Our Circus Presents Book

There's a touch of early Beckett - novels such as More Pricks Than Kicks and Murphy - about this book. Sardonic and bitter, yet never lacking in humour. Indeed the two main characters (to call them protagonists would seem to be contrary to their impassivity), - permanently on the cusp of committing suicide - could very well be Vladimir and Estragon; names as well-suited as any others, since we never learn what their parents decided to call them. They are always waiting: for an event, an action, an intervention by some other human being; some significant occurrence which might propel them into finally being decisive. Decisive about finally ceasing to be.

The tone of the book is, as is the case with those early Beckett books, one of constant exasperation; incredulity at the stupidity of other people; fury at the unfairness of one's fate. Yet there is no expectation that things could ever get better. The narrator dreams, fantasizes, even has a small measure of hope. It's enough to keep him going for at least another day, but he acknowledges the futility of these desires. The women will never arrive. He is too old to be a footballer. What saves all of this from becoming morose, self-flagellating, tedium is the almost chipper tone of the narrator, his air of merry confrontation with the mess of life. You feel that his curiosity about others - and what a variegated, woebegone cast of characters those others are - will be enough to carry him through. To allow him to finally arrive at a decision of his own. To continue, despite all. To continue waiting.

ESTRAGON:
If we parted? That might be better for us.
VLADIMIR:
We'll hang ourselves tomorrow. (Pause.) Unless Godot comes.