The History of Our World Beyond the Wave
   Robert Klein
  1998 Harcourt Brace & Co. NY USA
   ISBN: 0151004110


A survivor's comical and allegorical adventures, after a tidal wave wipes the world clean. Noah revisited this is not!

What a read! Lulled into a cranky, everyday boredom, you grumble along on an ordinary day at the beach in California until, with surprisingly ordinary and immediately evocative words, a wave the size of the sky, inundates all. Only Paul Sant survives because he was near a store of scuba diving equipment at the time.

And so the odyssey begins. Through wondrous weather, Wonderland-like creatures and redemptive encounters. I didn't much like Paul Sant; felt kept at a distance, perhaps as one of the unwashed. As I read my heart clanged like a San Francisco cable car even as my mind opened up to all manner of vistas. Perhaps it's a man/woman thing. I just wasn't thrilled by what Paul found exciting and amazed that Paul didn't notice what I did or cast much importance on the same. What possibilities abounded on this slate washed so clean.

Lovely, lovely hallucinatory descriptions, I wondered just how much of what Paul Sant saw because of who he was and what he saw because it was there to be seen. I'm sorry we left the company of Hiram Bell, and the fact that people and creatures kept disappearing was pretty obvious to me, having been the victim of many a flea-market loss because I didn't pay attention to the here and now.

Now this is a fine example of how my rating system isn't adequate: this is a 2 pot/3pot mix. Rather like Earl Grey tea. Couldn't help liking the read, wonderful fantasy and some excellent story-telling and I'm sort of glad it ended as it did. I did wonder if we're not doomed to do it all over again until we get it right? I've been thinking about Mr. Klein's little book for days!

Fiona King's illustrations are a delight and this is that rare book where the front cover picture really does represent its insides!
(04/12/99)

Rebecca