I recall reading an interview with Yann Martel several years ago (which I can’t find online now) where he expressed that he didn’t care if anybody read his books. At the time, I remember feeling annoyed. What privilege to have books published and not care if anybody else reads them! But that interview came back to mind as I read Son of Nobody and this time I thought, how creative he gets to be when he lets go of the expectations of readers.
I actually started listening to Son of Nobody in audio version but quickly realized this was a book that would work better for me on the page. I listened to the introduction and then a library copy came available and I quickly switched. Son of Nobody is a fictional annotation of a fictional work of Ancient Greek poetry. As such, the book is presented with the Greek poetry – known as The Psoad – on the top of the page, accompanied by the main character’s annotations at the bottom of the page. If you’ve ever taken a university literature class, you’ve probably read something in a similar style though you’ll find these footnotes very different.
The Psoad doesn’t exist. Harlow Donne is a scholar of Greek history and epic poetry, a graduate student. When he is given the opportunity to study for a year under an eminent professor at Oxford University, he takes it, even though it means leaving his wife and young daughter, Helen, back in Canada. While at Oxford, Donne comes across what he believes to be a lost epic poem depicting the Trojan War, this time from the perspective of the common soldiers of Ancient Greece, particularly one named Psoas, called the son of nobody.
On the top of the page we are presented with Donne’s translation of this discovered work. On the bottom half are his annotations – some providing context, some comparing to the better known works which depict the Trojan War. Other annotations tell us the personal story of Harlow Donne, how he came to be at Oxford and what happened to his family while he was there. There is often a lot of blank space. The story, as a whole, is light on plot. Not a lot happens to Donne though what he does experience is certainly compelling and there’s a sense of impending doom that kept me reading to find out if he would be okay.
Similarly, the Psoad isn’t exactly a poem driven by a dramatic plot. Most readers will probably be familiar with at least the outline of events surrounding the Trojan War. The interest lies in figuring out the role of this particular nobody. Why focus on him? What will he do? Will he survive?
These two stories, set thousands of years apart, dovetail nicely as Donne’s annotations begin to show us the type of man he is. And underneath this double-layered story is the growing understanding that the character of Donne controls this entire narrative. He’s the one who has discovered the story of Psoas, who has translated it, who has pieced it together. By the end I felt like I was reading a puzzle, like I was trying to put together some lost artifact, enjoying the complexity of the layered stories that Martel has created here. It’s an unconventional approach to a novel but it worked for me and I found myself admiring the guts of a writer who isn’t worrying so much about what the reader might think.
Karissa Reads Books 
Interesting! Martel never seems to write the same thing twice. Have you read Nabokov’s Pale Fire? Very similar situation with the footnotes becoming more and more clearly the place where the real story is occurring… whatever “real” might turn out to mean.