Finding Solace in the Navel of the Moon
Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo
Jennifer Clement’s Mexico City is a place of many marvels; a place filled with music, poetry and mystery, and a place in which danger is seeded in each moment. A gifted author and poet, Clement’s work has brought her international accolades and awards, and a wide audience for editions published in eight languages to date. Her novel, Widow Basquiat (Cannongate, 2000), a memoir of Suzanne Mallouk’s relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat and their life together in New York City, was a Bookseller’s Choice listing in the U.K.; film rights for Clement’s A True Story Based on Lies (Cannongate, 2001), a finalist for the Orange Prize for Fiction (U.K.), have been purchased by Whoopie Goldberg; and Clement is currently under consideration for a Pushcart Prize.
The depth and sophistication of Clement’s worldview is evident in her most recent effort, The Poison that Fascinates (Cannongate, 2008). Here, readers will experience Mexico in the country’s political, cultural and economic center, Mexico City. Clement explains that the city has three names, each one defining but transcending particular time periods. Describing the city’s layered existence, Clement says,
“When it is ancient and sad it is known as Mexico Tenochtitlan; when it is beautiful in the afternoon psychedelic light of bougainvilleas it is called ‘Mexico’; and when it is a modern, overpopulated shriek it is called the ‘Federal District.’ ”
Later, readers learn that Mexico, the country, is known as the “navel of the moon.” (It is also referred to as the “rabbit’s navel,” since the lakes upon which Mexico is founded are shaped like a rabbit.) In traditional cultures, the moon is associated with women, particularly mother figures, present and absent. Such figures have great weight in The Poison that Fascinates.
Clement’s narrative is a disappearing act, built on the vast number of people and things that have vanished from Mexico City as a result of the passage of time, twisted notions of progress, and sadness and neglect. A tragic sense of loss pervades the novel, an emptiness that is revealed through the lives of Emily Neale, her father, the young residents of the orphanage founded by Neale’s English ancestors and her cousin, Santiago. Emily has lost her mother, not to death but to a mystery that she unconsciously tries to unravel by devouring books and facts, studying history, learning the lives of the saints and working with the children at the orphanage.
Like Emily, her father takes refuge in isolation. He refuses to talk about his wife’s disappearance. Instead, he finds solace in lamenting the loss of butterflies, moths, beetles garter snakes, bats, rivers and lakes, pepper trees, forests, trolley cars, telegrams and other creatures and inanimate objects once common in Mexico City. Foremost among his obsessions, the bittersweet music of AgustÃn Lara provides him the ultimate solace. Where Emily uses catalogued facts and figures, her father has made Lara’s lyrics, many of them written for Mexican film star MarÃa Félix, a lens through which he views the world. A deep yearning that cannot be assuaged ties Clement’s characters together in a chain of nearly unbearable sadness. For example, Clement tells readers that the orphans are fascinated by Emily’s position as “half of what they are.” Emily has a father and her mother has not, to Emily’s knowledge, died. While tutoring them in English, Emily does not teach the children the words for “mother” and “father.”
Before she disappeared, Emily’s mother hired a nun to run the orphanage. Large in body and spirit, Mother Agata has served as mother to Emily and tried to mother the children who have lived at the orphanage during her tenure. For Emily, Mother Agata is also a quick reference source for the lives of the saints, as well as for folk beliefs and superstitions that, the nun contends, will keep Emily safe if respected. Mother Agata encourages another of Emily’s obsessions, as well, by clipping newspapers reports of women who have committed murder. While there have been women who kill with knives and guns, poison, readers learn, seems to be the method most natural to them.
The catalyst that shakes Emily’s fiercely guarded but fragile stability, the arrival of her cousin Santiago, is as earth-shattering as the earthquakes that have shaken Mexico City. It will, likely, take readers time to register–and accept–Clement’s ending. In the aftershock, they may discover a new meaning for the experience of “solace.” Mother Agata has guarded Emily up to this point, shielding her from a truth that has the potential to free–or destroy–her. As awful and beautiful as the city in which it is set, The Poison that Fascinates will resonate and repulse, delight and disturb, tease and trouble. It is an irresistible poison.
