The investigation
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The Investigator is despatched to a provincial town to find out the truth behind a disturbing spate of suicides amongst employees of the Firm. But from the moment he steps off the train, he finds himself in a world that is alien, unrecognisable, and diabolically complex. From the hostile weather and the fickle hospitality at Hotel Hope to the town's bewildering inhabitants, everything seems to be against him to the point where he wonders whether he is trapped in a recurring nightmare, or has passed into the realm of death itself.
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Originally published on Unravellations.
I find myself at a loss of what to say about The Investigation.
At first it was like an Alice-in-Wonderland-esque tumble down a rabbit hole into infinite loops of absurd nonsense, but then in the second half, it takes a grimmer turn and tone and by the end of the book, you're really left questioning what was the point of it all. Or was that the point?
A lot of online comments mentioned how The Investigation was Kafka-esque. I'm going to admit here that I've never read Kafka (shame on me) so I can't concur or rebutt any of these statements. What it did remind me a little of was Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot, except not as absurdist, and it didn't quite leave me with a feeling of liberating self-doubt as Beckett's play did.
The Investigation starts off only mildly absurd. The Investigator, as he is known, arrives at an unnamed town where he is supposed to find his way to the Enterprise to investigate a series of suicides amongst its employees. Everything in the book is named that way - the Waiter, the Server, the Guard, the Guide. Things turn topsy-turvy for the Investigator as nothing seems to happen according to plan. He gets a creepy feeling of being watched. It raised a lot of questions about personal identity in today's world, are we defined by our functions in society, have we all lost our own individuality in capitalism, so on and so forth. Side note: the Enterprise always reminded me of Google for some reason.
Things get from crazy to batshit insane. Allegories either become too convoluted or simply collapsed under themselves. I was left feeling as lost as the Investigator, all my previous predictions for the ending of the book fell through. If anything, this book had the ability to keep me reading and reading, fuelled simply by the curiosity of finding out what exactly is going on. I finished the book within 24 hours, but the ending fell a little flat for me. I'm not even sure if the author intended to clear anything up by the end. I know explanations are sometimes not necessary for complex works like these, they're deliberately left open-ended in order to facilitate thought and discussion, but when I look back and can't seem to connect any dots, or to find out any sort of message behind it all, I begin to question the efficacy of the ending. Maybe it's me?!
