Synopsis: Pre-Revolutionary Boston is a city on the edge of eruption, in which a class of landed merchants rail against tyranny while their slaves serve them coffee. In a house in this city a philosophical society, whose members eschew the use of names in favour of a system of numbers, are sheltering an African princess and treating her son to a classical education while monitoring every aspect of his life in minute detail. The boy, Octavian, knows nothing of his mentors’ goals, until he dares to open a forbidden door and learns that he is part of a grim experiment; an experiment intended to justify the most diabolical of all hypocrisies. As the arrival of new sponsors signals Octavian’s shift from favoured son to mere subject of observation, the colonies move ever closer to revolution and Octavian approaches his own confrontation with his tormentors.

Review: The first of two volumes in M.T. Anderson’s historical drama begins innocuously, with little to secure it in any particular place or time. The details of location and period emerge slowly, as Octavian becomes increasingly aware of the events outside the house and of his own lowly status within it. With his shifting perceptions, the philosophers change from eccentric to creepy to downright grotesque in their dual demands for liberty and property; freedom from British rule and the right to deprive their negro slaves of their own freedom.

Via this slow and constant process of revelation – and through the use of a range of documentary sources to periodically change the viewpoint of the narrative – Anderson avoids plunging the reader into a fixed moral and ethical perspective. Instead, he evolves his themes slowly and builds up the horrors of slavery in the same way that any horror story would be developed. Coupling believable characters with an equally convincing historical setting, Anderson paints a vivid picture of the Americas under a slave economy and the wide range of goals that the revolutionaries sought to achieve.

Although not a history, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing would provide an excellent accompaniment to a study of either the slave era or the American War of Independence. It is also a fine drama in its own right and explores its themes of slavery, hypocrisy and idealism superbly. Of course, the nature of those themes and Anderson’s visceral style mean that the book is unsuitable for younger readers.

2007-03-02