Damon Galgut, In a Strange Room

Damon Galgut's In a Strange Room is composed of three travel accounts, each one somewhat more fraught and disastrous than the previous. The protagonist (a South African named Damon, so there is likely strong identification between narrator and author) is clearly running from something fundamental to himself, something that he cannot escape through travel but that is worse when standing still. Just what this fracture is, Galgut never makes clear, but the fact of it is palpable.

The prose are strangely ungrammatical, with run-on sentences and missing punctuation, and this is tolerable, though I don't know that it adds anything to the novel. Still, despite this approach, the novel is tense and taut, with an increasing sense of a spiraling toward disaster. Most of the text is written in the third person ("He is feeling harried and under pressure and in this state he would rather be alone."), but there are periodic interjections in the first person. For example, the protagonist briefly steps in to says "So even in the first few day I become aware of certain differences between them." The "them" here includes Damon (protagonist), while the "I" is also Damon (narrator). Neither is identical with Damon Galgut (author), though all three overlap with one another. This device is quite effective, providing a tension between the direct punch of the first person and the distance provided by the third. That said, it is often the first person interjections that are the most remote, the most removed from the heart of the narrative ("I forget his name." "I don't remember how long it was.").

In the first of the three accounts, Damon meets a strikingly handsome German man, Reiner, while they are both traveling in Greece. They strike up a fast friendship of the sort that any frequent traveler knows. There is, though, a constant pull between them of a sexual attraction that neither (for differing reasons) seems willing to engage. They meet up again for a lengthy hike through Lesotho, at which point their travel becomes a proxy for their desires and their struggles for power, culminating in misery for Damon.

In the next, Damon again makes friends while traveling, now with a trio -- a brother and sister, and an older man whose connection to the two young siblings is never made clear. He is strongly attracted to the brother but, surrounded as they are, can only find the briefest moments for the most sparse exchanges with him.

Finally, as a middle aged man, worn out by his constant motion, Damon heads to India with a dear, but troubled friend. Here, all the looming disaster builds and builds until the dam breaks and chaos erupts.

Throughout, the novel is compelling, almost riveting, despite its simple tone, broken structure and basic plot. Pared down to the essentials, In a Strange Room vibrates with energy.