Table 41

by Joseph Suglia

TABLE 41 by Joseph Suglia is a novel in which you are the main character.  And the world around you is being destroyed and recreated.

296 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 17, 2018

Reviews

[Elizabeth Keller · Rating 1 out of 5]

Arduous. Masterbatory. Self-indulgent. Almost unreadable.

[Neetha Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Table 41 tickles readers' senses with visual spectacles. An abundance of sensory imagery, the book unfolds an unconventional tale through the second person narration and stream of consciousness style reminding readers about the pioneers, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Its mesmerising lyrical style with innumerable alliterative phrases and other figurative language devices has an amazing auditory effect on the readers. Table 41, a distinctive compilation.

By

Dr. Neetha Joseph
Author of 'Pneuma' and 'The Aeon of Improbable Scams'

[Marta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have enjoyed this novel very much for the originality in the content and development of the story. Table 41 reminds me of some classical science fiction books where animals turn against humans; I mean post-apocalyptic novels like John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids or Daphne du Maurier's novelette The Birds, which gave birth to Alfred Hitchcock's film. But I think Table 41 differs from such literary works mainly because of three things:

a) it belongs to our modern digital era as several descriptions indicate. From Table 10: "the sun was as pink as a Macintosh iPhone".

b) it is written in the 2nd person singular using the historical present, which makes the reader feel more involved in the story.

c) it has a tremendous humoristic touch although it is meant to be a serious narrative at the same time. I love the humor mixed with the increasing tension of Table 10 when the girl rides the ostrich, also the definitions of the difficult words: corvid, maceration, etc., as if treating all humans as stupid beings, which we very often are. In fact, Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland also did this. I love lines like this: "Nothing is more beautiful than the Egyptian vulture...". On the one hand it is true but, on the other, humans are being assaulted by a "birdy tornado".

Table 41 is also a critique of today's shallowness in a digitalized world where people no longer pay attention to what is important in life, that is, to nature and to the other human beings. Instead, they seem to be just interested in the material things, in their mobile telephones, in the unhealthy hamburgers at McDonalds which have been overtaken by the animals' retaliation. From Table 10: "Girl collides with you. Not paying attention to you, only to her telephone".

There is originality in the language. It is elaborate, at times very musical, vibrant and with lovely wordplays. There are also a lot of prose-poetry lines, just like what Jack Kerouac was able to do in his novel On the Road. I particularly love the sea descriptions of Table 1 and how the sea-boy emerges from the water. I am still thinking about the significance of this character in the novel, the whiteness of the eyes. Is it an alien? A fallen angel? Someone we should learn from? There is also a white cat and later on a girl, lady of ancient Greece with a white rose, "indifferent to the frogs". I wonder at the significance of all this, especially of the colors white, pink and black. White could symbolise innocence, pink could stand for youth, immaturity and lust, whereas black could suggest a bad omen, evil and danger. Also, I love these two very poetic descriptions of Table 10:

a) description of a girl: "A girl is nestling in the tree. One blonde strand of hair describes a question mark on her lineless forehead..."
I wonder: is this question mark a double meaning? On the one hand it is the form of the hair strand but, on the other, it could be a metaphor for a question mark: the girl is acting differently. Unlike the majority of the people, she is in the tree (in the tree of life? in what really counts in life?). She may ask herself questions about life and nature and she slithers down the tree to be embraced by her father.

b) description of an eagle: "The eagle extends its broad wings and vaults into the vaults of the sky. Its feathers resemble fingers, fingers that are playing an invisible celestial piano. The eagle makes its incandescent descent, the sun burning furiously behind it."
As a reader I experienced the welcoming “you” narrative positively because I felt I was inside the story, which I found original. In fact, apart from Duras’ and Faulkner’s novels, many poems are often written in the you-person because it helps the reader enter and so you can identify yourself more easily with everything you are reading. It is like the poem or story disappears, which is the ultimate effect any writer seeks.

Love this: “to paint with words” and “the book assaults you”. The baobab tree assaulted me while listening to the narrative. The power of nature vs. the power of our modern digital media and social networks, where the latter hinders us from marveling at the simplest things of life (i.e. I am usually sitting on a train and either reading a book or looking at the landscape, the sky, the sun, etc., while the majority of the people are busy with their smartphones and thus losing their ability to perceive and enjoy nature’s beauty.

I like the metaphors of the milk and the tree as they both mean life. I have immediately made the connection milk and tree= birth and life. I also like the critique of the capitalist consumerist society: “We represent and then we experience”. The author nails it.

I love the unexpected turn of the novel at this point, especially the chapter where the living unprocessed pigs attack the Consumeria that sold processed slaughtered pork produced according to the mandate of our nonsensical capitalist world. Also, I am glad the sea-boy appears at this point of the novel. Buried in the baobab tree? I am still wondering at the significance and symbology of this character. As I already commented I see a metaphor of life in the milk and in the baobab tree: there is birth in the milk, a rebirth for humanity? A second chance to do things better, love nature, animals, love ourselves? The tree's symbolic meaning of wisdom will make us wiser and less ignoble? Moreover, to me the milk is as white as the "oviform pupil-less eye-globes" of the sea-boy. Purity. Innocence. Shall we ever learn from our mistakes?

