The Prospector

The title of this mesmerizing novel is misleading. The original French, LE CHERCHEUR D'OR, means literally "the seeker for gold." THE PROSPECTOR is an over-literal translation for such a poetic book, quite without metaphorical resonance. More important, it is a forward-looking word, whereas Le Clézio's protagonist is entirely concerned with looking BACK, trying to regain entry to an Eden from which he was expelled as a child. Fortunately the Gauguin pictures reproduced on both the paperback and hard-bound editions are perfect in their evocation of an almost unreal tropical paradise; if you respond to them, you are likely also to be drawn into the spell of this book.The action, such as it is, is simply told. When the novel opens in 1892, Alexis L'Etang is a boy of 7, living on the coast of Mauritius, roaming the island with a native friend or sharing dreams with his beloved elder sister Laure. It is an idyllic life for a child, but it comes to an end when his father, a man of greater vision than business sense, is ruined by a devastating hurricane. After years of living in poverty, Alexis journeys by sailing ship to the distant island of Rodrigues, to pursue his father's tales of treasure concealed there by the Unknown Corsair. On the sea, and later living in a remote part of the island, he makes different discoveries from those he had expected. He also falls in love with a native girl, Ouma, who like him has turned back to nature after a convent education. World War I intervenes, and Alexis goes off to Ypres and the Somme, but returns to the islands to discover the true meaning of his quest.Le Clézio does not so much describe things as evoke them by incantation. In reviewing  ONITSHA , his masterpiece, I thought that his fondness for the heroic roll-call came from Homer, but the first influences on the young Alexis are less elevated: the adventure stories of H. Rider Haggard, the author of  SHE :--- Zweeke the sorcerer said, "You ask me, my father, to tell you of the youth of Umslopogaas, who was named Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most beautiful of Zulu women." Each one of those names was buried deep in me, like the names of living people.Throughout the book, Alexis conjures with the sheer sound of naming things: islands, mountains, rivers, trees, plants, birds. The book is written entirely in the first person, with very little dialogue, giving the rhapsodic effect of a waking dream, even amid the horrors of the Western Front:--- What do these rivers we are always talking about look like... the Yser, the Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne, the Ailette, the Scarpe? They are rivers of blood flowing under low skies, thick, heavy water carrying debris from the woods, burned beams, and dead horses.Or here, near the end, when the author merges past and present in timeless simplicity:--- Our life on Mananava, far from other people, is like an exquisite dream. [...] At dawn we glide into the forest, which is heavy with dew, to pick red guavas, wild cherries, and cabbages, Madagascan plums, bullock's hearts, and bredes-songe and margosa leaves. We live in the same place as the maroons in Senghor and Sacalavou's time. Look there! Those were their fields. They kept their pigs, goats, and fowl there. And over there they grew beans, lentils, yams, and corn.I have now read four Le Clézio books and some stories. All seem to be to some extent autobiographical, written out of a double loss -- his family removed from their home in Mauritius, and the author not seeing his father for the whole of his early childhood. The books feature travel and hardship, young protagonists in pursuit of some quest. They are filled with an aching nostalgia for a lost past, and with awe of the wild and ancient places of the earth and the secrets they may hold. In some ways, Le Clézio is a century behind his time; besides Rider Haggard, you can see the influence of Kipling and especially of Conrad. But his currency is modern; he deals in dreams. Let him once work his magic, then see if you can cast off his spell.

This "novel" is essentially one terrible and beautiful love letter to the sea. It is, au fond, more of a poem than a plot-driven narrative. I have no compunction at all in asseverating that the reader who does not feel or appreciate the power of the poetic will find nothing in this book to interest her/him. For me, the book was puissant and beautiful beyond all tears. Allow me to save the prospective reader some time by quoting the opening lines:"As far back as I can remember I have listened to the sea; to the sound of it mingling with the wind in the filao needles, the wind that never stopped blowing....It is the sound that cradled my childhood. I can hear it now, deep inside me; it will come with me wherever I go....Not a day went by when I didn't go to the sea; not a night when I didn't wake up with my back sweaty and damp, sitting up in my cot, parting the mosquito net and trying to see the tide, anxious and full of desire I didn't understand. I thought of the sea as human, and in the dark all senses were alert, the better to hear her arrival, the better to receive her. The giant waves leapt over the reefs and then tumbled into the lagoon; the noise made the air and earth vibrate like a boiler. I heard her, she moved, she breathed."You may stop there. If you aren't enchanted already, the book is not for you. Search for something more prosaic and pedestrian - plenty of that sort of thing about. The only novel which this one resembles - and it is a VERY strong resemblance - is W.H. Hudson's Green Mansions (which I urgently press on all lovers of this book) with Alexis' Ouma taking the place of Rima, whose statue you can see in Hyde Park in honour of Hudson, if ever your travels should take you to London.I don't know that there's much more I can add in laud of this beautiful and bittersweet novel in which waves of enchantment and disenchantment purl over the reader like strong tides over a bewitching, limitless seascape. I shall leave the final words to Alexis:"Who can know their fate? It is written here, the secret that awaits me and that no one but I can unearth. It is written in the sea, on the spray of the waves, on the sky that covers us during the day, and in the unchanging constellations. How am I to understand what it says?"This book will not help you to read what is written in water. But it will let you know that the writing is there for you.

Le Clezio writes with vivid lyricism about the natural beauty of Mauritius and other small islands off the eastern coast of Southern Africa. The protagonist's search for gold and for his lost youth is masculinity personified - solitary, driven, and empty of deep,lasting connection. The early 20th century colonial world is the backdrop. A young man's loss of his father and his quest to fulfill his father's dream is at the core. Both colonialism and loss create a survivor's guilt in this young man. In the end he is redeemed and lifted up by the sea, but he stands alone and bereft all the same.

Le Clezio's ability to paint surroundings And the inner thoughts of the person walking through them in a picture of words, effectively bringing you on their personal journey.