The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Night of Amber by Sylvie GermainJeffrey DeShell
Sylvie Germain. Night of Amber. David R. Godine, 1999. 336 pp. $23.95.
The sequel to the acclaimed The Book of Nights is an ambitious, complex stew made up of many different extremes: sadism and sentimentality, storytelling and philosophizing, irony and sincerity, sugar and salt. Sometimes, as in the best cassoulet, the different extremes combine to form a wonderfully warm, piquant, and satisfying dish. This happens many times in Night of Amber—Germain is an accomplished storyteller, and the novel is full of harrowing and wonderful episodes, reminiscent of One Hundred Years of Solitude. The story of Heartbreaker and the torture of a young boy in the Algerian War, the fabulous tale of the death of Pauline Peniel, and the murder by the force-feeding of candy to a young friend of the protagonist, Charles-Victor—these episodes stayed with me after I finished the book.
Sometimes, however, this dish became slightly sweet and sticky. The book begins with a quote from Jabès, then proceeds to name the main character “Night-of-Amber-Wind-of-Fire,” and ends with a priest singing the Agnus Dei and asking God, “Do you love me?” These are minor flaws: the concept of naming plays a vital role in the novel, and perhaps Germain has earned her rather overwrought conclusion. I was less impressed with the philosophizing, which often gets in the way of her exquisite narratives. The novel echoes with the language of Levinas and Blanchot, and these meditations detract from the power of the novel as a whole. Neither Night-of-Amber-Wind-of-Fire nor the narrative as a whole appear terribly interested in self-examination, and so the nocturnal speculations seem inauthentic to me. Despite these flaws, Night of Amber is a disturbing, provocative novel. [Jeffrey DeShell]