Sunday, April 20, 2003
Title: 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess
Author: Stewart Home
Publisher: Canongate
69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess is the latest book by English writer Stewart Home, published by the Scottish Canongate and set in Aberdeen. 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess is something of an oddity, low brow and high brow in equal measures it would seem. From the start it feels like every chapter contains graphic sex, while at the same time there is a running commentary of literary critique. Both of which become excessive at points.
69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess starts with the accidental meeting of Alan and Anna. Alan is in Aberdeen to clear out the flat of an old, deceased friend - a flat filled with books, all of which Alan is determined to read before he disposes of them. Anna is considerably younger, a 20 year old girl in Aberdeen as a student. Though both are English they find themselves in this Scottish city at the same time, where they meet and from the start have a relationship based on extreme sex and the constant discussion of literature.
The relationship evolves around their explorations of a book called "69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess" - the author K.L. Callahan claims that the Princess Diana was not killed in Paris as reported, rather he was hired as an agent to kill her and dispose of the body. Having killed the princess the author then decided to take the dead princess on a tour of stone circles in Aberdeen. Alan and Anna are trying to recreate this tour and determine whether it is at all possible, and hence whether there is any validity to the claims put forward in 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess. To this end they cart a dummy filled with bricks round Aberdeen, taking photos at each site, have sex at many, and allowing Alan to rant about the books he has read the whole time. Through this Anna, who is narrating the book, describes her dreams and in her dreams she makes a pact with the dummy - where the two will conspire to kill Alan.
69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess, the book by Stewart Home, which is about the book 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess by K.L. Callahan in many ways, is not a big book. About 169 pages, which has its own significance in the narrative, but for all the perceived brevity of the novel it is a dense work. Containing many layers as the threads are woven together, the sheer volume of data having something to do with how the reader can be propelled through the book. It can be considered that this is a very dry novel - the amount of time spent on literature and literary critique is intense, with many of the works covered being unfamiliar to me, and from the sounds of it, of little interest to me. Part of me would suspect that Home's is making much of this up, but there are enough references to authors that I am aware of and publishers that I have heard of that he retains credibility in terms of this all being based on real material.
The tour of Aberdeen is similarly dense, a great deal of concentration being given to the stone sites, their history, their current condition, and reports from various sources of previous visits to these places. With this there is a certain aspect of the travel journal to the novel. Many of the conversations between the two characters occur in restaurants and cafes in the area. For the most part visiting a different establishment each time, with some form of commentary being added about these as well. With this, I feel it is a fine piece of satire when the duo start to include the local supermarket cafes as part of their journey.
The ending of 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess has a certain ambiguity. In some ways one can feel that this ending is something of a cop out, leaving the narrative unresolved. In other ways it does seem to offer a certain degree of comment on the characters and the actions they undertake through the book. One thing I particularly appreciated about the ending though was the author's change of tone. Chapters 1-9 establish the voice of Anna well, but as soon as you turn the page into chapter 10 you pick up changes. The people here are the same, but from the first paragraph we know something has changed. Something which is evident as these last three chapters, 10-12, bring the novel to a close.
I have little doubt that 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess will not be to everyone's taste. Certainly on reflection it is not really to mine, the whole literary aspect could easily lose me as a reader. Yet the concept of the dead princess and the stone circles, of these people trying to recreate this journey and just the sense that there is something odd about this novel as a whole is what I actually did appreciate.
RVWR: PTR
April 2003
