Help! My Chameleon Keeps Visiting Me in Dreams and Spewing Esoteric Philosophy: A Reflection on Agualusa's "The Book of Chameleons"
Magic, mystery, and talking lizards galore
“Memory is a landscape watched from the window of a moving train”
Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog. I cannot believe we are on the penultimate reading of the term. How these few months have flown. Today I will be reflecting on Agualusa's “The Book of Chameleons”, so let us jump right in.
It pleases me to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Some of our recent readings have not been my favourite, so I was delighted when the first few pages of this book had me hooked. The structure, the plot, the characters, all of it was so immaculately thought out. Why don’t we go one by one and discuss each aspect?
First, the structure. I loved the shorter chapters of this book. I am one of many who have had their attention span ZAPPED by social media. With this novel, I was able to stay engaged much longer than other books that just keep going on. Not to mention, I enjoyed the jumping from setting to setting, both spatially and temporally. The use of dreams and memories to further colour the characters of this book was a masterclass in storytelling, in my opinion.
Speaking of characters, we have a gauntlet of fascinating ones to address. I cannot spend too much time speaking on each, so I will focus on our main protagonists: Felix and Eulálio. How does one decide to narrate a story from a chameleon’s perspective, let alone a man who has been resurrected as a chameleon? It’s works like these that make me feel my creativity will forever pale in comparison. Regardless, Eulálio was a captivating character. A narrative told by an outsider who is still deeply involved with the plot at hand. Not to mention, the vague implications that this chameleon can transcend the astral realm and visit others in his dreams sold this character to me. As for Felix, I found it interesting how the supposed main character of this story nearly becomes the least important of all the ones we meet. Of course, he is an important catalyst in the plot, but at some point, he close to vanishes from the narrative, becoming a meeting place for the other characters and nothing more.
Lastly, the plot. What a story this was. Admittedly, it is a bit difficult to figure out where it’s headed in the beginning. We can blame the narrator and the chameleon's limited scope for that. Yet, when things begin to reveal themselves, the story becomes leagues more fascinating than it already was. I was enthralled by the end of this book, and for good reason!
“The Book of Chameleons” was a novel full of magic, whimsy, and entertainment. I am not sure what more I can say about this book other than I loved it. I would be interested to hear if you did not enjoy this book, and why that was. My question for you this week is which character fascinated you the most? Why is that? In the meantime, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Bye for now.
B.B.
Hi Bilal!
Love the title! It made me laugh ◡̈ I'm glad you seemed to like the novel! I too really enjoyed it for the myriad of reasons that you too seem to share. I would love to ask Agualusa to see why he chose a gecko to be the main narrator. And the plot itself is so very intriguing! I do also agree with the shortened attention span because of social media. I don't know if it was just me but I had some difficulty keeping track of the characters. Like who is who? Who is becoming who? That might just be me but it was a challenge for me to keep track. I do also agree with you that although the shorter chapters are a perk, it was sometimes difficult to understand the plot because there was a lot going on. To answer your question, my favourite character has to be Eulalio. I find is character to be so interesting: a gecko with the mind of a man.
Much love!
Hi Bilal, I enjoyed reading your blog! As for your question, I found Angela the most interesting character. She was a simple character who was somewhat mysterious at the start of the novel, but by the conclusion, she had become the most complex character.