The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony

To be quite honest, my recent foray into the book publishing world via social networks (mainly Twitter) has left me disillusioned. Every book I pick up I seem to have heard 1001 things about, leaving my judgment altered. I enjoy a little glory every once in awhile: I like to be the one who finds the gem.

And finally, I have. The Convalescent, by Jessica Anthony.

When I scooped it up in Barnes & Noble (don’t judge me), I was drawn mostly to the cover. The book is a brilliant golden yellow. Its undersized jacket has the most arresting cover, simulating a woman of sorts within a web of multi-colored veins. The cover in itself was well worth the purchase, but it was admittedly quite deceiving.

What I would have guessed to be a twisted self-discovery story of some quirkily beautiful girl turned out to be the story (and history) of a deformed, diseased, and all together unpleasant little butcher named Mr. Rovar Pfliegman.

Rovar is a mute midget. He sells (stolen) meat from his inoperable school bus in the middle of a field in Virginia and falls victim to his own “benevolent erections.” His skin peels off and he can’t quite shake a hacking cough.

But despite these shortcomings, Rovar proves quite endearing through the skilled pen of Jessica Anthony. While he may defecate in a bucket, a portion of his bus is set aside for his “Reading Center.” Though he grunts instead of speaks, he eloquently writes the secondary narrative of The Convalescent as a letter to the object of his affection.

In fact, in regard to his love of reading and keen assessment of the absurd social world, Rovar is not dissimilar to another character with whom I’ve recently fallen in love: Madame Michel of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (though she is arguably lovelier and, frankly, cleaner).

Those around Rovar prove equally as intriguing. Marjorie taps his window each morning just to say hi and slices those who threaten Rovar. (She is a tall blade of grass.) Mrs. Kipner will never leave his bus. (She is a beetle who grew fat from eating a can of tomatoes and then grew too fat from said tomatoes. Thus, she is stuck in the can.)

Beneath this odd telling of Rovar's world, Ms. Anthony weaves an intricate history of Rovar's ancestors in eastern Europe. It may be more aptly described as a mythology, with its fantastical details, sordid twists, and stunning nature imagery. Case in point: Ms. Anthony manipulates the motif of the river so that it strays from the Disney/Pochahantas convention and rather becomes a powerful force of magical birth coupled with fantastical destruction.

She transforms the cliché image of the butterfly into something wholly new and imaginative, even stretching it to include the beetle, Mrs. Kipner. This butterly image, along with others such as that of the bird, is used to pull together otherwise unconnected events into a fate that is both firmly planted and frustratingly elusive.

Thus the teeniest things in this world (the butterfly, the bird and Rovar among them) get reinvented and exalted in Ms. Anthony’s work. She writes, “Only the gravitational force, by far the weakest force of all, guides the destinies of the universe” (116). Which is of course just an imaginative way of saying, “Good things come in small packages.”

In addition to this use of common motifs, she openly pulls from some of the most established traditions in literature (namely, Kafka). However, Ms. Anthony does so in a way that is not only skillfully executed but is also entirely her own.

Keep a lookout for this author… I’m expecting (and hoping for) further greatness from her in the near future.