T
here are not many books I think about for too long after having read them, but Smoke Paper Mirrors by Anna Tambour is an exception, because, although much of the novel mirrors real life to some extent, in the end it becomes a very strange book indeed. Apart from which, Tambour’s writing has a richness to it that dissuades the reader from moving on too speedily— she lays before your imagination such lush and magical scenes, such jewel-like descriptions that you have to surface from time to time and ponder upon them, and it is easy to see that she loves language and words, and of course, books.
Although Smoke Paper Mirrors covers a great deal of time and the reader is not given much detail about the separate lives of the characters, Tambour, with great skill, provides just the right touches to bring about empathy in the reader for them, and a desire to know their fates. Towards the end of the story Zhang Wenge changes his name to Arthur Zhang and goes to Australia where he struggles with non-acceptance and can’t get a job. But he has a lucky break when Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, allows the many thousands of Chinese students to stay in Australia after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Arthur gets a loan, buys land, and sets up a shop, ‘Zhang’s Infinite Immortals Fruit and Veg.’
Although they are fleetingly present in the first pages of the book at this point, new characters are introduced fully in the form of Melmet and her husband, Bülent, a quaint and romantic Turkish couple who run a restaurant. Arthur and the couple become friends, and there are some particularly moving passages about the power and nature of the friendship between Bülent and Arthur, both immigrants to Australia, and from time to time the book strikes out at the snobbery, cruelty and ignorance of many Australians towards outsiders. Tambour has a big feeling for the outsider in society, and this is not surprising as she is one herself.
Of the many elements I enjoyed in Smoke Paper Mirrors, one thing I liked particularly is that the characters often give each other wonderful gifts, the kind of gifts more likely to be found in dreams, I feel. Along the same lines, there is also a curious edge of the mystical about the book, although it’s hard to quite grasp why… fittingly so, perhaps. But the engravings by John Tenniel of the caterpillar with a hookah in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland came welcome to my mind, after reading Smoke Paper Mirrors, and Tenniel’s life and career, according to his biographer, Rodney Engen, ‘was that of the supreme gentlemanly outsider, living on the edge of respectability.’ I think there are some resonances there.
