Wisdom, happiness, freedom and lots of other things are so desirable that we pursue them purely for themselves, though they are only attainable as means or by-products of our other, less tempting goals. They are like unexpected guests who come and go and never stay for long. The more one is trying to take hold of them, the more elusive and annoyed they become. So, when wisdom is the main goal in the story (or life) and everything else is subdued to it, there is a chance of converting a novel into sermon and excitement into dullness, by leaving out the alluring fuel that is made of inner conflicts, trials, transforming dialogue between the characters and their circumstances. To a moderate degree this happened to A Severed Wasp.

A retired piano virtuoso returns to her birthplace to find solace, but bumps into an old acquaintance that needs her help. Between warm baths, herbal tea rituals and neck massages she finds the time to heat up her experience-made pot and pour the wisdom among the thirsty gathering that loiters around. She becomes a sage for the church congregation, a mentor to their prodigal children and a prosecutor of the mischief among them. Former pop star, reminiscences of Nazism and homophobic calls mingle in.

What makes the plot bizarre is the fact that it is a sequel to Little rain, a simple novel written around fifty years earlier, that resembles any other coming-of-age book. The author and protagonist surely have matured; the youthful determination and sincerity that made the prequel somewhat bearable have been replaced with stiffness and versatile plot twists that the protagonist, like god, straightens out with her magical touch. The old age seems to smooth the strains and edges like rivers do with pebbles. Unfortunately, the fun is not so much in the final result as it is in transformation.

The beginning of this book gave me an eerie feeling; the focus wasn’t where it should be and all the things that seem important were later ignored or followed by a hazy resolution. It felt as if something was misplaced and the setting called for a different examination, more suitable to the expectations it evoked. The natural flow of story was chopped by a robotic hand or some other foreign and unkind force. Over the years of reading I’ve learnt that this aversion I often feel towards beginnings has a simple cause; the more peculiar and unique the story is, the stronger is my initial resistance and the longer it takes for me to submerge in. Once in, the foreignness disappears and there is a colorful and plentiful world awaiting.

But sometimes, like in The Secret History, the robotic hand is not a part of a secret book’s organism, only a flaw. The props used in this book were serving only the author’s intentions, lacking any development, reasons, roots, or a life of their own. They were violently plucked out of any imaginable habitat and left floating around only to be at the story’s disposal in times of need. There’s nothing magical about bored college snobs that go on killing people out of pretentiousness; taking it as a modern version of Crime and Punishment, is not only an insult for the latter but also a very rough estimation of the former. Our values and fashions may really have changed, but human nature still has the same basic characteristic, reasons and laws that shape it. Even though the divine reason has abandoned us, we are still not floating in a void, waiting for literature to do whatever it wants with us. It can, of course, but that’s the reason why so many bad books are produced.

Our habits and rituals may seem ridiculous to an outside observer, all the more so, when there is no reason behind them. The church’s aberrations are rarely so vividly coloured as in the journey of this nun, who happens to find herself surrounded by odd habits of nunneries and can’t make sense of them. She is as close to a spring of meaning as it gets and everything she encounters forces her to drink from it: old traditions, that must have some sense to have lasted for so long and to be so highly respected; the lives of fellow nuns that must be meaningful in some way. Nevertheless she finds none for herself and remains detached. There’s no hidden, internal logic of such a closed system, just an obliviousness to the general laws of the world.

Although this novel is an epitome of all the wrongdoings of religious institutions to a degree that it made me laugh, I still felt a bit cheated by the final twist; but in a most charming way there is. I wanted to go back in time when stories emerged in passing and there was still as much effort put in personal pursuits as it was in professional ones… If, of course, such a time ever existed and it was not reserved for the chosen few who might as well be living today.

If the author’s intention was to show that any person, no matter how superfluous she may be, deserves freedom and acceptance, it would be a wonderful book, with all the steady rhythm and clarity of style. But he seems to claim the opposite — all that lies under the petty social judgments are some innocent actions performed by harmless girls, and so such social standards are worthless. And although he tries to make a tragic hero out of her, he lets her stand out only in her poise, for her mind stays old-fashioned, as men remain her only interest. Maybe that’s how changes always form, first comes form and then comes the content. But I think it would be better if he just put less fantasy and more life into it.

The book shows credibly how losing a hold over continuity of the present necessarily leads to strengthening of an inner world and enforcing its persistence to act out regardless of everyday barriers that slow down a healthy person: fears, others, physical obstacles. The gap between inner and outer, past and present, is sometimes lost in the narrative, but the author reinstates them with the help of a mystery, which gives the protagonist some focus and unity. What would otherwise remain dispersed and hidden from the outer world, is in this way made sensible and given a logic of its own.

As in The Curious Incident as well, it seems that only a peculiar state of mind is not itself enough to make the story interesting. The mysterious hook is needed to lighten up the matter and show the disease in broad spectrum. The tool with which both stories are told is similar to the psychological test where you need to make a castle out of a sheet of paper — what is assessed isn’t the final result itself as much as all the characteristics that one reveals unconsciously by focusing on the result: interactions with others, forethought or rashness, working under time limit etc. So, if all you care about mysteries is who’s done it, you’ll probably be disappointed by the book’s predictability, but that was never really the point.

I assume every reader knows what this book is about right from the start, even if he is unfamiliar with the plot. One can’t escape the charged atmosphere, electrified by contrasting the indifferent, all-embracing nature to the human world, and an ominous feeling of increasingly tragic events. What’s magical about Steinbeck’s writing is that while the events keep moving faster with each page, they nonetheless remain perfectly still. This paradoxical stillness resembles a calm before an earthquake. With an alertness of an animal anticipating danger, the reader doesn’t need to change the position to see what’s on the other side; everything is already there at the beginning. Perhaps the story was almost too neat, which is why it was easy for me to get detached.

The description of his adventure would be much more revealing, if it hadn’t elevated into a lecture about two ancient categories of being, one experienced through our everyday life, where language represents a barrier between us and the world, and the other one of true essence that can be reached only through some transcendental activity such as taking drugs. Although his expedition to the sphere of “pure perception” shows him the limitations of words and all our classifications, it seems he identifies his trip with as many concepts and theories as he possibly can. He makes a paradigm of unvailed awareness out of it, which selfless as it is, is based on one sole experiment of his humble self. Little is left of this experiment but widespread doctrines, which just fit too neatly. I wonder how much previous knowledge affected his experience or how much posterior interpretations transversed it and I got the feeling he didn’t quite catch it in its uniqueness, or as he would said, suchness.