Ponte city

I read "Ponte city" last night (in one sitting!).

Have any of you read it yet? We can share our comments on this particular blog.

His writing style reminds me of Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene and Ingeborg Bachmann put together. I found his irregular (yet experimental) narrative style very interesting but I found his characters to be banal and uninviting. I personally thought that the first half of the book is much more interesting than the other. Lucy almost disappears in the second half of the book and the focus sets on Kraner (pity as I found lucy to be much more three dimensional than Kraner). I loved the way he drove his story and the gritty noir surroundings. As I said earlier, his narrative and surroundings are much more well rehearsed than his characters. I see Meville's films have had an important influence on him as his noir narrative always used to simultaneously focus on two or more protagonists.

But why the title 'City of Gold' (in German) or why 'Ponte city'? I thought the title 'Tower of Babel' suits it better. By the way, the book is very badly translated (some sentences have been literally translated from German!) with grammatical errors (unless they were intentional).

But what kept my interest in the book? The experimental narrative. It kept me on the edge of my seat as to where the author would lead us to now. I wish I could've read his earlier books before so I might have accurately reviewed this book. But I have to admit, Norman can now look back at his three published novels and say 'atleast i've achieved something'. What's he planning next....... another fiction? On Pakistan? And can he get his other two novels translated?