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Cockroach. Rawi Hage (2009)

by Rawi Hage(Favorite Author)

3.36 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0241144442 (ISBN13: 9780241144442)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Hamish Hamilton

review 1: This is Hage’s second novel after his award winning “De Nero’s Game” (which I have not yet read) and could be considered as a follow up to that initial story. It is a novel that does not grab you on the first page, but slowly and firmly pulls you into the world of the narrator, a young man who has emigrated from war torn Beirut Lebanon to Montreal Canada. In making that trip, he has walked into the arms of a democracy but his life has not greatly improved. He is always hungry and lives on the edge of poverty, having traded the violence of war and a corrupt militia in his home country for a new enemy, the biting cold in his new homeland. He not only lacks food, he has little else -- a few sticks of used furniture he has picked up from the streets and a few pieces of... more clothing, none of it very warm. Having clean dry socks are a constant problem.He (the narrator is never given a name, something that speaks for itself), lives halfway in and out of a world of fantasy and madness, visualizing himself as a cockroach. Like other insects, he is quick and agile, shunning the light and preferring dark alleys, sewers and underground tunnels. He quickly notices barriers and borders and steers away, the underground being the only way he can pass through life. And like the cockroach he is an outcast, considered the scum of the earth, but also a survivor feeding off of others. The first part of the novel describes his ever present hunger, his constant scrounging for food, his attempts to collect on a debt and his visits to his well meaning but naïve and complacent therapist, Genevieve. Recently rescued from a failed suicide attempt, he is under the court ordered supervision of a therapist after being discharge from an institution. Genevieve, who appears more interested in his horrific stories than with helping him manage his life, struggles with her difficult assignment. It is through the narrator’s interactions with Genevieve, his few acquaintances and his lover Shohreh, that we get to know some of his horrific past, revealed to us slowly as the novel progresses. Initially he is not a likeable character. He feels he is owed something better and is constantly whining, feeling insignificant and neglected by life. He wants his share of what everyone else seems to have and looks down with disgust on his fellow immigrants. He survives living on welfare and petty thievery, a skill taught to him in his mother country. He seems to lack a moral and emotional center, feeling nothing about his victims and believing his poverty justifies his behavior. What he steals is not necessarily what he needs. He steals to make a statement, to let others know he can have an effect on their lives. He may take a favored lipstick, slippers, treasured correspondence, pages ripped from a Playboy magazine, or an exquisite leather briefcase. He even stoops so low as to leave a few drops of a fiery hot sauce in the dog’s dish. What he wants, is to make his presence felt. To show himself as well as others that he has some power over somebody or something. And it is through his thievery that he feels a sense of control. He is doing something to others rather than having them do something to him. Only during his hallucinatory experience with an albino cockroach in his kitchen, does he hear his behavior challenged when the large bug accuses him of arrogance and questions his belief that he belongs to something better. And the reader may readily agree. It is only after absorbing his terrible stories that you can better understand and empathize with him. Hage is an excellent writer and his ability with dialogue places the reader in the middle of almost every scene. The fast paced hallucinatory passages are at times difficult and unsettling, but effective in communicating the narrator hovering on the edge of madness.I struggled in rating this book. I cannot truthfully say I enjoyed reading it. I don’t think that enjoyment was ever the writer’s intention. It is certainly tough, dark and disturbing. But it does reveal some important truths about the immigrant experience in our country. And those truths may not make pleasant reading.
review 2: I read Cockroach because it had been chosen for Canada Reads this year. From the defense for the book on the show it sounded interesting enough to catch my attention. I agree that to me this doesn't seem like a typical immigrant experience to Canada, but my point of view is likely a combination of wishful thinking and naivete. He writes his characters in a valid way. Even the hallucinations have a validity to them. It had a violent, raw aspect to it that I have to say I really enjoyed. I would read more by Hage given the opportunity. less

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