The Little Snake
AL Kennedy (Canongate, $25) Reviewed by Trevor Agnew
The Little Snake is a charming and challenging fable – one of the oldest and most powerful methods of delivering an unexpected and sometimes unwelcome message. In The Little Snake, the multi-talented, awardwinning writer AL Kennedy has used a fable to rebuke most of the human race. Yet she has done it in a way that is both charming and funny. This is surprising because the little snake of the title has the grim task of meeting humans at the end of their lives and taking their ‘‘livingness’’ from them.
When he encounters the fourth-richest man in the world, the snake takes ‘‘everything you are’’ from him, while to an elderly lady, he brings reassurance and contentment. To both of them he brings death. The snake’s duties keep him busy but he is also aware that many humans are equally busy doing his work for him.
The snake’s attitude to the world, and its humans, begins to change when he meets Mary, who is a ‘‘remarkable, wise little girl’’. Mary is not alarmed when she finds the little snake wrapped around her leg like a bracelet, because she knows about snakes, and realises that a talking golden snake with ruby eyes and ‘‘a voice like buttered velvet’’ is nothing to fear.
The little snake has many names but they all mean the end of life; Mary calls him Lanmo, (which is death in Haitian). We see Mary through Lanmo’s senses, tasting through his tongue. ‘‘He tasted truth and bravery and toothpaste and soap that smelled of flowers.’’
Their discussions are often very funny. Having decided that he will not end Mary’s life just yet, Lanmo promises to watch over her as she sleeps and keep away her nightmares.
‘‘But I don’t have nightmares.’’ ‘‘You might now – you have a snake on your pillow.’’
As a result of his many conversations with Mary, Lanmo soon finds himself changing and experiencing new emotions: curiosity, anger and guilt; love is a puzzle to him as well.
The author’s gentle asides to the reader, which are sympathetic without being twee, add another dimension to her fable. For example, when Lanmo is lying on Mary’s school desk, everyone thinks he is a ruler. The only person who sees him is Mary’s friend Paul, who gazes into the snake’s eyes. ‘‘ The boy felt his heart beating flipper ty pip per ty in his chest and understood… that something remarkable was happening, something educational, something he would have to remember.’’ Paul is learning that ‘‘it is only with the heart that one can see rightly’’.
Years later, when disaster and persecution spread across the land where Mary lives, Lanmo helps her and Paul to escape. Because snakes find all knowledge inscribed inside the inner layer of their egg before they hatch, Lanmo feels he is able to offer wise words of advice to the young couple: ‘‘Remember that you must always lay your eggs in warm, dry sand, far from humans and their stupidity and angriness.’’
Since Lanmo also offers more practical assistance in their dreams, Paul and Mary do eventually find a secure refuge but it is also clear that one day Lanmo must return to claim Mary’s ‘‘livingness’’. There is no spoiler here; both Lanmo and Mary have talked about the inevitability of his last visit. When, however, this final reunion does take place, the story draws up the threads neatly and weaves them into a subtle ending which is both moving and satisfying.