A strange D-light
Tale about a letter casts spell over readers
D (A Tale of Two Worlds)
Michel Faber
Hanover Square
Michel Faber's new novel is a strange delight — particularly if you have a child around to share it with. There has always been an element of innocence in Faber's work, though it has often felt overwhelmed by horror and suffering. Now, though, he has made good on his vow to give up writing for adults and published D (A Tale of
Two Worlds), which gives full voice to his gentle wit and mischievous spirit. With its buoyant sense of wonder, D is a novel graciously indebted to the fantasies of C.S. Lewis, James Thurber and Norton Juster, along with the characters of Charles Dickens.
Our heroine is Dhikilo, an observant 13-yearold girl living with her adopted family in an English town. There are other immigrants around, but she's the only one from Somaliland. Dhikilo knows almost nothing of her war-torn birthplace, except that it's an actual region and not, as so many kindly white people keep telling her, a mispronunciation of Somalia. She bears this and other racial microaggressions politely, but she's determined to learn more about her origins, which is Faber's subtle way of blending an ancient quest tale with contemporary concerns.
Although her research on the internet sheds little light, it does feed her love for language.
She's struck, for instance, by the Somali word saxansaxo, which denotes “the smell and the coolness carried on the wind from a place where it's raining to a place where it isn't.”
On an ordinary Monday morning, Dhikilo notices a misspelled headline in the weekly paper: “Goobye Cars, Hello Skateboars.”
No one seems to notice these weird elisions except Dhikilo.
Like Dorothy travelling through Oz, Dhikilo finds herself crossing into a fantastical world with a dog, though not a little one.
But somehow she must find the missing Ds and stop whatever or whoever is making them vanish.
It's an odyssey through a treacherous land where she'll encounter kindly felines and mean trolls and even evil cheese.