The swallowed man

Select an Action

Title:

The swallowed man

Author:

Carey, Edward, 1970- author.

Subject Term:

Fathers and sons -- Fiction.

Forgiveness -- Fiction.

Parenting -- Fiction.

Wood-carvers -- Fiction.

Summary:

"In the small Tuscan town of Collodi, a lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, "as if the wood commanded me," Giuseppe--better known as Geppetto--carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, the woodcarver screams at him ... and the boy, Pinocchio, leaps from his arms and escapes into the night. Though he returns the next day, the wily boy torments his father, challenging his authority and making up stories--whereupon his nose, the very nose his father carved, grows before his eyes like an antler. When the boy disappears after one last fight, the father follows a rumor to the coast and out into the sea, where he is swallowed by a great fish--and consumed by guilt, as he hunkers in the creature's belly awaiting the day when he will reconcile with the son he drove away. With all the charm, atmosphere, and emotional depth for which Edward Carey is known--and featuring his trademark fantastical illustrations--The Swallowed Man is a parable of parenthood, loss, and letting go, from a creative mind on a par with Gregory Maguire, Neil Gaiman, and Tim Burton"-- Provided by publisher

Publication Date:

2021

Format:

Book

Language:

English

Available:*

Library	Item Type	Item Barcode	Call Number	Current Location
Searching... Mishawaka Library	Book	33028011890219	Fiction CAREY, Edward	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

"A strange and tender parable . . . All of Edward Carey's work is profound and delightful." --Max Porter, author of Lanny

The ingenious storyteller Edward Carey returns to reimagine a time-honored fable: the story of an impatient father, a rebellious son, and a watery path to forgiveness for the young man known as Pinocchio

In the small Tuscan town of Collodi, a lonely woodcarver longs for the companionship of a son. One day, "as if the wood commanded me," Giuseppe--better known as Geppetto--carves for himself a pinewood boy, a marionette he hopes to take on tour worldwide. But when his handsome new creation comes magically to life, Geppetto screams . . . and the boy, Pinocchio, leaps from his arms and escapes into the night. Though he returns the next day, the wily boy torments his father, challenging his authority and making up stories--whereupon his nose, the very nose his father carved, grows before his eyes like an antler. When the boy disappears after one last fight, the father follows a rumor to the coast and out into the sea, where he is swallowed by a great fish--and consumed by guilt. He hunkers in the creature's belly awaiting the day when he will reconcile with the son he drove away.

With all the charm, atmosphere, and emotional depth for which Edward Carey is known--and featuring his trademark fantastical illustrations-- The Swallowed Man is a parable of parenthood, loss, and letting go, from a creative mind on a par with Gregory Maguire, Neil Gaiman, and Tim Burton.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

British writer and illustrator Carey (Little) brings his grotesque whimsy to this lackluster retelling of a harrowing episode from Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio. The story begins with Giuseppe Lorenzini having been swallowed by a giant sharklike creature. Giuseppe, who had been sailing the seas looking for his runaway wooden son, Pinocchio, takes up residence in the monster's abdomen, finding refuge in a Danish ship the fish has also ingested. Thus sheltered and supplied (with food, drink, candles, and ink), he composes his autobiography, attempts some new carving projects, and, as time passes, succumbs to hallucinatory fits of madness. The humble craftsman is an orotund narrator, holding forth from the belly of the beast in high rhetorical style: "I am a monarch of space. Emperor of Inner Sharkland." Some of Collodi's famous scenes (burning feet, growing nose) are briefly replayed, but the narrative is mostly devoted to Giuseppe's backstory, including tepid accounts of the women he loved, and to his Crusoe-like survival strategy. In the most interesting sections, Carey dives into Giuseppe's strained relationship with his own father that presages his tempestuous relationship with the impish Pinocchio, but these moments are few and far between. The book feels both slight and overstuffed, a prolonged exercise in style that brings little insight into Collodi's classic. (Oct.)

