The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (2016)

The High Mountains of Portugal is such a captivating book that I hardly put it down between start and finish. It tells three absorbing stories of novella length which are interlocking both in content and in message. The whole book is obviously an extended allegory, meant to impart important truth or truths. My problem is that I was never able to figure out just what specific truths the author meant for me to understand. Or maybe Martel included so many truths that it became too confusing a mix for my limited intellect to absorb. So while I did totally enjoy reading the book, I was left at the end saying,"What?"

The first novella takes place in Lisbon in 1904 and concerns a young man who has been plunged into numbing grief and rebellion against God by the the deaths of his lover, their child, and his father, all in a short period of time. He becomes obsessed with the journal of a priest that recounts the carving of an extraordinary artifact which would change the way Christians think about God, so he drives across Portugal in one of the earliest automobiles to find it. His adventures and misadventures along the way are narrated in a picaresque style and are amusing in a slap-stick way.

The second novella takes place 35 years later with a Portuguese pathologist as the protagonist. This one has a bit of a surprise ending, so I won't describe it in depth, except to say that it includes a surrealistic autopsy and a lengthy (and surprisingly interesting) discussion of the biblical four Gospels as an extended allegory with connections to the mysteries of Agatha Christie.

About 50 years later, in the mid 1980s, a Canadian politician mourning the death of his wife impulsively buys (adopts) a chimpanzee and returns with it to his native Portugal. Events come full circle here, with his journey across Portugal to the "high mountains" recalling the journey in the first novella, and with other connections of events and animals and images abounding.

Martel is certainly saying something here about grief and how we confront it, but I don't believe that to be his primary message. He is also addressing questions of religious faith. And, as in his Life of Pi, Martel includes an animal that has symbolic significance. Twice he includes the quote, "We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels"; the artifact being sought in the first novella turns out to be a crucifix with the crucified being an ape; the pathologist in the second novella finds an ape, among other things, inside a cadaver; the chimpanzee in the third story changes the way his owner lives his life. I can't quite put my finger on what this teaches the reader, however.

Here's something interesting that occurred to me. The name of the ape in the last novella is Odo. This is also the name of the changeling shapeshifter character in the television program Star Trek Deep Space Nine. If you look this Odo up on the internet you can see that the character looks very simian-like, especially around the eyes. TV's Odo is one the Founders, overlords of a galaxy. Coincidence? I think not.

I recommend this book. It will give you something to think about.