[Eric Purchase · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine what would happen if a jungle grew up over the city of Chicago. That’s what Joseph Suglia’s Table 41 does. But it’s not an ordinary jungle. Instead, it’s a jungle that springs up overnight, is overflowing with milk, and has plants and animals from all over the world. Table 41 drops you right into this apocalypse because it is one of the few novels ever written in the second person. You the reader are the protagonist. You observe the transformation of your city and suffer its consequences. You experience these unprecedented events with child-like wonder—the prose is simple and repetitive like a children’s book. At the same time, you notice the profusion of new life around you, a perception reinforced by Suglia’s exotic vocabulary. (I learned more new words from this book than I have since I was first learning to read.)

The severe contrast of modern city and primordial jungle causes us to reconsider the structures of modern life that we take for granted. Buildings, electricity, phones, businesses, streets … none of them are as permanent or inevitable as we assume. More importantly, Table 41 demonstrates just how much our identity relies on those structures. We like to think of ourselves as free and self-sufficient, but what would happen to us if we didn’t have work to go to, didn’t have someone to deliver food to restaurants and grocery stores, didn’t have homes built for us … and therefore couldn’t rely on other people to behave in predictable ways? Table 41 is disorienting in a way that sci fi and fantasy only wish they could be.

Warning: Table 41 is an experimental novel. You won’t find a conventional story and character development. But the rich, enjoyable language kept me reading with pleasure—that and the crazy scenes Suglia reveals with short, wry sentences. When birds take over a McDonalds, “The crows are devouring the pickles,” Suglia writes. “They are loving it.” If you like quirky experimental novels, you’ll love Table 41.

[Miranda Lemon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Table 41 is brilliant, I have read it twice and I can't wait to read it again. I always thoroughly enjoy it. It is a rich experience, when I read it I am not an outsider but a character in the story. Unique, absorbing and captivating, and I highly recommend it to every reader.

It is a work of art, full of fascinating imagery, texture and detail. I am so glad that I came across Table 41, because it has changed the way I see literature. Each chapter is new and exciting, I think everyone should experience it.

[Life Imitates · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very repetitive book that could’ve been condensed into 100 pages. I enjoy reading in second person, and I was hooked by the mission we were setting out on in the beggining. However, the book continued to describe the same things over and over again for the next 260 pages. There were some interesting moments, but for the most part, it was beating a dead horse. This whole book felt like the author was setting the background for an upcoming scene, but the scene never came. For the most part, the novel was just a description of scenery. This book was very hard for me to get through.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Table 41 was a very challenging book to read... delightfully challenging. When I first read Table 41, the vocabulary was amazing. The descriptive journey kept me coming back. As I began to share Table 41 with my son, he instantly found it interesting. As we kept reading, I knew this would be a great Christmas gift for him. It wasn't long before we had more family listening in. We have enjoyed it so much.

[Joanne Rolston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hands down it was the weirdest book I think I've ever read. The author has written from the perspective of "you" in order to put the reader in the different scenes, but I found it hypnotic. The ending was mad, like Jack Torrance at the Overlook in front of his typewriter mad. I couldn't give the book 3 stars, it's between a C for creativity and D for don't know.

[Xavier Pérez-Pons · Rating 5 out of 5]

A different book. Groundbreaking. A perfect combination of imagination, elegance and intelligence.

[Jay Northearn · Rating 5 out of 5]

You need to brace yourself somewhat when commencing this novel, for Joseph Suglia is a very generous writer with a salvo of descriptive ingredients at his disposal. This is not a chef who will hold back. He will not let you leave his Table ( 41 ) without you feeling utterly sated, dazzled with textures and tastes, knowing that not one of the offerings has been pedestrian or cliched. Far from the typical commercial pressures for today’s writers to be slick, cynically sparing and functionally efficient, Suglia clearly wants to give so much – to make things scintillate in shifting spectra like an expressionist artist, so I feel this guy owes as much to Van Gogh as any writer. At the same time, I don’t think this generosity should suggest an easy ride, not when the descriptive richness un-peels deceptively like onion-skins of consciousness, and frequent bouts of cognitive dissonance threaten to engulf like the seascape sweeping into the opening scene. Suglia’s intense focus should ( one might think ) bring the reader ‘closer’ to the subject, but that’s not the intention. As his Brechtian lens bores in, and for all the strangely superficial wonders of colour, tone and substance, we realise the peculiar narrative stance is borne of a spectator in a haunted dream-time, alienated and synthesising scene by disturbing scene like some bizarre, hyper-aesthetic computer. As I said: this is not easy-reading, and for all the right reasons. I must read more of this.