If I Were Me

Chris Knight is managing editor of the Canadian HR Reporter.

At one point in this novel, the main character, a white American Jew
named Lander, is asked by his adopted black daughter Rachel (who has
renamed herself Tewfiqa Niggadyke and is sharing a flat with her Polish
girlfriend and lover in Warsaw) if his uncle had owned property in
Berlin before World War II; because if he did, she is eligible to
reclaim the property under a Holocaust reparation program.

This is by way of saying that Clark Blaise’s new book takes the whole
world as its setting—not, as some books will, because it is there for
the taking, but because it allows the author to show his characters
relating to the totality of the world in different ways.

The story follows Landers through trips to several countries where he
is lecturing on linguistics, expounding his theories about the
deterioration of language in Alzheimer’s patients. It also follows his
inner quest to decipher the meaning of his life and the lives of his
adopted daughter and natural son. Blaise expertly intertwines these
voyages into many opposites— dreams and reality, nationality and
personhood, past and present, present and future.

Histories, both personal and institutional, are also interwoven. While
the story takes place in the present day, there are allusions to and
discussions of history that show the impact that time as well as place
has on individuals. Just as a moment of language may be understood only
in the context of the sentence and conversation in which it appears, so
Blaise’s “now” takes on full substance and meaning only when seen
as part of a much larger story. This 112-page slice of now is a brief,
bright flash of intuition that illuminates far beyond the reach of its
pages.