It is during one of these forays that he has his fateful encounter with Chevalier Calleja, one of those lovable, if slightly eccentric, characters that haunt the reading room. As is to be expected, every time Thorne is on one of his frequent visits to Malta, he makes his way to the National Library in Valletta. The narrator remarks that, very likely, it was his enthusiasm which he passed on to her when she was still a child that started her on her career. Once discharged from the Navy, he becomes a librarian at the University of London where he honed the skills that make a sleuth out of every librarian worth his salt. Besides being a man of action, Thorne has "a love for the world of learning", specializing in Spanish and Hispanic studies. This training was later to stand him in good stead. During the war, he is recalled to England and carries out a number of mysterious intelligence missions.
He comes across as an affable, decent man of considerable charm. When we first meet Zachary Thorne in 1938, he is a young naval officer from London. Back in 1938, the Englishman and her father, who owned a small bazaar in St Julian's where the family lived, struck up a friendship which was to last for decades as it widened out to include both men's families. The dream sets the tone the tale takes off immediately after Linda, the narrator, and now a middle-aged librarian, tells us how Zachary Thorne had crept into her life several years before she was born. And at the end of it all, is the exit where one eventually ends up - the only way out or are there others? Moreover, as successive dead ends are encountered and discarded, one is presented with alternatives routes which, however, lead to the same place. Once inside a maze, it becomes very hard to conceptualize the overall layout. The labyrinth is a favourite symbol with Jorge Luis Borges who makes a relatively short, but important, appearance in the story. Finally, as he staggers out, he brushes by a stranger and then picks up a notebook, a manuscript, written in a language which he cannot make out, even if it seems familiar. His disorientation is made worse by the descending fog. Zachary Thorne, the book's protagonist, finds himself trapped inside a maze. Better known for her poetry ( Kessidra: Versi taż-Żmien Maħrub) and short stories ( Happenstance: Tales of Circumstance), this time round Lillian has written a novel which is still suffused with elements that permeate her previous writings: how our lives are marked by circumstances which at first glance appear to have come about through pure chance the walls of memory within which we are destined, some would say condemned, to live and the poignancy that fleeting time adds to our lives.
Shadows in Penumbra is Lillian Sciberras' latest publication.
0 kommentar(er)
