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BOOKS&CULTURE
by SARAH LANGI
rish author Eimear McBride’s
short novel (149 pages) is, as the
title suggests, strange. However,
in many ways, it is less strange
than her first two novels: A Girl Is a
Half-Formed Thing (2013) and TheCheck in for
strangeness
Not much happens
in Eimear McBride’s
new novel, but
chances are the prose
will still capture you.
by ANNA ROGERSW
hen I was about three-quar-
ters of the way through this
book, Donald Trump, with
Benjamin Netanyahu at his
side, announced his much-
vaunted “peace plan” for the Middle East.
This deeply unjust proposal could easily
have been another piece of the extraordi-
nary mosaic that is award-winning writer
Colum McCann’s new novel, Apeirogon.
The title? It means a shape with an infi-
nite number of sides that can, however,be counted. There’s no conventional plot,
narrative, timeline, character develop-
ment or readily discernible and accessible
structure. Behold, instead, hundreds
of numbered fragments, some just a
sentence, some lengthier, that gradually
cohere to tell a compelling story. At its
heart, it’s about Israel and Palestine, but
it’s also about much more.
The two men at the book’s heart are real
figures. Rami Elhanan is an Israeli. Bassam
Aramin is a Palestinian and a Muslim.
Their worlds, geographically so close, are
unimaginably different – and McCann
tellingly reveals the differences. What
brings them together is death: some years
apart, both lost their daughters. Elhanan’s,
13-year-old Smadar, was killed by a Pal-
estinian suicide bomber while shopping
with her girlfriends; Bassam’s Abir, aged
10, was shot and killed outside her school
by an Israeli soldier.
Both men had made their own contri-
bution to the ceaseless violence in this
land: Aramin was imprisoned for seven
years for a grenade attack on a group
of Israelis; Elhanan fought in the Israeli
Defense Forces. Both initially felt only the
need for vengeance against their children’s
murderers. But through the organisa-
tion Combatants for Peace, the two
fathers became friends and, in the face ofAvenging
angels
Two real combatants
on either side of
the Israel-Palestine
conflict come together
in a powerful novel.
G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
and respect,” says Sellars. Wagner’s Tristan
und Isolde is also part of Kopernikus.
“Tristan is about forbidden love, impossi-
ble in this world but possible in the next.”
Early in his career, Sellars worked
with musicians at the humanitarian
Emmanuel Church in Boston, and more
recently on numerous collaborative
projects with sacred themes. He admits
he dodges questions about his faith. “But
in this period of intense materialism, can
we say ‘nothing is sacred’? Music reminds
you that we’re all in the zone of the
sacred.”W
hile Sellars was working with
Adams on the opera The Gospel
According to the Other Mary, the
pair encountered the choral music of
Renaissance composer Orlando di Lasso,
particularly his late masterpiece Lagrime di
San Pietro (Tears of Saint Peter). Ultimately,
the music was not used in the opera,
but fellow collaborator Grant Gershon,
director of the Los Angeles Master Cho-
rale, urged Sellars to stage it. Auckland
audiences will experience Lagrime after
four years of rehearsal and almost 40
performances.
Sellars calls it one of the most beautiful
productions he’s seen. “It was an incred-
ible, shocking task for the 21 singers at
first – memorising 90 minutes of seven-
part polyphony and very demanding
staging. But they keep going deeper and
deeper into it. And the subject matter!”
The music tells the story of Peter’s denial
of Jesus as he was arrested. “Jesus looks at
Peter – and Orlando’s madrigals are about
what was inside that one look. It’s heart-
rending and very personal.”
Sellars believes artists have a trans-
formational role. “That’s always been
part of the job description,” he declares.
As founding director of the Boethius
Institute at the University of California
in Los Angeles, he teaches courses called
“Art as Moral Action” and “Art as Social
Action”. “There’s so much that is morally
corrupt, so much injustice,” he says. “To
not address this is unacceptable at this
moment in history. And artists are very
fluid – we can open avenues of com-
munication between different parts of
society.” lKopernikus Opéra, NZ Festival of the Arts,
March 1-2; Lagrime di San Pietro, Auckland
Arts Festival, March 13.