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The Chameleon
John is infinite.
He can become any book, any combination of words — every thought, act and expression that has ever been, or ever will be, written. Now 800 years old, John wants to tell his story.
Looking back over his life, from its beginnings with a medieval anchoress to his current lodgings beside the deathbed of a cold war spy, John pieces together his tale: the love that held him together and, in particular, the reasons for a murder that took place in Moscow fifty years earlier, and that set in train a shattering series of events.
Samuel Fisher’s debut, The Chameleon is a love story about books like no other, weaving texts and lives in a family tale that leads the reader into an extraordinary historical journey, a journey of words as much as of places, and a gripping romance.
He can become any book, any combination of words — every thought, act and expression that has ever been, or ever will be, written. Now 800 years old, John wants to tell his story.
Looking back over his life, from its beginnings with a medieval anchoress to his current lodgings beside the deathbed of a cold war spy, John pieces together his tale: the love that held him together and, in particular, the reasons for a murder that took place in Moscow fifty years earlier, and that set in train a shattering series of events.
Samuel Fisher’s debut, The Chameleon is a love story about books like no other, weaving texts and lives in a family tale that leads the reader into an extraordinary historical journey, a journey of words as much as of places, and a gripping romance.
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
June 14, 2018
-A review copy was sent to me from Disclaimer Magazine in association with Salt Publishing. The original review was posted here.
The Review:
This is a book about books that is narrated by a book. Now isn’t that a sentence to chew over? Let me explain.
“My name is John, and I am this book.”
Drawing upon themes Virginia Woolf so eloquently presented in her experimental novel Orlando, Samuel Fisher tells the life story of a book that has existed for centuries. Like the character Orlando, John the book does not grow old and die but instead continues to exist as the ages pass.
Nevertheless, he does change a bit like the title suggests. Chameleons adapt to their environment; they shift colours to best fit their surroundings. His letters are rearranged and his sentences are reconstructed as another story is told through his pages; yet, he remains the same only more suited to his present situation: he changes his appearance to meet the needs of his audience.
John can become any infinite variety of words and letters; he can become any book that has ever been written or will be written, and he can even formulate his own original books. His true power resides with his timing though. He can transform into the right book at exactly the right time. Indeed, the literature he becomes is exactly what the people he belongs to need to read at any given moment. It could be a novel about shifting genders and immortality (like Orlando) or it could be an epic poem about filial grief or simply a guide to help navigate a new country or city. The point is, John the book has you covered without you ever even realising it.
“My flesh itself can change. I can be bound (quarter, case, saddle stitch, side stitch) or unbound; I can be paper and card, I can be vellum (calf, sheep, goat, human), I can be staples, glue, tread or plastic. And with all these changes my flesh speaks to you. These changes I make are to draw you to me, that you might pick me up and take me somewhere new.”
In such a thing I saw a celebration of reading and literature. Not enough people are reading today. They spend too much time on their smartphones and in front of their television sets: they are disconnected from the power of books and the power of words. The problem is increasing as technology continues to advance. Books have the power to change lives, as Samuel Fisher shows us here; reading the right book at the right moment can be very, very, powerful and can move us in a new direction. John the book is not entirely altruistic, though the potentness of books is established regardless of his motives.
Moreover, those that do read do not always do so respectfully. Well, at least, according to John. I suppose he would know best. Readers fold pages instead of using bookmarks (The horror! The horror!) and they eat whist they read leaving crumbs forever wedged between pages (blasphemy.) Books do not like this. They hate it. They like to remain undamaged and to be stored indoors where they cannot become scuffed and torn by constant travel or tarnished by food, stains and the ever shifting weather. Hearing these principles, principles any avid reader ought to hold, from the perspective of a book was rather amusing. It is such a witty device and bespeaks the intelligence and thought that has gone into the writing.
Reading is fantastic and keeping books clean is absolutely the right things to do, though not all books are good. Some are bad. Some lie. And some tell us things we never want to learn. However, books are written to be read; it is up to us to do in a way that shows appreciation for the art of writing. John, and all books in general, provides humanity with an infinite variety of stories and universes. We should experience them whilst we can.
“There is a book for every possible combination of letter- every possible sequence of words. Every thought, act and expression has already been described. It means that the universe was spent before it began. It makes the passage of time redundant.”
In turn, humanity provides John with stories that inspire him to create new worlds. He can become anything, though he can never fully emulate real life. He can present a story, though he can only watch the real thing. You might call such a thing a curse, the curse of being a chameleon.
Samuel Fisher’s debut novel will not disappoint the literati, and its chatty informal tone will make it feel accessible to all readers. The Chameleon is playful and witty; it is a book that presents an argument as to why books are so vitally important, and if you want to hear the case please purchase it here.
The Review:
This is a book about books that is narrated by a book. Now isn’t that a sentence to chew over? Let me explain.
“My name is John, and I am this book.”
Drawing upon themes Virginia Woolf so eloquently presented in her experimental novel Orlando, Samuel Fisher tells the life story of a book that has existed for centuries. Like the character Orlando, John the book does not grow old and die but instead continues to exist as the ages pass.
Nevertheless, he does change a bit like the title suggests. Chameleons adapt to their environment; they shift colours to best fit their surroundings. His letters are rearranged and his sentences are reconstructed as another story is told through his pages; yet, he remains the same only more suited to his present situation: he changes his appearance to meet the needs of his audience.
