Customer Reviews

Kalimantaan

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This rich, reflective novel tells the story of a hard-headed Englishman's establishment of a private raj in Borneo.
Plot summary: In spite of antihero Gideon Barr's misplaced attention to detail, the kingdom survives attacks by pirates, headhunters, cholera and the weather, and even Barr's tragic marriage, only to finally be undone by revolution and misplaced trust.
Details of plot and place are wonderful here, but what really stands out is the characterization and the tensions of the many private and public relationships in this kingdom. More tension: the tropical environment consistently resists "civilization" or even comprehension from its European residents.
Kalimantaan doesn't put characters with modern sensibilities in front of a quaint backdrop; it's a "historical" novel only in the sense that it interrogates history and historiography.

great book. challenging, reminding me of when i was attempting to read my father's _tales of washington irving_ when i was in 2nd grade. at first, i was finding my feet, getting the jist of _kalimantaan_, and then i found myself immersed. piercing insight into flawed humans in relationships in a 19th c. exotic setting. very real characters, horrific death scenes (not written in order to make us squirm, fortunately--and originally), and exact portrayals of love in many, many forms. a broad, swashbuckling adventure story, and those involved are tragic, memorable, and deeply affecting in their humanity.

Before you begin reading this book, realize it isn't quite a novel; it's more a combination history and novel, but not in the usual "historical novel" sense. It briefly involves many real life characters, jumps from vignette to vignette about them, involves totally different groups of people over a large span of years, and confuses with frequent dangling pronouns which don't clearly refer to one person or another. The other reviewers obviously fall into 2 camps. I believe that the great divide between them is a matter of whether the reader could get over the hurdle presented by the book's basic inaccessibility.

Rather than 3 stars, I would have liked to give it 5 for beauty of imagery, especially for bringing this exotic locale to life, but one star for story. The book has been listed as a New York Notable etc.--several lists. I believe it received these kudos because it presents a new slant on how to present historical fiction, as described above. But characters aren't cohesive and don't come to life in a three-dimensional way. The joy of the read is all setting.

Finding any cohesive tale here is hard work--note that Amazon.com sells a "reader's guide" to Kalimantaan. I don't know what to make of the fact that such an obviously talented writer did not present a cohesive story. Just a failing when writing a first book? Self-conscious writing? Poor editing? I only know I was very eager to start this book, and am bitterly disappointed. To me, the book is the equivalent of a beautiful body without a skeleton.

This is the kind of story that I expected to get deliciously lost in, with its exotic locale and adventuresome characters, but Godshalk's style would not let me.

The story, of an English explorer, Gideon Barr, and his young wife in the mid-19th century who created his own empire in Borneo, is rich with the opportunity to let the reader feel transported to a far away time and place. But that never quite happens. The first 150 pages or so are extremely tough going, with dry accounts of Barr's successes and failures as he slowly establishes himself in this untamed world. Then, he sends for his young cousin, Amelia, or Melie, to become his bride. At this point, the story seemed to open up a bit, and I began to feel involved. But never completely.

There were many horribly sad circumstances, that didn't have the emotional impact on me they could have, if the author didn't keep me so distanced from them. There are interesting secondary characters, like Maureen Dolan, and Hogg, but they aren't well developed. I'm giving it three stars, because the bones are there for a really great story; I just wish there was a bit more meat on them.

Do you have to be interested in British colonialism in the Far East to enjoy this book?

Emphatically not. The establishment of a precarious enclave of Victorian civilisation in the jungles of Borneo is just the backdrop to CS Godshalk's tale of ordinarily-well-meaning-but-deficient human beings, with - in this case - most of the "ordinary" filleted out by the rigours of the place.

What is left is convincing, moving, rounded, tragic. The "hero" is Gideon Barr, accidental(?) founder of the British outpost at Kuching; the "heroine" Amelia (Melie), his teenage bride, growing to understand herself too late (?); the "villain" cholera, or the jungle, or chance.

The prose is a constant delight. Godshalk's delicacy of touch reminds me of Gide, her compassionate omniscience of Stendhal. Characters (European and "native") shimmer into view, completely described in their carriage or their hat, disappear for 200 pages and then reappear not as they were but suitably changed. It takes a bit of work to follow these creatures around, but - well - it's worth it (the same applies to Dostoevsky).

Is this what really happened in Borneo around 150 years ago? Of course not. No merely historical reconstruction could offer such depth. This is a novel, and a glorious one.

