As If By Magic by Angus Wilson

(Secker and Warburg, 1973)

 

I didn't manage to finish this book, but I read more than 300 of its 400 pages before I gave up.  It's a messy, poorly conceived and paced novel that follows two characters who are distantly related: Hamo, a middle-aged botanist who has developed a new form of "magic" rice that is changing agricultural practices around the world, and Alexandra, his goddaughter, who flees with her two male lovers first to a commune in Morocco and later to see a Swami in India.

The encounters that Hamo and Alexandra have with many people on their journeys (Hamo is going around the world to visit rice-producing areas) are related in punishing and exhaustive detail, and scenes where very little is actually happening drag on for pages and pages.  With some brutal editing, a dark and daring comic novel might be achievable, but the length and scope of the book -- intended no doubt to make it an "important" novel -- slowly but surely prevent it from assuming any sort of compelling shape or pace.  This is a shame, because there are a few very funny scenes, and many original and interesting characters.  Alexandra's simultaneous affairs with two men (one of who is the father of her baby) is erotically charged but never ignites, and Hamo's obsession with, and pursuit of, beautiful boys, while daring and boldly explored, finally becomes tedious and distasteful.