John can become any infinite variety of words and letters; he can become any book that has ever been written or will be written, and he can even formulate his own original books. His true power resides with his timing though. He can transform into the right book at exactly the right time. Indeed, the literature he becomes is exactly what the people he belongs to need to read at any given moment. It could be a novel about shifting genders and immortality (like Orlando) or it could be an epic poem about filial grief or simply a guide to help navigate a new country or city. The point is, John the book has you covered without you ever even realising it.
“My flesh itself can change. I can be bound (quarter, case, saddle stitch, side stitch) or unbound; I can be paper and card, I can be vellum (calf, sheep, goat, human), I can be staples, glue, tread or plastic. And with all these changes my flesh speaks to you. These changes I make are to draw you to me, that you might pick me up and take me somewhere new.”
In such a thing I saw a celebration of reading and literature. Not enough people are reading today. They spend too much time on their smartphones and in front of their television sets: they are disconnected from the power of books and the power of words. The problem is increasing as technology continues to advance. Books have the power to change lives, as Samuel Fisher shows us here; reading the right book at the right moment can be very, very, powerful and can move us in a new direction. John the book is not entirely altruistic, though the potentness of books is established regardless of his motives.
Moreover, those that do read do not always do so respectfully. Well, at least, according to John. I suppose he would know best. Readers fold pages instead of using bookmarks (The horror! The horror!) and they eat whist they read leaving crumbs forever wedged between pages (blasphemy.) Books do not like this. They hate it. They like to remain undamaged and to be stored indoors where they cannot become scuffed and torn by constant travel or tarnished by food, stains and the ever shifting weather. Hearing these principles, principles any avid reader ought to hold, from the perspective of a book was rather amusing. It is such a witty device and bespeaks the intelligence and thought that has gone into the writing.
Reading is fantastic and keeping books clean is absolutely the right things to do, though not all books are good. Some are bad. Some lie. And some tell us things we never want to learn. However, books are written to be read; it is up to us to do in a way that shows appreciation for the art of writing. John, and all books in general, provides humanity with an infinite variety of stories and universes. We should experience them whilst we can.
“There is a book for every possible combination of letter- every possible sequence of words. Every thought, act and expression has already been described. It means that the universe was spent before it began. It makes the passage of time redundant.”
In turn, humanity provides John with stories that inspire him to create new worlds. He can become anything, though he can never fully emulate real life. He can present a story, though he can only watch the real thing. You might call such a thing a curse, the curse of being a chameleon.
Samuel Fisher’s debut novel will not disappoint the literati, and its chatty informal tone will make it feel accessible to all readers. The Chameleon is playful and witty; it is a book that presents an argument as to why books are so vitally important, and if you want to hear the case please purchase it here.
April 2, 2019
Now longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
A book written by the bookseller of an innovative independent bookshop (Burley Fisher Books) who was the judge in the first year of Britain's finest book prize- the Republic of Consciousness Prize (which rewards small publishers for taking risks in literature); it has a front cover recommendation from Eley Williams– winner of the second year of that prize for her wonderful short story collection Attrib. and other stories
Not surprisingly therefore this is an experimental book which simultaneously celebrates literature.
It is published by the brilliant Norfolk based publisher Salt and like all their books came with a handwritten postcard (in this case a vintage postcard of their seaside home town of Cromer, including its famous pier) and with a small packet of salt. I bought this (and another book) as part of their #JustOneBook campaign - a campaign which both showcased the precariousness of the small literary presses in the UK and the sense of community among them - with other presses, book bloggers and reviewers all tweeting and re-tweeting the campaign with spectacular results.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/salt-...
One of the common conceits of the modern novel as an artform is the omniscient, third party narrator – the central conceit of this novel is to simultaneously embrace and reinterpret this convention.
The narrator in this novel is the novel itself – John, an 800 year old self-aware book capable of reinventing itself as any book, a skill he uses like a chameleon to work his way through human society, and a book which boasts as past owners Alexander Bell and Rothschild but which for the last 50 years has been owned by Roger – a Russian based British Spy now dying, causing John to for almost the first time to write itself as a new (rather than already published) book – the novel we hold in our hands.
There are a number of lovely musings on the physical nature of books from a book’s viewpoint - the impact of heat, cold, licked fingers and toast crumbs; and on their wider role in spycraft (as a source for ciphers, as something to pretend to read when waiting for a rendezvous).
There are also many clever literary references in the books or stories whose form John adopts or considers:
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (clearly a precursor to and inspiration for this book),
Dorothy Richards “Pointed Roofs” (when acting as a cipher – and which is the first book to use the “stream of consciousness technique)
Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (when John has a poignantly described romance with another self-ware book, able to communicate only by book title)
Borges short story the Library of Babel which first awakes in John the possibility of invention and implants in him the need to find someone whose story he can tell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroph...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lib...
But on a simple reading this book could be criticised for straying from its central concept and conceit – and being to a large extent made up of two conventional tropes: a Cold War spy story and a multi-generational family story.
Both however are I think crucial to the book and are metaphors for something deeper:
- The real spy story in the book is not Roger’s activities in Moscow but instead The Book’s (literally – in every sense of the word) undercover activities in the human world – trying to understand but also interpret what it means to be human: a role that encapsulates what all great literature seeks to help us achieve
- The real multi-generational family story is that between readers, books and their authors
Highly recommended to all lovers of innovative literature from any generation.
