novels in verse / review by Lisbeth Coiman
It started when I finished reading Couplets this year. I thought back to The Cyclist, which I’d read so long ago. I had never talked to anyone who’d read it, and yet it sits on shelf where I keep the books I want within eyesight, that I can see when I look up from writing.
I asked the internet: Does anyone want to write a book review looking at novels in verse? Because I would like to read that. Especially one that looks at The Cyclist. Lisbeth Coiman took on the task.
If you’re interested in writing [nonstandard] book reviews, read to the end to find out how to publish yours in Mommy’s El Camino.—Wendy
Psychological Complexity Tantalizing the Senses
The Cyclist by Viken Berberian. Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Couplets: A Love Story by Maggie Millner. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023.
by Lisbeth Coiman
As complex as it is exquisite, The Cyclist, by Viken Berberian, is a feast for the senses. Placed in a fictional Beirut, The Cyclist offers a culinary tour of the Middle East while exploring the mind of a terrorist in training. In The Cyclist, the wannabe terrorist meditates on his life and death decisions, while training for the Attorneys, a political organization, whose sole dogma seems to be exponential revenge. “Six eyes for an eye, a dozen hands for a hand.”
The Cyclist is a novel in verse. As such, it is written in a hybrid form that looks and behaves like narrative punctuated by the elements of poetry. The writer must be completely informed about what it takes to write long form fiction and at the same time be fluent in poetry. Poetry doesn’t have to be vertical, but writing prose using funky syntax doesn’t make it poetry either.
The first novel in verse I read was Concierto Barroco (Siglo Veintiuno, 1974) by Alejo Carpentier, the acclaimed Cuban author, forever Novel Prize contender, and musicologist who influenced the Latin American boom in the 60s. This novella—long form fiction of less than 120 pages—is based on the actual meeting of Vivaldi, Handel, and Scarlatii, in a sort of keyboard competition organized by Handel, which eventually inspired the Vivaldi’s Opera Motezuma. Concierto Barroco begins when Amo (Spanish word for enslaver in colonial times) is packing for a voyage from Cuba to Europe. On the first page, as in a Baroque concert, the readers meet the elements of music and repetition that will captivate them throughout this little-known jewel of Latin American literature. “…de plata los platos pescaderos con su pargo de plata…” This alliteration of /p/ and /pla/ in the word plata (silver) eventually sounds like percussion, giving the first two pages of the story the rhythm of Afro-Caribbean drums in words.
What Concieto Barroco does with music, The Cyclist accomplishes with culinary imagery that will tantalize the reader throughout this beautifully written novel. The narrator has suffered some sort of accident. From his hospital bed, he reflects
“…the butcher who sent me into my torpid sleep sliced a section of my gray matter like a knife-wielding chef about to serve a cold-cut platter...My mouth smells like fermented lentil stew. My portly built has turned pita thin...fed intravenously…sweet and sour faces… unappetizing day…”
The juxtaposition of food and human body, and of corpses later in the story, reveal deep psycho-social problems. These first two pages instruct us to read with the senses. To feel is to understand.
In contrast with Concierto Barroco and The Cyclist, the simplicity of the form in Couplets, by Maggie Millner, reveals the need to create memory in the fast paced, succinct language of the poem. Couplets is a novel in verse about a recent divorcée who explores her sexuality. In Couplets, Millner gifts the reader with delicate passages of queer erotica. What starts as her first lesbian experience turns into an immersion in the complex world of polyamorous relations, where pleasure and disappointment found common ground. As the title indicates, and apart from a few prose passages, the novel is written entirely in couplets. The introductory poem, “Proem” speaks about transformations. Millner succeeds at using the specific poetic form, couplets, to tell the story.
Both Couplets and The Cyclist are compelling stories that pull the readers in with intrigue and well-rounded characters. By analysing the way these stories are told we can discover their hidden literary treasures. Only then, we will be able to see the truths revealed deep inside these novels.
Both novels use all the elements of fiction and all the elements of poetry. They have rhythm, imagery, character growth, and a story arc. These elements are weaved in beautifully. Both writers succeed at creating strong emotional connections with the reader. That’s possibly the reason why they chose this genre.
The difference between Couplets and The Cyclist is in the way they introduce the elements of fiction. In Couplets, the speaker is in a bus going places in a city, arriving late, going to therapy. The reader barely has time to see these images floating in the verses. With this brevity, the speaker establishes a sense of urgency of the urban setting and the emotional mood of a woman exploring herself. She has a new life to live. The form fits this urgency.
On the other hand, The Cyclist opens in a full hospital scene in Beirut, complete with nurses, sounds, and smells, setting the reflective mood, and a dark psychological tone. The narrator is paralyzed, those around him are not even aware that his mind is fully functional. He has time to look back at the horror he is supposed to unleash.
