[.ca] Oxygen (ISBN 0340728264)

From Amazon.com:
In Andrew Miller's third novel, Oxygen, the award-winning author of Ingenious Pain offers an intense, claustrophobic tale of parallel lives, of regret and redemption. A family reunion of sorts is underway in the summer of 1997 for Alice, a newly retired, long-widowed schoolteacher, dying of cancer at her home in the English countryside. Gathered at her side are her two sons: Alec, a myopic, indecisive translator, and the more gregarious Larry, an unemployed TV soap star whose glittering U.S. career is about to take a nosedive into the shabby territory of porn films, so he can stave off bankruptcy and hold on to his disintegrating marriage. The counterpoint to this scenario is Laszlo Lazar, Hungarian exile and feted playwright, whose latest work, Oxygen, Alec is translating. Lazar, who has a comfortable existence in one of the more fashionable Paris quartiers, seems to possess everything that Alec does not: critical success, a loving partner, a longstanding circle of artistic friends. Yet Lazar is tormented by memories of the 1956 uprising and a comrade he feels he betrayed. When a political splinter group asks him to undertake a mysterious mission, he seizes his chance to atone for the past. Shifting between a quintessentially English idyll, the carousing bars of Paris, the physical and emotional aridity of California, and a Budapest of the past and present, Miller skillfully evokes his characters' stories and their common theme--the liberation of self--even if the end result is self-destruction. He writes compassionately of the terminally ill Alice, clinging to the last vestiges of life, the last agonizing breath: "Was that the last to go? Certain gestures, reflexes, a way of cocking the head or moving the hands in speech?" He reminds us that human beings have choices, even in despair, and he provides a suitably ambiguous ending to round off a wise and engrossing novel. --Catherine Taylor, Amazon.co.uk

I just didn't care to "get it.":
Let me preface by saying this was my first Andrew Miller novel. Based on the description and the reviews I'd read on Amazon, I was looking forward to an exhilarating reading experience. Well, I didn't get it. You probably know the threads of the story: several, unrelated plot lines where each character is challenged. If I cared to, I could discern the links between them all; however, I just did not care enough about the story or the characters to pull the threads together. All through the story, I felt that Miller was just on the edge of taking the plunge to explore these characters more fully, but it never happened. Some characters were well drawn, such as Laszlo and even Larry, but the others were not fully realized. Since the novel had "Finalist for the Booker Prize" emblazoned on its label, I expected more.

Wonderful:
Andrew Miller's Oxygen is a wonderful novel, one that seamlessly shifts from one story to the next and then back again, one that focuses on human needs--from oxygen, to love, to family, to reconciliation. The novel focuses on the people surrounding (some directly, some indirectly) Alice Valentine, a dying woman in Great Britain. Her older son, Larry, is trying to save his marriage and his finances, while ruining his acting career through porn movies. Her younger son Alec is trying to see which portions of his life are worth saving, while at the same time trying to help his mother in any way he can. He is a translator of plays by Laszlo Lazar, a Hungarian exile living in Paris. The novel also focuses on Lazar's attempt to reconcile his current life, with the life he left behind in Hungary. All the novel's characters are real people, with real stories. Well done.

What was the point?:
A friend highly recommended the book, partly because - since I'm Hungarian - one of the characters is an aging Hungarian playwright in Paris who'd once fought in the '56 revolution. Miller's writing style flows beautifully. But it flows nowhere. There are two distinct stories - bridged by the the play Oxygene. In one story, the Valentine sons gather to be with their mother, Alice, who is dying of lung cancer (she was a smoker you see). One of the sons, Alec is also translating the play Oxygene (written by the aging Hungarian in Paris). As Alice lies dying, Laszlo the Hungarian playwright is enjoying life in Paris with his young lover, rubbing facial cream into his skin to rejuvenate it, and mourning his lack of bravery during the revolution when he failed to save a dear friend. Oxygen is presumably the symbolic bridge that connects the two parts of this book since there's absolutely no other connection between the Valentines' story and Laszlo's story. We breathe oxygen you see to live. Alice is dying because she can no longer breathe. And so forth. A somewhat strained metaphor. The journey through a tale is made exciting and meaningful by an emerging character arc: there was next to none for the characters in this book. Maybe I"m old fashioned. I like a story. And I think I'm tired of reading books about dysfunctional families, and the failed 'average man'. No matter how nice the writing style.

Short of Breath:
By the time I finished this book, I really wondered what the connection was between the two stories of the story: the story of the Valentine family grappling with the death of the family matriarch, Alice, and the story of Hungarian playwright Lazlo who's caught up in some sort of political intrigue. Then, as rarely happens, I understood that the connection is in Lazlo's play, where at the end the miners underground begin to try tunneling up while someone above ground begins trying to tunnel down to save them. In this case, I'd say the two sides tunneling towards each other are Alice's son Alec (who's also translating the play into English) and Lazlo, but I might be wrong. The play ends ambiguously and so does Miller's book. Ordinarily I would have panned this book because when it ends, there is no resolution, but understanding the metaphor (or hoping I do), it makes sense to me. So I can understand why Miller ended the novel where he did. Still, as a reader I prefer concrete endings that resolve the issues being brought up in the book. My problem, another rarity, is that the book is too short. I was just getting to understand the characters and then the book is over, I'd have liked more time to flesh them out better. The other problem is that not a lot of interesting stuff happens. There's no action, there's not even a lot of dialogue, it's more about people THINKING about things, which while it gives us insight into the characters, does not make for an interesting story. Give me some love scenes, some car chases, a barroom brawl, SOMETHING other than characters contemplating the sad state of the universe. Anyway, what anyone reading this is wondering by now is: should I buy this book? I'd say yes, but only if you've nothing else to read. Miller's writing is good, the characters are decent, and all the contemplating does make you think.

Rises to the challenge:
In his third novel, Andrew Miller leaves behind the 18th-century England of his previous work and gives us a story set in the summer of 1997. Miller deserves credit for taking action to avoid being typecast as only a writer of historical fiction: he clearly excels at much more. In "Oxygen" Miller sets himself the challenge of scripting a novel that incorporates several different plot threads, some of which eventually intertwine, some of which never do. The story comes alive thanks to a cast of credibly flawed characters: in California, washed-up British actor Larry Valentine is battling debt and drugs in what seems a doomed effort to save his marriage, while back in England his mother Alice, in the last phase of terminal cancer, is being cared for by her other son, Larry's weak-kneed younger brother Alec. Still struggling to find direction in his life after romantic failure and a breakdown of his own, Alec is engaged in translating "Oxygène", the latest play by celebrated Hungarian exile László Lázár. In Paris, Lázár himself hosts dinner parties with his lover Kurt and a handful of old friends, blissfully unaware that his life is about to be turned upside down. I felt "Oxygen" to be a novel about challenges, about promises kept and unkept, about people who find courage within themselves to an extent that would surprise all who knew them, and about people who let others down when they least expect it. Before the story is over all of Miller's characters have been challenged in some way or another - and their reactions are often surprising, but sometimes, sadly, just what we would expect of them. Adept at characterization, Miller makes his cast live and breathe to a degree few authors can match, and his talent for travel writing was an unexpected treat: whether narrating Lázár's movements across Paris or Larry's hilarious commuter plane flight in California, he makes you feel like you're there. A novel about challenges, then, that was itself a challenge to create - one the author has met admirably.