A book written by the bookseller of an innovative independent bookshop (Burley Fisher Books) who was the judge in the first year of Britain's finest book prize- the Republic of Consciousness Prize (which rewards small publishers for taking risks in literature); it has a front cover recommendation from Eley Williams– winner of the second year of that prize for her wonderful short story collection Attrib. and other stories
Not surprisingly therefore this is an experimental book which simultaneously celebrates literature.
It is published by the brilliant Norfolk based publisher Salt and like all their books came with a handwritten postcard (in this case a vintage postcard of their seaside home town of Cromer, including its famous pier) and with a small packet of salt. I bought this (and another book) as part of their #JustOneBook campaign - a campaign which both showcased the precariousness of the small literary presses in the UK and the sense of community among them - with other presses, book bloggers and reviewers all tweeting and re-tweeting the campaign with spectacular results.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/salt-...
One of the common conceits of the modern novel as an artform is the omniscient, third party narrator – the central conceit of this novel is to simultaneously embrace and reinterpret this convention.
The narrator in this novel is the novel itself – John, an 800 year old self-aware book capable of reinventing itself as any book, a skill he uses like a chameleon to work his way through human society, and a book which boasts as past owners Alexander Bell and Rothschild but which for the last 50 years has been owned by Roger – a Russian based British Spy now dying, causing John to for almost the first time to write itself as a new (rather than already published) book – the novel we hold in our hands.
There are a number of lovely musings on the physical nature of books from a book’s viewpoint - the impact of heat, cold, licked fingers and toast crumbs; and on their wider role in spycraft (as a source for ciphers, as something to pretend to read when waiting for a rendezvous).
There are also many clever literary references in the books or stories whose form John adopts or considers:
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (clearly a precursor to and inspiration for this book),
Dorothy Richards “Pointed Roofs” (when acting as a cipher – and which is the first book to use the “stream of consciousness technique)
Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (when John has a poignantly described romance with another self-ware book, able to communicate only by book title)
Borges short story the Library of Babel which first awakes in John the possibility of invention and implants in him the need to find someone whose story he can tell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroph...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointed...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lib...
But on a simple reading this book could be criticised for straying from its central concept and conceit – and being to a large extent made up of two conventional tropes: a Cold War spy story and a multi-generational family story.
Both however are I think crucial to the book and are metaphors for something deeper:
- The real spy story in the book is not Roger’s activities in Moscow but instead The Book’s (literally – in every sense of the word) undercover activities in the human world – trying to understand but also interpret what it means to be human: a role that encapsulates what all great literature seeks to help us achieve
- The real multi-generational family story is that between readers, books and their authors
Highly recommended to all lovers of innovative literature from any generation.
May 12, 2018
My name is John, and I am this book.
Samuel Fisher is a bookseller: co-owner of Burley Fisher Books; was a judge in 2017 of the UK's finest literary prize: The Republic of Consciousness Prize; has co-founded a small independent press: Peninsula Press, who first books will include one on translation from the MBI-winning Deborah Smith; and this, his debut novel, comes with a recommendation from the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winning Eley Williams. Oh, and it is narrated by a self-aware book, the book indeed we are reading.
So I was predisposed to like it, and I am pleased to report it didn't disappoint.
Our narrator John is, indeed, a book, 800 years old (starting life, or at least consciousness, as a medieval manuscript) but able to transmute ('I might not be able to move but I can change') into whatever book he wants, for example, one of his standard fallbacks:
It’s one of those books that doesn’t seem to exist until it’s needed, until those moments of original fear when faith - unborn and subliminal - rises to the surface. The accumulated legacy of faith - that’s the comfort it brings. It’s a book that has presided over weddings and funerals, baptisms and confirmations. It connects the dots between Ruth and her antecedents and the moments they themselves groped for the eternal. It’s freighted with their joy and their terror.
I should know. I’ve spent more time as a family Bible than anyone.
Although able to see, hear, taste and smell, he is unable to move or to talk, but he has is way of drawing in readers, and is also particularly fascinated by human companionship having only once, and briefly, encounter another such book. As he watches two people fall in love to the strains of a Lizst concerto:
The frantic chromatics were apt because courtship has always been hard for me to follow. It has its own language, written onto and out of the body, of blood rising to the skin, to spell out that thing which words leave to evaporate in cliche’s runnels: the body’s ancient intention, expressed as if for the first time. The language of intimacy has no words, yet desire still makes itself understood. Or so i must infer, from the results. My skin does not allow me to join the conversation.
...
My skin cannot blush. I have no throat from which to sigh.
But I have one weapon more powerful than either: my scent. The sweet perfume of vanilla and almond that greets you when you lift an old book from the shelf, a smell that triggers a powerful sense of nostalgia that you cannot place.
...
There are other smells that I can produce, in my deliberate attempts to lure curious fingers towards my covers. I can produce the solvent tang of ink and glue that recalls cracking the spine of a new paperback. I can emanate the toasted aroma of warm photocopies. I keep up with the changing times. But the floral musk of vanilla and almonds remains the most reliable: the bouquet of rot and decay occasioned by the slow degradation of my pages.
