Aardvarchaeology

Panos Karnezis's new novel The Birthday Party is a re-imagination of the life of Aristotle Onassis, the shipping magnate. The book is structured around the events of a single day and night towards the end of the tycoon's life, though the bulk of the text is made up of deftly interleaved backstory. The storytelling method is straight-forward on the verge of simplistic, with an omniscient narrator. Being used to far more murky and intricate approaches, I found myself wondering if some passages were in fact intended as naïvistic parody. The only metafictional twist I've detected is that one of the characters is a writer working on an authorised biography of the rich man. He is an Englishman in Greece, while The Birthday Party has been written by a Greek in England.

One thing I missed was a richer backdrop of chronological and topical reference points tying the story to the post-war history of our own or some alternative world. As it is, the narrative kind of floats in a timeless and anonymous late 20th century, where the only things and people mentioned by name are Karnezis's fictional creations.

I know next to nothing about Onassis, and I have little doubt that the book is packed with in-jokes obvious to the knowledgeable reader. Yet Karnezis kept my interest adequately stoked, mainly through a conflict introduced early in the book (and set out in the back-cover blurb) whose resolution he withholds until the final pages. The tone of the writing is detached and suave, the style austere. And that is my main complaint: hardly anything in the novel is exciting or engaging or challenging, be it emotionally or intellectually. This book will not affect your blood pressure.

The Birthday Party