Kirkus Review

A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view. The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies--fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain's logbook, ink--are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship's wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when "she" dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own "son"--Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist's art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: "The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born--I began to suppose this--just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person." Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, "Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?" A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Known for his eccentric character studies infused with imaginative illustrations, Carey follows Little (2018) with a reimagining of Collodi's Pinocchio from the point of view of Geppetto as he languishes inside the belly of a whale. Writing in a journal discovered in the Captain's cabin of a schooner residing inside the monstrous leviathan, Giuseppe "Geppetto" Lorenzini records the events that led to his undersea captivity. The journal describes a lonely carpenter who decides to create an articulated doll for mercenary gain, but as he crafts the marionette, it comes to life, causing him great distress and soon, the puppet runs away. When the wooden boy fails to return, Geppetto sets out to find him and seek forgiveness, only to end up inside the mammoth colossus where he now resides. He seeks solace by drawing and chronicling his misspent youth under a stern father and encounters with various women, hoping the account might reach his son. No Disney fairy tale, this is an illustrated, literary, poignantly erudite study in anguish, guilt, madness, soul-searching, and eventual redemption.

Excerpts

1. I am writing this account, in another man's book, by candlelight, inside the belly of a fish. I have been eaten. I have been eaten, yet I am living still. I have tried to get out. I have made many attempts. But I must conclude that it is not possible. I am trapped within an enormous creature and am slowly being digested. I have found a strange place to exist, a cave between life and death. It is an unhappy miracle. I am afraid of the dark. The dark is coming for me. I have candles; they are my small protection. And I have this purloined book, that I shall slowly fill. Before the last candle dies, I'll tell my tale. I give you fair warning: I can boast you no battlefields; this is no murderer's story; there is no great romance. But before all this, back on land, I did an extraordinary thing. An impossible thing. And for that thing--in order that the world may be put back in balance--I am now paying a severe cost. I shall tell my terrible shame, my tale of the supernatural though so devastatingly real. Am I to account myself very fortunate, or entirely devoid of luck? I considered myself, before this last tumble, a very fortunate individual, blessed of more good luck, surely, than was my fair portion. Back on land, after all, I had made a miracle, I had fashioned an impossible thing. But this piece of good luck is overshadowed by a rather enormous piece of bad luck that I am not quite able to forget, for I live with the fact every day. A monster fish has swallowed me--a shark or relative of that species, I am no expert. It is no small basking shark that has thus contained me, I say that straight, no catfish with grand opinions of himself. I have been taken by a colossus, perhaps the largest of its kind that ever was. Perhaps the last surviving megalodon , of prehistoric vintage. Deep in such a thing do I dwell. I had heard of this monster-beast, this hunger-creature, ere I braved the waters. Did I head out in a large military vessel equipped with cannon and musket, with harpoon and barbed hook? No, I must own I did not. I set out into the watery world on a dinghy, a rather ancient craft. It floated, it was seaworthy, so long as the sea was in good humor. I went out because someone had told me--was it a cruel joke, I wonder now?--that my own son was on the water in distress, and I wanted him back. I wanted, to be clear, to save him. But I did not save him. Of that, I am most keenly aware. I bought a small boat. It seemed a solid boat to me, but I am ignorant of such matters, and the further out I rowed, the less certain I was. Some miles out, the water began to move strangely. Waves, when before it had been calm. My little boat rocking, soon some water spilling in. An increasing storm upon me. My little boat trembling more and more, and then waves breaking and the sea opening--as if it were boiling--and then the great mouth itself was upon me. The hole, rushing forward. The living tunnel hurtling unto me. Such a size, no hope against such a thing, like the world had erupted. The