Reincarnation discussion

Eleni Papanou’s Unison (The Spheral) is an elaborate concatenation, usually elegant, in places difficult and disturbing, of metaphysical, psychological, science fiction and visionary elements blended to present a hero’s epic quest to overthrow an autocratic mind-controlled society, called Unity, which he was instrumental in creating in the first place after a Great Cataclysm befell Earth as we know it. A sort of Groundhog Day (the movie with Bill Murray) in the far future, only the day is a lifetime that repeats until the protagonist gets it right.

As a reader, there were points where I felt like I was struggling through rapidly shifting dream (both fantastical and nightmare) material that got me as confused as the characters in the story seemed at that juncture. I’d feel like I’d read the same scene earlier and was tempted to skip ahead. Just in time to keep me in the story’s flow, the character would experience a similar déjà vu, recall the previous instance, and use the memory to recast his actions to achieve a more positive result. Nice tracking of effect on the reader by the author, intentional, I assume.

Unison is an excellent example of uninhibited experimentation with Visionary Fiction, a genre long practiced by classical and best-selling authors but still relatively unknown, at least by its proper name. Brown University professor, Edward J. Ahearn, in his book Visionary Fictions: Apocalyptic Writing from Blake to the Modern Age “finds this form at once exhilarating, immensely disturbing, vital, and subversive.” Ms. Papanou’s Unison (The Spheral) does all that to perfection but takes it a positive step further. Not to spoil the conclusion, but, unlike T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men, Eleni’s novel ends with a bang, not a whimper.