Fisher has some fun with his concept, imagining life as a book, for example:I hate toast, I really do. the crumbs get caught between your pages and then slip down to your gatherings. Like a stone in your shoe., although John he is a fan of annotators.
In a brief novel, Fisher covers a lot of ground. In his non-linear narrative John explains how we came to self-awareness, and how his world operates (changing form in order to tempt humans to pick him or to discard him as suits his purpose) and also reflecting on some of his past owners, including Nathan Rothschild and Graham Alexander Bell.
This is, unsurprisingly, a book soaked in literature and echoes, and both direct and free quotation of other novels. One of John's explicit inspirations is Virginia Woolf's equally long-lived and chameleon Orlando:
She is a character I can sympathise with. As time gallops forward, Orlando canters behind; while those around her are born, live, grow old and die, she passes them by. And always, under her doublet or shirt or bodice or corset or blouse - whatever the fashion of the day, or her gender that day, calls for - she carries a manuscript.
Another is Borges's The Library of Babel, which to John feels like an autobiography written by a future version of myself.
The Borges comparison does invite a slightly unfair comparison from the reader. Borges and Kafka were able to take a brilliant concept - a library that contained all books, an author who rewrites Don Quixote in his own but identical version, a man who wakes up as an insect, a machine that carves the violated law into the condemned prisoner's skin - and turn them into brilliant and canonical short stories.
It is rather unfair to expect anyone else to be in their league, and Fisher, having developed the wonderful concept of a self-aware book, doesn't entirely see it through.
But instead he takes the novel in a different, and equally compelling direction, as John; lying by his current, elderly, owner Roger's death-bed, in Roger's mother's old house and accompanied by Roger's daughter and grand-daughter, narrates Roger's life story, a story framed by two deaths, one in Soviet Russia (in a scene borrowed explicitly from Frances Spufford's brilliant Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream) and the other of Roger himself.
Roger was a cold-war British spy, his sourcebook for encrypting messages, appropriately enough, Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson, known as the first novel to be described, in a review, as “stream of consciousness” [although Richardson herself disliked the term, opining that “amongst the company of useful labels devised to meet the exigencies of literary criticism it stands alone, isolated by its perfect imbecility.”] John the book accompanies Roger on his missions to Moscow by changing into Pointed Roofs.
While at times the link to John's story seems a little tangential (sometimes it is as if Fisher has to remember that it's a book talking and justify John's knowledge of events - e.g. by having John change into Pointed Roofs so he can accompany Roger to Moscow) it is a beautifully drawn, eloquently written and touching story of both cold-war spycraft, but, more importantly, of love across 4 generations of a family.
Recommended.
Samuel Fisher is a bookseller: co-owner of Burley Fisher Books; was a judge in 2017 of the UK's finest literary prize: The Republic of Consciousness Prize; has co-founded a small independent press: Peninsula Press, who first books will include one on translation from the MBI-winning Deborah Smith; and this, his debut novel, comes with a recommendation from the 2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winning Eley Williams. Oh, and it is narrated by a self-aware book, the book indeed we are reading.
So I was predisposed to like it, and I am pleased to report it didn't disappoint.
Our narrator John is, indeed, a book, 800 years old (starting life, or at least consciousness, as a medieval manuscript) but able to transmute ('I might not be able to move but I can change') into whatever book he wants, for example, one of his standard fallbacks:
It’s one of those books that doesn’t seem to exist until it’s needed, until those moments of original fear when faith - unborn and subliminal - rises to the surface. The accumulated legacy of faith - that’s the comfort it brings. It’s a book that has presided over weddings and funerals, baptisms and confirmations. It connects the dots between Ruth and her antecedents and the moments they themselves groped for the eternal. It’s freighted with their joy and their terror.
I should know. I’ve spent more time as a family Bible than anyone.
Although able to see, hear, taste and smell, he is unable to move or to talk, but he has is way of drawing in readers, and is also particularly fascinated by human companionship having only once, and briefly, encounter another such book. As he watches two people fall in love to the strains of a Lizst concerto:
The frantic chromatics were apt because courtship has always been hard for me to follow. It has its own language, written onto and out of the body, of blood rising to the skin, to spell out that thing which words leave to evaporate in cliche’s runnels: the body’s ancient intention, expressed as if for the first time. The language of intimacy has no words, yet desire still makes itself understood. Or so i must infer, from the results. My skin does not allow me to join the conversation.
...
My skin cannot blush. I have no throat from which to sigh.
But I have one weapon more powerful than either: my scent. The sweet perfume of vanilla and almond that greets you when you lift an old book from the shelf, a smell that triggers a powerful sense of nostalgia that you cannot place.
...
There are other smells that I can produce, in my deliberate attempts to lure curious fingers towards my covers. I can produce the solvent tang of ink and glue that recalls cracking the spine of a new paperback. I can emanate the toasted aroma of warm photocopies. I keep up with the changing times. But the floral musk of vanilla and almonds remains the most reliable: the bouquet of rot and decay occasioned by the slow degradation of my pages.
Fisher has some fun with his concept, imagining life as a book, for example:I hate toast, I really do. the crumbs get caught between your pages and then slip down to your gatherings. Like a stone in your shoe., although John he is a fan of annotators.
In a brief novel, Fisher covers a lot of ground. In his non-linear narrative John explains how we came to self-awareness, and how his world operates (changing form in order to tempt humans to pick him or to discard him as suits his purpose) and also reflecting on some of his past owners, including Nathan Rothschild and Graham Alexander Bell.