There is so much that is lovely and fascinating about this book, that it is especially sad that it fails to come together on so many levels. Others reviewers have, rightly in my view, criticized her cryptic style. She tends to use pronouns in the place of names so frequently that often it is difficult to know who did what to whom, and while her use of Dayak words can give a sense of place, the glossary in the back is so incomplete that it became a running joke for me to spot the occasional word that is defined. Characters drop into and out of the narrative with such amazing speed that recognizing their names when they die seems almost a triumph -- and they do tend to die. Godshalk spends almost all of her emotional capital by the end of the book.

While each of these elements contributes to one's overall frustration with the book, the larger problems emerge with the narrative. We view the story first from Gideon Barr's perspective until he marries and we take up his wife's view. Barr disappears, as a rounded character, in favour of the wife, who despite what seems like a great effort on Godshalk's part, never becomes one. She remains a largely passive figure, who's tribulations and mental anguish become the central focus of the book. Much of this reads like a bloated exercise for a creative writing class -- and often makes the book's four hundred pages seem interminably longer.

The fact that Godshalk puts fictional characters into a real time and place, usurping the fascinating people whose story is apt to be more interesting is itself problematic, but I couldn't help feeling for the great naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace who becomes, in Godshalk's hands, a sort of lovesick puppy.

This is a huge novel about a relatively unknown and exotic place, Borneo, in an exotic time (the English colonial period of the 1830's.) Gideon Barr sets out for Borneo frankly and openly to carve an empire, as men in the East India Company did. Barr is brutal and effective in quelling pirate attacks on the coast. In exchange for ridding the coast of a nuisance, he demands that he be set up with a land holding and names himself Rajah. The Rajah sails back to England and pragmatically chooses for himself a Rani, Amelia, daughter of a cousin. Amelia is not attractive, but possesses the useful characteristics of strength, health and a no-nonsense attitude that Barr knows will help her survive the almost impossible conditions of heat, disease and other disasters.

The opening of the novel focuses on Barr and his obsession to please his dead mother, who actually cared nothing for her son and abandoned him early in life. Barr spends his adulthood creating a fantasy-saint and making a living offering of his achievements to lay on her altar. Thus his drive to build an empire, complete with the trappings of royalty.

The focus then switches to Amelia, his young bride. She survives the terrible conditions in Borneo, where fabrics and paper rot from the humidity and heat, where the top of walls in the houses must have a gap open to rain and wind lest the moisture fester inside the rooms. Disasters such as cholera epidemics, savage attacks are common. Children die of diseases; they become viewed as necessary casualities, replaceable parts. The servants are not be trusted; Amelia makes a particularly perceptive observation that the Chinese staff is not eating the food they prepare. They would never turn down good food; what are they putting in it--poison? There is also the enigmatic figure of Barr's native mistress, a local sorceress. What is her role in the goings-on?

The scope of this novel is large, but it has some of the theme of Heart of Darkness, where a man can hide and become a king, though at a perilous price. It is loosely based on Conrad's other tropical novel Lord Jim, hence the similarity. It's a fine, adventurous read. Although not really all that similar to it, if you liked the Poisonwood Bible, this book would probably appeal to you as well.

I'm not sure why I found this book so fascinating, except that it allowed me to enter a world that I might never have known. I didn't like the main character, Barr, or many of the others, except the children, always the children, but that wasn't the point. The juxtaposition of good and evil is beautifully realized as we are slammed from one to the other, feeling the steaming tropical land, seething, forever changing. The author has somehow captured the essence of the duality of man and his prideful attemts to conquer the unconquerable. There were times I wasn't even sure who was speaking, but it didn't matter. Like Barr's European wife, I just followed her lead and drifted through this amazing world. It is a wonderful gift when a writer can offer such a feast to her readers.

Like an earlier reader, I stayed up all night to finish this book. I was transported to a dirty, difficult life in Borneo with death, disease and danger always lurking in the menacing darkness.

But, also like earlier reviewers, I found it difficult to keep track of the story: who "he" or "she" was, what the many native terms meant. There is a sketchy family tree and an abreviated glossary, but neither is adequate.

That said, reading the book with a eye to tracking only Amelia and Gideon's stories is not too hard. Leave the other characters as colorful background, interesting but indistinguishable.

I picked this up again after putting it down 6 months ago--imagine my shock at not even recalling much of the 50+ pages I had already read. True, the story is lush and somewhat enrapturing in its description and setting. But I find it impossible to know Barr, much less give a hoot about his philosophies, actions and life. And, if this is a "woman's story" as I have read in several reviews, after 110 pages, no 3-dimentional woman character has yet surfaced. I wonder why an editor did not help Godshalk eliminate some of her dozens of extraneous characters and terms. This book is, in a word, frustrating.