While Couplets focuses on the form both for meaning and as a resource to convey urgency and brevity, The Cyclist does not care for form or rhyme. Yet, there is rhythm achieved by alliteration.
“If Leng were alive, he would have instructed me to save my appetite for the shower-party special: a bubbling bowl of brain bouillabaisse. This Provençal stew consists of scallops, prawns and other sea creatures, always in touch of beurre blanc.”
The alliteration of the phoneme /b/, for instance, creates the idea of a bubbling human brain stew, making the image vividly repulsive. There lies the mastery of this novel. It disgusts the reader with literary splendor. “Come a little closer my friend. Inhale. I am the aromatic scent of death; a soupçon of sin; the sweet smell of a severed limb.” Through alliteration and simile, the text becomes melodic, like a laconic Arab song: “The wheels of the car outside sizzle over the drizzle like grainy balls of falafel floating in a pool of oil.” This disturbing imagery intertwines with allusions to culinary language in rhythmic alliteration making this passage as splendid as it is repugnant.
And this is where I depart from the comparison. The Cyclist held me captive while eventually my attention for Couplets deflated.
Berberian relies heavily on figurative language, persona, imagery, allusions, rhythm, numerous literary reference (with quotes from Nahib Mafouz, Khalil Gibrand, Rimbaud, Yehuda Amichai, Rumi, and even from the AlQaeda training manual,) all of which adds depth and expand the complex system of metaphors and similes. “Cooking like chemistry. It’s as much about conductivity and the ingredients that are tossed into a dish as it is about timing.”
The complexity of this system of metaphors is best achieved when the author places images of a gestating baby next to descriptions of corpses.
“Shrapnel-studded tongue of once gregarious kid. Or Leng’s lovely side dish: pulsating heart of a five-year-old that is no longer inside her. And finally my favorite: five dozen crispy and curled bodies, courtesy of our intrepid baby.”
Along with poetry, Viken uses the elements of fiction-- character development, narrator, plot, scene, dialog, setting, tone, and mood. While the imagery in The Cyclist keeps the reader cringing and sighing, the well achieved plot and complex character move the story from scene to scene. The reader will not want to put the book down.
“I brought you something.” And he sweeps the bread crumbs off my shoulders.
“Is it the baby? Let me have the backpack, quick.”
Likewise, in Couplets, the speaker juxtaposes contradictory imagery of cringe and pain associated with sex to reveal the emotional complexity of the story:
“…she walked / into the bar. And came right up. And shook
his hand with one she’d slipped inside
my body days before. Or like the blood
that came in steady, heavy rivulets
the last night he and I had sex…”
The reader must resist looking at The Cyclist as a glorification of terrorism. True: the book dives into the geopolitics of violence and how the world sees the Middle Eastern character.
“There was a time when our neighbors paid a premium for our glorious fruits, but somewhere along the way, the terms of trade moved against us, and the world became more interested in the terror they produced.” And “…Like everything in the Middle East, even a papaya is informed by politics.”
Instead, The Cyclist is an invitation to enjoy life’s pleasures, even in a region of the world caught in a neverending cycle of violence.
“[In an Orange Grove in Lebanon] It can drive a man to die for the perfume of an orange grove. But the scent of the grilled hen can inspire one to live another day.”
Coincidentially, the speaker in Couplets closes her reflection in a prose segment that starts with onions on a skillet. Love informs their writing.
“You pushed the onions around in their hot skillet, asking yourself what is was you wanted. Winter air blew through the open window, drawing tendrils of teams over the range. The table beside you was covered in light, and you would sit there all afternoon, writing. The thought excited you almost the way the thought of sex excited you: not knowing what sensations would come out, what sounds.”
Culinary joy stands at the center of The Cyclist, but also love, sex and ultimately the joy of raising children, which makes the story be told in future past perfect. The character’s love of food and his romantic love play a role in the decision about the horror he is supposed to carry out. Then he delivers his life manifesto:
“The Road to Terrorism usually begins with a pinch of alienation, a dab of ennui. My advice to those who want to avoid this condition is to increase their intake of honey. Try with a cup of Earl Grey to wash aways the prosaic crumbs stuck in your tummy. Depending on your taste, you may prefer a gram of royal jelly: The preferred palliative of region’s monarchy. Secure in the hive, this is the honey that the queen bee feasts on.”
Tonight, I will listen to Vivaldi, while eating Kousa Mahshi. Maybe I’ll read Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz again, for a good dose of lesbian erotica.
Lisbeth Coiman is the author of I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (2017) and Uprising / Alzamiento (Finishing Line Press, 2021) Her book reviews have been published in the New York Journal of Books, in Citron Review, and The Compulsive Reader to name a few. Lisbeth can cook Middle Eastern food. She lives in Los Angeles.
Thanks for reading! I’m very interested in publishing non-standard book reviews. If you have ideas, feel free to pitch me at mommyselcamino@proton.me. Payment is $75-100.
Wonderful!