An inversion of the Orpheus myth where our hero gets trapped in the Underworld and his lover Eurydice orchestrates his release.Mishka, a half Jewish, half Lebanese Australian studying music in Boston, is our Orpheus while his lover Leela, a transplant from the Bible-belt south (from a town appropriately called Promised Land), studying the mathematics of music, is his Eurydice. In his quest to find his missing Lebanese father, Mishka gets involved with a bunch of suicide-bomber terrorists and flies out to Lebanon where he disappears. On his tail, and on Leela’s, is the twisted and tortured Cobb, also formerly from Promised Land, a veteran of the Iraq war, now a contract security consultant; Cobb has secretly admired, pursued, and been scorned by Leela while they were growing up in Promised Land. Now it’s payback time for Cobb as he holds the power to bring Mishka back alive, or not.The story flips back and forth between Boston, Promised Land, the Daintree rainforest in north-eastern Australia, and the Middle East. While the American and Australian scenes are well developed (probably due to the writer’s first-hand experience of having lived in these countries), I found the Middle Eastern ones sparse, suggesting that Turner Hospital had no real experience of the locale and was writing from sketchy research material. That said, there are great contrasting scenes painted in the US and Australia: the dreamlike sequences when Leela and Miskha first meet and later when they realize that they are implicated in terrorism after a subway bombing in Boston; when Mishka recalls growing up at Chateau Daintree deep in the rainforest, the only child in a quirky multi-generational family of transplanted music –loving Hungarian Jews released from the Holocaust, as unique to the area as the quandong trees that grow only in the Daintree; and when we are taken back to Promised Land to visit Leela’s and Cobb’s respective cantankerous fathers, both dying of cancer and waiting out the other guy. Strangely enough, I was enjoying the literary nature of the book until the pace quickened after Mishka was kidnapped and the novel veered off into the thriller genre, and, in my opinion, failed at that point. Because what happens in the Middle East is so fragmentary and all the action happens off-stage, I found this section more like a data dump where all the loose ends were tied up in a perfunctory way, as if the book was being suddenly rushed to market. It’s a pity, because the build up to that point was superb.Shortcomings apart, this book is a good reminder of how terrorism has penetrated the fabric of life and literature in the developed west, be it in the US or Australia, and how it has conditioned our behaviour and expectations. And it also says to me that the literary-thriller genre is still an open field, and that it’s tough to integrate two different genres without readers on both sides of the scale left wanting “a little bit more.”
I kind of forgot that books this boring existed. I'm usually pretty careful with my reading choices. I only really read literature, literature from authors I've researched, whom I know are, if nothing else, interesting. Who usually create works that aren't of the norm so to speak, whatever that means. Anyone who looked at my ratings would see I mostly rate books pretty highly, not because I know what I like, but because I read what's worth reading. Therefore, even if I don't love a book, it still might challenge me and have me think, teach me something. I also study literature, so the books I'm forced to read are usually worth it anyway.I can say none of that for Orpheus Lost. I started reading it and then I finished. It has characters who say and do things. It has a plot that moves along. It has resolves at the end. It's a dull story that reads like an airport thriller with some juvenile fancy pretentious undergrad writing thrown in to make it look like something worth more than the piece of shit that it is. It's covered in accolades, which is totally baffling to me, its author is respected, and not in a John Grisham kind of way. The prose is at times embarrassingly bad. The love story is inexplicable, the only reason it gets away with slamming two characters together who in no way reflect real or interesting human beings is because its based on the Orpheus myth, and Orpheus and Eurydice fell in love.Some of the reviews actually refer to this book as "important". Holy shit. This books is wholly concerned with its own story, its a novel that does nothing other than try to suck the reader in with a plot concerned with terrorism. The author, Janette Turner Hospital, has obviously never been to the deep south, or if she did she was walking around with her eyes closed and hands over her ears yelling, "the stereotypes are true!" The sections in the "Promised Land" are fucking embarrassing. Fuck this book. I can't even be bothered continuing with this review.
What do You think about Orpheus Lost (2007)?
Orpheus Lost begins its focus on Southern-girl turned MIT mathematician, Leela. She finds herself in the bowels of the subway drawn in by the haunting sounds of musician Mishka Bartok's violin. Shortly after, the two begin to date and eventually move in together. The novel is thick with references to Orpheus and Eurydice, playing off the myth on various levels. After a suicide bombing, Leela is interrogated by her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend Cobb, who has become a mercenary and has a personal interest in tying Leela's current lover to the terrorist incident. Mishka, however, has secrets of his own that take him to Lebanon and unleash the usual web of confusion and misunderstandings one would expect in a book with middle-eastern characters in a post-9/11 world. Thus, at about 100 pages in, I found myself unimpressed and unsure I wanted to continue to read a story I had already heard a million times. But, then the author took a turn. She returned to the South for backstory on Leela and Cobb. She explored Mishka's parentage and the effects of loss from the Holocaust on his Hungarian family. The terrorist misunderstandings, while real and frustrating, then become the tragic result of years of secrets. Orpheus Lost is many stories of families woven together to the point of Leela and Mishka's hope for reunification. And, like Orpheus and Eurydice, they both have to travel to hell and back, in the hopes that they can avoid looking back at their past, in order to begin anew.
—Anne
Well, it is a good thing that I saw Metamorphosis at the Pgh Public, because it helped me understand this book. I believe I have admitted publicly that I made it through 4 yrs of HS and 4 yrs of college without reading any classics/mythology/etc. My aunt, a former hs AP English teacher would be aghast to know this. But somehow, I muddle through life ignorant.Anyway, this was a pretty good book. Leela picks up and falls in love with a street musician Mishka. Her childhood friend/rival Cobb is a "secret agent" who is investigating terrorists. He informs that Leela, that Miska is involved with terrorists who are setting off bombs in Boston. Who should Leela believe, Mishka or Cobb? Oh, this book also fits me theme of warm places. Mishka spends his childhood in the jungle of Australia with parrots and tropical plants.
—Sandra
Shifting between unlikely perspectives of a mathematician, an Army/ Security guard and a fragile, emotionally wounded and gifted musician, explores the terrain of falling into the metaphorical underworld of Hades. These characters make a fatal mistake and 'Orpeus', the double identity accidently becomes associated with a terrorist organisation. This novel is about the guilt, revenge and justice. It is also about the ramifications of uncovering terrain that is best forgotten. Like her earlier novel, Tiger in the Tiger Pit, this novel beautifully describes music. But this time, she evokes Eastern as well as Western music. A great book. I don't know why she isn't more polular. She is a prolific Australian author. Motifs and descriptions of music similar to Vikram Seth's An Equal Music and Peter Goldsworthy's Maestro. Does it matter if you don't know the myths of Orpheus? Books that make literary allusions should not be seen as inaccessable. It makes you want to find out more about Greek mythology and read The Iliad and The Odyssey (even in a condensed children's book format to start with). No, literary allusions should never detract from a book, but enhance it. More writing should do this - it makes the reading a more enriching and educating experience, if we chose to remember or find out about the other stories.
—Emma Willis
