Tuesday 28 February 2012

baby no-eyes: The prologue.

 (note to self: do not google search baby no-eyes. D-':)

"My mother the frog could've haemorrhaged, and I could've... 'Go Mum. Led's ged ouda hia,' I said. Lap lap lap, lappity lap."

What. No. I am not enjoying this prologue. To be fair though, I am in a cynical mood.

The writing itself is great, near perfect actually. Abundant in adjectives and all that jazzy stuff without going too overboard and drowning you in details. The use of onomatopoeia (if that's what it's even supposed to be) however is driving me bonkers. Lap lap lap, lap lap lap, lap. Lap. Lap. Lappity lap.
Yes, okay, I get it!

I'm also not a big fan of slang, but that's more of a personal preference. "Ouda spaze". "Come on Mum, geddus ouda hia". ... Kind of irritates me.

Though, it does become apparent that it's actually a fetus speaking to us from the womb, so here's hoping it overcomes it's little pronunciation issue...

Yeah, at first I thought it was a little weird that the author chose to narrate from an unborn baby's perspective, but now that I'm typing this, it's sort of grown on me. It's unique and wasn't uninteresting, so although I'm tempted to set fire to the book every time a read the word 'lap' or 'karm', I'm going to suppress those urges and soldier on through.

I'm not yet sure if I should be sharing all the bobby bits of the book or if I'm meant to elude the plot, but seeing as I've only read the prologue... Meh.

So, Te Paania (Paani, Paani Girl) is the unborn child's mother. She's left the father in the middle of the night and traversed to a new city, where her family lives.
What's weird about this is that the poor guy didn't do anything wrong. "You might think she was running away from beatings or other forms of cruelty. You could think she'd been treated in some deliberately unloving way. 'I was bored,' she said, 'and lonely, and children need a great chance in life - need a family, stories and languages. Someone to give them a name...' Never underestimate a mundane life, lady. Never.

Yip.

Questions I have:
*Fetus keeps talking about 'someone else'. Is there a twin?
*Is Fetus (Yes it's name is Fetus now) lacking eyes?
*Paani's family seemed to have expected her arrival, but much earlier than the present time of the story (This isn't a question, but it intrigues me nonetheless).

2 comments:

  1. You are a perfect Human being. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like the way you are developing your ideas through reflection. Great deep thinking!

    ReplyDelete