I enjoyed it.

The habits of our lives make us presume that things will happen in a certain foreseeable way, that there will be a vague coherence in the world. Now reality appears to be changed, unreal. When a man awakens, or dies, he is slow to free himself from the terrors of the dream, from the worries and manias of life.Indeed it is in the world of virtual images that the author deals in this gem of a novella by the Argentinian Bioy Casares. The protagonists's world is one of explorations and dangers; in a world threatened by relentless pursuit and dangers, he ekes out a survival that is pathetic and dangerous in the extremes, and very Robinson Crusoe like. What is presented here is improbable in all the superabundance of images created by a scientist named Morel who had chosen that isle for its isolation and seclusion from humanity. What the narrator of the story witnesses in the deserted island in the form of intruders were just manifestations of Morel's ingenuous invention - The Invention of Morel. What he witnesses in the form of his lady love, Faustine, is but another image of her projected in a deserted world, and that is quite evident in the way she is unaware of her silent lover's presence or entreaties, even when he was close by. The romance was a strange one, where the persons were unacquainted of each other, and oblivious of each other's presence. Indeed it is a beautiful phantom that he addresses himself to when he confesses before Faustine.To be on an island inhabited by artificial ghosts was the most unbearable of nightmares; to be in love with one of those images was worse than being in love with a ghost (perhaps we always want the person we love to have the existence of a ghost).This one was a short but wonderful read with elements of suspense admixed with those of a sci-fi novel. This reminds me a lot about Edgar Allan Poe's story MS Found in a Bottle.Octavio Paz describes the core theme of the novella as: '......the body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privileged perception, the most complete and total perception not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows, we ourselves are shadows.'