This is, unsurprisingly, a book soaked in literature and echoes, and both direct and free quotation of other novels. One of John's explicit inspirations is Virginia Woolf's equally long-lived and chameleon Orlando:
She is a character I can sympathise with. As time gallops forward, Orlando canters behind; while those around her are born, live, grow old and die, she passes them by. And always, under her doublet or shirt or bodice or corset or blouse - whatever the fashion of the day, or her gender that day, calls for - she carries a manuscript.
Another is Borges's The Library of Babel, which to John feels like an autobiography written by a future version of myself.
The Borges comparison does invite a slightly unfair comparison from the reader. Borges and Kafka were able to take a brilliant concept - a library that contained all books, an author who rewrites Don Quixote in his own but identical version, a man who wakes up as an insect, a machine that carves the violated law into the condemned prisoner's skin - and turn them into brilliant and canonical short stories.
It is rather unfair to expect anyone else to be in their league, and Fisher, having developed the wonderful concept of a self-aware book, doesn't entirely see it through.
But instead he takes the novel in a different, and equally compelling direction, as John; lying by his current, elderly, owner Roger's death-bed, in Roger's mother's old house and accompanied by Roger's daughter and grand-daughter, narrates Roger's life story, a story framed by two deaths, one in Soviet Russia (in a scene borrowed explicitly from Frances Spufford's brilliant Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties' Soviet Dream) and the other of Roger himself.
Roger was a cold-war British spy, his sourcebook for encrypting messages, appropriately enough, Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson, known as the first novel to be described, in a review, as “stream of consciousness” [although Richardson herself disliked the term, opining that “amongst the company of useful labels devised to meet the exigencies of literary criticism it stands alone, isolated by its perfect imbecility.”] John the book accompanies Roger on his missions to Moscow by changing into Pointed Roofs.
While at times the link to John's story seems a little tangential (sometimes it is as if Fisher has to remember that it's a book talking and justify John's knowledge of events - e.g. by having John change into Pointed Roofs so he can accompany Roger to Moscow) it is a beautifully drawn, eloquently written and touching story of both cold-war spycraft, but, more importantly, of love across 4 generations of a family.
Recommended.
May 12, 2018
There is a lot of curious trivia here but the end result is so all-over-the-place it is hard to see what sort of reader will be completely satisfied.
A novel with a narrator who is an 800-year-old transmutable book seems like a set up for a voyage through an almost millennium-length view of history. Instead the story mostly centres on the late 20th century life and Cold-War career of a British spy named Roger and occasionally his wife Margery as viewed by "John" the book.
It is especially tempting to interpret the use of a detail from the painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" from the school of Pieter Bruegel the Elder as a metaphor for the novel. In the painting, a ploughman (shown in the book cover detail) is the main character in the foreground and the actual drowning of Icarus from falling into the sea is a small detail in the background (not even shown on the book cover). Roger's mostly mundane life is thus in the foreground of the novel and the imagined epic life of "John" the book is mostly left in the background.
There are some intriguing snapshots of "John's" history such as when it has an encounter with another example of its species. That seems to set up the possibility of a non-bibliographic interpretation with the idea of an alien species at the forefront. That idea is never explored though.
There is an odd digression with an almost blow by blow description of an historic chess match as played by Thomas Bowdler (yes, the one who published the censored Shakespeare) vs. Henry Seymour Conway as replayed by Roger with one of his Russian contacts. The historic game itself can be viewed here.
All of it is a curiosity that likely won't completely satisfy fans of epic historical fiction, spy fiction, science fiction, or of chess games but will at least intrigue each of them to some degree.
A novel with a narrator who is an 800-year-old transmutable book seems like a set up for a voyage through an almost millennium-length view of history. Instead the story mostly centres on the late 20th century life and Cold-War career of a British spy named Roger and occasionally his wife Margery as viewed by "John" the book.
It is especially tempting to interpret the use of a detail from the painting "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" from the school of Pieter Bruegel the Elder as a metaphor for the novel. In the painting, a ploughman (shown in the book cover detail) is the main character in the foreground and the actual drowning of Icarus from falling into the sea is a small detail in the background (not even shown on the book cover). Roger's mostly mundane life is thus in the foreground of the novel and the imagined epic life of "John" the book is mostly left in the background.
There are some intriguing snapshots of "John's" history such as when it has an encounter with another example of its species. That seems to set up the possibility of a non-bibliographic interpretation with the idea of an alien species at the forefront. That idea is never explored though.
There is an odd digression with an almost blow by blow description of an historic chess match as played by Thomas Bowdler (yes, the one who published the censored Shakespeare) vs. Henry Seymour Conway as replayed by Roger with one of his Russian contacts. The historic game itself can be viewed here.
All of it is a curiosity that likely won't completely satisfy fans of epic historical fiction, spy fiction, science fiction, or of chess games but will at least intrigue each of them to some degree.
May 28, 2018
A challenging premise, but one that soon blossoms into a moving tale of family, loss, and love, with some cold war espionage and chess thrown in for good measure. A refreshingly original novel.
May 1, 2018
Maybe wears its influences a little heavily on its sleeve but is otherwise very fine indeed.