sea creature, colossus, flesh-mountain. I saw it only fleetingly, for a handful of seconds. Like Moses it split the water, and suddenly before me was a great black depth. I fell, for there was no alternative, toward it and within it. Into the very mouth. I saw its teeth. Arranged in rows two or three deep. A graveyard. On I fell, out and away from everything I knew. Confined, constricted. Stolen! How shall I ever find him now? I shall never see him again. I smashed down the dark tunnel, my body thrown and thumped, dashed and dragged, desperate for breath. Down and down, darker and damper, until at last the falling ceased. I had landed and now could breathe again. But what land was this, what peculiar geography? I was up to my knees in liquid. I puffed, I panted--I, somehow, lived ! Scraped here and there, disheveled certainly, bruised and bloody, but still, no matter the unlikeliness, still alive. And yet what living could this be? Rickety and miserable, harrowed by the dank rocking darkness, at last I started feeling about. The floor was moist yet solid enough, but even as I fumbled I could find no end to it. Timidly I rose, fully expecting my head to strike a surface, but soon I was standing at full height and still I found no roof. I lifted my shaking hands above me with caution, fully prepared for them to strike something solid. But the strike did not come. I proceeded to extend my height as well as I could and yet I touched only more unoccupied space. Only after a moment did rumors of the high ceiling begin to reach me, in the form of liquid dripping from above. I have suffered this small rain ever since. Here, then, was space. I set out east five paces, no limit; west ten paces, no end yet. The ground, I report, was not even. I tried to walk forward and stumbled upon objects, pieces of half-eaten sea life, yet still the place went on. I called out, and the altered sound of my voice was a terror to me. "Hallooo!" The noise was unpleasant, and there came the response: Hallo! Hallo! Hallo! All the time quieter, the decreasing ghosts of my original sound. I felt about further, in total darkness, no hint of anything but black and black and ever more of black, until I bumped into something solid. A wall, cast out at an angle, but not of flesh--it seemed to me, somehow, to be of wood . Planks of wood. Curving upward. Wood? Impossible! I followed this wall with shaking hands and, finding its end, pulled myself up onto it. This took some doing, and I failed many times. But then--at the peak of its curve--a flat surface! Flat, here? Flat, true? Flat! It could not be. And yet it was. I crawled upon this flat and had not been long about it when suddenly there was an opening in the flat ground and I tumbled downward, into something else. I had fallen again. Not so very far this time; about the height, I surmised, of a full grown man. There was blood in my mouth. I felt about: more flat . . . and yet not only. I could not trust myself to believe it. Stairs! My hands discovered actual solid stairs . No! Impossible! But there was no mistake. I had fallen down stairs. Did this peculiar creature have perhaps a spiral stairway within its intestines? Was there a smart rotunda to its heart? Twin outhouses of kidneys? Its oesophagus a redbrick chimney flue? How strange, that a great fish should master the concept of right angles. On the floor--solid floor, now, this was--I felt boxes, wooden crates spilled about. These were surely not a natural part of my enormous host, I sensed, but rather something consumable, like me. The lid of one I proceeded to break loose, then felt about its insides. Stacked in neat rows, I felt a particular column I was only too familiar with, made, I supposed-- O, irony! --of whale fat. Candles! Spermaceti pillars, so many night-killers, so many suns. And dry, by my word. Hallo, tallow! To light one and see again: how lovely that would be. I fumbled about, hoping to find a tinderbox to rescue me, but no such miracle was about. I was so thirsty to see again that I panicked myself utterly. Until in my weeping misery it at last occurred to me that I may have the solution with me all along. Joseph, Joseph, I said to myself, have you ever been the smoker of a pipe? Aye, I answered myself, I am part of that fraternity. If there were light, I should show you my right finger and thumb, be-yellowed by my habit. You would spy the evidence of a staining to the hairs of my upper lip. You would meet my teeth, also witnesses of this behavior. So then. Ah! Left trouser cupboard? Empty but for the leg. Right side: something else there? Careful now, careful, withdraw with steadiness. Is it there, I ask you? Oh! It is, it is. Beautiful lady, Lucy, my Lucifer. So then, to strike the box of her, open her eyes. I sent up a flare to heaven. I lit my vesta. I had light. Light, ho! Excerpted from The Swallowed Man: A Novel by Edward Carey All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.