Ship Of Fools
"A stranger. Ecks. Estranged. Expelled..." For reasons we come to assume are political, thirty-odd-year-old Ecks can never go back to his unnamed country. Traveling, learning new streets, leaving again, he is an exile. In numerous short chapters prefaced by dreams, biblical quotes, and dream-like descriptions of an ancient tapestry, Ecks' wanderings are filled with ingenious descriptions, places with no names, and eccentric characters who share his intense soul-searching interest about their place in a confused and polluted world. We first meet Ecks on a ship with Chinese lanterns that, when darkened, "hang like forgotten trophies, lonely witnesses, spent fireflies." A gentle man to whom women are drawn, Ecks knows that "the best way for a foreigner to get to know a city is to fall in love with one of its women, someone inclined to mother a man far from home and also appreciative of different pigmentation. She will trace him a path that does not figure on any map and instruct him in a language he will never forget." And Ecks, the perennial foreigner, finds delightfully unusual women to guide him in what is ultimately a series of semi-related stories about sex and power. Reading this unconventional novel is a bit like floating on an unknown sea: wonderful, beautiful, and filled with surprising possibilities.-- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. --From500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen