Saudade by Thomas Trofimuk

Reviewed by Robert Runté

This is a novel about the fear of death, of loss and longing, of aimless searching.

Wait, wait! Don’t leave! This is not the sort of tedious, depressing literary novel about death and dying that only a literature professor could love. This one is a surprisingly great read.

It is a puzzle novel. A mystery, but not really the who-done-it-kind. More existential, but in a fun way. And, just under the surface, there is this wry humour: our hero pictures death is a woman who has issues with doorknobs, which is why she’s always hovering outside. (Freud had issues with doorknobs, but I’m not sure whether that’s an allusion here or just a coincidence.) The novel is not ha-ha, laugh-out-loud funny—not Death from a Terry Pratchett novel—but there is an absurdist element that had me smiling throughout the book.

And clever! I highlight the clever bits in books, lines I wish to come back to because they are so insightful or so well written that I need to study or deconstruct them at length—but I can’t stop now because the story is pulling me forward and reflection will have to wait. I’ve highlighted hundreds of lines in this one. So much insight! So many memorable lines! One cannot go a chapter, or even a few pages, without encountering something memorably quotable.

Stylistically, Saudade is a tour de force. Trofimuk use of description, of the economical use of miniscule details as the driving force in the mystery is unlike anything I have previously encountered. Whereas literary writers often lose the forest for too detailed attention to the trees, or get so bogged down in the beauty of the writing they lose narrative, Trofimuk’s plot is primarily driven by an almost absurdist attention to meaningless details. The whole point of the book might be the need to be in the moment, to pay attention to everything, to notice, experience, and appreciate every detail of the now.

The mystery starts when our protagonist’s attention wanders for a second from the story his wife is telling him, and when he looks back up, she has vanished. The central conceit is that one can escape death if one hides inside a story so convoluted, so filled with digressions, that death gets distracted and follows the wrong trail. It is exactly such a tale his wife is telling our hero when she disappears, and the resulting thriller is the most convoluted, twisted, blind alley, clue- and red-herring-filled mystery any protagonist could ask for. So. . .every detail—that this character is wearing red shoes or that one is balding—may be a clue, or completely irrelevant, but everything is worthy of one’s attention. As his wife says of the story she’s telling him when she disappears:

“Honey, I want you to pay very close attention to this story. It’s Important that you remember it. Every detail. Every half-truth. Every name. Even the characters who have no name.”

But then, also,

“I am not for a second suggesting there are parts of this story that are more important than others, but this next part is more important than the rest.”

These are not the normal clues and red herrings of some routine who-done-it, but a master class in choosing which details strike the protagonist’s eye, without overloading the reader in narrative-clogging description. Again, the nearly random nature of what is observed is kind of the whole point: everything in the now is important, even when it’s not remotely relevant because the now is all we ever get in life—so pay attention.

But also: as the title signifies, the novel is really about the nostalgic longing for what’s been lost, for people and events that have become a part of who we are, but which can never be recaptured. A longing nostalgia is an inevitable part of who we are, including all the little bits we barely noticed when they were happening. Through his idiosyncratic selection of details to highlight, Trofimuk evokes our lived experience of the infinite minutia—both remembered and forgotten—that make up each moment of the now.

The convoluted plot, the surreal adventures, the odd segues all give the novel something of a dream-like structure. Like Philip K. Dick at his best, Trofimuk challenges our construction of reality while dispensing useful insights on how to cope with a universe of infinitely branching choices.

There’s a cinematic ambience to the book that made it feel like I was watching an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Like Sixth Sense, when I got to the end, the entire gestalt cube flipped, and I was sure Trofimuk must have cheated. When I went back to check, however, I had to concede Trofimuk had laid everything out from the earliest pages. This is not just another who-done-it reveal; this is a fundamental shift in how one looks at death, love, and the meaning of life. This is a book that has something to say, but instead of telling or showing the reader, makes them experience the entire epiphany for themselves.

Best book I have read this year, and a serious contender for top five of the decade. Unreservedly recommended.

Saudade is published by NeWest Press.