July 10, 2018
This book has one hell of a conceit, and anything that weird, I'm (a) interested, and (b) skeptical. He pulls it off. Through careul, thoughtful writing, surprising developments of the idea, and a thread of meaning running through it, the whole thing comes off as incredibly ungimmicky, and in fact humane and full of depth. Great stuff.
July 19, 2018
The plot of this novel is mainly a suitably convoluted cold war spy story. What makes it worth reading is the narration by a sentient, mutating book, the interesting and often humorous snippets from its earlier incarnations and the quality of the writing.
December 15, 2019
3.75/5
January 26, 2023
It’s common for readers to be obsessed with a book. But have you ever seen a book become obsessed with a human? That is John, and he is this book.
I honestly don’t know how to properly put my thoughts about the book into words, but I know that I love everything about it! The story is told from the perspective of the soul of a book, John, as we time travel with him to show his life spent with other humans and why and how he is utterly in love with Roger, the current owner, and his story.
John is unlike other books that we see and read. He is literally a chameleon; he adapts to his environment as he changes from cover to cover. And he doesn’t only simply change his skin; he would change and restructure the words and sentences to capture the reader’s attention. Basically, he is the book that a reader would desperately need at that moment of time.
I love everything about John. He can be serious, witty, and very dramatic. Especially his dramatics in being extremely envious of other words written by Roger. Yes, he was jealous of Roger’s memoir diary that he wrote! And his terrible memory, as well as being sidetracked because, as he captures your mind by beginning a story from the past, he becomes sidetracked and begins another. I was so frustrated. But I promise everything will tie together in the end.
I do think that his forgetful memory is mirrored by Roger, as he is old and on his death bed (not a spoiler, it’s in the synopsis). So as I kept reading, I kind of realize and speculated that John might be old and also dying? It’s really interesting to me because in the end, you’ll get to know what John was desiring all along, which was never to be bound and to be other books telling other people’s stories. It was something that he wanted and that most humans desire to be preserved. Also, the part about how he came into existence was super interesting too!
The main thing that had bamboozled me was actually the cover, which is part of a painting called The Landscape and the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel. It’s as if John was already telling me before I began reading that his stories are fragmented, or that I will only see one part of the whole picture because there are certain important parts of his story that he could not remember or failed to mention in the beginning because of his old mind. "You can punish yourself for inaction; I can only fault my inattention." Am I making sense with this? I have no idea, but that’s just how I felt.
The writing in this book was phenomenal to me; it has a lot of depth and layers, great use of metaphors and analogies, and it makes you stop and think, going back to the previous pages to see what other hidden things I have missed to fully understand the whole book. It was definitely a great book to start off the year for me.
I honestly don’t know how to properly put my thoughts about the book into words, but I know that I love everything about it! The story is told from the perspective of the soul of a book, John, as we time travel with him to show his life spent with other humans and why and how he is utterly in love with Roger, the current owner, and his story.
John is unlike other books that we see and read. He is literally a chameleon; he adapts to his environment as he changes from cover to cover. And he doesn’t only simply change his skin; he would change and restructure the words and sentences to capture the reader’s attention. Basically, he is the book that a reader would desperately need at that moment of time.
I love everything about John. He can be serious, witty, and very dramatic. Especially his dramatics in being extremely envious of other words written by Roger. Yes, he was jealous of Roger’s memoir diary that he wrote! And his terrible memory, as well as being sidetracked because, as he captures your mind by beginning a story from the past, he becomes sidetracked and begins another. I was so frustrated. But I promise everything will tie together in the end.
I do think that his forgetful memory is mirrored by Roger, as he is old and on his death bed (not a spoiler, it’s in the synopsis). So as I kept reading, I kind of realize and speculated that John might be old and also dying? It’s really interesting to me because in the end, you’ll get to know what John was desiring all along, which was never to be bound and to be other books telling other people’s stories. It was something that he wanted and that most humans desire to be preserved. Also, the part about how he came into existence was super interesting too!
The main thing that had bamboozled me was actually the cover, which is part of a painting called The Landscape and the Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel. It’s as if John was already telling me before I began reading that his stories are fragmented, or that I will only see one part of the whole picture because there are certain important parts of his story that he could not remember or failed to mention in the beginning because of his old mind. "You can punish yourself for inaction; I can only fault my inattention." Am I making sense with this? I have no idea, but that’s just how I felt.
The writing in this book was phenomenal to me; it has a lot of depth and layers, great use of metaphors and analogies, and it makes you stop and think, going back to the previous pages to see what other hidden things I have missed to fully understand the whole book. It was definitely a great book to start off the year for me.
November 30, 2018
True originality is a rare thing for us humans. To come up with an idea that is unlike anything anyone else has thought. Of course you can never know if anyone else has had an idea previous to you. However, I think Samuel Fisher comes pretty close to something extraordinary and unique with The Chameleon. It is not like anything I have read before, which is ironic since the book also contains every book that has or will be written. I was so fascinated I had to give this book my first five star-review on this blog!
Our protagonist is the sentient written word. He can take the form of any written word; vellum manuscript, erotica, hardback classics, a shopping list, he can manifest as whatever form of writing he chooses. But although he can deliberately become any form of literature, he is not very mobile and depends on others for manifestation. That being said his existence is not ubiquitous; he needs a person to pick him up on the bus, to put him on their bookshelves or sell him in a bookstore. Through his numerous owners he observes human life, and he has been doing this for 800 years now. He has been the sole companion of an anchoress and late night reading material of Nathan Rothschild. Time and place is a bit blurry for our book; he is simultaneously everywhere and ‘everywhen’. And so the plot of the book is not told in a chronological order. Which makes perfect sense, story-telling is after all eternal. I can, hand on my hart, say that I have never encountered a point of view character like this previously.
