Seven Types of Ambiguity

Elliot Perlman
(Picador) $35.00 PB

"Is it mad to love in spite of the evidence... or just necessary?"

When a question of this magnitude is made a sole memorandum in generous-sized blue type on the back cover of a hefty, black book boasting 607 pages of dense text... it is surely not unreasonable that one could make the assumption that the answer may lie somewhere within? Having made my way through the 607 pages of very dense text, I may now suggest it is not unreasonable to consider oneself silly if one dreamt that something so prosaic as an answer may come from a book titled, Seven Types of Ambiguity.

The book I refer to is the latest to come from Melbournian author, Elliot Perlman. The title draws from a critical text of the same name by William Empson, first published in 1947. Mr Empson's study discusses the use of ambiguity in poetry, his main contention apparently being that the proportion of ambiguity in a work relates quantitatively to the beauty of the work. At the risk of making a second false assumption, one might put forth that this is dependent on the controlled use of ambiguity, and the particular type. Ambiguity half-full suggests a multiplicity of meanings, charming double-entendres and liberal room for subjectivity. Ambiguity half-empty results in confusion, a lack of points of reference and obscurity of reason.

It is more this latter kind of ambiguity that sees the characters in Mr Perlman's novel crashing into and against each other. Seven parts of the book allow seven different characters to unfurl a very tight, carefully plotted tale. Each is remarkably articulate in describing the same events that they all play a fumbling part in. The ambiguity exists in their incongruous interpretations, and the fine lines between right and wrong, love and obsession. The novel is crafted to lay out these discrepancies side by side, and carefully guides you to a point where almost all of the threads, even the slimmest ones, have been knotted.

This kind of care and cleverness means there is really not much ambiguity for the reader. Mr Perlman has gone to great lengths to put together an intricate, credible, and intelligent network of thoughts. He uses his characters and his plot to broach a plethora of human emotions and broader social issues with able theories and substantial objections. He has certainly not used ambiguity as an excuse to furnish an unfinished novel. There is copious research evident in the construction of a small set of characters, diverse in both their professional and private realms, and in their capacity to control the world about them.

Mr Perlman inhabits these minds with varied success. Not surprisingly, he is best as a man more competent at his work than at home, and worst as any kind of female. For the most part, he himself is quite plain in all of them. For all the legitimacy of the words, their application is laborious. Of one character another judges,

"There was somehow all the time a certain heaviness attaching to (him)".

This could equally be applied to the book. Four times I broke long sittings of silence with a smirk. I was surprised each time. The extent of measure in the book often sadly precludes instinctive insight, flippant wit or subtle insinuation. I reached points where the details tugged so at the progress of the story it felt mad to persist. The didactic and dogmatic nature of the dialogue keeps the reader at arm's length, when really one should be so drawn into these characters, for they are so familiar.

Surely the most striking ambiguity of all is the type known as humanity. So complex are our likenesses and differences, we are capable of playing out the same stories but with infinite variation: the futility and monotony of the day-to-day; the same small actions which kill us but keep us alive; the shades of love that move and pervert us. We live these stories, we read them, we relish them, we know them inside out, yet when we question them rarely do we get any answers. I closed the last page of Mr Perlman's novel and turned again to the back cover. A more pertinent question might be about madness itself. The success of Seven Types of Ambiguity is in conveying the masks that humanity wears and the madness equated with taking them off. Like seven layers of skin, ambiguity protects us, but perhaps also allows the madness to perpetuate. Is it mad to exist in a world where what is most true is often most buried? Is it mad to persist in spite of the evidence?

Review by Leah Muddle