The first two pages of this novel remind me a
bit structurally of the first two pages of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.   Heavy on the philosophical issues, it is
also a little like the works of Iris Murdoch. 
Hoffman’s novel is a first person science fiction.  Musing about and rooting out the past
becomes the means to uncover the narrator’s secret.  The narrator, whose name is Iris, struggles to understand and
detach from her mother.  Her early years
are spent in such a closed in environment that she has little opportunity to
make friends.  She has no father.  Some of the tale is told to an
"Advisor" who is much like what we would call a psychoanalyst.  The mystery of the past drives much of the
first half of the novel.  Iris struggles
to find something to fill the "utter blankness where at least a fantasy of
a father might have been" (p. 13). 
She struggles also with the "seamless attunement" (p. 15) in
which she exists with her mother.  This
closeness is something others outside the dyad seem to find odd.  Eventually Iris becomes aware of a "weirdness"
(p. 116) inside herself and suspects something about her is not normal.  People threaten to enter the closed circle
of the world with her mother only to be expelled.  First a peer friend and her family then her mother’s boyfriend
are pushed out of Iris’ life.  In each
instance the others sense the strangeness of the dyad of mother and child.  Iris searches for and finds the reason for
her apprehension but this does not provide any comfort; rather it strips away
her ability to be close to her mother and further confuses her own sense of
identity.

There are few futuristic science
elements in this novel.  This works well
and may prevent the book from seeming outdated later.  Hoffman violates one of the basic rules of science fiction–the
book is not action oriented.  Much of
the novel is two people talking or the narrator musing alone.  However, Hoffman is able to make the
deviation from genre rules work.  The
lone musing of the narrator in the first half of the book evoke a sense of a
terrible, white, empty space.  This
might be a disconcerting experience for some readers, but it is an integral
part of how Iris feels at the core of her self.  At other times she seems to be in the middle of a symbiotic
oneness with her mother described in phrases like "she sponged me up"
(p. 16).  Sometimes Iris seems quite
comforted by the closeness: "when we talked intimately, it was difficult
to figure out who was speaking, whose voice was saying the words we both
thought." (p. 35).  At other times
she sees it as "pathological" and a "terrible sameness."
(p. 37). 

When Iris discovers the secret she runs away
and tries to find some of the family members she has never been allowed to
have.  She tries to find a sense of self
and tries to forge relationships with others. 
At first, Iris feels she is a monster, a freak.  Eventually, Iris is able to partly come to
terms with herself and with her mother.

Much of the language in this novel suggests
the author has some knowledge of psychoanalytic theory.  Acting out is called acting out.  The mechanism of projection is nicely
illustrated.  Though Iris sees herself
as an unusual and particular case, what she experiences is something that all
people experience as they emerge from the childhood symbiosis with the mother
and struggle to bootstrap themselves into existence as an individual.  Hoffman recounts in a very evocative way the
desire for and fear of the overwhelming unity with the mother.  Her metaphors of emptiness suggest the fear
of being what Kleinians call being scooped out and devoured by the mother.  Weirdness, indeed!

© 2004 Marilyn Graves

Marilyn Graves, Ph.D. is a
clinical psychologist and topic editor of Psychology and Fiction at
suite101.com.

Categories: Fiction, Philosophical