When we meet the protagonist he has spent the last 60 years in the possession of Roger. Although our book has belong to a number of extraordinary persons over the years it is the moderately intelligent and pretty unassuming Roger that has become his great love. We first meet Roger on his death bed as an old man, but the book also presents us to Roger as a horny teenager, a cold-war spy and as a husband and parent. The book’s love for Roger is a rather sad affair – Roger never notices him, and so our book’s love can never be returned. But his affection for this ordinary man is so great that he has decided tell Roger’s life story, even though writing, in stead of being writing, seems a heinous action to our protagonist. (read full review here)
Our protagonist is the sentient written word. He can take the form of any written word; vellum manuscript, erotica, hardback classics, a shopping list, he can manifest as whatever form of writing he chooses. But although he can deliberately become any form of literature, he is not very mobile and depends on others for manifestation. That being said his existence is not ubiquitous; he needs a person to pick him up on the bus, to put him on their bookshelves or sell him in a bookstore. Through his numerous owners he observes human life, and he has been doing this for 800 years now. He has been the sole companion of an anchoress and late night reading material of Nathan Rothschild. Time and place is a bit blurry for our book; he is simultaneously everywhere and ‘everywhen’. And so the plot of the book is not told in a chronological order. Which makes perfect sense, story-telling is after all eternal. I can, hand on my hart, say that I have never encountered a point of view character like this previously.
When we meet the protagonist he has spent the last 60 years in the possession of Roger. Although our book has belong to a number of extraordinary persons over the years it is the moderately intelligent and pretty unassuming Roger that has become his great love. We first meet Roger on his death bed as an old man, but the book also presents us to Roger as a horny teenager, a cold-war spy and as a husband and parent. The book’s love for Roger is a rather sad affair – Roger never notices him, and so our book’s love can never be returned. But his affection for this ordinary man is so great that he has decided tell Roger’s life story, even though writing, in stead of being writing, seems a heinous action to our protagonist. (read full review here)
August 4, 2020
At first you think this book is going to be fundamentally a gimmick: an amusing or distracting gimmick, but a gimmick all the same. After all how else can you take a book that is literally written/ told by a book itself? And a shape changing near immortal book at that
But... by god it’s so much more. Fisher finds a way to use an omniscient narrator but also find a way to make that narrator’s very being an integral part of the story. There’s a chapter where two of the main characters play chess, using moves that the book has seen many years before. The chapter thus becomes an exploration of game playing whilst also playing a game in and of itself. It’s an extraordinary bit of writing, managing to be both erudite and deeply moving
And the book also manages to be a love story and a book about memory and loss and time and betrayal AND a spy thriller but somehow deftly manages to structure all these so delicately into a highly moving tale of one book’s love and loyalty towards two of the many people who have owned him. It’s also a book about books and ideas and storytelling but never overwhelms you with a sense Fisher is showing off
What it most reminds me is of Jonathan Coe before The Rotters Club and especially Maxwell Simm put me off him for a bit. That delirious sense of BS Johnson invention and cleverness tied with emotion that made What A Carve Up! and The House of Sleep so powerful. It’s clever and erudite and breaks rules but is still a deeply powerful and emotional novel when you strip all that away. I honestly feel like I’ve discovered a small masterpiece. Hugely recommended
But... by god it’s so much more. Fisher finds a way to use an omniscient narrator but also find a way to make that narrator’s very being an integral part of the story. There’s a chapter where two of the main characters play chess, using moves that the book has seen many years before. The chapter thus becomes an exploration of game playing whilst also playing a game in and of itself. It’s an extraordinary bit of writing, managing to be both erudite and deeply moving
And the book also manages to be a love story and a book about memory and loss and time and betrayal AND a spy thriller but somehow deftly manages to structure all these so delicately into a highly moving tale of one book’s love and loyalty towards two of the many people who have owned him. It’s also a book about books and ideas and storytelling but never overwhelms you with a sense Fisher is showing off
What it most reminds me is of Jonathan Coe before The Rotters Club and especially Maxwell Simm put me off him for a bit. That delirious sense of BS Johnson invention and cleverness tied with emotion that made What A Carve Up! and The House of Sleep so powerful. It’s clever and erudite and breaks rules but is still a deeply powerful and emotional novel when you strip all that away. I honestly feel like I’ve discovered a small masterpiece. Hugely recommended
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 14, 2022
This is Book 13 of my 20 Books of Summer 2022
Imagine if your books could talk! What they could say about us as they observe us from their bookshelves! And in this story that's exactly what happens! 'John' is 800 years old and has a story to tell - no strange thing as he's a book, watching over as time and history happen in front of him. And he's a very funny narrator and I loved his humour and quips as he recounts various stories, mainly based around Roger who he is currently with. Roger has had a stroke so John is telling his story for him, watching what is going on and interpreting stories that Roger has forgotten as his mind fails him.
