Aciman’s novel is an in-depth analysis of a romance
It starts with a Christmas party on the Upper West Side, Riverside Drive. Clara meets the speaker behind the Christmas tree, and introduces herself with the words, “I am Clara.” Then follows page after page about the introduction. “I am Clara”. Which to me seems very much like the ordinary, customary, relatively polite way of introducing oneself at a party. But for Aciman this seemingly is a revelation. Three words signifying a world of opportunity.
Starting from this odd night, each of the following nights are discussed and described in pretty much the same level of detail. And as the relationship develops – admittedly with some funny and amusing misunderstandings – more suggestive meanings are conjured. But nothing really happens? They don’t – as one might put it – consummate the relationship. And from start to end there are lots of really deep discussions, yet even so, I can’t honestly say that I ever felt I really came close to the characters – their souls, what made them tick, the inner beings.
I have noticed that the book has received a lot of rave reviews, but I really beg to differ. To my mind this is an author too interested in his own voice and what he considers wonderful sentences and expressions. Listen to this:
“From our high perch, the silver-purple city looked aerial and distant and superterrestial, a beguiling kingdom whose beaming spires rose silently through the twilit winter mist to parlay with the stars. I watched the fresh furrowed tracks on Riverside Drive, the scattered lampposts with their heads ablaze, and a bus crawling through the snow, tilting its way past the knoll off the 112th and Riverside before shuffling off, snow padding its lank shoulders, an empty, Stygian vessel headed toward destinations and sights unseen. I am like Clara, it said, I’ll take you places you never knew.”
Sure, this is sophisticated. But it is also completely vacuous! It doesn’t push the novel forward – and indeed, there are a lot of paragraphs like this one. As if there really is no story to tell, at least not a story more important than the voice of the author – not even one close to being equally important. To me, this is grand-standing. Aciman is posing in Eight White Nights. And poseurs are quite boring. Give me instead the stuff of life; flesh, movement, achievement, pain, emotion, sorrow, sweat, tears and joy. Give me observations and insight, not word games and literary scrabble. Give me real people and a real story. 360 pages of posing are 340 pages too many!
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