It was such a fresh feeling to this story, to have this really interesting perspective. The places and things a 'book' witnesses over the years, the situations he finds himself in - he's even been buried! - and it was a unique reading experience as he recounts the experiences of Roger and how his family evolved from meeting Margery to fatherhood.
It's often emotional and a really compelling story and one I thoroughly enjoyed - I just hope my books don't get the idea to share their stories about me with the world!!
Imagine if your books could talk! What they could say about us as they observe us from their bookshelves! And in this story that's exactly what happens! 'John' is 800 years old and has a story to tell - no strange thing as he's a book, watching over as time and history happen in front of him. And he's a very funny narrator and I loved his humour and quips as he recounts various stories, mainly based around Roger who he is currently with. Roger has had a stroke so John is telling his story for him, watching what is going on and interpreting stories that Roger has forgotten as his mind fails him.
It was such a fresh feeling to this story, to have this really interesting perspective. The places and things a 'book' witnesses over the years, the situations he finds himself in - he's even been buried! - and it was a unique reading experience as he recounts the experiences of Roger and how his family evolved from meeting Margery to fatherhood.
It's often emotional and a really compelling story and one I thoroughly enjoyed - I just hope my books don't get the idea to share their stories about me with the world!!
July 8, 2018
John is an 800-year-old consciousness of many books. He changes book form as is necessitated by his travels through time, aka 'the chameleon.' John speaks of his awakening and time spent with human companions through history, gathering what experiences he can on what it means to be human.
In conjunction with the story of John the book consciousness, John delivers the extended story of his latest human companion, Roger, beginning with the present day from Roger's deathbed in his family home, surrounded by his daughter, Ruth, and granddaughter, Jessica, and reflecting back on Roger's life from his pre-second war childhood to his university Russian studies, his marriage to Margery, his Secret Intelligence Service work in Moscow and Irkutsk in the 1950s, the birth of his and Margery's daughter, and the ups and downs of his family and career as a Cold War spy living apart from his family.
A moving and unique perspective story about a family and time.
In conjunction with the story of John the book consciousness, John delivers the extended story of his latest human companion, Roger, beginning with the present day from Roger's deathbed in his family home, surrounded by his daughter, Ruth, and granddaughter, Jessica, and reflecting back on Roger's life from his pre-second war childhood to his university Russian studies, his marriage to Margery, his Secret Intelligence Service work in Moscow and Irkutsk in the 1950s, the birth of his and Margery's daughter, and the ups and downs of his family and career as a Cold War spy living apart from his family.
A moving and unique perspective story about a family and time.
January 15, 2021
Solid narration by the narrator now, more plain, more simple, but poetic and existentially striving, so perhaps not so solid. Anxiety in an empty house. The, by turns, immanent and imminent death of one Reader as Roger, death as an elephant in the room.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.
September 19, 2024
This was unexpected from start to finish. It kind of appeared out of nowhere, in a way similar to how the narrator materialises into the lives we learn about.
Make sure nobody interrupts your last session so the magic will envelop you as it should!
Make sure nobody interrupts your last session so the magic will envelop you as it should!
July 21, 2019
John is any book he wants to be, that's how he's lived for the last 800 years. Interesting narrative 💗
August 2, 2019
Love the concept, and of course the author's love of books! An alternative, but enjoyable read
March 31, 2020
Have you ever read a novel narrated by a book? Yes...a book! But this is no ordinary book. This is John. He has been “in existence” for hundreds of years and has seen the world change dramatically as it moves from one owner to the next. As a book, John collects stories that have already been written, or going to be written, and which he can wear, like an item of clothing, to express himself.
When one day he finds himself in the care of a new owner - Roger - he becomes intertwined in Roger’s life as a spy and love his love for Margery. In Roger’s last remaining last remaining days, John takes on an important task of documenting his life with Roger by writing his memoir of sorts.
The novel explores the very essence of life and the way in which books can be used to solidify stories using the written word so that they live on forever. How they can be used to add enrichment to our lives and used as a vessel to inform and document, but also how no two people are the same. How, just like John’s need to constantly adapt to meet his owners requirements, our own reading preferences are individual.
This is a very unique perspective to take when writing a novel and definitely indicates the authors love of books with the constant literature references documented throughout.
My only slight critique would be that on occasion, the narrative wasn’t completely cohesive. At times it jumped through time to memories of previous owners and periods that didn’t quite fit with the main narrative. But as a debut author, there is so much potential here and Fisher is certainly one author to be highly praised.
When one day he finds himself in the care of a new owner - Roger - he becomes intertwined in Roger’s life as a spy and love his love for Margery. In Roger’s last remaining last remaining days, John takes on an important task of documenting his life with Roger by writing his memoir of sorts.
The novel explores the very essence of life and the way in which books can be used to solidify stories using the written word so that they live on forever. How they can be used to add enrichment to our lives and used as a vessel to inform and document, but also how no two people are the same. How, just like John’s need to constantly adapt to meet his owners requirements, our own reading preferences are individual.
This is a very unique perspective to take when writing a novel and definitely indicates the authors love of books with the constant literature references documented throughout.
My only slight critique would be that on occasion, the narrative wasn’t completely cohesive. At times it jumped through time to memories of previous owners and periods that didn’t quite fit with the main narrative. But as a debut author, there is so much potential here and Fisher is certainly one author to be highly praised.
July 13, 2021
3.5, really wanted to finish it and very original and interesting idea
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